David DeGraw: Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination

The global banking cartel, centered at the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve, have paid off politicians and dictators the world over — from Washington to Greece to Egypt. In country after country, they have looted national economies at the expense of local populations, consolidating wealth in unprecedented fashion – the top economic one-tenth of one percent is currently holding over $40 trillion in investible wealth, not counting an equally significant amount of wealth hidden in offshore accounts.

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A Real-Market Alternative

In America we are taught from birth that capitalism is synonymous with markets, democracy, and individual liberty. Whatever its flaws, the only alternative is communism, or so we are told.

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The Insurers' Real Agenda for Change

The media had lots of health care news to obsess about last week. A federal judge ruled the health care reform law unconstitutional, and Senate Republicans tried in vain to repeal the law. But most of the press paid virtually no attention to a potentially much more important development -- a multi-pronged effort by five major insurers to strip from the law key regulations and consumer protections that aren't to their liking.

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The Official Unemployment Rate; an "Official" Lie

Do you believe Friday’s government report that the unemployment (U.3) rate fell last month from 9.4 percent to 9.0 percent? How could the rate decrease when January only saw a reported increase in payroll employment of 36,000 jobs when some 150,000 new jobs are needed to be created each month just to stay even with population growth?

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The State of the Union’s Schools: What We'd Like to Hear from Obama, But Won’t

While everyone knows that Barack Obama's State of the Union speech is likely to continue to push for the agenda that we've been facing in Race to the Top — privatization, more testing and test based "accountability," Arne Duncan's meanderings, more charter schools, and the other policies that have taken the nation's public schools further towards ruin than anything imagined when George W. Bush was President — we can at least try an imaginary alternative. Hence, the following wording from a State of the Union speech that we won't hear (at least not from the current President of the United States):

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The State of the Union: What the President Should Say

The President will have to devote a big part of his speech to the economy, but which economy? Corporate profits are up but jobs and wages remain in the doldrums. People with lots of financial assets, or who are deemed “talent” by large corporations, are enjoying a solid recovery. But most Americans continue to struggle.

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Bonuses for Bankers, Bankruptcy for Public Services

So, now we know about the $15bn-plus 2010 pay package for Goldman Sachs partners and employees [1]. The top rungs will get their many millions each [2], with lesser and lesser amounts going down the GS hierarchy. The mass of its more than 35,000 employees will, as usual, get much, much less than the top. In addition, the appreciation of Goldman's share prices likewise adds billions to employees who got stock options, which were likewise distributed very unequally throughout the firm. The unequal division of rewards within Goldman Sachs mirrors and mocks the far larger social divide it feeds.

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Microcredit: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Unraveling the confusion behind microcredit: how some models help alleviate poverty, while others exploit the poor to make the rich richer.

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Obama's Deregulation Dance With Wall Street

With a new Republican Congress falling all over itself to hand corporations whatever they want, it was only a matter of time before some politician turned up in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, breathlessly describing the "dazzling" and "path-breaking" nature of the free market, and vowing to get rid of regulations that have placed "unreasonable" burdens on businesses.

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Actually, The Retirement Age is Too High

The most dangerous conventional wisdom in the world today is the idea that with an older population, people must work longer and retire with less. This idea is being used to rationalize cuts in old-age benefits in numerous advanced countries -- most recently in France, and soon in the United States. The cuts are disguised as increases in the minimum retirement age or as increases in the age at which full pensions will be paid.

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