Despite dismal job-creation numbers for June, it’s probably premature to say the U.S. economy is slipping into the second decline of a double dip recession. What’s abundantly clear, though, is that America’s hollowed-out, seriously eroded economy is hard put to create sufficient jobs even when there is no recession. Experts say the economy must create [...]
Posts under ‘Labor’
Middle class has a choice to make:
fight for what’s right or go under
While other nations such as Japan, China and Germany have been busy providing universal health care, advanced worker training and enhanced job security, building high-speed rail networks and modern infrastructure, the U.S. has excelled at producing more super-rich individuals, pushing the definition of super wealth into the stratosphere.
Banks have a political reason
for prolonging economic misery
We suspect the major banks, at least, aren’t lending because they’ve made a cynical, self-serving political calculation. If they can see to it Obama will be a failed, one-term president, the chances of replacing him with a Bush-style pro-business, antiregulation Republican are very good.
Who we don’t need as Fed chairman
— and who could do a better job
What’s wrong with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is the same thing that makes Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and top Obama economic advisor Larry Summers poor choices for their high posts at this time: they’re devoted to an outdated notion that what’s good for big business and the financial industry is good for America. That [...]
Sanders makes compelling case
against second Bernanke term
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders put a hold this week on the nomination of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke for a second term, laying out his case in a public statement. Here’s why Sanders believes President Obama should replace Bernanke with a new nominee. “The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national [...]
GM, Chrysler lay groundwork
for their own eventual demise
They had better hope this gamble will yield benefits in savings and competitiveness outweighing the costs, customer losses and ill will being generated all over the country. But as we will explain shortly, even if they realize short-run net gains, they’re in jeopardy of disastrous fallout within a few years.
Toyota projects $1.7 billion loss,
proving Republicans wrong again
Turns out that, just as the Big 3 CEO’s claimed, the unprecedented credit crisis and resulting market downturn, coming on the heels of an unprecedented, long, painful runup in fuel prices, with the economy sliding into recession, created a perfect storm for the whole auto industry, not just their companies.
Bush offers automakers small loan;
Republicans react with hissy fit
President Bush acted Friday to provide a desperately needed bridge loan for troubled automakers General Motors and Chrysler, effectively tiding them over until shortly after Barack Obama becomes president. The $13.4 billion loan money to be drawn from funds appropriated for the financial-industry bailout is, literally, about the least Bush could do. The president’s plan [...]
Automakers should get their $25 billion loan
What congressional leaders like Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., are talking about is a bailout loan to be repaid with interest, not a giveaway. What’s more, the loan will come with plenty of hard-nosed conditions, including no dividends, no huge bonuses and a certain measure of austerity for trustees and top executives.
Eight-year ripoff party over and we pay the tab
Try to wrap your mind around 10 straight months of job losses, topped off by 240,000 in October, adding up to an official count of 1.2 million for the year — shattering bad-news records going back to the early 1980s. But the reality is much worse, because those who don’t qualify for unemployment or who [...]
