Recently in Economy Category

Breaking news: In order to cut down on travel time through the revolving door for President Obama's outgoing and incoming team of advisers, the White House is moving from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Here's the new location:Might as well be:"President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level administration post, possibly White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said. [...]After...

Houston Mayor Annise Parker has ordered mandatory furloughs for some City of Houston employees.(Above--Various iconic images from our great City of Houston. We all need to pitch in to keep our city strong. Montage by Yassie.)From the Houston Chronicle---"Thousands of city of Houston employees will have to take six unpaid days off in the coming six months, one of a series of actions Mayor Annise Parker is taking to close a $29 million budget gap. "This is a step...

Awww, poor wittle banksters. They got their fee-fees hurt by the mean, old pwesident who didn't invite them to the recent oligarchy roundtable in Washington:"On the mental list of slights and outrages that just about every major figure on Wall Street is believed to keep on President Barack Obama, add this one: When he met recently with a group of CEOs at Blair House, there was no representative from any of the six biggest banks...

I've never been a fan of raisins. There's just something about a so-called fruit that is all shriveled up and looks like dead bugs that has never appealed to me.   Over the years, raisins have become analogous with things that I have found annoying. I find it particularly annoying when a situation calls for bold, decisive action ... and in comes Mr. Stay Puft to handle it. You know what I'm talking about. You...

In a January 20 article at the Center for American Progress, Michael Linden differentiated between those who are serious about addressing our fiscal problems-the deficit hawks-from those who posture and preen about it--the deficit peacocks. Here's how he defines a peacock:"Deficit peacocks like to preen and call attention to themselves, but are not sincerely interested in taking the difficult but necessary steps toward a balanced budget. Peacocks prefer scoring political points to solving problems."This is...

Fiction:"Congress at midnight Thursday approved an $801 billion package of tax cuts and $57 billion for extended unemployment insurance. The vote sealed the first major deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans as Democrats put aside their objections and bowed to the realignment of power brought about by their crushing election losses. The bipartisan support for the tax deal also underscored the urgency felt by the administration and by lawmakers in both parties to prop...

From Open Congress:"[T]he 99er problem -- people exhausting all unemployment benefits without finding a job -- is about to get much worse because we're approaching 99 weeks from the brunt of the recession unemployment spike. Congress is not planning to add more weeks of unemployment benefits and the Federal Reserve is projecting the unemployment rate to stay pretty much where it is for the next year. Putting it all together, this means that for the...

The Senate voted 83-15 yesterday to invoke cloture on President Obama's sell-out compromise on the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%. Nine Democrats and Bernie Sanders voted "no." The nine were: Jeff Bingaman (NM), Sherrod Brown (OH), Russ Feingold (WI), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Kay Hagan (NC), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Pat Leahy (VT), Carl Levin (MI), and Mark Udall (CO). One of the poster children for duplicity and hypocrisy, Mary Landrieu of...

*Sigh*"President Obama will host a roundtable with about 20 corporate chiefs on Wednesday, according to the White House, part of an attempt to ease strained relations with business. Expected for the session at the Blair House, across the street from the White House, are executives from a range of industries, including American Express, Cisco Systems, Dow Chemical, Google, Motorola, Intel, UPS and PepsiCo, according to people involved in the planning. But the White House said...

Just one small segment of Sen. Bernie Sanders' marathon speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday, dealing with the class war and the winners and losers in that war:<br />"...in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income. The top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income-more than the entire bottom 50 percent.""From 1980-2005, 80% of all income went to...