"Words that make actions speak louder."
Remember that $500,000 pay cap for bailed-out banking execs the White House announced in February? Under Treasury Secretary Geithner’s new rules for bailout pay, that max has become a minimum. Early this past February, amid escalating public fury over $165 million in bonuses at bailed-out insurance giant AIG, President Obama announced a $500,000 cap on […]
To rescue the global economy from reckless power suits, we just may need a ‘maximum wage.’ So say Australia’s top labor leaders and a fairly daring cohort of MPs in the UK. By Sam Pizzigati You don’t need to be particularly bold, not these days, to blame excessive executive compensation for a good chunk of […]
The awesomely affluent of high finance, if current trends continue, seem almost certain to survive the mess they’ve created — with their wealth and power largely intact. And Treasury and Congress don’t appear to really mind. The American economy hasn’t been working — for working Americans — for a generation. Over the last three decades, […]
Citi analysts spent two years obsessing over luxury consumption by the rich. Last week, the ultimate symbol of that consumption — the fine art bubble — finally popped. Back a year ago, not long after Bear Stearns bit the Wall Street dust, buyers and sellers at New York’s annual spring fine art auctions shrugged off […]
Amid our world’s economic wreckage, today’s New York Times marveled, at least one developed nation seems to be doing just fine. That nation — little Norway — actually grew economically last year. Norwegians today haven’t just sidestepped the recession. They face no national debt. And Norway’s banks? They remain, the Times observes, “largely healthy and […]
Tax-cutters inspired by Jack Kemp have always argued that high tax rates give the rich an incentive to cheat on their taxes. The reality: So do low tax rates. Jack Kemp, the 1996 Republican vice-presidential nominee, died a week ago Saturday from cancer. Two days later, the Obama White House announced a crackdown on overseas […]
A World Bank economist is suggesting we need to concentrate less on the complexities of high finance and more on the noxious simplicity of our deeply unequal income distribution. Our high priests of high finance — the bankers and traders of Wall Street — take great pride in the complexity of their endeavors. Single-tranche collateralized […]
Who takes more of a risk when they wake up in the morning and go in to work? Laborers at construction sites? Or CEOs? Statistically, the answer could hardly be any plainer. Just over 1,200 Americans, notes a new report that surfaced last week, died on the job in construction in 2007. The risk of […]
The United States has been regularly counting people, via the Census, since 1790. But the federal government didn’t start counting the dollars in people’s pockets, with any regularity, until 1983 when the Federal Reserve began conducting a “Survey of Consumer Finances.” This Fed survey, now conducted every three years, tallies just how much family wealth […]
We live in a sound-bite political culture. Politicos and policy makers hardly ever engage their opposite numbers in anything close to real debate. Instead, they inflict upon us carefully rehearsed talking points. And the rest of us usually don’t particularly mind — because we’re not paying much attention anyway. We’re not paying attention because the […]