The Federal Open Market Committee is not going to stop quantitative easing just yet. This is no surprise considering the weak economic conditions and as we pointed out, an inflation rate below expectations. The risk of deflation is real.
The very odd spectacle of President Obama personally lobbying for Larry Summers - his preferred choice to run the Federal Reserve – came to an end this week when Summers withdrew his name for consideration. The final blow for Summers came when a fourth Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, in this case Jon Tester of Montana, issued a statement in opposition to Summers.
The story which should be front page news but is not is income inequality. U.C. Berkeley professor, Emmaneul Saez studies income inequality and has recently updated his research with 2012 figures and the results are astounding. The top 1% breaking records for grabbing America's income gains should be what's blaring across the headlines.
People are broke and hungry in America and the food stamp program has been the only thing between many and starvation. Food stamps are successful, it has an incredibly low fraud rate and most importantly, America doesn't have starvation filling the streets as a result. Yet for some reason House Republicans, with Majority leader Eric Cantor leading the charge, want to cut food stamps and force people to starve.
How the Financial Elite Con Us into Wanting the Wrong Thing
Competitive or self-regulating market economies promote dynamic creative destruction and rebirth—led by people’s needs, wants and desires, thus properly directing economic progress. Historically, competitive market economies are a relatively new economic system, and while very productive, they are not self-sustaining, are unstable and require significant state support and regulation to function properly.
Welcome to Outrageous Economic Shorts, the reader's digest of economic horror. Below are studies, facts and figures that should be enough to make your hair curl. Unfortunately information like this pops up every week. Yet read it and weep, here's some of the latest.
Happy Labor Day! The national holiday came about as an actual day of contrition by Congress for murdered striking railroad workers, although a union, the Knights of Labor, had been organizing celebrations before the Pullman Strike, along with the Central Labor Union.
A woman named Dawn Hughey had worked at a Dollar General store for just four months when she was named "manager" of a store in the Detroit suburbs in 2009. Having recently moved home after a stint in California, Hughey had hoped the new honorific title (and its accompanying annual salary) would help her start a new life in Michigan. But like other managers in America's booming dollar store industry, Hughey quickly came to realize she was a manager in name only.
The Institute for Policy Studies has released a no holds barred report on CEO pay, culture. Even the study title screams outrage, Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted. Every year there is a list of the top 25 highest paid CEOs and over the past 20 years this list has included 500 executives. Of those 500 who made the Wall Street Journal's top 25 highest paid Chief Executive Officer list, a whopping 38% were utter failures at their jobs.
Those 50 and older, who were laid off over the past 5 years, have had an especially difficult time being rehired. Many have already drained their savings and now rely on government services. Some have taken their own lives.
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