Archive for April, 2009
Chrysler Headed For Bankruptcy?
The NYTimes is reporting that the government is preparing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy (reorganization) filing for Chrysler. The filing itself could come as soon as next week. Union health care and pension benefits would remain protected and a potential deal with Fiat could still be worked out under the filing. A major sticking point, however, ...Read more.
Wall Street Digs In
Good online piece from Newsweek from a while ago (April 10th). The subtitle is confusing, though: clearly Obama is getting the message (from Wall St.)! Wall Street Digs In The old system refuses to change. Is Obama getting the message? Michael Hirsh | Newsweek Web Exclusive Not long ago, a group of skeptical Democratic senators ...Read more.
The Dull Compulsion of the Economic (ix): Zizek
A series of blog postings by D&S collective member Larry PetersonA Meditation on The Monstrosity of ChristOK, that was a seductively incomplete, or even misleading title for this blog entry. The reference is not so much to Jesus Christ as it is to the atheistic, Marxist-inspired philosopher/critic/psychoanalyst/you-name-it Slavoj Zizek, who has teamed up with the ...Read more.
The Big Banks' Fuzzy Math
There’s less than meets the eye to the latest reports of bank profits. Most of it appears to be the result of accounting shell games and TARP money passed through AIG. With the government handing them nearly free money and lots of people wanting to borrow it and pay interest, why can’t they make an ...Read more.
Another $3 Billion Ponzi Scheme
It’s getting hard to keep track these days. Was anybody making money honestly this past decade? From the WSJ: MINNEAPOLIS — Bernard Madoff bilked the public with fictitious securities transactions. Tom Petters, prosecutors allege, gulled his victims with nonexistent DVD players and flat-screen TVs. Among the spate of alleged scams that have come to light ...Read more.
Sky High Unemployment for Blacks With Degrees
Another EPI economic snapshot: Fifteen months into a deep recession, college-educated white workers still had a relatively low unemployment rate of 3.8% in March of this year. The same could not be said for African Americans with four-year degrees. The March 2009 unemployment rate for college-educated blacks was 7.2%-almost twice as high as the white ...Read more.
Financialization of the American University
This is from D&S collective member Faisal Chaudhry, with whom we hung out in NYC this past weekend during this year’s Left Forum. It follows up on earlier posts on this topic, here and here. Some Further Notes on the ‘Financialization’ of the American University In recent weeks we have been keeping an active watch ...Read more.
Big Corps Using Bailout Bucks For Lobbying
It’s the best game in town. Get taxpayer bailout billions and spend some of the spare cash on lobbyists to press Congressional Reps and Senators into giving more money and ending onerous conditions like limiting executive compensation. There oughta be a law… –df From the Washington Post: Major recipients of federal bailout money spent more ...Read more.
American Empire Foreclosed? (Mark Engler)
One of the people that we (D&S collective member and blogger Larry Peterson and I) got to hang out with while we were in New York for this year’s Left Forum was Mark Engler (author of this review that we published online a couple of months ago). Mark has a great skewering of Niall Ferguson ...Read more.
Obama *Does* Take on Entrenched Interests
I missed a noteworthy item in Saturday’s New York Times because I was down in New York for this year’s Left Forum (which was terrific, by the way; I hope to be blogging about it here and there in the next couple of days, time permitting). Julia Willebrand, who was tabling next to us for ...Read more.
