Economy and Business
How to Become a Billionaire
Meet the Greediest Women of 2013
I always agonize while compiling a list of the 10 greediest Americans of the year. Every holiday season, I find so many candidates deserving this distinction that bankers alone could fill this list. Or fast-food CEOs. Male masters of the universe again dominate this...
Don’t Deck the Halls for This One
Channeling the spirit of the holiday season, key lawmakers managed to set aside dysfunction and take the first step in a small budget deal for the 2014 fiscal year. Back in October, Congress ended the 16-day government shutdown that cost this country 120,000 jobs by...
Flashback: You Can’t Save Social Security by Destroying It
One of my favorite stories of 2004 concerned Senate Majority Leader William Frist and his campaign fund. Realizing he had an excess of funds, he invested in the stock market. He lost about $450,000 between 2000 and 2004. You would think that would have taught...
Exposing Secret Trade Pacts
NAFTA. CAFTA-DR. TPP. TTIP. That numbing spoonful of alphabet soup represents four so-called free trade pacts that benefit global capital at the expense of everyone else. The North American Free Trade Agreement came first, and NAFTA will soon mark its 20th...
The Fake Debt Crisis
As the American people tried to celebrate last year's holiday season while mourning the loss of 26 lives in Newtown, Connecticut, Congress and the White House were duking it out over the "fiscal cliff." Our leaders reached a temporary solution on New Year's Day that...
We’re Not Broke — We’ve Been Robbed
With the Friday the 13th December deadline for a federal budget deal, the cries of "we're broke," and "we can't afford to keep spending," are ringing again. But we're not broke and acting like we are is making us poorer. One of the biggest common misunderstandings is...
Tiny Tim Time at Walmart
Who says Walmart isn't big-hearted? Just look at the chain's outlet in Canton, Ohio, where management set up bins for food donations, asking people to give generously to the poor who otherwise would not have a Thanksgiving dinner. But the bins weren't for customers —...
Attack of the Budget Slashers
‘Tis the Season to Celebrate Mammon
Here come Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. It's a month-long season of friends and family, spiritual reflection, and time to decompress from our usual helter-skelter lives, right? Good lord, shout the corporate bosses, are you nuts? Do you think America is some...
