Economy and Business
Marching Toward Greater Inequality
Are America’s rich getting richer? Certainly. Every official yardstick shows that America’s most affluent are upping their incomes much faster than everyone else.
How Mitt Got His
What a blessing it is for Mitt Romney to serve as the Republican nominee for president.
Romney Passes the Buck
Because Bain Capital did things between 1999 and 2002 that Mitt Romney doesn’t want to defend — such as exporting American jobs — Romney claims that its outsourcing program wasn’t his doing. He says he played no “active role” in deciding on Bain’s investments after 1999. But even if we take Romney at his word, does that mean he bears no responsibility for what his company did?
Economic Rapture Might Be around the Corner
The 2011 fiscal year ended with a $1.3-trillion deficit. How did America go from a state of “burgeoning federal surpluses” (in Greenspan’s words in 2001) to “extraordinary financial crisis” (the way he put it in 2010) in just one decade? Two words suffice: tax cuts.
Shameless Tax Loopholes
One intriguing aspect of today’s taxation debate is that it’s so shameless.
50 Years of Gutting America’s Middle Class
Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, 50 years ago this month. Sprawled along a major thoroughfare outside the city’s downtown, that inaugural store embodied many of the hallmarks that have since come to define the Walmart way of doing business. Walton scoured the country for the cheapest merchandise and deftly exploited a loophole in federal law to pay his mostly female workforce less than minimum wage.
Save Austerity Measures for the Next Boom
There are two competing theories on how to pull us out of the economic slump we’re in, but you’d hardly know it from the debate going on in Washington. Conservatives, who want us to cut our way to prosperity, keep drowning out those who think we should be pumping money into the economy by spending more on teachers, research, roads, bridges, and other public works.
The Tea Party Shtick
Not too long ago, Americans only dressed up in George Washington wigs and tri-corner hats on the Fourth of July. But then the tea party came along. Colonial garb started turning up at rallies all year around.
The Robin Hood Tax
I spent 22 years in the financial services business. Beginning in the 1980s, I worked at exchanges where we traded everything from futures on soybeans to shares of stock to options on interest rates. During these boom years for the U.S. and global financial markets, traders and Wall Street executives earned fortunes.
One Weak Domino
The stock market keeps going up and down like a yo-yo. I thought you’d like to know why. It’s Greece.
