On Thursday the 28th I went to a lecture by the celebrated economist Thomas Piketty at Columbia University. Author of the best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty emphases his work on wealth concentrations and distribution over the past 250 years. He says that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently …
I don’t know who this toad Kevin O’Leary is, but somewhere in the great media world he has a job opining on the global situation. I don’t know what the rest of his body of work indicates, but this excerpt alone shows that he, and what’s more, whoever hired him, should be sent back to …
With this appearance on CNBC last week, the Legend of Elizabeth Warren continues. Look how she shoots down these two smart-alecks who dare come at her armed with nothing more than some producers’ notes and a little cocktail party conversation. “No!” Elizabeth says, and they are gobsmacked. You know, I love Hilary Clinton, but whenever …
This was first published on The Washington Monthly’s site on May 25, 2013. I have three laws of politics. I don’t know if they explain everything, but they often explain something, and that’s enough for me. Malanowski’s First Law of Politics is that the rich and powerful will always act in their own self interest. …
In the Times a couple of weeks ago, Thomas L. Friedman wrote one of the most interesting, alarming, and possibly prophetic pieces I have read this century. Let me quote it at length: “It’s hard to have a conversation today with any worker, teacher, student or boss who doesn’t tell you some version of this: …
. . .so far, anyway, has appeared in The American Conservative. It is called “Revolt of the Rich,”and it is by by Mike Lofgren, who spent 16 years as a Republican staffer on House and Senate Budget Committees. In the article, he makes a case that very few other Republicans are willing to advocate: not …
I must say I kind of love this painting by Alex Schaefer, a Los Angeles artist. I really appreciate this peacefully anarchic protest. According to the website at Hive Gallery, where this and other paintings in this series are being exhibited, “Alex wants us to “get over our apathy”…to let the regulators, economists, bankers know …
According to an article in The Hill this morning, seven states–Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and Wisconsin, all headed by Republican governors–have decided to opt out of the provision in the Affordable Health Care Act that expands Medicaid. Another eight–Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Texas and Virginia, all of which except Missouri …
As Joe Nocera reminds us today in the Times, “Not a single top executive at any of the firms that nearly brought down the financial system has spent so much as a day in jail. . . .What is also true, and which is every bit as corrosive to our belief in the rule of …
Here is an Iron Law of the modern era: When rich guys talk about freedom, hold on to your wallet. They are almost always talking about ways to make themselves more free to get more money. Case in point: in an interview with The Guardian on Sunday, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, said that …