In his column in the Times yesterday, Joe Nocera wrote about Robert G. Wilmers, the head of the M&T Bank, based in Buffalo. Wilmers has distinguished himself by growing M&T into one of the most highly regarded regional bank holding companies in the country, and one of the best performing stocks in the S&P 500 …
It has always shocked me that it took nearly four years after the Crash of 1929 for the famous Pecora hearings to take place. One cannot believe that all that time passed before the Senate held hearings that exposed the corrupt and short-sighted practices that ruined the economy. Well, here we are, coming up on …
Ezra Klein has a smart, sobering piece in The Washington Post today, evaluating the strategy of Osama bin Laden, and how he has almost succeeded in attaining his goals. Klein speaks to a counterterrorism and al-Qaeda expert named Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, whose view is that “bin Laden has been enormously successful” using a strategy that the …
In The Baseline Scenario today, James Kwak runs a chart from Rep. Paul Ryan‘s proposal to diminish Medicare: “Here’s how to read that chart,” writes Kwak. “In 2030, under current law, a 65-year-old Medicare beneficiary’s health care will cost $60. (Obviously, this is using an index, not real dollars.) Medicare will pay $35 and the …
Essential reading from the excellent Joseph Stiglitz in Vanity Fair: “It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control …
When ABC News’s Jonathan Karl asked Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republicans’ exciting new Budget Action Hero, “What do you say to nervous Republicans who say that this is a political Kamizake mission?”, Ryan replied, “They didn’t come here for a political career. They came for a cause.” Having just completed a new installment of the …
In The Atlantic this month, Graeme Wood has an article about a study undertaken by Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. It’s a study about how the rich feel about being rich, “an extraordinary sample of confession, memoir, and apologia” from the super-rich, as the center’s director, the sociologist Paul G. Schervish, puts it. …
Michael Moore spoke at a rally in Wisconsin last Friday, and here is what he said: “Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The …
The essential Robert Reich has nailed the current crisis brilliantly: “The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and …
The new issue of The Atlantic features an exceptionally good article by the impressive Chrystia Freeland called “The Rise of the New Global Elite.” The excellent article describes a new aristocracy whose power reaches across boundaries, whose ability to act in its own self-interest is probably impervious to national governments, and, perhaps most alarmingly, whose …