Category: Economy
What’s Crippling the Recovery?
by Polly Cleveland | Jan 22, 2014 | Economy(Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen | Source: Reuters) Under incoming Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, the United States Federal Reserve Bank will begin to “taper” its program of “Quantitative Easing” or “QE.” Under QE, the Fed every month buys billions of U.S. Treasury bonds and other securities from the big banks. QE keeps down longer-term […]
Why Beating Back Inequality Won’t Be Easy
by Sam Pizzigati | Jan 20, 2014 | EconomyHalf a century ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty.” That war would soon make a real difference. In the decade following its 1964 launch, our official poverty rate dropped from 19 to 11.2 percent. But that progress stalled in the 1970s, and a profound economic insecurity now afflicts the vast majority of […]
Why the Working Class Blames the Poor
by Jack Metzgar | Jan 20, 2014 | EconomyTeaching macroeconomics with a group of union stewards and local leaders last month, I had just finished explaining the enormous economic stimulus the combination of “food stamps” and unemployment compensation is providing to our struggling economy. When you include the “macroeconomic multiplier effects” of these “automatic stabilizers,” it was about $260 billion in 2012, and […]
When the Business Press Made Fraud Seem Normal
by Jim Sleeper | Jan 16, 2014 | Economy, MediaIn 1920 the New Republic ran “A Test of the News,” a special supplement to the magazine (published soon after as the book Liberty and the News) by Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz showing that in the three and a half years since the Bolshevik revolution, the New York Times had reported “not what was, […]
Push Washington Toward More Spending
by Jeff Madrick | Jan 11, 2014 | EconomyThe weak employment report out today reinforces the view that the Federal Reserve should not ease up on monetary policy soon. The strength of this economic recovery is not yet clear, and the Fed is the only game in town due to sequestration of government funds. Waiting another three or four months to tighten policy […]