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The key to financial recovery: restoring the rule of law on Wall Street.

By James K. Galbraith
The New Republic

The financial crisis in America isn't over. It's ongoing, it remains unresolved, and it stands in the way of full economic recovery. The cause, at the deepest level, was a breakdown in the rule of law. And it follows that the first step toward prosperity is to restore the rule of law in the financial sector.

By changing their measurement of progress, Marylanders can see for themselves whether chasing the benefits of continued economic growth is worth the costs.

By Scott Gast
YES! Magazine

For the first time in years, there’s serious discussion about the size of our military budget.

By Christopher Hellman
YES!

The current economic crisis, coupled with concerns about spiraling deficits and our staggering national debt, is, at long last, bringing military spending to the forefront of the budget debate. Not since the end of the Cold War and the discussion of a “peace dividend” has the Pentagon budget—generally considered sacrosanct—received such scrutiny.

By letsgetitdone
FDL

The Senate passed financial reform Thursday, and President Obama will sign it, but many of the tough decisions will be made by federal regulators. How they interpret the bill will be key.

By Gail Russell Chaddock
Christian Science Monitor

Even before the Senate passed sweeping finance reform Thursday, House Republicans – now within range of taking back the majority in fall midterm elections – called for its repeal.

By Chris Hedges
Truthdig

From Colorado to New York, natural gas drilling is putting drinking water at risk.

By Jeff Deasy
AlterNet

The ordinary tap water available to 12 million residents in the New York Metropolitan area has been reliably clean and flavorful since 1842, when an aqueduct was built to bring pristine water from upstate to the city. For years the prideful city's water is a consistent winner in blind taste tests. Easy to take for granted, it comes as a shock to learn it is now endangered by natural gas drilling.

By Allen W. Smith
Dissident Voice

In December, the Obama deficit-reduction commission will make recommendations for budget cuts that will then be voted on, with an up or down vote, by the lame-duck Congress. Already, there is much speculation that Social Security will be one of the big targets. The rationale for cutting Social Security seems to be that, during such difficult economic times, everything should be a candidate for the chopping block, and that the public should support such cuts out of a sense of patriotism.

By Janine R. Wedel
Huffington Post

Strange as it sounds, my experience mapping under-the-radar power in Communist Poland, as a social anthropologist, helped me identify a new breed of modern-day power broker here in the U.S. Unaccountable operators are increasingly shaping public policy to suit their own interests, a disturbing trend I examine in my book Shadow Elite.

The Daily Beast

Economists Manifesto

By Annie Lowrey
Washington Independent

This entire interview with Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), the head of the House Appropriations Committee and a powerful veteran member of Congress, who is retiring this year, is worth a read. But one passage is particularly striking. Obey is discussing his proposal to divert funds from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education program to save teachers’ jobs. Due to the states’ fiscal crises, as many as 200,000 local government employees, many of them teachers, might lose their jobs in the coming year.

Does the G-20 Show the Shape of things to Come -- austerity and extreme police actions?

By Paul Jay
Real News Network

With all the public attention during G20 on the 1000 arrests and such, something critical was overlooked. That's the paradox the assembled heads of governments created for ending the global economic crisis.

The G20 leaders recognize that "demand" needs to grow. That means people must have the means to buy stuff. Do a search in the G20 Toronto Summit Declaration and fourteen times you'll find a reference to boosting or increasing "demand".

By Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge

As we close on another week replete with ugly economic data and the usual bizarro counterintuitive market, here is a summary of the 50 most underreported facts about the state of the US economy, courtesy of the Coto report [1]. After reading these it almost makes sense that the market has become completely desensitized to the sad reality now pervasive in this country. Readers are encouraged to add their own observations to this list. Surely if the list is doubled, the market will go up to 72,000 instead of just 36,000.

By Ezra Klein
Washington Post

Financial reform has passed. The sprawling legislation is meant to be an air bag protecting us from the next major crash, which of course raises the question: Will it work?

"We would have loved to have something like this for Lehman Brothers," said Hank Paulson, who served as Treasury secretary when the financial system melted down in 2008. "There's no doubt about it."

Bank Of America, Citi Results Show Hurdles Ahead

REUTERS

CHARLOTTE, N.C./NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America and Citigroup posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings on lower credit losses, but their shares fell as the banks highlighted the challenge of boosting revenue in a stagnant economy.

Revenue is down from a year earlier and the banks, like their rivals, are grappling with how their business will be affected by the landmark financial reform bill passed by Congress on Thursday.

The Rich Catch Everyone Else’s Cutback Fever

By MOTOKO RICH
New York Times

The provisional economic recovery has been helped in large part by the spending of the most affluent.

Late last year those households started buying with much more confidence, while other consumers held back. Now, even the rich appear to be tightening their belts.

“One of the reasons that the recovery has lost momentum is that high-end consumers have become more jittery and more cautious,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.

By Sandra Postel
YES! Magazine