• Deficit
• Energy
• Federal Reserve
• Food
• Green Economy
• Healthcare
• Housing
• Jobs and Worker Rights
• Local Economy
• Military Spending
• Safety Net
• Taxes
• Trade
• Transit

Credit-Card Rates Climb
Levels Hit Nine-Year High as New Rules Limiting Penalty Fees Help Fuel Rise

By RUTH SIMON
Wall Street Journal

Interest rates continue to tumble for the U.S. Treasury, companies and home buyers alike. But for a large portion of 381 million U.S. credit-card accounts, borrowing rates have been moving only one way: up.

And average rates are likely to climb further in the near future.

By Dean Baker
Huffington Post

The middle class is getting whacked by the Great Recession. Fifteen million people are out of work, another 9 million workers can only find part-time jobs, and millions more have given up looking for work altogether. Those lucky enough to be employed are unlikely to see any substantial wage gains for years to come.

Collapse of middle class means there's no fuel for recovery, Gerald Celente argues

By Daniel Tencer
Raw Story

The US economic recovery in recent quarters is little more than a "cover-up" and the world is headed for a "Greatest Depression," complete with social unrest and class warfare, says a renowned economic forecaster.

Gerald Celente, head of the Trends Research Institute, told Yahoo!News' Tech Ticker that there's no risk of a "double-dip recession" because the first "dip" never ended.

By Robert B. Reich
Politcio

Mitt Romney is smart enough not to join Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin in using the proposed mosque at ground zero to to lauch a presidential bid. While Gingrich is busy comparing Muslims to Nazis (“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington”), and Palin is calling on New Yorkers to “refudiate” the plan (she subsequently corrected her word choice), Romney is offering an economic plan.

That’s a wise choice. Mitt knows Americans don’t care about mosques in Manhattan. They care about money in their own mitts.

By Robert Field
NewsLanc

An article “Past Peak Prosperity” from a prominent Sunday News columnist reflects:

How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline

It's going to get worse -- a whole lot worse

By Paul B. Farrell
Market Warch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- "How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

By Rebecca Abrahams
Huffington Post

Election fraud attorney Bob Fitrakis is sending letters today to attorneys representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads requesting that they retain all documents, emails, accounting records and other records. This "document hold" is the first step toward legal action based on the groups' alleged laundering of illegal campaign contributions from large corporations.

By Shahien Nasiripour
Arthur Delaney
Huffington Post

President Barack Obama's signature plan to combat the housing crisis has fallen short of its goals -- rather than significantly and permanently reducing home foreclosures, it is only delaying them.

Finance reform won't stop the high-risk gambling that wrecked the economy - and Republicans aren't the only ones to blame

By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone

By ERIC LIPTON
NY Times

WASHINGTON — Nearly a dozen current or former lawmakers have been honored by university endowments financed in part by corporations with business before Congress, posing some potential conflicts like that attributed to Representative Charles B. Rangel in an House ethics complaint.

The donations from businesses to the endowments ranged from modest amounts to millions of dollars, federal records show. And the lawmakers, who include powerful committee chairmen or party leaders, often pushed legislation or special appropriations sought by the corporations.

By Stephen C. Webster
RAW Story

It's no secret that many of the world's largest industrialized nations are somewhat eager to ease their reliance on the U.S. dollar. For months China and Russia have pushed ever subtly, for a new "global reserve currency," to give governments around the world enhanced economic stability in the event of greater fluctuations in the dollar's value.

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.

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 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

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.