Joseph Stiglitz – The Great Malaise Continues

NEW YORK – The year 2015 was a hard one all around. Brazil fell into recession. China’s economy experienced its first serious bumps after almost four decades of breakneck growth. The eurozone managed to avoid a meltdown over Greece, but its near-stagnation has continued, contributing to what surely will be viewed as a lost decade. For the United States, 2015 …

Dean Baker – The Federal Reserve Board and the Presidential Candidates

Some of the folks watching the Republican presidential debates were struck by the fact that Donald Trump was apparently unfamiliar with the concept of the nuclear triad: that the United States maintains a nuclear force composed of land based missiles, submarine based missiles, and strategic bombers that can deliver nuclear weapons. This is the sort of basic knowledge of the …

Dean Baker – The Federal Reserve Board and the Presidential Candidates

Some of the folks watching the Republican presidential debates were struck by the fact that Donald Trump was apparently unfamiliar with the concept of the nuclear triad: that the United States maintains a nuclear force composed of land based missiles, submarine based missiles, and strategic bombers that can deliver nuclear weapons. This is the sort of basic knowledge of the …

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – Addressing A Digital Divide – 12.09.15

Digital currency is destined to change almost everything about our money systems and management. The traditional gatekeepers of credit, and the types of credit issued, are also changing. This week Ellen talks with Scott Smith, an author, financial innovator and presidential candidate who achieved great success in the old mechanics of money but sees a brighter path ahead with simple changes that can do away with income tax and the national debt. Co-host Walt McRee speaks with the CEO of a community-dedicated credit union choosing to leave the business because of harassment from the federal agency that oversees them. And Matt Stannard takes a retrospective look at the past year in public banking news.

Chris Hedges – ‘A Pipeline Straight to Jail’

The defeat of the Harvard University debate team by a team from the Eastern New York Correctional Facility in the Catskills elucidates a truth known intimately by those of us who teach in prisons: that the failure of the American educational system to offer opportunities to the poor and the government’s abandonment of families and children living in blighted communities …

Larry Schwartz – The 9 Most Expensive Medicines in the World—Courtesy of Big Pharma

Hedge funder Martin Shkreli reminded everyone of the sky-high—and seemingly arbitrary—costs of prescription medicines in this country when he bought and immediately increased the price of an established drug used to fight a parasitic infection. The price hike was eye-popping, from $13.50 a pill to $750 per pill, prompting Dr. Judith Aberg of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount …

Ellen Brown – Who Owns The Federal Reserve?

This article was first published by Global Research in October 2008 “Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.” – The Honorable …

Steven W Thrasher – Disaster capitalism is a permanent state of life for too many Americans

In the United States, disaster has become our most common mode of life. Proof that our daily existence was something other than a simmering, smoldering disaster has been historically held somewhat at bay by the myth that hard work equals some kind of subsistence living. For the more deluded amongst us, this ‘American dream’ even got us to believe we …

Mike Whitney – Markets Gone Mad

Imagine your doctor put you on a daily dose of oxycontin, phenobarbital and Quaaludes for six years straight. Then he suddenly cancelled your prescription. Do you think your behavior might become a bit erratic? This is what’s going on with the stock market. It’s trying to shake off six years of overmedication brought on by the Fed’s zero rates and …

Charles Hugh Smith – Is the Stock Market Now “Too Big to Fail”?

Correspondent Bart D. recently speculated that the U.S. stock market was now “too big to fail,” that is, that it was too integral to the global financial system and economy to be allowed to fail, i.e. decline 40+% as in previous bubble bursts. The U.S. stock market is integral to the global financial system in two ways.Now that investment banks, …