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Let's say you're a member of the upper class. You work as an investor or a banker or an entrepreneur or a highly paid professional (like a doctor, lawyer, or accountant) or a business owner in some industry like retail or transportation. Or maybe you don't work at all, but live off your stocks and bonds. Which economic scenario looks more attractive to you, strictly in terms of how it will affect your bottom line:
Today’s Republican Party is turning out to be the worst friend business could imagine, led by politicians who don’t understand the modern economy, and, worse, are ready to blow it up on principle.
This spring, as a GOP beholden to the Tea Party geared up for brinksmanship on the debt ceiling, lobbyists for Wall Street and corporations begged Republican leaders to back off. These pleas were ignored, and now a few trillion dollars in shareholder equity, wealth owned primarily by the top 10 percent of the richest Americans and corporate executives, has gone poof.
A commission appointed by the Massachusetts legislature is considering the creating a state Partnership Bank to boost the local economy by increasing community development lending.
Boston, MA - Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit -- covering Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island -- issued a decision upholding Maine's campaign finance disclosure provisions, which had been challenged by the anti-gay marriage National Organization for Marriage. In response, Lisa Danetz, Demos Senior Counsel, issued the following statement:
A big reason why financial crimes are so hard to prosecute is that authorities often lack witnesses who can testify in detail about such crimes. That means prosecutors must rely on others forms of evidence -- like documents and emails. But even a pretty damning paper trail just doesn't have the punch of an individual pointing their finger and unloading all the sordid details. Also, without an insider to explain the labryinth of a typical securites fraud, it can be hard for prosecutors to ever even assemble such a trail.
In the wake of the S&P downgrade, the Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it would keep short-term interest rates near zero for two years. This was a departure from the Fed's previous language, which did not offer a specific timeline. These rock-bottom rates can't continue indefinitely, and the Fed has the power to raise them at any time. As well, further downgrades of the U.S. credit rating could work to push interest rates up.
In an op-ed in today's New York Times, Jeffrey Ganns provides the most insightful explanation yet of why S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating even though there is no evidence that the United States would ever not make good on its debts.
The cascade of budget cuts continues. The National Employment Law Project (NELP) reported last week that several states, including Michigan, South Carolina, and Florida, were cutting unemployment benefits. For over 50 years, there had been a national consensus that state unemployment benefits should last 26 weeks.
WASHINGTON DC-- In the wake of an austerity debt ceiling deal that will cost 1.8 million jobs in 2012 and do nothing to address inequality and the decline of the American middle class, today the Rebuild the Dream Campaign – with the support of partner organization Demos – announced a new Contract for the American Dream.