Economics - LA Progressive

Pasadena Initiatives Forum Sunday: Will You Cast an Informed Vote?

Join us this Sunday for a Forum to review the eleven propositions that will be voted on in November. Sunday, 14 October, 12:45 p.m.

What the Walmart Whistleblower Said

By Bobbi Murray

Bobbi Murray: Walmart de Mexico (called “Walmex”—no kidding) was alleged to have spread around $24 million or so in bribes to make sure Walmart’s presence there expanded at a rate that eclipsed the competition.

Government “Debt” Isn’t What You Think

By Mark Dempsey

Worrying about government debt is like worrying about the monster under the bed. The issue isn’t debt, it’s power.

War Nation: Military Keynesianism’s Iron Grip on Washington

By John R. Moffett

John R. Moffett: Our world-spanning military, paid for by American taxpayers, serves the interests of defense contractors and the government officials that funnel the money to them but it does not serve the American taxpayer.

Move Our Money: New State Bank Bills Address Credit and Housing Crises

By Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown: We may not be able to beat the banks, but we don’t have to play their game. We can take our marbles and go home.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris Agrees to Monumental Settlement

By Sharon Kyle

Sharon Kyle: Kamala Harris emphasized the need to continue to chip away at the forces behind this crisis, stating that she and her team have instituted a Mortgage Fraud Strike Force which has been created to protect innocent homeowners and bring to justice those who defraud them.

Foreclosures 101 – Part 1

By Kwazi Nkrumah

Kwazi Nkrumah: For years the banks, real estate agents and investors in real estate securities on Wall Street were making money hand-over-fist. They did all this while pretending to break from their previous established history of gross discrimination and red-lining against the disproportionately non-white borrowers whose limited financial resources forced them into “sub-prime” status in the first place.

Wells Fargo Meets Occupy: Where There’s Smoke There’s Smoke?

By Dick Price

Dick Price: Occupiers expressed satisfaction that their concerns had been heard by Wells Fargo leaders, but frustration that little concrete action had been taken and no promises made for future steps.

Robo-Signing Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

By Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown: The evidence to date suggests that “robo-signing” was not a mere technical default or sloppy business practice but was part and parcel of a much larger fraud, the fraud that brought down the whole economy in 2008.

California AG Kamala Harris Standing Firm Against Foreclosure Settlement

By Sharon Kyle

Sharon Kyle: Kamala Harris standing firm on decision to reject bank settlement that could garner the state $15 billion but would release bank liability.

What’s the Economy for Anyway?

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich: The biggest problem is that corporate money is undermining democratic institutions in the name of better deals for consumers and investors.

Keynes and Hayek, Obama and the Republicans

By Walter G. Moss

Walter Moss: From the Reagan years to the present, conservatives have been fond of quoting Friedman and Hayek. Their influence can be seen in such documents as the Republican Party’s 1994 “Contract with America.”

Friday Feedback: Attacks on Teachers

By admin

This week, an article by Mark Naison, “How Attacks on Teachers and Government Workers Will Impact All Our Lives,” drew the following exchange between Ryder and Steve Wider.

The Foreclosure Crisis: Urgent as Ever and Could Get Worse

By Carl Bloice

Carl Bloice: There are an estimated 3.5 million seriously delinquent mortgages out there. There were nearly 2.7 million foreclosure filings on about 1.9 million homes last year. That’s down from 2007, but it’s still about one out of every 69 homes in the country.

A Vote for Newt, Willard, and Chums Is a Vote Against the Unemployed

By Julie Driscoll

Julie Driscoll: In their zeal to see that President Obama is a one-term president, it does not behoove Republicans to roll out anything that would actually improve the economic outlook for the unemployed. They barely pay lip service to it.

Confessions of a Child Janitor

By Tina Dupuy

Tina Dupuy: Gingrich has a dark vision for a Shining City Upon a Hill: where poor children work in place of union labor. It’s basically the 20th century played in reverse.

President Obama’s Osawatomie, Kansas Stemwinder

By admin

President Barack Obama: I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules.

Occupy Our Homes: The Next Stage

By Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier: Perhaps because so many Occupiers have recently been evicted from their encampments in cities across the country, they have found common cause with the growing number of American families facing foreclosure.

The Jobs Report: Don’t Break Out the Champagne

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich: When people ask me what Congress is likely to do I always say the same thing: The odds are in favor of nothing.

Friday Feedback: Occupy’s Demands

By Dick and Sharon

Philadelphia Police Captain (Ret) Ray Lewis

Friday Feedback: The notion that if work to open your own company that the government can force you to sell shares of it to employees is very much against what I believe in.

Looking Beyond Election Day

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich: Political elites are worried about thunder on the right and the left, but they show scant understanding of what these growing anti-establishment forces signify. Meanwhile, the nation drifts.

The Federal Reserve Bank – National Day of Protest

By Sharon Kyle

Of the Federal Reserve Bank, Wikipedia says, The twelve Federal Reserve Banks form a major part of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. The twelve federal reserve banks together divide the nation into twelve Federal Reserve Districts, the twelve banking districts created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.[1] [...]