DhafirTrial

Ellen Brown  Web of Debt

On July 1, interest rates will double for millions of students – from 3.4% to 6.8% – unless Congress acts; and the legislative fixes on the table are largely just compromises. Only one proposal promises real relief – Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act.” This bill has been dismissed out of hand as “shameless populist demagoguery” and “a cheap political gimmick,” but is it? (more…)

In a letter (PDF) sent to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Attorney General Eric Holder and SEC Chair Mary Jo White on Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) demanded to know why the government keeps accepting financial settlements from criminal bankers when they could instead be taken to trial, convicted and locked up. (more…)

Washington Post

Nearly a third of the nation’s working families earn salaries so low that they struggle to pay for their necessities, according to a new report. (more…)

RT

“The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process,” while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater growth, a new Oxfam report said. (more…)

The Independent U.K.

Documentary proof exists that France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy took more than €50m from the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, a French judge has been told.(more…)

Matt Stoller

Throughout the months of November and December, a steady stream of corporate CEOs flowed in and out of the White House to discuss the impending fiscal cliff. (more…)

Stephen C. Webster Rawstory

Representative-elect Alan Grayson (D-FL) said Monday that he will put mega-retailer Walmart squarely in his sights during the next Congress for the company’s liberal use of public assistance programs to supplement their workers’ wages. (more…)

By Melanie Sloan and Robert Greenwald

What do Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman have in common? Each of these corporations is one of the top five largest defense contractors in the nation. In 2011 alone, the Department of Defense committed to spending nearly $100 billion with just these five companies. To put that in perspective, that is about the same amount spent on the entire federal education budget for 2011. (more…)