DhafirTrial

What Goes Around Comes Around

Ellen Brown Counterpunch 3/02/10

When billionaires pledge a billion dollars to educate people to the evils of something, it is always good to peer closely at what they are up to.  Hedge fund magnate Peter G. Peterson was formerly Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and head of the New York Federal Reserve. (more…)

Empire and Oligarchy

Ralph Nader Counterpunch 3/01/10

The twin swelling heads of Empire and Oligarchy are driving our country into an ever-deepening corporate state, wholly incompatible with democracy and the rule of law.  (more…)

You Think Greece Has Problems?

Michael Hudson and Jeff Somers Counterpunch 2/15/10

While most of the world’s press focuses on Greece (and also Spain, Ireland and Portugal) as the most troubled euro-areas, the much more severe, more devastating and downright deadly crisis in the post-Soviet economies scheduled to join the Eurozone somehow has escaped widespread notice. (more…)

The Retrogression

Ismael Hossein-Zaden Counterpunch 2/13/10

It is becoming increasingly clear that the financial meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent economic contraction that continues to this day represent more than just another recessionary cycle. (more…)

The Baseline Scenario

Over the past year, there has been much discussion about how the financial crisis exposed weaknesses in free-market theory.  What has attracted less discussion is the extent to which the high priests of free-market theory themselves destroyed meaningful contracts and other bedrocks of functioning markets and, in the process, created the conditions for the theory’s weaknesses to emerge.  (more…)

“….For the six major banks of the United States, their total balance sheet is over 60 percent of U.S. GDP. [The banks] got bigger during the crisis. All the big guys are out there looking to take risk. So would you — and so would I — if we felt we were immune. If you had a ‘get out of jail free card,’ wouldn’t you go take a lot risk right now?”  (Watch the video.)

AP

The level of poverty in America is even worse than first believed.

A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government’s official figure.  (more…)

Diploma Mills and Debt Peonage

Danny Weil Counterpunch 10/15/09

Now instead of becoming a dental assistant or truck driver, you can take out federal grants and loans to obtain a $33,000 online bachelor’s degree in “Homeland Security” from the American Public University System, a for-profit college that consists largely of a Web site. (more…)