The Interest Rate Swaps that Are Bankrupting Local Governments The “toxic culture of greed” on Wall Street was highlighted again last week, when Greg Smith went public with his resignation from Goldman Sachs in a scathing oped published in the New York Times.  In other recent eyebrow-raisers, LIBOR rates—the benchmark interest rates involved in interest rate swaps—were shown [...]

In an article titled “Still No End to ‘Too Big to Fail,’” William Greider wrote in The Nation on February 15th: Financial market cynics have assumed all along that Dodd-Frank did not end “too big to fail” but instead created a charmed circle of protected banks labeled “systemically important” that will not be allowed to fail, [...]

Para resolver la crisis económico-financiera de Grecia y de Italia se han formado, por exigencia del Banco Central europeo, gobiernos solo de técnicos sin participación de ningún político. Se partía de la ilusión de que se trata de un problema económico que debe resolverse económicamente. Quien solo entiende de economía, acaba no entendiendo ni siquiera [...]

Los llamamientos a la derogaciónde la ley Dodd-Frank de reforma financiera son algo más que estrafalarios. Solamente hace tres años que el sistema financiero en su conjunto estuvo al borde del colapso, con el presidente Bush alertándonos de una segunda Gran Depresión si el Congreso no aprobaba rápidamente un plan de rescate masivo. Esta crisis fue [...]

A Century of Our Streets Vs. Wall Street Occupy Wall Street, the ongoing demonstration-cum-sleep-in that began a month ago not far from the New York Stock Exchange and has since spread like wildfire to cities around the country, may be a game-changer.  If so, it couldn’t be more appropriate or more in the American grain that, [...]

El presente documento ha sido consensuado por la Asamblea General de NYC con fecha del 29 de septiembre de 2011 En estos momentos en los que nos reunimos solidariamente para expresar un sentimiento de injusticia generalizada, no debemos perder de vista lo que nos ha unido. Escribimos estas palabras para que todos aquellos que se sientan [...]

Observations, Impressions and Images From Amid the Multitudes in Liberty Plaza The ongoing exercise in democracy transpiring in and around the Occupy Wall Street site in Lower Manhattan imbues one’s heart with resonances of the real. Many reasons factor into the phenomenon: Here, for example, one does not feel scammed and demeaned…gripped by the sense of [...]

In two protests thousands of miles away from one another on Saturday, a similar spirit of demand for government responsiveness to the people was made. In both cases there was a police crackdown and some clashes broke out. But in one case, the government showed flexibility and attempted to take steps to calm the anger [...]

This protest pinpoints how dysfunctional our economic system is: we must refashion it for human needs, not corporate aims Occupy Wall Street has already weathered the usual early storms. The kept media ignored the protest, but that failed to end it. The partisans of inequality mocked it, but that failed to end it. The police servants [...]

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class [...]