So much for perfect timing. Barack Obama presented his economic team -- Summers, Geithner, Orzag -- all protégés of Robert Rubin -- just as the Treasury Department was pumping out billions to rescue Citibank -- which featured Rubin as chair of its executive committee -- from collapse. Is this the change we need? The depth of the crisis we face renders the old arguments irrelevant. Under Bill Clinton, Rubin championed reducing budget deficits, deregulating finance, and opening foreign markets to private investment. Now deficit spending must go up, banks must be re-regulated, trade imbalances must be reduced and manufacturing can no longer be scorned.
Instead of spending money on more band-aids, a revised Constitution with a health care amendment would give direction to a unique American purpose and, over time, solve an historic problem.
One of the goals of the latest plan is to reduce mortgage rates through government buying of mortgage-backed securities and Fannie and Freddie debt. And it worked immediately.
The President-elect knows that we've heard a lot of promises from the current management and are left totally wanting. We're desperately seeking direction and will cut him no small amount of slack.
The root problem runs deeper than excessive personal debt. The problem lies in a value system that measures our human worth according to our net worth.
Maybe Ralph Nader was right: the same Wall Street hustlers will have a lock on our government no matter which major party wins the election. How else is one to respond to Obama's economic picks?
I'm thankful for Sarah Palin's vice presidential bid, which taught us that Alaska is not in a box off the coast of California.
Would the Sixties be the sixties without the Beatles? Would teen culture as we know it exist without Elvis? And can any record, no matter how brilliant, have a similar impact today? Somehow, I don't think so.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying investors are stupid. I'm saying they follow the advice of people who pay no attention to the data. As a consequence, they engage in "stupid investor tricks."
A half dozen names are percolating, with increasing familiarity, as possible EPA Administrators. But just who are these prospects?
We can't afford CEOs, who may be stars in the Casino Economy, to be failures in our economy. We are the victims of their greedy crimes. And ironically so are they as long as they cling to the past.
Hillary's appointment isn't even official, but the Obama/Clinton narrative has already left the realm of politics. Its twists, turns, shadings, and complex emotions are the stuff of literature.
Yes, it's incredible that nobody required Rubin and the board to resign as a condition of the Citibank bailout. But I tend to look at these final days as the BushCo crooks holding their final heist.
A recent Defense Department report cites cases of 173 Americans arrested between 1947 and 2007 for passing state secrets to al-Qaeda, China, Egypt, Cuba, Poland, Germany, Russia, North Korea, France, among others.
I would love to have Howard Dean in the cabinet. Not so much because he's a progressive as because he is right. I am of the naïve belief that that should matter.
On January 20, the Bush administration's stodgy, wheezing version of whitehouse.gov will be carted off to the National Archives in its entirety, leaving precisely no legacy -- and no limits.
Balance is hard for most working women -- but it is particularly elusive for women wanting to be a senior exec, be in the board room, run a billion dollar division or be a CEO.
Government action is required, either through incentives or directives. In these times, and with these stakes, the government should use whatever powers it has to get this done.
Lawrence B. Wilkerson has spent 31 years as a soldier in the US Army, including military service in Vietnam. He played a role in the death of a Vietnamese girl and came to disclose that.
