Joe Biden's father had it right: "It's socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor." How did we get here?

More than thirty years ago we embarked on a grand deregulatory experiment. The financial sector was unleashed from New Deal-era controls. We were told this would lead to great...

Bill Clinton and John Doerr, the venture capitalist, are urging the Obama administration to use unspent TARP funds to stimulate jobs and reduce energy wastage by providing cash to homeowners and businesses for weatherization. It's being sold as a way to counteract our jobless recovery (make that our job-loss recovery)....

It's going from obscene to disgusting. Each day reveals how we've traded away our sense of decency and the common good in exchange for pure, unadulterated greed.

Unemployment is a statistic. We hear it so often that, unless we are without work, it loses its meaning. Even when we...

Peter Galbraith wanted to do well by doing good. He passed himself off as a diplomat who was helping the Kurds to write their constitution and to develop their oil fields. But winning a peace prize was not on Peter's mind. He wanted to secure his place in the Billionaire...

When I read the headline "American Wages out of Balance" on page 2 of the New York Times business section, I figured it would be a well-reasoned piece about our obscene distribution of income. It would be good for the Times to describe how Wall Street profits and bonuses,...

Let's weigh the pros and cons of the record bonuses going to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley (and many others) during the worst economic crash since 1929:

Pros:
1. The bonus winners found a way to get rich. This is America and if you're smart enough...

To: President Obama
From: The Looting of America
Re: Speech you should give to prevent a Republican sweep next fall.

"My fellow-Americans,

We face a true national emergency. More than 30 million Americans are without jobs or are working part-time because there...

"Wall Street will remain a big, important part of our economy, just as it was in the '70s and the '80s. It just won't be half of our economy....We don't want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader." -- President Obama, May 2, 2009.

It's...

It's just sitting out there.

Talk to your neighbors and you can sense how angry they are about the rich gaining ever more wealth during the Great Recession. They understand that the bailout money -- our tax dollars -- went to the largest financial institutions in the world which...

Everyone realizes that we have to do something about "too big to fail." But there are two fundamentally different paths: one threatens the very existence of the billionaire bailout society and the other makes it permanent.

The obvious way to end "too big to fail" is to break up large...

Democracy, socialism, capitalism, neo-liberalism -- none of them do justice to who we are and where we're headed. Socialism left the planet several decades ago, except in the minds of Fox News pundits. We're not sure what capitalism really is anymore, now that we've bailed out the entire financial sector....

We are entering the billionaire bailout society.

For the past thirty years we have minted billionaires, and we have created the most unequal distribution of wealth since 1928-29. This didn't happen by accident. We deliberately deregulated the financial sector and we deliberately eliminated the steep progressive taxes on the...

You knew this was coming. The Obama administration had to come down hard on the companies that received the most obvious bailouts -- Bank of America Corp., American International Group (AIG), Citigroup, General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial. They had to do something to show they were not Wall...

Are we becoming a nation of hypocrites?

We force very low income single moms to jump through hoops to get their welfare checks. We resent them living off our tax payer dollars. We want them out working hard to support themselves even if there are no suitable jobs available, no...

Bloomber News:

U.S. regulators should consider breaking up large financial institutions considered "too big to fail," former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said. Those banks have an implicit subsidy allowing them to borrow at lower cost because lenders believe the government will always step in to...

For some of us.

It's time to recognize what it means to be part of the billionaire-bailout nation. Citizenship comes in three distinct flavors.

If you are wealthy, it's fantastic to take part in the resurgent Wall Street boom. You are thrilled to see the trillions in taxpayer dollars...

Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times:

To put that $23 billion bonus pool number in perspective, it is the most Goldman Sachs has accumulated for bonuses in its history -- twice as much as in 2008. And it is doing so while memories are still fresh that just a...

New York Times:

The banking giant Citigroup is saying goodbye to its $100 million man, Andrew J. Hall, and the commodities firm he ran. While the firm had generated big profits for the bank, it had also led to significant controversy because of Mr. Hall's huge promised bonus.... Citigroup...

Legislation by Representative Barney Frank to tighten derivatives regulation contains an exemption that may let most financial firms escape new collateral and disclosure rules, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.

It's time to watch Wall Street flex its political muscle. The...

"Now main streets whitewashed windows and vacant stores

Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to
Your hometown, your hometown,...