Did you know that Apple Computer was a foreign entity? Did you know that it's more Irish than anything else, at least as far as taxes are concerned? Or that it pays very little in income tax, even though its products wouldn't exist if it weren't for projects funded by...

A lot of people have attacked JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon over the years, including this author. After today's shareholder votes at JPM, Mark Gongloff is right to describe Dimon as a "cult leader." Gongloff quotes critics, like Public Citizen's Bart Naylor who offer pointed and very valid criticism...

Last week since I wrote to the Executive Vice President of CBS News asking for a comment on Lesley Stahl's unpublicized withdrawal from the Advisory Board of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. The inquiry was acknowledged and forwarded on to the press officer for 60 Minutes. There's been no response...

The day may come when the worst nightmare a crooked banker or compromised regulator can have begins with the words, "You have a letter from Senator Warren."

But before we get to that, here's an experience that may seem familiar: You're at a party or family get-together -- a Sunday...

These days the economic news reads like some strange collaboration between John Steinbeck and Eugene Ionesco, a mashup of The Grapes of Wrath and The Bald Soprano. Grim statistics of poverty, lost hope, and widespread tragedy -- the stuff of human reality -- are juxtaposed with a surrealistically disconnected political debate that focuses on...

Simpson and Bowles, those two hired pitchmen for budget-cutting hysteria, are still hawking an economy-killing product called "austerity economics," a product that's designed to benefit their wealthy patrons at everybody else's expense.  This philosophy provides some (very thin) intellectual cover for the Republicans' lunatic bloodbath of spending cuts.

Of course, Simpson...

Deficit projections have already decreased by $200 billion for this year alone, so why do Republicans keep lunging for ever-more radical spending cuts like they were corn dogs at a barbecue? That's more in deficit reduction than President Obama's proposed cut to Social Security would "save" in 10. So why...

Apparently it never occurred to Attorney General Eric Holder that the Associated Press might be "too big to fail." If it had,then his Justice Department probably never would have investigated it.

The AP isn't just any news agency. It's the largest one in the United States and one of the...

Rep. Henry Waxman should make a promise to his constituents, but he doesn't want to. So, instead of promising that he'll protect Social Security from President Obama's proposed benefit cut, Waxman told one of his constituents the very idea of asking representatives to make "pledges" is wrong.

This notion...

My mother has never liked Mother's Day. She says it's a phony holiday designed to boost profits for Hallmark Cards. I say, who cares as long as everybody's happy? After all, I tell her, Hallmark isn't Blackwater or Halliburton. And besides, not all profits are evil.

That doesn't mollify her....

Will California Attorney General Kamala Harris hang tough in her new lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, the first to target individual bankers accused of defrauding the public? If so, it would be the first time in five years that executives at a major bank have personally paid a price for their...

If you're a jobless person looking for food or a wounded vet who needs health care, 60 Minutes has a solution: Beg a billionaire for it. That was part of the powerful, if covert, message behind last Sunday's 60 Minutes broadcast.

The rest of Sunday night's message, which tracks closely with...

At least three senators up for reelection in Republican-leaning states next year are defying President Obama by indicating they'll refuse to support the White House's Social Security cuts in any "Grand Bargain" on the budget. There are a number of reasons why this is important, including the fact that it...

This Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes was a brilliant case study in the media's ability to manipulate the public mind. The entire hour is worth studying, if only as one of the most illuminating and sophisticated examples of media manipulation in recent memory.

Who, What, When, Where ...

The most...

When historian Niall Ferguson made his offensive comments about John Maynard Keynes last week, he wasn't just revealing an ugly side of own nature. He was defending his authoritarian and economically punitive ideology not only against its opponents, but against reality itself.

But then, when your best-known editorial is...

News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed -- and a common need for...

Sure, we urgently need to repeal the sequester.  (You can tell your Representative that here.) But it's even more important to repeal the insane thinking that led to the sequester.  

That means repealing the deficit babble that still dominates Washington (and provided the theme for the President's weekly Saturday address)....

A poll was released today which found that only 16 percent of adult Americans know anyone who was affected by sequester flight delays. Now that Congress has acted so swiftly to address this disproportionately higher-income inconvenience, that number probably won't grow very much. But you know somebody whose...

This week Slate columnist Matt Yglesias became the latest in a long list of commentators, analysts, and politicians to be seduced by the alluring notion that you can quantify, measure and model the value of a human life in intellectually stimulating, value-free, and career-advancing ways.

This false technocratic gloss is...

Politico reports that Congressional leaders from both parties are trying to find a way to exempt themselves and their staff members from using the "Obamacare" health exchanges, as mandated in the health reform law.  The Politico story says that Hill leaders are afraid that their lower-paid staffers would leave...