Robert Reich

The dog that didn't bark this week, let alone bite, was the president's response to JPMorgan Chase's bombshell admission of losing more than $2 billion in risky derivative trades that should never have been made.

"JPMorgan is one of the best-managed banks there is. Jamie Dimon, the head of it,...

Mitt Romney's reaction to J.P. Morgan Chase's mounting losses from reckless trades is "the market will take care of it." His spokesman says "no taxpayer money was at risk" so we don't need more financial regulation. Romney has even promised to repeal Dodd-Frank if he's elected president.

Yet at...

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the nation's largest bank, whose chief executive, Jamie Dimon, has lead Wall Street's war against regulation, announced Thursday it had lost $2 billion in trades over the past six weeks and could face an additional $1 billion of losses, due to excessively risky bets.

The...

The 2012 election should be about what's going on in America's boardrooms, but Republicans would rather it be about America's bedrooms.

Mitt Romney says he's against same-sex marriage; President Obama just announced his support. North Carolina voters have approved a Republican-proposed amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage. Minnesota...

Who's an economy for? Voters in France and Greece have made it clear it's not for the bond traders.

Referring to his own electoral woes, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Monday in an article in the conservative Daily Telegraph: "When people think about the economy they don't see...

Francois Hollande's victory doesn't and shouldn't mean a movement toward socialism in Europe or elsewhere. Socialism isn't the answer to the basic problem haunting all rich nations.

The answer is to reform capitalism. The world's productivity revolution is outpacing the political will of rich societies to fairly distribute its...

As I feared, the economy has stalled.

Friday's jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March's number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but it's still abysmal relative to what's needed). At least...

We'll know more tomorrow when the jobs report is announced, but today's report on America's massive service sector -- which make up about 90 percent of the economy -- is sobering to say the least.

The Institute of Supply Management's non-manufacturing index fell to a four-month low in April (53.5,...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 13,338 Tuesday, its highest since December, 2007. The S&P 500 added 16 points. Wall Street will remember May 1 as a great day.

But most of these gains are going to the richest 10 percent of Americans who own 90 percent of the shares...

What are the three demographic groups whose electoral impact is growing fastest? Hispanics, women, and young people. Who are Republicans pissing off the most? Latinos, women, and young people.

It's almost as if the GOP can't help itself.

Start with Hispanic voters, whose electoral heft keeps growing as they comprise...

Europe is in recession.

Britain's Office for National Statistics confirmed today (Wednesday) that in the first quarter of this year Britain's economy shrank .2 percent, after having contracted .3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. (Officially, two quarters of shrinkage make a recession). On Monday Spain officially fell into...

Bill O'Reilly, the tumescent personality of Fox News, said on his Friday show "Robert Reich is a communist who secretly adores Karl Marx." (This came after Fox News' Neil Cavoto called me a "sanctimonious twit" for suggesting the rich should pay more in taxes.)

O'Reilly's accusation is odd,...

President Obama's electoral strategy can best be summed up as: "We're on the right track, my economic policies are working, we still have a long way to go but stick with me and you'll be fine."

That's not good enough. This recovery is too anemic, and the chance of an...

The shareholders of Wall Street giant Citigroup are out to prove that corporate democracy isn't an oxymoron. They've said no to the exorbitant $15 million pay package of Citi's CEO Vikram Pandit, as well as to the giant pay packages of Citi's four other top executives.

The vote, at Citigroup's...

As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote in 1904, "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

But the wealthiest Americans, who haven't raked in as much of America's income and wealth since the 1920s, are today paying a lower tax rate than they have in over 30...

One of the most pernicious falsehoods you'll hear during the next seven months of political campaigning is there's a necessary tradeoff between fairness and economic growth. By this view, if we raise taxes on the wealthy the economy can't grow as fast.

Wrong. Taxes were far higher on top incomes...

Now that Mitt Romney is the presumed Republican candidate, it's fair to ask how he made so much money ($21 million in 2010 alone) and paid such a low rate of taxes (only 13.9 percent).

Not only fair to ask, but instructive to know. Because the magic of private equity...

The general election of 2012 starts today.

We need to do everything we can to make sure Barack Obama is reelected president. But we also need to mobilize for the long haul -- beyond Election Day. We need to fuel a movement to take back our economy and our democracy.

Presidential elections can draw peoples' attention to larger challenges facing our nation, but they can also be distracting. The media focus on the game -- who's up and who's down, and which political strategies are winning or losing -- rather than on the big issues. Campaigns are also geared to winning on Election Day, not to building long-term strategies and movements for fundamental change.

I've been involved in public life, off and on, for over forty years. I've served under three presidents. When not in office I've done my share of organizing and rabble-rousing, along with teaching, speaking, and writing about what I know and what I believe. I have never been as concerned as I am now about the future of our democracy, the corrupting effects of big money in our politics, the stridency and demagoguery of the regressive right, and the accumulation of wealth and power at the very top.

We are perilously close to losing an economy and a democracy that work for everyone, and replacing them with an economy and government that exist mainly for a few wealthy and powerful people.

That's why I've written an ebook called Beyond Outrage (see the above video). You have every reason to be outraged. Moral outrage is the prerequisite for social change. But you also need to move beyond outrage and take action. The regressive forces seeking to move our nation backwards must not be allowed to triumph.

The point of Beyond Outrage is to help you focus on what needs to be done and how you can do it, and to encourage you not to feel bound by what's politically possible this year or next. You need to understand why the stakes are so high, and why your participation - now and in the future -- is so important.

In my experience, nothing good happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington become mobilized, organized, and energized to make it happen. Nothing worth changing in America will actually change unless you and others like you are committed to achieving that change.

Robert Reich, one of the nation's leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future;" "The Work of Nations," which has been translated into 22 languages; and his newest, an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen's group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org....

Next Monday most Americans will be filing their income taxes for tax year 2011. This year, though, tax day has special significance. If there's one clear policy contrast between Democrats and Republicans in the 2012 election, it's whether America's richest citizens should be paying more.

Senate Democrats have scheduled a...

The economy added only 120,000 jobs in March -- down from the rate of more than 200,000 in each of the preceding three months. The rate of unemployment dropped from 8.3 to 8.2 percent mainly because fewer people were searching for jobs -- and that rate depends on how many...