Sheldon Filger

The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the United States supposedly "created" 115,00 jobs in April. Not even President Obama's supporters are cheering loudly over this figure, as it indicates a slowing down of job creation -- and that is if the number is...

People usually resign from a position through a private letter to the boss. Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs executive director based out of London who manages U.S. equity derivatives for clients in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, chose a different method when he decided to leave the payroll of...

The current Eurozone debt crisis is not only an acute economic and debt crisis. It is also political farce, with a heavy dose of irony. The motivation for the creation of the euro was noble; the European continent had ripped itself apart over centuries of internecine warfare, culminating with two...

On February 4, 2012 one of the saddest events in the history of the United Nations Security Council occurred. A resolution seeking to end the violent suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Syria and largely sponsored by the Arab League was vetoed by Russia and China. Though 13 out of...

All signs point to 2012 witnessing an acceleration of the negative economic and fiscal metrics that plagued advanced and major emerging economies in 2011. In particular, the eurozone debt crisis, which dramatically worsened in 2011, shows no sign of abating in 2012. A clear indication of this is that eurozone...

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, in his recent column, has declared that the crisis in the global economy is now a depression. Since the onset of the global economic crisis, policymakers and media pundits have resisted using the "D" word, instead preferring terms such as the "Great Recession." However,...

The figures for China's purchasing managers' index (PMI) for November registered a mere 49 points, according to the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing. This figure represents a contraction in the crucial Chinese manufacturing sector. It has been due to its role as factory to the world that...

As all but the most gullible no longer have faith in the European politicians to resolve the increasingly deadly sovereign debt crisis among the PIIGS nations in the Eurozone, the last ditch hope is now resting with the European Central Bank. The new president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, is...

Once again, as they have already done countless times before since the emergence of the European sovereign debt crisis, the 27 political head honchos of the European Union have boasted that they have saved the global economy from collapse with finally, the real definitive cure for the crisis. However, the...

For about two weeks, a seemingly spontaneous protest movement has evolved in the financial district of New York, dubbing itself the "Occupy Wall Street Movement." Supposedly leaderless, there seems to be a core of ideologically committed individuals utilizing social media to empower a protest movement aimed squarely at the financial...

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve during 1979- 1987, issued an eloquent warning against economic policymakers deliberately increasing the inflation rate as a way of dealing with escalating economic and fiscal problems that have defied all other policy measures. Volcker's...

In 2009, I published a short book entitled "Global Economic Forecast 2010-2015: Recession Into Depression." At the time I made my original forecast, sovereigns across the globe were accumulating massive levels of public debt, unprecedented in economic history, with supposedly two objectives in mind: 1.) Stabilize the world's...

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis issued revised figures for the first quarter of 2011. It had earlier reported an annual rate of anemic GDP growth of 1.9 percent for Q1. Even if that number had been accurate, it was insufficient to reverse the catastrophic rate of unemployment...

Any doubt that the Eurozone debt crisis is no longer contained but has metastasized into a full-blown global calamity is rapidly being erased by fast-moving events. With the second bailout of insolvent Greece in the works, followed by a ratings downgrade to junk by Standard & Poor's, Moody's has now...

I was not alone in being skeptical as the first European/IMF bailout package was cobbled together last year when the Greek sovereign debt crisis first exploded. At that time, the European politicians assured their constituents that the 110 billion euro bailout for Greece would absolutely stabilize...

Alan Greenspan, former Fed Chairman and a prime facilitator of the U.S. housing bubble, appears in retrospect a scion of fiscal prudence in comparison with his successor, Ben Bernanke. This disaster-prone Fed Chairman presided over the financial collapse of 2008, which came in the wake of his prediction...

Reports have leaked of a startling new development in connection with the 2012 Republican presidential primary. According to an item by Scott Conroy of RealClearPolitics, Sarah Palin and her political machine have commissioned the conservative filmmaker, Stephen Bannon, to produce a two-hour epic film documentary presenting an heroic...

In our corporatized consumer culture, we humans are subjected to saturation bombing of advertising containing subliminal as well as overt sexual messaging. An outcome of this mass-merchandising of sexuality in the guise of the commonplace is the frequent rendering of the erotic as ordinary and indistinguishable from the background noise...

The weakest links in the Eurozone chain are known as the PIIGS. This acronym represents five fiscally vulnerable members of the European monetary union: Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. Already, two of the five members of this august club have capitulated to the dismal reality of their public finances...

If Sarah Palin should declare her candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the past few days may be looked back at by political historians as an important marker. While pundits continue to dwell on the supposedly collapsing poll numbers for Palin and trumpet the erosion of her presidential ambitions,...