Ever since Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his initiatives in micro finance, the sector has been attention that had hitherto been denied it. The Professor himself has been toasted around quite a bit and the Grameen Bank has now been invited to set up shop in Assam. But the success and […]
Is the U.S. Economy in a Recession?
Everybody has an opinion – and a certified perspective – on the current status of the U.S. economy. Some say we are experiencing a contraction. Others call it a correction. These definitions are commonly interchanged among a broad population of pundits who believe we are in a recession. However, there are other commentators with similar […]
Experts Offer Tips on Avoiding Home Foreclosure
by James Parks The mortgage foreclosure crisis, fueled by years of unchecked predatory lending practices and a speculative bubble in real estate prices, has resulted in a disaster for millions of America’s homeowners. Not since the Depression of the 1930s have so many U.S. homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Defaulting […]
Can You Spend $3 Trillion Better than Bush?
– by Mike Hall It’s not easy spending $3 trillion. I tried (see below). But then again I wasn’t buying a quagmire in the Middle East. That price tag—$3 trillion—is what the Bush administration is spending on the war in Iraq, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The checks paid for with our taxpayers’ dollars that Bush is […]
Federal Reserve Says Let’s Go Living in the Past
"[The risks here] are modest in comparison to the substantial damage to the economy and economic well-being that potentially would have accompanied Bear’s insolvency. It became clear that Bear’s involvement in the complex and intricate web of relationships that characterize our financial system, at the point in time when markets were especially vulnerable, was such […]
Brave New World, Same Old Story
101 years after the original JP Morgan bought out a failing financial company in order to prevent an economy-troubling panic on Wall Street, the scion of JP Morgan arranged a saving buyout of the failing Bear Stearns, Inc. financial institution from the same motivation. The problem is, that first buyout by the first JP Morgan […]