Category Archives: Econ & Money

Thomas Friedman, writing today about Mubarak, says,

He had no vision, no high aspiration, no will for great educational attainment. He just had this wildly exaggerated sense of Egypt’s greatness based on the past. That is why I feel sorry for those Egyptians now clamoring to get back money they claim the Mubaraks stole. That is surely a crime, if true, but Mubarak is guilty of a much bigger, more profound, theft: all the wealth Egypt did not generate these past 30 years because of the poverty of his vision and the incompetence of his cronies.

We could already say pretty much the same thing about GW Bush (with the difference being that the money siphoned to crony corporations like Halliburton was in the main not stolen, just wasted legally). How long before we are saying something similar (minus the personal enrichment) about Obama?

Obama’s budget is cruel; the Republicans’ is even crueler. Both are failures to deal with our needs and our problems. These are budgets for rich people on the backs of the poor. They are forms of fiddling while the new Rome burns.

Watch this: Jeffrey Sachs tells the truth about the budget. It’s like a breath of fresh air.

But Sachs’s is a lonely voice in our public debate.

In Debts Should be Honored, Except When the Money Is Owed to Working People — Dean Baker.

If I could pick one idea to purge from the American psyche, it would be the idea that rich people are special, magical wealth leprechauns who must be allowed to pursue their interests without hindrance lest the entire economy collapse.

via Crooks and Liars, C&L Opening Bell: Legalizing fraud.