Category Archives: economic collapse

Summers’ end (exit Iago)


“Look, it’s Larry Summers,” said Swamp Rabbit, pointing at an oil slick on the wetlands that surrounds my shotgun shack in Tinicum. “I think he’s heading north, maybe back to Harvard.” “No way,” I said. “He gambled away a big … Continue reading

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Making the world safe for plutocracy


I tuned in Wednesday evening for Barack Obama’s let’s-bomb-Syria speech and heard this: What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose … Continue reading

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Atlantic City’s ultimate crap-out, a.k.a. Revel


They echoed in my head this morning, the words of Swamp Rabbit as he confronted me at my shotgun shack in the Tinicum swamp: “What’s your plan, Odd Man?” The pesky little rodent mocks me because I tend to bitch … Continue reading

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Walter White, working-class hero


Last week the Philadelphia Daily News ran a story about unemployment with a photo of a middle-aged man in a business suit — a former office worker out of luck and money — begging for a job on a streetcorner … Continue reading

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The pig and the Post (another trophy for Jeff Bezos)


A few facts about Jeff Bezos, billionaire CEO of Amazon.com, the enormously profitable online department store that’s beating up on bricks-and-mortar retail outlets: 1) The price Bezos paid this week for the Washington Post was $250 million, about one percent … Continue reading

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Tom Friedman’s brave new fantasy world


Richard Eskow’s insights regarding Thomas Friedman will make perfect sense to anyone who has read Friedman’s gung-ho dispatches about globalization and entrepreneurship in the digital age, or his advice to the discouraged — “But you know what they say to … Continue reading

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Dems-in-name-only won’t help close income gap


Paul Krugman, commenting on one of the moral midgets who pushed through the House a new farm bill that would maintain generous government subsidies for agribusinesses while eliminating food stamps: Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; … Continue reading

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Krugman strains eyes, can’t see light at tunnel’s end


Give credit to Paul Krugman for consistently refusing to pretend the so-called Great Recession was anything less than a depression. Now he’s suggesting hard times might be here to stay, because working-class Americans are too brain-dead to take action on … Continue reading

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Ding dong! Maggie’s dirty deeds live on


From a 2004 column in Daily Mail on what happened to the working class in Britain after Margaret Thatcher’s successful crusade to kill the miners’ union: … What the [coal miners’] strike represented to us was a set of values … Continue reading

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When life feels like ‘Groundhog Day’


I was biking through a school-free drug zone, on my way to a temp job, cultivating bad habits. Not overtly bad habits — Marlboros and meth, and so on — but rather those drab little habits meant to ensure the … Continue reading

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