Debtors’ Island: How Puerto Rico Became a Hedge Fund Playground

Jennifer Wolff New Labor Forum
By the year 2000, the government ran on ever-larger deficits. It all came to a screeching halt in 2014, when Puerto Rico’s debt was degraded to junk status and the island was effectively shut out of the financial markets. The fiscal and economic predicament has had a devastating impact on the working and middle classes.

 The Panama Papers Expose the Hidden Wealth of the World’s Super-Rich

Chuck Collins The Nation
 The Panama Papers reveal the widespread use of shell corporations in the British Virgin Islands, the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, and Panama. Historically, North American investors prefer tax havens in the Caribbean or Panama, with an estimated 54 percent of offshore investments going to those areas.   The release of the Panama Papers should give a strong boost to US and global campaigns to crack down on these global secrecy jurisdictions and practices.

Why Bernie’s Right About Glass-Steagall

Edward Morris History News Network
Sanders believes that the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 led to the formation of banks that became “too big to fail,” contributed to the financial crisis in 2008—and will lead to another crisis without corrective legislation. And he has a strong argument, one that can be effectively made using Citigroup, the two-century old bank that has a history of wreaking havoc on itself and the economy when it mixes commercial banking with with investment banking.

Review: 'Miles Ahead,' an Impressionistic Take on Miles Davis

Manohla Dargis The New York Times
Does it matter that stretches of "Miles Ahead"— a gun-rattling, squealing-tire car chase included — came out of the filmmakers’ imagination rather than Davis’s life? Purists may howl, but they’ll also miss the pleasure and point of this playfully impressionistic movie.

INDIGENOUS CUISINE

Amelia Levin FSR Magazine
Native American chefs and food producers are taking the U.S. dining scene back to its true roots. Native American cuisine focuses on the “pre-contact” or “pre-colonization” foods that naturally existed in this country before Spanish and other immigrants introduced new crops and other goods, which in some areas changed the agricultural landscapes and natural ecosystems dramatically.

Criminal Justice: The High Price of Breathing While Poor

Donald Cohen Capital and Main
In March 2016 the U.S. Department of Justice announced a powerful new effort to stop local practices that unfairly target poor people by trapping them in “cycles of poverty that can be nearly impossible to escape.” Courts across the country are requiring people arrested with minor misdemeanor charges—like driving with a suspended license—to pay fines before getting their day in court. If they can’t afford the fine, they are forced to wait behind bars until they can.

Day of the Demagogue Trumpian Deportation Fantasies and American Realities

Tanya Golash-Boza Tom
The proposals to “build a wall” and “deport them all” that have animated this election season are quite fantastical. And then there’s the irony that such plans come from a political party that has long criticized government spending and waste. On wasting money, we’re talking textbook cases here.