Portside

In the 1950s and 1960s, the richest 1 percent took home 9 to 10 percent of total income. Today the top 1 percent gets more than 20 percent.

We could dramatically reduce the financial sector or cut its profits, salaries and bonuses without harming the economy.

The objective of the ideological project of the economics profession in the current era is to provide a theoretical foundation for unregulated financial markets and unregulated capitalism. The fact that the project has succeeded in the face of logic and history is admittedly a fantastic conjurers’ trick, but it is ridiculous to award Nobel Prizes to the conjurers.

Clone Wars in Taiwan; Casino Man Hedges Bets - Calls for Nuking Iran; R.I.P. Dark Knight Lou Reed; Busted for Shopping While Black; Teaching Economics Needs to Catch Up

In his powerful speech to the AFL-CIO convention, the famed economist says '95% of the gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the upper 1%.'

Bertolt Brecht on whistle-blowers, those who oppose their own governments immoral activities; Reader Comments on NSA Spying; Civil Liberties Suit; Edward Snowden; Angela Davis; Undercounting the Poor; Syria; The Rosenberg Case ; Paleo Diet; Announcements - Meeropol, granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Manifesto and Petition in Support of the Monument to the International Brigades in Madrid - Help by signing.

We all want to believe a recovery is here, but indicators are that it's not. We're getting swindled again by banks and politicians.

A recent “Spreadsheet Scandal” has rocked the economics world. It has eliminated the last remaining technical argument in support of the President’s “chained CPI” Social Security cut. Earlier this year the IMF admitted they had made errors in their modelling of expenditure multipliers. Now, the darlings of the austerity cultists – Rogoff and Reinhart – has been exposed for errors in spreadsheet coding. Who is ever going to take responsibility for these travesties?