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Here are just some of the sobering facts:-- There are 8.5 million people receiving unemployment insurance and over 40 million receiving food stamps.-- At the current pace of job creation, the economy won't return to full employment until 2018.-- Middle-income jobs are disappearing from the economy. The share of middle-income jobs in the United States has fallen from 52% in 1980 to 42% in 2010.-- Middle-income jobs have been replaced by low-income jobs, which now make up 41% of total employment.-- 17 million Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor's degree.-- Over the past year, nominal wages grew only 1.7% while all consumer prices, including food and energy, increased by 2.7%.-- Wages and salaries have fallen from 60% of personal income in 1980 to 51% in 2010. Government transfers have risen from 11.7% of personal income in 1980 to 18.4% in 2010, a post-war high.The bottom line is simple says Schwenninger: The middle class is shrinking, which threatens the social composition and stability of the world's biggest economy. "I worry that we're becoming a barbell society - a lot of money wealth and power at the top, increasing hollowness at the center, which I think provides the stability and the heart and soul of the society... and then too many people in fear of falling down."

Brazil's economy grew at its fastest rate in at least 14 years in the first three months of 2010, official figures have shown.

theRSAorg - April 01, 2010 - This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.

People don't behave the way economics says they should. Massive simulations of human interactions will warn us of coming crises - from finance to flu

Crecimiento del PIB en 2010 y 2011.

"Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world." -The late people's historian Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 - January 27, 2010)

Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a blog post about the "mistake of 1937," the premature fiscal and monetary pullback that aborted an ongoing economic recovery and prolonged the Great Depression. As Gauti Eggertsson, the post's author (with whom I have done research) points out, economic conditions today - with output growing, some prices rising, but unemployment still very high - bear a strong resemblance to those in 1936-37. So are modern policy makers going to make the same mistake?

It's really amazing to see how quickly the notion that contractionary fiscal policy is actually expansionary is spreading. As I noted yesterday, the Panglossian view has now become official doctrine at the ECB. So what does this view rest on? Partly on vague ideas about credibility and confidence; but largely on the supposed lessons of experience, of countries that saw economic expansion after major austerity programs. Yet if you look at these cases, every one turns out to involve key elements that make it useless as a precedent for our current situation.

The danger of depending too much on a Chinese rescue for the global economy: Even planned slowdowns cause panic

If you watch just one funny and handsome Marxist critique of the financial crisis, make it the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce's animated version of David Harvey's RSA speech "Crises of Capitalism." It's been making the rounds this afternoon, and for good reason: Mr. Harvey, a Marxist scholar who heads CUNY's Center for Place, Culture & Politics, describes not just the failures that caused the ongoing fiasco, but the failure of how we've explained it.

Arab nations finally won agreement from the US and the other nuclear powers to take the first step toward banning nuclear weapons from the Middle East. Now, the next move is Israel's.

Quand la crise sévit, elle ne dérobe pas seulement l'emploi, ne réduit pas seulement les moyens de subsistance. Elle provoque aussi un effet sur les esprits : celui de réduire à néant les espoirs que fondent les parents sur les études. Pourquoi s'acharner à scolariser ses enfants quand "les retours attendus en termes de travail et de revenus s'amoindrissent" ?

They have been shot at, imprisoned, deported and threatened - what makes somebody prepared to risk their lives to go into the occupied territories?

For decades, Turkey was one of the United States' most pliable allies, a strategic border state on the edge of the Middle East that reliably followed American policy. But recently, it has asserted a new approach in the region, its words and methods as likely to provoke Washington as to advance its own interests.

Según publicó la prensa paulista, el presidente Obama envió una carta a sus pares de Brasil y Turquía en la que apoyaba un acuerdo similar al alcanzado hace diez días en Teherán. La Casa Blanca insiste con más sanciones.

DOMINIQUE PLIHON, de ATTACT, dice que detrás de la crisis están la dominación de las finanzas y la especulación por encima de los Estados, la pérdida del poder político frente al financiero, la degradación consiguiente de la democracia, los déficit y la pobreza.

As fear continues to spread over the impact of the Greek debt crisis, more people are questioning how such a small country could impact markets around the world.

The IMF has warned euro nations that without more centralised control they risk sinking back into recession

Report described as clean break from Bush years addresses fresh challenges including rise of India and China