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The Great Recession could have spawned another era of fundamental reform, just as the Great Depression did. But the financial rescue reduced immediate demands for broader reform. Obama might still have succeeded had he framed the challenge accurately. Yet in reassuring the public that the economy would return to normal, he missed a key opportunity to expose the longer-term scourge of widening inequality and its dangers. Containing the immediate financial crisis and then claiming the economy was on the mend left the public with a diffuse set of economic problems that seemed unrelated and inexplicable, as if a town's fire chief dealt with a conflagration by protecting the biggest office buildings but leaving smaller fires simmering all over town: housing foreclosures, job losses, lower earnings, less economic security, soaring pay on Wall Street and in executive suites.

China is busy turning the global challenge of climate change into a national opportunity, but it needs another decade to advance its technology to the point where superior manufacturing and lower costs will secure its dominance of the clean-tech sector. By giving China more time to develop its capacity while neglecting our own, America is not just losing the clean-tech race, it's forfeiting it.

On Monday, Brazil and Turkey brokered a deal with Iran that would see it trading enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. Observers in Germany see a diplomatic coup for the rising powers, but warn that it could just be another ploy on the part of Iran.

Markets in the United States and Europe fell and the euro hit another low for the year on Thursday after the European Central Bank disappointed investors hoping for decisive action to contain the euro zone's increasingly virulent debt crisis.

Trading derivatives on regulated exchanges would be a major step forward, but it may no longer be enough. Economic bubbles are not recognized by those inside of them, the Congress of the united States being no exception. The $604.6 trillion derivatives bubble, which is equal to more than ten times world GDP, is a global issue. If existing OTC derivatives remain in place and there are no restrictions on what banks can trade derivatives, there is no actual or immediate reduction of systemic risk. Thus, the risks that led to the financial crisis in 2008 are likely to remain present in the global financial system for years to come. In fact, many banks have more CDS risk now than in 2008. Passing a bank-approved version of the financial reform bill, while it may be portrayed as a political victory or serve to calm financial markets temporarily, is unlikely to prevent another global financial crisis.

European financial markets were expected to suffer another week of turmoil after the Spanish government was forced over the weekend to rescue a regional mortgage lender and European leaders revealed deep divisions over how to tackle mounting deficits in the eurozone.

With top corporations expecting another year of record profits, economists offer a pessimistic vision of America

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig said U.S. regulators should avert another crisis by breaking up large financial institutions that pose a threat "to our capitalistic system." 

http://www.mint.com | It's official, trillion is the new billion. No longer is government spending talked about in terms of a mere ten digits. With the recent flurry of government spending, we are going to need another three zeros to make sense of it all. One trillion dollars is a number that few people can comprehend, let alone your standard nine digit calculator. So what does one trillion dollars look like?

"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."- John F. KennedyThere's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s - people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation - and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fac

There has been much concern about financial contagion between Europe and America. But the real problem stems from another form of contagion: bad ideas move easily across borders, and misguided economic notions on both sides of the Atlantic have been reinforcing each other.

A University of Zurich study 'proves' that a small group of companies - mainly banks - wields huge power over the global economy. The study is the first to look at all 43,060 transnational corporations and the web of ownership between them - and created a 'map' of 1,318 companies at the heart of the global economy. The study found that 147 companies formed a 'super entity' within this, controlling 40 per cent of its  wealth. All own part or all of one another. Most are banks - the top 20 includes Barclays and Goldman Sachs. But the close connections mean that the network could be vulnerable to collapse

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner dined on Wednesday night with European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, a closed-door, no-public-comment session that placed the American official in the middle of an ongoing European debate: Which Trichet would show up?

Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file - "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.