The world’s most popular — and profitable — social networking brand is increasingly coming under fire for its questionable tax practices even as it is earning praise and adulation from Wall Street on the day it becomes a publicly traded company. The Facebook stock IPO (initial public offering) has become a media and market phenomenon, [...]
The darkest and most frightening echoes of the 2008 financial crisis that rocked the global economy were stirred over the past week as mega-bank JP Morgan Chase broke the news of a stunning $2 billion loss in a trading debacle similar to the kind that conspired to wreak the American economy only three-and-a-half years ago. [...]
HOW DOES A CAPITALIST COUNTRY DEAL WITH A CRISIS IN EMPLOYMENT? BY CUTTING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS, OF COURSE. (World Socialist) A political “deal” between the Obama administration and a Republican congress is now coming home to roost as some 200k American workers are slated to be cut off from “extended” unemploymet benefits—half of them in the [...]
` OBAMA AND HIS FRIENDS LAUNCH NEW ERA OF FRANCO-AMERICAN RELATIONS WITH A LESS-THAN CONCILIATORY TAKE ON THE NEW FRENCH SOCIALIST PRESIDENT. (Buzz Feed) ` The overwhelming defeat on Sunday of incumbent French President Nicolas Sarkozy has already sent “ripples” across the pond to America, where Sarkozy’s successor, Socialist Francois Hollande, has received a decidedly chilly reception [...]
As economic instability continues to roil world markets and threaten the marginal sliver of a recovery since the global recession of 2008, the pace of income inequality has quickened as the rich really are getting richer — a lot richer. On both sides of the Atlantic, the gap between prosperity and financial hardship is growing [...]
As Barack Obama prepares to go before the American people and ask for a second term in the White House and his presumptive Republican opponent demands that voters unseat the Democratic incumbent, the two presidential challengers will do so with a trail of broken ethics promises and unprecedented access to corporate interests and major lobbyists [...]
“ALL THEY CARE ABOUT, IN THE END, IS THE WAR ITSELF—OR RATHER, WAR ITSELF.” (Chris Floyd) The April 1 annnouncement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the U.S. government will be help arm the “Free Syrian Army” opposition comes as no surprise to Chris Floyd, although the real “fools” being played by these and [...]
SPECULATION OR SANCTIONS: WHAT IS DRIVING UP GLOBAL OIL PRICES? (Antiwar.com) While some analysts argue that market speculators are artificially manipulating prices to their benefit, U.S. Energy Information Administrator Howard Gruenspecht calls this a “minority view.” The real major factor in that rise, he says, is the effect of U.S. and E.U. sanctions against Iranian [...]
FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT: DOES ANYTHING MORE NEED TO BE SAID ABOUT THE MUTUAL HOSTILITY OF AMERICANS AND AFGHANS IN AFGHANISTAN? (Dissident Voice) In a season of near-daily assaults of Afghans on Americans or Americans on Afghans, Gary Leupp surveys some history and notes that this tends ever to be the case in “Empires” when domination [...]
RISING INSTABILITY IN AFGHANISTAN COULD SPUR EARLIER U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWS. (New York Times) ` In a plan strenuously opposed by the Pentagon, the New York Times reports that the Obama administration is considering what can only be described as a mild acceleration of their purported “timetable” to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Conflict with the [...]
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