Dollars & Sense articles from November 2008

Dollars & Sense archives from November 2008

A left opening.(from the editors)(financial crises and Barack Obama)(Editorial)
November 1, 2008... The historic election of Barack Obama. A banking crisis that continues to unfold, and a U.S. and global recession that continues to deepen. U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ever-more sobering evidence of climate change, with the clock ticking...

Gender pay gap hurts (some) men, too!(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... A new Department of Labor study, released in September, suggests that nice guys really do finish last. The study followed the salary histories of 12,000 workers since 1979. Among the results: men with traditional attitudes about gender roles...

How about some privacy?(data mining )(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Data-mining has become increasingly sophisticated in the last decade and has contributed to the rise in individual debt, according to the New York Times. It turns out that major credit bureaus like Equifax and TransUnion, which are sitting on a...

Recession funnies!(Cartoon)
November 1, 2008... is it a recession yet? As A TV REPORTER. I MAKE GOOD MONEY! BUT I DON'T KNOW IF THERE'S A RECESSION, WHICH IS WHY? INTERVIEW HIM! I'M A SENATOR, WITH EXCELLENT PAY. BUT I'M NO ECONOMIST, SO I'LL RELY ON HIM TO TELL ME IF IT'S A...

Failure to communicate.(Tesla Motors Inc.'s downsizing)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The pink slip has gone digital. In October, electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors decided to close its Detroit-area facility and lay off most of the 100 workers there. Tesla posted a blog announcing the layoffs on the company website--two days...

No union with that latte.(Starbucks Corp. and labor union)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Erik Forman, a Starbucks barista at the Mall of America in Minnesota, was illegally fired in July for "discussing a written warning with his peer." He recently got his job back after the National Labor Relations Board charged Starbucks with...

Communist revival in Japan?(A Crab-Canning Boat)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Is there a radical wind blowing through Japanese society these days? Possibly, according to a recent Reuters story, which reports that a relatively obscure Marxist novel from 1929 has rocketed to the top of bestseller lists across the nation. A...

The financial crisis dwarfed?!
November 1, 2008... The global economy is losing more money from forest loss than from the current financial crisis, according to a study commissioned by the European Union. Based on the value of the services that forests provide, such as absorbing carbon dioxide,...

Letters.(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2008... To the editors That was a really excellent article by Thad Williamson ("America Beyond Consumerism," May/June 2008). I'm writing this on the 4th of July, and how it's going with the pursuit of happiness is rarely mentioned: pursued ever...

Top ten ways to recognize the next Great Depression.(comment)
November 1, 2008... Maybe it is just a professional liability, but I have spent much of the last few months thinking about when someone would have known they were living through the Great Depression. Would you have known as early as the October 1929 stock market...

CPI blues: changes to the Consumer Price Index dramatically reduced the "official" rate of inflation.
November 1, 2008... Think about economic conditions in the 1970s, and you're likely to have visions of gas lines snaking around corners, a weary Jimmy Carter looking droopy and forlorn in the Oval Office, and the general sense of "malaise" (Carter's word) that...

Derivatives and deregulation: three left economists take the discussion of the financial crisis beyond bailouts and reregulation.
November 1, 2008... IT HAS BECOME COMMONPLACE TO DESCRIBE the current financial crisis as the most serious since the Great Depression. Although we have more tools now to avoid a depression, the current crisis presents in some ways more significant challenges than...

Crisis and neoliberal capitalism.
November 1, 2008... The Financial Crisis and the Real Economy It is impossible to predict the course of the financial crisis. The effects of the crisis on the real economy could be very large, especially if it engulfs more and more of the financial sector. But...

Capitalism hits the fan.(United States'economic history)
November 1, 2008... Let me begin by saying what I think this crisis is not. It is not a financial crisis. It is a systemic crisis whose first serious symptom happened to be finance. But this crisis has its economic roots and its effects in manufacturing, services,...

Populism and neoliberalism in Iran: as much as the role of fundamentalist Islam or the country's foreign policy stance, it's economic issues that account for Iran's shifting political winds.
November 1, 2008... Iranians used to think inequality was rooted in capitalism, but now [we realize] it is government control that breeds discrimination.... Direct citizen access to the oil revenue [instead of welfare spending] would empower our poor... and...

Climate economics in four easy pieces: conventional cost-benefit models cannot inform our decisions about how to address the threat of climate change.
November 1, 2008... ONCE UPON A TIME, DEBATES about climate policy were primarily about the science. An inordinate amount of attention was focused on the handful of "climate skeptics" who challenged the scientific understanding of climate change. The influence of...

Financialization.
November 1, 2008... You don't have to be an investor dabbling in the stock market to feel the power of finance. Finance pervades the lives of ordinary people in many ways, from student loans and credit card debt to mortgages and pension plans. And its size...

Women in a failing economy: a level playing field?
November 1, 2008... Traditionally, periods of economic downturn in the United States have meant that women worked more. As their husbands were laid off, they sought paid employment to provide family income, leaving the proportion of women in the workforce higher...

Dear Dr. Dollar.(Column)
November 1, 2008... I do like thinking about the mess in the financial markets as a "rotten tooth," for something is certainly "rotten" in the current situation. And there is a way in which the analogy is useful: just as we are heavily dependent on the dentist to...