When you think European financial crisis, you think Greece, or Spain, or Italy. But economic trouble in the small island nation of Cyprus is causing a serious panic throughout Europe. Because of Cyprus banks’ exposure to the financial troubles in neighboring Greece, the island nation’s banks need a bailout.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp is supposed to insure deposits and regulate banks, but the agency has helped the banksters avoid trial for their crimes since the 2008 financial meltdown. The LA Times reports that the very agency responsible for investigating and prosecuting bank procedures that crashed our economy has been quietly settling charges out of court – and out of the view of the American public.

As Robert Borosage wrote, “Too Big Too Fail” has become “Too Big To Jail.” According to attorney general, our big banks have gotten so big that bringing criminal charges against them for blatantly criminal acts “will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.” (Click here to tell Attorney General [...]

For years, the Obama Administration has been pummeled for failing to bring criminal charges against a single major Wall Street bank or a single leading Wall Street banker for what the FBI termed an “epidemic of fraud” that blew up the entire economy.  Investigations revealed the banks committed routine fraud in peddling mortgage securities they [...]

As sequester cuts start to bite a little harder, the Fix the Debt gang is pushing for a “grand bargain,” deep cuts to earned benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare in exchange for some vague promises about “tax reform.” They may have a powerful ally in the White House. Rather than barnstorming the country [...]

You may have seen the charts showing how working people’s wages stopped going up along with productivity gains: Update: I am adding this chart of productivity gain and wages, from EPI’s The wedges between productivity and median compensation growth: This means the gains went … somewhere else. See if you can guess who got them? [...]

You are probably hearing that the Post Office is “in crisis” and is cutting back Saturday delivery, laying people off, closing offices, etc. Like so many other “crises” imposed on us lately, there is a lot to the story that you are not hearing from the “mainstream” media. (Please click that link.) The story of [...]

It’s been 13 days since the Campaign for a Fair Settlement challenged President Obama to use the first 100 days of his term to “fix what Wall Street broke.”  Though Obama said his policies will, “speed relief to the hardest-hit homeowners,” he has yet to act on many of these demands. The Campaign for a [...]

In DC the geniuses are busy with the billionaire agenda, fighting the things We, the People do to make our lives better. Meanwhile, in the real world yet another report is out that shows how one-sided trade deals with China and others are killing off our jobs and factories and industries and economy. And while DC’s geniuses work themselves into a frenzy over the budget deficit — money that we Americans mostly to each other — they ignore the real problem: the trade deficit, and hundreds of billions of our dollars continue to bleed out of our country, year after year.

Bloggers have learned some hard lessons about engaging with right-wing nutcases who leave nasty comments: “Don’t feed the trolls.” Starve them of the attention they seek. Ignore them and move on. This advice also applies to the right-wing nutcases threatening to bring down our economy by refusing to raise the debt-ceiling limit. They won’t get any traction on this unless Democrats engage with them. So ignore them, isolate them and scorn them but do not engage with them. Their billionaire & Wall Street funders will stop them and the pubic will see them for what they are, but only if we all just leave them alone. They aren’t really going to hold their breath until we all die.