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Today's
Stories
July 2, 2008
Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai
Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style
Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory
Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark
July 1, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch
Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?
Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland
Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police
Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats
Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism
Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies
Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq
Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice
June 30, 2008
Peter Lee
Did a Plutonium Generator End Up in the Ganges?
Jeff Sommers
Burying the Bloody Shirt; A New Age for Latvia Dawns? "Astatu Loskutovu!"
David Macaray
The AFL-CIO Votes to Endorse Obama
Martha Rosenberg
Sex Work is Different from Sex Slavery, aver Carnal Toilers
David Price
Blind Whistling Phreaks and the FBI's Historical Reliance on Phone Tap Criminality
Alexandra Early
Report from El Salvador: Why They All Keep Coming
June 28 / 29, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Guess What "Surprise" Republicans Yearn For
Jeffrey St. Clair
Nike's Bad Air
Joan P. Mencher
The Human Right to Eat
Nikolas Kozloff
Nader, Obama and White Talk
Jason Hribal
Tillie, Elephants and the Zoo
Alan Maass
Obama Swerves Right
Robert Fantina
Iraq and the New York Times
Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
It Was Oil, All Along
Mike Whitney
A Glimmer of Light in Television Wasteland
Justin E. H. Smith
Collective Guilt and the Fate of Kosovo
Pham Binh
The Mendacity of Hope
David Yearsley
The Rest is Noise
Christopher Ketcham
19 Aphorisms
Jeremy R. Hammond
Bush and the Press vs. the Constitution
Kathleen M. Barry
An Open Letter to Barney Frank on Israel
Walter Brasch
Politics and Animal Cruelty in Pennsylvania
Brett Drugge
A Field Trip to the Reagan Library
Susie Day
Sex Sans the City
Website of the Day
How to Expose a Hypocritcal Politician
June 27, 2008
Franklin C. Spinney
The Defense Reform Trap
Jonathan Cook
Israel's Encaging of Gaza
Brian Cloughley
Chaos in Afghanistan
Saree Makdisi
Occupation by Bureaucracy
Liliana Segura
Reactionary Change:
Obama and the Death Penalty
Paul Krassner
Remembering George Carlin
William S. Lind
The War and the Yellow Press
Candace Cohn
Embracing Big Brother
Ron Jacobs
What's a Voter to Do?
Binoy Kampmark
Beached in Chile
Website of the Day
Zoom Uganda
June 26, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Who's Actually Winning in Iraq?
Nikolas Kozloff
Kinder and Gentler Assassination Techniques? Obama Waffles on School of the Americas
William P. O'Connor
The Drone of Experts
Saul Landau
McClellan's Mini Mea Culpa
Ashley Smith
Which Way Forward for the Antiwar Movement?
Dave Lindorff
Our Kids and Their Kids:
Terrorists or Victims?
David Macaray
A Brief History of Union Negotiations
Binoy Kampmark
Warming Seats at the Hague:
John Howard and War Crimes
Matt Reichel
There's No Hope at the Ballot Box
Remi Kenazi
You Don't Mess With the Racism!
Website of the Day
A Movement Afoot in the Heartlands
June 25, 2008
David H. Price
The Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness
Stephen Soldz
The Torture Trainers and the APA
Andy Worthington
Six Years Late, Court Throws Out Gitmo Case
Marjorie Cohn
Scalia Cites False Information in Habeas Dissent
Joanne Mariner
What Boumediene Means
Ralph Nader
Starving AMTRAK
Robert Weissman
High Flyers and Soaring Inequality
Christopher Brauchli
Blackout at the EPA
Suren Pillay
A Picture of Things to Come?
Seth Sandronsky
UC Workers Avert Walkout
Website of the Day
Obama Talkin' White
June 24, 2008
Ishmael Reed
Obama: the Big Let Down
P. Sainath
They've Got the World by the Belly
Nikolas Kozloff
Charlie Black's Play Book: McCain Needs Another 9/11
Gregory Kafoury
Obama's Rightward Lurch
Betty Shamieh
Fear of Flailing: Erica Jong's "Arabs and Other Animals"
Mike Whitney
Gas Price Gouging: Don't Blame the Saudis
Andy Worthington
Italy's Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo
Bill Christison
Towards a World Parliament
Philippe Marlière
Spoiling Sarko's Euro-Show
Website of the Day
Who Owns You?
June 23, 2008
Michael Hudson
How Should the Middle East Invest Its Oil Profits?
John Ross
Killing Farmers with Killer Seeds
Peter Montague
Environmental Enron: the Clean Coal Con
Ramzy Baroud
Gaza's Dying Children
Robert Fantina
McCain, Racism and the Supreme Court
Robert Weitzel
A MAD Foreign Policy: America's Irrational Defense of Israel
David Macaray
The Supreme Court's Hostility to Organized Labor
Howard Lisnoff
Where's the Anger?
Richard Rhames
Grieving Mr. Gotcha: Russert, GE and Neutron Jack
Gail Dines
Penn, Porn and Me
Tim Matson
Bright Ideas for Storms and Blackouts
June 21 / 22, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The Russert Send-Off
Jeffrey St. Clair
Adventures in the Endangered Skin Trade
Pam Martens
A Secret Oil Gusher Inside Citigroup
Mike Whitney
The Game is Over: an Interview with Michael Hudson on the Economy
Chris Floyd
Torturegate
Tim Wise
The Ugly Side of Disaster: Katrina and the Midwest Floods
Paul Craig Roberts
A Totally Lawless Regime
Michael Winship
How Countrywide Leveraged Washington
Ron Jacobs
Vietnam Blues
Ramzy Baroud
Palestine in the American Imagination
Alan Farago
The Off-Shore Drilling Scam
Michael Yates
Paul Krugman on Race: Ignorant and Disingenuous
Dave Lindorff
Keeping America Safe: Prosecuting Children as Terrorists
Bernard Chazelle
Why Israel Won't Accept a Two-State Solution
Linda Mamoun
Mearsheimer and Walt in Tel Aviv
Jo-Shing Yang
Dying of Hunger, Dying of Thirst
Robert Jensen
Fear and Hope on a Runaway Train
Website of the Weekend
Slavery By Another Name
June 20, 2008
Robert Oscar Lopez
Brownout in Black Camelot: Obama and Latino Voters
Paul Craig Roberts
John Yoo, Totalitarian
Bouthaina Shaaban
The Real Arab AIPAC
Bill Quigley
The Big Lock-Up
Moshe Adler
Is Cuba Done With Equality?
Patrick Cockburn
An End to Iraq Contractor Immunity?
Andy Worthington
John McCain, Torture Puppet
Norman Solomon
Health Care and the Ghosts of War
Martha Rosenberg
Can Wyeth Fool American Women Twice?
June 19, 2008
Ralph Nader
Why Won't Corporations Take On Big Oil?
Chellis Glendinning
Techno-Fascism: Every Move You Make
Neve Gordon
Learning to Drive in Rafah
Dave Lindorff
Killing the News in Iraq
Sheldon Richman
Habeas Corpus Saved--Barely
George Bisharat
Obama's Missteps
Jackie Corr
Dear Mr. Kilowatt
Farzana Versey
Will Gorkhaland Become a Reality?
Website of the Day
Trouble on the Range
June 18, 2008
Nicole Colson
Hunger and Humiliation in the Belt-Tightening Economy
Rev. William E. Alberts
The "F" Word and the White Press
Vijay Prashad
Obama's Genuflections to the Swing Lobby
Parvez Ahmed
Oil Prices, Market Regulation and the Election
Bob Moss
Judicial Warfare in Boumediene
Dave Lindorff
The Elephant in the Room
David Wilson
Bush in London
June 17, 2008
Conn Hallinan
The Brain Trauma Vets
Wajahat Ali
Chomsky Speaks: On Iran and Iraq
Marjorie Cohn
Reviving Habeas Corpus
Uri Avnery
Two Professors: Mearsheimer and Walt in Israel
David Macaray
Adversarial Relationship
Rannie Amiri
Forgotten Lives in a Forgotten War
Website of the Day
Pentagon Money
June 16, 2008
Uri Avnery
An Apology
Corey D. B. Walker
The Racial Politics of Symbols
Howard Lisnoff
Files Upon Files
Dennis Loo
2008 Elections: Of Whales and Worms
Paul Craig Roberts
Obama and the Fall Into Tyranny
June 13 / 15, 2008
Douglas Valentine
McCain: War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?
Alexander Cockburn
Change, What Change?
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Peter Linebaugh
On Wat Tyler Day
Ishmael Reed
The Colossus:
Sonny Rollins, Take One
Joe Bageant
Old Dogs and Hard Time
Harry Browne
Ireland Shows the Way!
Andy Worthington
The Supreme Court's Gitmo Decision: What Does It Mean?
Jeff Sharlet
The F-Word
Binoy Kampmark
They Gassed Us: Agent Orange in OZ
Alan Farago
His Little Piece of the Pie
Brian Cloughley
America the Detested: the Pakistan Airstrikes
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
How to Stretch Gasoline
Reza Fiyouzat
Oil and Racism
Patrick Bond /
Richard Kamidza
How Europe Underdevelops Africa
David Yearsley
Music in the Rubble
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Dennis Kucinich!
Ronnie Cummins
Don't Panic; Go Organic
Dan Bacher
Bush Tries to Raid Salmon Disaster Funds
Michael Dickinson
Jesus in Megiddo Prison
Seth Sandronsky
My Father's World
Poets' Basement
Tu Fu / Rexroth
Website of the Weekend
Torture and the American Psyche
June 12, 2008
Judith Levine
As Cranes Fall and People Die
Patrick Cockburn
Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases
Saul Landau
The Iraq War Becomes Suicidal
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Bling-Bling:
Government by Crony
Norman Solomon
Deadly Diplomacy
Helen Redmond
Why Can't We All Get KennedyCare?
Laura Carlsen
No Rest for the Working Poor
Jeremy R. Hammond
Threats Against Iran Escalate
Anne Landman
Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer?
Website of the Day
Fire in Watts
June 11, 2008
Paul Craig Roberts
Why Oil Prices Are So High
Ralph Nader
Wall Street Gamblers
Joshua Frank
Why I Can't Support Barack Obama
Clifton Ross
Conversation in Miami: the Neoliberal Left and Socialism
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Whatever Happened to "Democracy Now?"
Stephen Lendman
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption
Diane Farsetta
Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly
Ron Jacobs
The Sixties Painted Black
Deborah Rich
Hay Belly Nation: the FDA and the O-Word
Hop Wechsler
A Friend of Women?
My Bill Clinton ... and Ours
Website of the Day
A New Path to the Waterfall
June 10, 2008
Alan Farago
John McCain and the Company He Keeps
James G. Abourezk
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby
Saree Makdisi
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)
Malini Johar Schueller
A Picture From Beirut
John Ross
Killing Foods, Killing People
Wajahat Ali
Rumi and Sufism
Peter Morici
Bernanke Aggravates Recession Risks
Jordan Flaherty
Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation
Gary Macfarlane
Collaboration on the Clearwater: Is It Legitimate?
Joanne Mariner
The Gitmo Trials: an Inglorious Start
Website of the Day
The End of the Clinton Machine?
June 9, 2008
Uri Avnery
No, I Can't: Obama, Israel and AIPAC
Nikolas Kozloff
McCain & the Republican Insitute: Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"
Allan Nairn
Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry
Dennis Loo
Threats on Iran and the "Batterer's Defense"
Harry Browne
Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire
C. Hand
U. S. Bid to Hike Iran's Gas Prices Seems Doomed
Peter Morici
An Unsustainable Trade Deficit
Kenneth Couesbouc
A Ripe Time for Inflation
Martha Rosenberg
The Inconvenient Senator Grassley
James L. Secor
Chinese Superstition or Unconscious Oracle?
Website of the Day
Pay Bo Diddley!
June 7 / 8, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top
Ishmael Reed
How Miles Davis Changed My Life
Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet the King the Beers: John McCain and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark: Oil Prices, Israel, Iran and the U.S.
Robert Fantina
When Truth is the Casualty
Conn Hallinan
Iran and Rumors of War
Neve Gordon
The Occupation and the Politics of Death
Tom Barry
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security
Patrick Irelan
Raiding the Packing House
Tim Wise
Your Whiteness is Showing
David Ker Thomson
The Hard Question
Joshua Frank
"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana
David Yearsley
Disaster Music
James T. Phillips
1968: Year of the Rat
Joe Allen
The Real Bobby Kennedy
P. Sainath
Making Life Brighter in Kondapur
David Macaray
Should Unions be More Democratic?
B.R. Gowani
Experience and the Two-for-One
Fred Gardner
What Happened (at the DA's Office)
Peter Harley
Technology to the Rescue? Kurzweil and the Human Machines
Michael Dickinson
Surrender the Bones of Geronimo!
Jen Roesch
Where are the Real Women in Sex and the City?
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Landau, and Buknatski
Website of the Day
Partying with the Waltons
June 6, 2008
Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine
Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal
Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal
James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist
Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market
Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?
Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself
Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley
June 5, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq
Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage
Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?
Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly
Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...
Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award
John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC
Dan Bacher
The Parching of California
DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off
Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?
Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers
June 4, 2008
Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban
Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie
Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth
Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers
George Wuerthner
Farm Economics
Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics
Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed
Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended
Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement
Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space
Website of the Day
Red State Rebels
June 3, 2008
Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny
Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy
Steve Early
San Juan Showdown
Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony
George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People
Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry
Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway
Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?
June 2, 2008
Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal
Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse
Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler
Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria
Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?
Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun
John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico
Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List
Website of the Day
Man on Earth
May 31 / June 1, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come
Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers
Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush
Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall
P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day
Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo
Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan
Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?
Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?
Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle
Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes
Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again
Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God
Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo
David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter
Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch
Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...
Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts
Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes
Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep
Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies
Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse
May 30, 2008
Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From
Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession
Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists
Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba
Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap
Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People
Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror
Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)
Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9
Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement
May 29, 2008
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women
Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race
Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead
Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States
William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game
Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil
Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter
David Macaray
A Union Fable
Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies
Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil
Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com
May 28, 2008
Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul
Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?
Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College
Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder
Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola
Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan
Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You
Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan
Website of the Day
Older Than America
May 27, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader
Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?
Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions
Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem
Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn
Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations
Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16
Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting:
Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates
Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup
Susie Day
Gone with the W
May 26, 2008
Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option
Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day
Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day
Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me
Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?
Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?
Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital
Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System
Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters
David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips
Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama
May 24 / 25, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate
Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem
Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures
Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters
Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections
Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture
Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq
David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch
Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba
Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing
John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point
Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx
Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968
Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?
Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work
Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger
Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep
Daniel Cassidy
My Mother
Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson
Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob
May 23, 2008
Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home
Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry
Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia
Mark Engler
The World After Bush
George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America
Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism
Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan
Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq
Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle
Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment
Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign
May 22, 2008
Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar
Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet
Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid
Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China
Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq
Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard
Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman
Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement
Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard
Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel
May 21, 2008
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton
Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America
Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign
Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat
David Model
Genocide in Iraq?
Eric Walberg
Afghanistan:
Who is the Enemy?
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President
Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny
Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay
May 20, 2008
Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google
Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These
Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet
Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are
David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle
Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water:
Skating Around the Tanker Issue
Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba
Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed
Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender
Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman
May 19, 2008
Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live
Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement
Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands
Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead:
Mosul on Lockdown
B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle
Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture:
If Not Now, When?
Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?
John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace
Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free
Robert Day
I Get a Horse
Website of the Day
Evolve or Die
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Greed Without Accountability
Economic Domino Theory
By
RALPH NADER
The worst top management of giant corporations in American history is also by far the most hugely paid. That contradiction applies as well to the Boards of Directors of these global companies.
Consider these illustrations:
The bosses of General Motors (GM) have presided over the worst decline of GM shares in the last fifty years, the lowering of GM bonds to junk status, the largest money losses and layoffs of tens of thousands of workers. Yet these top executives are still in place and still receiving much more pay than their successful counterparts at Toyota.
GM’s stock valuation is under $7 billion dollars, while Toyota is valued at over $160 billion. Toyota, having passed GM in worldwide sales, is about to catch up with and pass GM in sales inside the United States itself!
GM’s executives stayed with their gas guzzling SUVs way beyond the warning signs. Their vehicles were uninspiring and technologically stagnant in various ways. They were completely unprepared for Toyota’s hybrid cars and for the upward spiral in gasoline prices. They’re cashing their lucrative monthly checks with the regular votes of confidence by their hand-picked Board of Directors.
About the same appraisal can be made of Ford Motor Co., which at least brought in new management to try to do something about that once famous company’s sinking status.
Then there are the financial companies. Top management on Wall Street has been beyond incompetent. Wild risk taking camouflaged for years by multi-tiered, complex, abstract financial instruments (generally called collateralized debt obligations) kept the joy ride going and going until the massive financial hot air balloon started plummeting. Finally told to leave their high posts, the CEOs of Merrill-Lynch and Citigroup took away tens of millions of severance pay while Wall Street turned into Layoff Street.
The banks, investment banks and brokerage firms have tanked to levels not seen since the 1929-30 collapse of the stock market. Citigroup, once valued at over $50 per share is now under $17 a share.
Washington Mutual – the nation’s largest savings bank chain was over $40 a share in 2007. Its reckless speculative binge has driven it down under $5 a share. Yet its CEO Kerry Killinger remains in charge, with the continuing support of his rubberstamp Board of Directors. A recent $8 billion infusion of private capital gave a sweetheart deal to these new investors at the excessive expense of the shareholders.
Countrywide, the infamous giant mortgage lender (subprime mortgages) is about to be taken over by Bank of America. Its CEO is taking away a reduced but still very generous compensation deal.
Meanwhile, all these banks and brokerage houses’ investment analysts are busy downgrading each others’ stock prospects.
Over at the multi-trillion dollar companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the shareholders have lost about 75 percent of their stock value in one year. Farcically regulated by the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, Fannie and Freddie were run into the ground by taking on very shaky mortgages under the command of CEOs and their top executives who paid themselves enormous sums.
These two institutions were set up many years ago to provide liquidity in the housing and loan markets and thereby expand home ownership especially among lower income families. Instead, they turned themselves into casinos, taking advantage of an implied U.S. government guarantee.
The Fannie and Freddie bosses created another guarantee. They hired top appointees from both Republican and Democratic Administrations (such as Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick) and lathered them with tens of millions of dollars in executive compensation. In this way, they kept federal supervision at a minimum and held off efforts in Congress to toughen regulation. These executives are all gone now, enjoying their maharajan riches with impunity while pensions and mutual funds lose and lose and lose with no end in sight, short of a government-taxpayer bailout.
Over a year ago, leading financial analyst Henry Kaufman and very few others warned about “undisciplined” (read unregulated) and “mis-pricing” of lower quality assets. Mr. Kaufman wrote in the Wall Street Journal of August 15, 2007 that “If some institutions are really ‘too big to fail,’ then other means of discipline will have to be found.”
There are ways to prevent such crashes. In the nineteen thirties, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose stronger regulation, creating the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and several bank regulatory agencies. He saved the badly listing capitalist ship.
Today, there is no real momentum in a frozen Washington, D.C. to bring regulation up to date. To the contrary, in 1999, Congress led by Senator McCain’s Advisor, former Senator Phil Gramm and the Clinton Administration led by Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury, and soon to join Citibank, de-regulated and ended the wall between investment banks and commercial banking known as the Glass-Steagall Act.
Clinton and Congress opened the floodgates to rampant speculation without even requiring necessary and timely disclosures for the benefit of institutional and individual investors.
Now the entire U.S. economy is at risk. The domino theory is getting less theoretical daily. Without investors obtaining more legal authority as owners over their out of control company officers and Boards of Directors, and without strong regulation, corporate capitalism cannot be saved from its toxic combination of endless greed and maximum power—without responsibility.
Uncle Sam, the deeply deficit ridden bailout man, may have another taxpayers-to-the-rescue operation for Wall Street. But don’t count on stretching the American dollar much more without devastating consequences to and from global financial markets in full panic.
Consider the U.S. dollar like an elastic band. You can keep stretching this rubber band but suddenly it BREAKS. Our country needs action NOW from Washington, D.C.
Ralph Nader is running for president as an independent.
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