Tuesday’s partisan small ball on gas prices, replete with consequential rhetoric and insignificant action, did nothing to dispel the sinking feeling that we are in for months of political theater as real challenges and issues founder.
Read moreGoogle’s Results Reflect Giants’ Surge, as Everyone Else Struggles
Late yesterday afternoon, Google announced its financial results for the first three months of 2012. Its results were typically extraordinary, and demonstrate—if more demonstration is needed—a truism of our time: this is a golden age for capital. It is a golden age for corporations with a global reach. It is a marvelous time to have access to capital, and to deploy capital. And it is a challenging time to be a wage earner. In short, it is great to be capital; it is not a good time to be labor.
Read moreObama, Romney Tax Returns Unleash Worst Political Instincts
So it would seem that President Obama and his family are experiencing downward mobility. The Obamas released their 2011 tax return today, and showed that they earned $789,674. That is a healthy income and places the president well in the top 1 percent of all earners in the United States. He and Michelle paid $162,000 in federal income tax, at a rate of just over 20 percent. That is less than what the president recently proposed as the minimum rate for the very affluent. In addition, the Obamas donated more than 20 percent of their income to various charities.
Read moreWhy Book Publishers Should Stop Worrying and Love the eBook
FROM THE DAILY BEAST | APRIL 12, 2012
Why Big Profits are Ahead for Book Publishers – Yes, Book Publishers
The headlines haven't been good for book publishers in the past few days – the past few years, really – but economist Zachary Karabell says look past all that. Ebooks mean big profits and future much brighter than what's happened to magazines and newspapers.
Read moreObama Call for Buffett Rule Is Potent Politics but an Economic Pitfall
Tuesday was a signal day for the 2012 presidential election: Mitt Romney conclusively became the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party after Rick Santorum suspended his campaign, and President Obama launched a full-throated attack on wealth and privilege, setting the stage for a campaign that will use the gap between rich and poor as a centerpiece.
Read moreMarch Jobs Data Proves the Crisis is Over but Problems Remain
Today’s latest installment of the official jobs data should be final proof—if more is needed—that the U.S. economy is no longer mired an acute employment crisis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. labor force grew by 120,000 in March, continuing a trend now more than a year old of steady improvement
Read moreBefore Condemning Foxconn, Americans Should Examine Their Own Labor History
Apple has made waves this week, but not for its products or its stock price. Instead, it has once again been the center of damning revelations about labor practices in Chinese factories that make the iPad and the iPhone. But while Apple certainly deserves the criticism, this story is not as simple as it seems. It’s not just about Apple and working conditions; the other story is U.S. anxiety about China, double standards, and an American tendency to forget our own history and how we have evolved.
Read moreJim Kim: Obama’s Bold Pick to Lead the World Bank
Yesterday, President Obama announced his nomination for the next president of the World Bank, and the choice came as a surprise to almost everyone. Unlike recent heads of the bank—from Paul Wolfowitz, whose tenure was cut short by a minor scandal, to Robert Zoellick, who is now retiring, to the rather august James Wolfensohn—Dr. Jim Yong Kim is neither a power player in Washington nor a well-known political figure globally. Nor is he a banker of repute. He is instead a major figure in international aid circles, a founder of the health-care organization Partners in Health, a former leader of the World Health Organization’s initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS, and most recently, the president of Dartmouth University.
Read moreChina’s Not the Big Trade Cheat Harming America’s Domestic Economy
As in 2008, China has again emerged as a central campaign issue. On the stump, Mitt Romney has emphasized that if he is president, China will no longer run roughshod over the United States as he contends it has during the Obama administration. “On day one,” he thunders, “I will declare China a currency manipulator, allowing me to put tariffs on products where they are stealing American jobs unfairly. We can compete when there’s a level playing field, and we’d win.”
Read moreWhy Was Executive Greg Smith Shocked by Greed at Goldman Sachs?
Yet again, Goldman Sachs has seen its reputation plummet in the public eye. A scathing resignation letter-cum-opinion piece by a disgruntled midlevel executive published in Wednesday’s New York Times quickly went viral and was the talk of the financial town. And it was quite the letter, filled with accusations of a “toxic and destructive” culture, of executives expressing unmitigated scorn for clients, including referring to hapless ones as “muppets,” and general disdain for anything except profit and more profit, whatever the ethical or moral costs.
Read moreJobs Report Shows Unemployment Steady, but There’s Underlying Trouble
Friday’s monthly dose of official information about the U.S. employment picture, a.k.a. the jobs report, showed very little change. The official unemployment rate stayed the same, at 8.3 percent, and 227,000 jobs were added.
Read moreWhat Market Panic? Halcyon Days for Silicon Valley
It’s no secret that the media world is disproportionately represented by denizens of the East Coast, which also overlaps with the corridors of politics and finance. For the past years, these circles have been focused on financial crises, the fate of the euro zone, high unemployment, government debt, unbridled political partisanship, nuclear proliferation, and successive waves of market panic.
Read moreJob Market’s Tough ‘New Normal”: Some Careers Aren’t Coming Back
As the overall economic picture in the United States continues to brighten, the job market remains a contentious issue. Yes, the headline official unemployment rate has fallen sharply in recent months to just over 8 percent. But most Americans, judging from polls, remain pessimistic about jobs and see a challenging landscape of high unemployment and stagnant wages.
Read moreBells Are Ringing! Confidence Rises as the Dow—Finally—Hits 13,000 Again
The Dow Jones industrial average briefly flirted with 13,000 today, marking the first time since May 2008 that the august index has reached that level. The number is purely symbolic, of course, but the steady rise of stocks this year (with the major indices up anywhere from 5 to 10 percent) has taken many by surprise, none more than Wall Street professionals who have assumed a Greek default and the ensuing financial catastrophe to be a near certainty. Instead of a Europe-led meltdown, we are witnessing a melt-up.
Read moreAs Xi Jinping Visits the U.S., Obama Gets That China’s Not the Bad Guy
Just when you think you’ve seen everything, you get the following: the next leader of China, a nation of 1.3 billion people vying to supplant the United States as the world’s largest economy, flies to America on a goodwill tour and goes to…a farm in Iowa. Yes, Vice President Xi Jinping will spend the evening in Muscatine, Iowa, in the Victorian farmhouse he briefly lived in more than a quarter century ago, when he was an official from the Chinese province of Hebei sent to learn Iowa’s agricultural innovations and bring them back to a China that was then struggling to increase crop yields
Read moreUnemployment Rate Drops, But Reality of Jobs Crisis Is More Complicated
Friday’s jobs report proved what has been increasingly clear these past months: Unemployment remains stubbornly high, has stopped getting appreciably worse, appears to be getting better, and will be a chronic issue even as the overall economic picture has brightened considerably.
Read moreObama Extols Warren Buffett as Hero, But to Wall Street He’s No Angel
Obama invokes Warren Buffett as a high-minded Wall Street icon, but to some he’s a robber baron, says Zachary Karabell.
Read moreGoogle 2011 Results Show Growth, But Can Tech Giant Thrive in Long Run?
‘Tis the season for large technology companies to announce their results for the end of 2011, and last night it was Google’s turn, along with other behemoths Microsoft, Intel and IBM. With expectations lofty, Google’s performance was found lacking by investors, who sent the stock down nearly 10 percent after the company reported that while revenues grew, the prices it was able to charge for advertising had declined about 8 percent.
Read moreUnemployment Rate Drops, But Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story
Today’s monthly jobs report from the federal government is undoubtedly good news for the White House, the Obama administration and for the Democrats in general this election year. It may also good news for American financial markets, which have for now reversed last year’s late trend and are clinging to whatever good news they can.
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