Just last week two of America's leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal presented opinion pieces discussing why Americans remain bitter about the federal bailouts.


Read More...
More on Financial Crisis

When President Obama took office in January 2009, 76 percent of Americans believed he would "bring needed change to Washington." Within three months, that figure had dropped to 63 percent, and by January 2010, it had dipped to 50 percent (it is now 44 percent). In February 2009, the president's job approval rating stood at 68 percent. By the end of the year it was 50 percent, where it remains. Within months - certainly by the end of his first year in office - much of the public had lost confidence in his ability to fix the economy, create jobs, reduce the national debt and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Welcome to the impatient society.

The reality, of course, is that no president and no Congress can fix these very difficult problems in a short time. We know this in our personal lives - sound finances, good skills to get a decent job (or a better job) and strong relationships with those we care about take years to build - and when they are broken to rebuild. Yet in the public arena, we expect fast results.

Perhaps our lack of patience is a function of the 24/7 news cycle, where finding fault with the president and government is essential to fill up air time. Perhaps it is a function of the two-year Congressional cycle, which invites us to expect a lot in a short time or else replace our representatives with others who promise to deliver. But the impatient society is most likely due to more than this, because American impatience shows up in so many other parts of our lives.

Read More...

America's job crisis is a result of decades of shopping on credit and underinvesting in research to fuel new industries, says analyst Fareed Zakaria.

Creditors have until midnight Friday to submit alternatives to a plan backed by the media conglomerate and its largest creditors. At least two groups intend to file restructuring proposals.

Still recovering from a management scandal that claimed its chief executive a week ago, Tribune Co. is bracing for its next disruption: how to cope with legal challenges from Aurelius Capital Management and other unhappy creditors seeking to upend its bankruptcy case.

Mike Lee, Utah's Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate, floated the solution of a total government shutdown Thursday to deal with increasing budgetary concerns and growing debt.

NPR spoke with Lee, who said that a governmental standstill may soon be "absolutely necessary":

"Our current debt is a little shy of $14 trillion. And I don't want it to increase 1 cent above the current debt limit and I will vote against that," he says.
Read More...
More on Elections 2010

What was the silver bullet that made virtually all losses disappear even though every aspect of the administration's initial loss estimates proved too optimistic? There was none. They made losses disappear the old-fashioned way, with fictional accounting.
Read More...
More on Larry Summers

Most accounts of the ministerial meeting last weekend of the Group of 20 -- 19 nations plus the European Union, together representing the world's wealthiest economies -- implied that it continued to perform sterling service: heading off currency wars, keeping explicit protectionism under control and deftly managing the process of reforming governance at the International Monetary Fund.

Post-financial crisis, middle-income countries continue to rise in economic importance, and the recent shift in global leadership from the Group of 7 (the United States, Canada, Britain, Italy, France, Germany and Japan) to the G-20 is commonly supposed to accommodate the growing claims of "emerging markets" on the world stage.

Read More...
More on G-20 Summit

Google TV Lets You Search TV & Web Listings (Credit: Logitech)

In theory, Google TV makes an enormous amount of sense.

Read More...

$1.6 billion of interest, excessive fees, and other exorbitant costs are being charged to poor people every single day, making it almost physically and fiscally impossible for individuals to exit the poverty cycle.
Read More...
More on Poverty

A federal investigation has uncovered hundreds of allegations of physical and mental abuse, and financial exploitation of the elderly all happening under what is supposed to be the watchful eye of the courts.