I would give some cognizance to former Senator Judd Gregg’s statement that a weekend (or two?) without Social Security checks going out will be necessary before the House Republicans yield on raising that old debt ceiling, not because of his old job (Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee) but because of his new one… senior advisor to Goldman Sachs. I agree with Gregg’s assessment– better than 50-50 there will not be a “debt ceiling deal” by August 2nd; we are up to July 21 now, with no particular end of this “crisis” apparent. He believes that a few days of...

S&P, it seems, has concluded there is risk of U.S. sovereign default even if the debt ceiling is raised by Congressional action. Of course, on the debt ceiling issue, most people, according to polls, blame the Republicans. What does any of this mean? Damned if I know. Precious metals… probably. Canned goods, bottled water, secure farm land, useful social relationships, bicycle parts… for sure. Ammunition? Maybe we’ve come that far. Let’s hope not. Anyway. We appear to have a political process that has become a suicide watch… and, because we have a media that is itself dominated by a criminal...

As the debt ceiling chicken game gets closer to the wire (four weeks from… today?), the Obama Administration now proposes significant reforms (read “cuts”) to Medicare and Social Security. And even Eric Cantor seems to have “gone crazy” by considering closing tax loopholes. Desperate times/measures? Rather than jump on the President for selling out once again, on this one, let’s acknowledge that his all-compromisy “third way” may be the only way to deal with the “third rail”… as critical as I have been of the President (largely but not exclusively because he sold me out– and many of his supporters–...

I see little if anything to quibble with in Ezra Klein’s WaPo piece where he suggests that the President’s decision to “go public” in his criticism of Republican Congressional leaders for their refusal to include tax increases (any tax increases at all) as part of their price to agree to expand “the debt ceiling,” which now seems to have some kind of a consensus deadline of early August before “really bad things happen,” means, ineluctably, that “the negotiations have failed.” Ezra notes that the hang-up seems to be the President’s demand for around $400 billion in tax increases (against the...

The most interesting part of this “process piece” by the Grey Lady concerning the political passage in New York of legislation recognizing same-sex marriage is not the fact [as I briefly discussed with Lindsay, who, amusingly is a member of the same CSA as I] that the one politician who really deserves credit for taking genuine political risk to advance the issue is David Paterson… and he isn’t even mentioned in the Times piece. Oh yes… the interesting thing… the article does mention that one of the key hedge fund managers who wrote one of the key checks to make...

To paraphrase the late great Mahatma Gandhi, my view on free market capitalism in the United States is that I think it would be an excellent idea (instead of the rigged and crony “capitalims” we “enjoy” now.) Case in point: CNBC reports that the 500 largest U.S. corporations are sitting on a record $800 billion in cash and cash equivalents and they just won’t hire, even as they literally earn zero or negative real returns on their cash. Some groups of shareholders are pressing for increased dividends so that they at least can make use of the cash, if corporate...

This Slate piece by Dahlia Lithwick pretty much sums up my own feelings towards the Supreme Court’s (5-4… surprise, surprise) decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, in which it, quite literally, ruled that Wal-Mart was just too darned big to sue- just the sheer size of the entity and the vast numbers of individual store managers making independent store decisions all of which just magically ended up discriminating against women– was sufficient to justify continuing a practice that has resulted in over 2/3 of the behemoth’s employees being women, but less than 1/3 of managers. Discrimination, you say? Pish posh...

L’Affaire Weiner seemingly comes to an end, thereby requiring the American media to run around to find another excuse not to cover the impending Greek default, the fallout of which may now have led to massive fallout in Italy and Spain… ignore the tagline of this post [“the war between liberals and conservatives is a false divide and conquer dog and pony show”] at your extreme peril. Yes, as I walked through the streets of Brooklyn to retrieve my week’s produce share from my local CSA this morning (food security first, boys and girls… that reminds me… I need to...

We’ll “jump off” with this hit-piece on Governor Rick Perry (R-TX), the “R” seemingly for “religious nut” as Perry once again invites other governors to a revival meeting with a gay-bashing group. The Think Progress piece notes occasions where Perry riffs on the Old Testament (apparently the Pharaoh’s Dream story) and otherwise suggest that current economic misery is “God’s plan” and the rest of us shouldn’t be too dependent on the government (and he’s doing his part by trying to slash Texas’s) and of course, misery lets us be “closer to God” or “God’s plan” or thereabouts. Well then. I...