Why U.S. Economy is In So Much Trouble ---- Part N

It all changed in the mid-1990s. One simple graphic tells the story, via Klein

Everything else derives from this: Social Security shortfall, Medicare shortfall, budget deficit, unemployment. 

Dan Rather: Obama Putting Outsources in Charge of Creating U.S. Jobs

Chuck Swoboda, CEO of Cree Inc. recently told Chinese officials during the opening of a new LED plant in China that, "Cree management never runs this company as a US company. We consider Cree to be a global company with local wisdoms.”

Swoboda then returned to the U.S. for a photo-op with President Obama who bragged that the $39 million tax credit in stimulus funds given to Cree had created U.S. jobs, even though more than half of Cree's 5,000-person workforce is in China, and Cree is using the H-1B visa program to displace American workers. 

WikiLeaks Reveals Washington Con on Oil Prices | BusinessWeek

While politicians tell us demand is driving up gasoline prices, behind the scene we learn that there is an excess supply. Promises to reign in Wall Street price manipulation have been filled with all other legal restraints on the Too Big To Fail, the recycling bin. 

Now, you can see why Obama and the Tea Party alike call WikiLeaks traitorous. 

U.S. Has Worst Income Inequality of Industrialized Nations: OECD

Income inequality typically marks third-world countries such as Chile, Turkey and Mexico. 

Yet the U.S. ranks fourth in the world in income inequality, just behind Turkey, according to an update of the Gini index by the OECD. 

Explosion at Apple iPad Factory Kills 2 | BBC News

Chinese, Apple Inc. subcontractor Foxconn, already scrutinized for at least 13 worker suicides, using under-age girls on production lines, and falsified work records, suffers fatal explosion.

Europe Investigates Banks Over Derivatives | Dealbook

Finally!

Let's not hold our breath that this will lead to the the meaningful financial reform we need (which was sabotaged in the U.S. Senate), and it's certainly not the criminal investigations that many, top economists have called for, but ... just maybe ... we'll see some reigning in of the Too Big to Exist Fail Wall Street Banks.

What US Companies Have the Most Untaxed Foreign Income? | The Big Picture

Depressing news to celebrate tax day, from The Big Picture by Barry Ritholtz. 

Fox News Blasts U.S. 'Lies' About Middle East, Praises WikiLeaks

Surely, the apocalypse is nigh! Conservative Fox News is defending WikiLeaks for outing U.S. government lies about our involvement in the Middle East. 

G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether - NYTimes.com

The irony that President Obama named Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, -- one of the leaders in shipping American manufacturing jobs to Asia -- to head the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is emphasized by a lengthy, front-page essay in today's New York Times on how G.E. can make $26 Billion in net profit while paying zero in U.S. corporate income tax.

On factor ignored in the NYTs, is that during this same period when G.E. was raking in billions in net profit, it also received TARP subsidies, while mysteriously avoiding TARP-pay restrictions on executives including Immelt. 

Safety on the Cheap vs. Regulation | Reich

If General Electric hadn't cut corners on the failing Japanese nuclear power plants, the radiation leakage would almost certainly be a small fraction of what it actually is. 

The Tea Party-GOP argument that we need less government regulation, in the face of the Enron-energy rip-off which de-frauded California rate payers of $20 Billion, the Exxon Valdez and BP oil spills, the Halliburton Iraq rip-offs causing soldiers' deaths, and the Wall Street melt-down is beyond irrational.