The speculative binge in hedge funds, private equity, derivatives, and subprime mortgages is pushing the larger economy into a general downward spiral.
Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America. Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter.
Posted inColumns
Tax and Spend
Restored growth, distributed more equitably, is the cure for past debt. That requires public investments.
Posted inFeatures
A Conversation with Zbigniew Brzezinski
After the failure of adventures based on fantasies, it’s time for a big dose of reality in America’s Mideast policy. America’s most notable foreign policy realist speaks with the Prospect.
Posted inArticle
Hedging Disaster
This past week, even jaded observers of Wall Street were startled to learn that last year’s top hedge fund manager, James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, made $1.7 billion in 2006. Alpha Magazine reported that the top 25 hedge fund earners garnered an average of $570 million in 2006, up from $362 million in 2005. The […]
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Privatizing and Profiteering
The deepening college loan scandal is a classic case of what can happen when government uses private companies as middlemen to carry out public goals. Lately, investigations by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, and others have revealed a number of problems: Bribes paid by loan companies to colleges and universities. […]
Posted inSpecial Report
Compassion and Coalition
Imagine an infant born into poverty. this child is statistically at greater than normal risk for every bad social outcome in later life associated with early chronic trauma. As the infant grows into a toddler, the child is more likely to have poor cognitive and emotional skills; later on, to do poorly in school; to […]
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Third Time’s the Charm?
Three times in my political adulthood, we have seen the exhaustion of a conservative ideology and presidency. Under Presidents Nixon and Bush II, the ingredients were corruption, corporate excess, and overreach of presidential power. During the 12 years of Reagan and Bush I, the hallmark was the failure of conservative economics. […]
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House of Pain
Representative Barney Frank of Newton, Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was in town this week to hold a hearing on the squeeze on household incomes and housing costs. In city after city, costs of both rentals and owner-occupied homes have been outstripping paychecks. Representative Barney Frank of Newton, […]
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State of the Unions
The New York Times recently reported that the earnings gap is now the widest since 1928, with the richest 1 percent of Americans having captured most of the economy’s 2005 growth, and the bottom 90 percent getting nothing. Between 1979 and 2005, according to MIT professor Thomas Kochan, the productivity of American […]
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The Subprime Scandal
The Bush administration and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce picked an awkward moment for their latest assault on financial and consumer-protection regulation. At the very moment that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was meeting with Wall Street bigwigs in a high-profile confab this week to call for weakening the post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley Act and […]
