Robert Reich

Marketplace 4/28/04 It’s an economy where educational credentials and connections count for moreand more. A degree from one of the Ivies or from a Stanford, Michigan, orBerkeley isn’t exactly a bus ticket to fat city – but it sure helps. At thevery least, you need a bachelors degree just to get on the highway. But […]

Marketplace 4/21/04 Wal-Mart is America’s largest corporation, with a whopping $256 billion insales last year. It’s also the largest employer in the United States, withover a million American workers. And that’s not including millions moreAmericans who work for companies that exclusively supply Wal-Mart. Is Wal-Mart too big? Not according to America’s antitrust laws, whichconsider only […]

Marketplace, April 14, 2004 Over the past four decades, the share of federal revenues coming fromcorporations has dropped by two-thirds, from 21 percent of governmentrevenues in 1962 to only 7 percent last year. Who’s made up the difference?You and me, of course. America gasped when it learned that Enron didn’t pay a dime of taxes […]

Marketplace, April 7, 2004 Attention is focused this week on Condoleezza Rice’s testimony about what sheknew and when she knew it. But more important information about what Americacould have done — and could do to prevent future terrorist attacks — mayemerge from elsewhere tomorrow. That’s when the International Monetary Fundbegins a conference examining the economies […]

Marketplace March 17, 2004 The Fed won’t raise interest rates, despite the possibility of asset bubblespopping all over the place. Alan Greenspan and the Fed came in for a lot of criticism after thestock-market imploded in 2000. For years he had warned investors againstirrational exuberance. But he didn’t raise interest rates enough to prickthat bubble […]

Marketplace, March 3, 2004 The “rotten apple” theory of corporate misbehavior is getting aboost.Members of the Rigas family, who ran Adelphia, have just gone to trial.Ex-World Com CEO Bernard Ebbers has been indicted. Jeffrey Skilling,erstwhile chief executive of Enron, was formally arrested and charged withfraud and insider trading. The “rotten apples” theory assumes that what […]

Marketplace, February 25, 2004 You may think your taxes are going down, or at least that’s what the WhiteHouse keeps saying. Well, think again. With budgets stretched so thin at alllevels of government – and the federal government failing to back up statesand cities – sales taxes have risen to record highs. Listen to this. […]

Greg, I know it can’t feel great when the Republican Speaker of the House chews you out for saying that outsourcing of U.S. service jobs overseas is “just a new way to do international trade.” You were only saying what every economist believes — that if something can be produced more cheaply abroad, it makes […]

Marketplace, February 4, 2004 It’s hard for most people to get their brains around a $521 billion deficit.Most of us have a hard enough time envisioning a million dollars, let alonea billion — which is, of course, a thousand million. Try to think about 521housand million dollars — which is next year’s budget deficit — […]