All those governments in Europe who thought that it was a great idea to combat the recession by imposing drastic austerity measures and balancing their budgets by squeezing the poor, labor, and middle classes are taking well-deserved drubbings. Yesterday, the governments of France and Greece joined that of the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Denmark in getting kicked out of office. [Read more…]

One of the mysteries of governmental responses to the current financial crises in the US and Europe has been the call for more austerity and belt tightening, even at the risk of social turmoil. One would think that the natural tendency for policy makers fighting a depressed economy is for increased government spending to stimulate employment and growth. And yet we hear endless blathering about the importance of balancing budgets and closing deficits, by which is meant cutting social programs that benefit the majority rather than cutting spending on defense or raising taxes on the wealthy. [Read more…]

The deadline for filing taxes is April 17 and so I mailed in my tax returns over the weekend. Yes, I still send in paper returns via snail mail. It is not that I am a Luddite, not entirely anyway. In fact, I wrote my own spreadsheet for taxes many years ago that I update each year to accommodate any changes. All I have to do is input the data and it calculates my federal, state, and local taxes in exactly the same format as the tax forms. I then download the fillable pdf forms from the various government websites and copy the figures from my spreadsheet onto the forms. [Read more…]

Robert Caro is the famed biographer of legendary New York planner Robert Moses and is currently working his way through a multi-volume epic biography of Lyndon Johnson. What connects the two is that both Moses and Johnson were skillful accumulators and wielders of power and this topic fascinates Caro. [Read more…]

The former socialist president of Brazil Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva grew up poor and knew what it was like to be hungry as a child. When he took office in 2003, he said that food was a basic human right and launched the Zero Hunger program. Part of it involves government-run restaurants that serve everyone healthy meals at low prices. This Marketplace report describes one such restaurant: [Read more…]

[Update: David Cay Johnston emailed me to clarify some points in my post. He said:

Also, it is not necessarily a subsidy to provide rural service at the same price as other service. Calling it a subsidy depends, partly, on making a value judgement about the network. If you cannot reach a relative or business in a rural place the utility of the network is reduced, making it less valuable to you and everyone else. So urban callers get a benefit, too, from rural service.

And as my column carefully points out, people in URBAN areas could end up without phones or with only high-cost phones under the rules the phone companies are writing and getting enacted, in four states so far, into law.]

I must admit that this is not a question that had occurred to a city dweller like me who takes such access for granted. But David Cay Johnston says that there is a nearly century-old obligation for phone companies that provided landline service to also be providers of last resort to all at the same price, so that people in remote areas are not disadvantaged. [Read more…]

There is a job opening to head the World Bank and there have been some interesting maneuverings to fill it.

Ever since its creation in 1944, the job has gone to an American while the corresponding position at the sister institution the International Monetary Fund has gone to a European. While the decision is ostensibly made by consensus, the actual voting strength depends on the contributions of each country and the US has about 16% and the EU countries have about 29%. As long as they stick together, it will be hard for other nations to get one of their own into the position. [Read more…]

Greg Smith, a senior executive at investment bank Goldman Sachs, has resigned and fired off a salvo at what he describes as the “toxic and destructive” environment of that institution, where they routinely disparage their clients as ‘muppets’ while ripping them off. [Read more…]