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…]

The policies of the crazy Swedes are, for some weird reason, based on benefiting the majority and not on making the richest 1% even richer. No wonder their country is such a hellhole with their good roads and public services.

In my post Lifestyles of the rich and oblivious I wrote about the complaints of people like Andrew Schiff who felt that he could not live as he wanted to in New York City on $350,000 per year. To no one’s surprise (except perhaps to people who move in the same circles) he received a huge negative backlash [Read more…]

A lot of people newly entering the work force or trying to find work in a new area after being laid off discover a catch-22, that employers often require them to have some experience but that they can’t get experience until they get employed. Unpaid internships are often touted as a way of breaking that cycle, a means of getting work experience without [Read more…]

Apparently smaller bonuses this year are causing all kinds of angst for the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said [Read more…]

It is clear that there are serious vertical inequities in the tax code, in the sense that some people who are in the highest income quintiles, and even some of those in the top 1%, pay federal taxes at a lower rate than those in lower quintiles. Bruce Bartlett shows a [Read more…]

It looks like Greece has been strong-armed into accepting the terms of the Eurozone bailout. It seems like this bailout is not a bailout of Greece but of all the banks that lent money to successive Greek governments with seemingly little caution. Much of the bailout money given to Greece will immediately go out again to repay the banks, and [Read more…]

Political cartoonist and essayist Ted Rall wonders why, in the face of ever-increasing anger about the growing inequality in the US and other developed countries, the ruling class does [Read more…]