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04/23/2012

Huge Corporations Win Global Economic Spoils as 99 Percent Get Squeezed

Behemoths like Exxon and Apple plus ‘smaller’ companies like Qualcomm are the real 1 percent, raking in trillions and widening the gap with individuals and even nations. They must be held accountable.
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04/13/2012

Google’s Results Reflect Giants’ Surge, as Everyone Else Struggles

Late yesterday afternoon, Google announced its financial results for the first three months of 2012. Its results were typically extraordinary, and demonstrate—if more demonstration is needed—a truism of our time: this is a golden age for capital. It is a golden age for corporations with a global reach. It is a marvelous time to have access to capital, and to deploy capital. And it is a challenging time to be a wage earner. In short, it is great to be capital; it is not a good time to be labor.
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04/11/2012

Obama Call for Buffett Rule Is Potent Politics but an Economic Pitfall

Tuesday was a signal day for the 2012 presidential election: Mitt Romney conclusively became the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party after Rick Santorum suspended his campaign, and President Obama launched a full-throated attack on wealth and privilege, setting the stage for a campaign that will use the gap between rich and poor as a centerpiece.
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04/06/2012

March Jobs Data Proves the Crisis Is Over but Problems Remain

Today’s latest installment of the official jobs data should be final proof—if more is needed—that the U.S. economy is no longer mired an acute employment crisis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. labor force grew by 120,000 in March, continuing a trend now more than a year old of steady improvement, but less emphatically than the past three months when surveys showed gain well in excess of 200,000 per month.
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04/25/2012

Latest Record Results Show Apple a Bigger Global Power Than Most Nations

The tech behemoth is not just a cool computer/phone/tablet company, but a multibillion-dollar ecosystem and society with more influence and clout than most countries.
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04/18/2012

Obama-Republican Fight Over Gas Prices Is Pure Political Theater

Republicans are dismissing the president’s new proposal to reduce prices at the pump as a stunt—but both parties are guilty of drumming up rising prices as a political issue when they are barely changed from a year ago, says Zachary Karabell.
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04/13/2012

Obama, Romney Tax Returns Unleash Worst Political Instincts

So it would seem that President Obama and his family are experiencing downward mobility. The Obamas released their 2011 tax return today, and showed that they earned $789,674. That is a healthy income and places the president well in the top 1 percent of all earners in the United States. He and Michelle paid $162,000 in federal income tax, at a rate of just over 20 percent. That is less than what the president recently proposed as the minimum rate for the very affluent. In addition, the Obamas donated more than 20 percent of their income to various charities.
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04/11/2012

JPMorgan’s $2 Billion Loss Fueled by Efforts to Avoid Risk

Ironically, the bank suffered huge losses in an internal fund set up to hedge its own capital against potential risks. That result will strengthen those who want more stringent restriction on banks’ internal trading.
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