Goldilocks and the Big Bears

By the Economy Team

You know how it is when you just want to take one lousy week off? Just one week out of fifty-two, one week when the clients and the problems fade to a dim memory. Just a single week of solitary to recharge the old batteries...
Something to remember once you’ve managed to get a week like that to yourself; Do NOT drop by the office to pick up anything you’d forgotten. Because that’s when your week is over. Kaput. Finished.

The Tax Man and the Pot of Gold at the End of the Dubai Rainbow

By the Economy Team

From Wes Clark's 2004 Campaign Position Papers
Manufacturing Security Plan:

Stop rewarding companies that shift jobs overseas.

- Stop tax breaks for companies that move overseas for tax reasons.
Wes Clark would close outrageous loopholes in the tax code, like the ones
that allow companies to avoid taxes by shifting income to Bermuda.

- Deny government contracts to firms that move headquarters overseas for tax reasons or shift substantial numbers of U.S. jobs overseas. Wes Clark believes that companies should not be rewarded for moving their headquarters to overseas tax havens or shift substantial numbers of U.S. jobs abroad.

The Case of the Man in the Middle

By the Economy Team

You know how it is when you can’t get a song out of your head? Well it was like that when I went to meet my sister-in-law Iris at the airport. Iris is a freelance writer and blogger. My brother is away on tour with the band for one of their reunion gigs. Dodging in and out of traffic, the music on the radio is Stealers Wheel song Stuck in the Middle with You. The tune becomes like background music in my head while I go in the airport bar to meet Iris, “Clowns to the left of me! Jokers to the right! Here I am stuck in the middle with you…”

The Case of Doing Good

By the Economy Team

Yowza! That super secret assignment went way longer than I’d expected. Everybody’s been trying to weasel out of me where I’ve been-- but my smackers are sealed tight. I’m sworn to secrecy. All I can tell anyone, including my mother, is that I’ve been pretty much everywhere... “doing research”. Heh. For the really curious who just can’t let it alone, I tell them to read David Cay Johnston’s book, “Perfectly Legal”. Then I give them this list - and tell them to stick a map on the wall and start throwing darts.

Economy CSI Series on Debt

An American History: Part IX

“In God We Trust"

By the Economy Team

Hello once more

We are moving through time toward the present. We are coming to the end of the story. It’s a never ending story, but we have to stop somewhere and there’s no time like the present. So let’s play catch up as we follow the money in American life.

Economy CSI Series on Debt

An American History: Part VIII

“I’d Gladly Pay You Tuesday for a Hamburger Today!” - Wimpey

By the Economy Team

The first half of the twentieth century not only had fascinating rhythms, in terms of the US economy, they were fascinating times. Land speculation in Florida proved prosperous for many in the 1900s. The FED was supposed to be supervising the banks, but that didn’t always work out so well.

Automobiles were becoming a major part of the lives of the elite.

Economy CSI Series on Debt

An American History: Part VII

Off to see the Wizard - Silver and Greenbacks and Gold, Oh My!

By the Economy Team

How’s it going? Are you hanging in there?

The Civil War cost our country a lot in blood and treasure.

The Greenback remained the currency, even though some wanted to do away with it. In 1875, the Greenback Party would have none of that, campaigning for an increase in circulation of all that sweet green paper money and returned 14 members to congress in 1878, when it was decided to keep the number of dollars in circulation to the then current amount. In practice, the Gold Standard was in effect starting in 1873, when the silver dollar ceased to be the standard for our currency.

Thanks to the various gold rushes, our currency was once again backed by something and this time it was gold and only gold. If you were a silver miner you were not happy about this. If you were a Kansas farmer who hadn’t heard about the change in time to cash in the hoard of silver coins under the floor boards in the cabin, you were equally chagrined.

Economy CSI Series on Debt

An American History: Part VI

Greenbacks, C Notes and Civil War Between the States

By the Economy Team

We have come to the most curious and sad times in the history of our young nation.

“America was to be baffled and haunted by its state banknote system right up to the Civil War,” as stated by Goodwin in his book about money in North America, Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America .

With the separation of the south from the northern states caused the very decentralized system of money and credit created throughout the country to be concentrated once again under central control in the both the north and the south to pay for all aspects of the war. The income tax was created during the civil war, money borrowed and paper money printed by the government for the first time. In 1862, the Treasury was given the right to print notes.

Economy CSI Series on Debt

An American History: Part V

Andrew Jackson's Worst Nightmare

By the Economy Team

Economy CSI Series on Debt

An American History: Part IV

The Creation of The Bank of The United States

By the Economy Team

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs"

~ Thomas Jefferson | Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

Allow us, if it pleases you, a reminder of the various players in the next Act of our Drama of Debt: