When banks have been in trouble, they come to you and me, the taxpayers, to be bailed out. Aerospace companies depend on contracts paid for by you and me, the taxpayers, for their bread and butter. Oil prices are kept low by government subsidies and when an oil company messes up and a spill happens, a good deal of the money for clean up comes from you and me. Yet these are the companies that pay the least taxes.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, points out for us the top ten tax dodging companies, and let me tell you I for one won't give ANY of them a penny if I can avoid it.

From Bernie Sanders:

Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders:

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.  read more »

From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson ("No End In Sight"), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

If there is just one finance blog I would consider required reading to understand the depth of corruption in Wall Street, it is naked capitalism. It was created by Yves Smith, the author of ECONNED: How Unenlightened Self-Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.

In her book she describes how going back to the 1970s, there was a push by free-marketeers to use Economics, not Finance, to not just create policy but to develop the trading tools that has created the hydra of the 1980s S&L and the current banking collapse, the sub-prime mortage orgy and the derivatives unicorn and rainbows markets.

Smith is ruthless when it comes to denouncing Economics as a discipline that is not qualified to provide policy advice and she has no problems calling out free-marketeers as looters. To say I deeply admire the breath of her financial knowledge and her fearless activism is to put it mildly.

It's why, when she says a documentary about the crisis is good, I take notice. From naked capitalism - Inside Job: A Movie Wall Street is Sure to Hate  read more »

I think trying to tie the recession with "Octomom" was a bit of a stretch. Still, am comforted by the fact that a "Lady Who Lunches" like Peggy Noonan is feeling the recession in the Upper East Side like this lady who barely lunches here in the East Village :

If you want to feel the bruise of what's happened, pick a neighborhood full of shops and go up and down the street. Here's Second Avenue in the 80s. A jewelry and consignment store on 84th has a new sign on the window: "We Buy Gold." Paul is at the counter, spraying the tarnish off a silver chain. How's business? "No buyin', no sellin', no nothin'. It's a joke. People scared. They're in shock." Nearby, an empty storefront, a bar that had been in business only 10 months. The sign on the window—you see it all over Manhattan now—says, "Retail Space Available." Next door, in a small beauty salon, the owner says "We're trying to survive." In September business plummeted. It's down "at least 30%," she says. July and August had been surprisingly good; her clients didn't go away on vacation. In the fall they were fired. "They lost the job, so they don't need to cut and color so much."

In a liquor store just off 82nd, the owner, from India, says volume is still high but profits are down. "In business, if you have a product under $15, is good. People used to spend $70, $80 on a bottle of wine, all the bankers, the young kids. Nothing moving more than $15."

On 81st, the kosher restaurant has closed. On 79th, the Talbots is gone. "Left a few months ago," says the doorman next door.  read more »

Thanks to the efforts of mass transportation advocates led on the ground by Transportation Alternatives, Streetsblog, and, nationally by Transportation For America and in Congress by NYC's own Congress Member Jerrold Nadler , the House of Representatives has voted to increase the mass transit portion of the stimulus package by $3 billion (check here for a blow-by-blow of the debate & vote)

Update. So much for Bipartisanship The stimulus package passed the House Tuesday night 244-188. Not one Republican voted for the stimulus, 11 Democrats voted against. The Times added a great map which identifies the 11 Democratic nay-sayers and GOP allies by district. Moveon seeks ad cash to soften GOP Senators' stimulus opposition.  read more »

I don’t know if you’ve been following it, but the first signs that the in-coming Obama administration will be center-right in character have – on a policy level – emerged in the new administration’s plans for stimulus or recovery spending. Many people like me quietly (or loudly) worried that the cabinet & White House appointments were Clintonian in character. The appointments of Senator Clinton, Rep. Emmanuel and the rest worried me, but I’ve thought that – if the team were led in a progressive direction, having centrist Democrats on board could be handy.

However, Obama-inspired press leaks about the stimulus package have made clear than on a policy basis, the far right of the Republican party may be accommodated with useless tax cuts while the needs of the nation may be ignored. The New York Times and Washington Post carried the news a couple of days ago and its very bad.

Mr. Obama plans a $750 Billion stimulus, $300 Billion of that will be spent on tax cuts . The reason this is a ghastly idea, from the point of view of softening the nation’s deepening depression is that the $300 Billion is – in essence – money thrown away. The stimulus value of the proposed tax cuts is very, very small, as compared to other ways of spending the money.  read more »