Weekend Art: Art of the Economic Collapse: Prophet of Doom vs. Triumph Over the Banking Blues — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Oath Breakers and the Age of Treason.

The Obama and Osama Deception.

BP is Burning Endangered Sea Turtles Alive; & more BP (Bad Press reports) — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Now that insurance reform has passed, let’s take a visual look at where we are in 2010 with health care in America.

On the chart, below, only one nation is remotely similar to the United States in terms of a health care delivery system — and that is Mexico. However, in 2012, Mexico’s Universal Health Care system will be complete. At that point, the United States’ largely for-profit health care system will be unique in the world. And that’s when the big action begins.

The aftermath of healthcare “reform”.

Important changes in societal economic philosophy and policies occurred in the United States during the 1980s, after a transition period covering the Carter Administration, and accelerating after the accession of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency. It’s now nearly three decades later, and we can ask how well the transition from Keynesianism to Neo-liberalism has worked. It’s common knowledge that this period has seen wage stagnation for working Americans, and also growing inequality. In this post I want to present a simple table showing certain changes in key indicators across the decades and discuss its significance for evaluating the performance of neo-liberalism compared to the earlier Keynesian orientation and policies. Here’s the Table.

Galbraith on Yahoo Finance Video

There were some pretty intense stories this week for The Weekly Audit, including an expose on predatory mortgage brokers reinventing themselves as foreclosure prevention experts and some great commentary on AIG bailout shenanigans.

Part 1 of a series that breaks down the basic concepts necessary to understand the economic collapse.