Labor, Trade, & Finance Archives - Page 87 of 233

Third Prize: You’re Fired

by John Feffer | Jul 19, 2011

In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin walks into the office of underperforming salesmen and shakes them to their core. He’s the guy from the head office, and his motivational speech has a whiff of sulfur to it. The top prize for sales that month, he announces, will be a new Cadillac. The second prize: a set of steak knives. As for the third prize, he informs them with a certain twinkling malice, “You’re fired.” One of the salesmen in the audience, Ed Harris, leans back in his chair — he’s not buying it. Baldwin takes off his watch, puts it on Harris’s desk, and says that it costs more than the Hyundai that Harris drove to work. “I made $970,000 last year,” Baldwin practically spits at him. “That’s who I am. And you’re nothing.”

The Audacity of Free Trade Agreements

by Laura Carlsen | Jul 14, 2011

Congress could vote any day now to strike a new blow against already-battered U.S. workers and the unemployed. Committees in the House and Senate recently marked up the Colombia, Panama, and South Korea Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The Obama administration is urging passage of all three relics of the Bush administration before the summer recess. The full-court press on the FTAs represents a reversal for a president elected on a trade reform platform.

Italy: Barbarians — in Suits — at the Gates

by Conn Hallinan | Jul 13, 2011

While the headlines go to Greece, Portugal and Spain, Italy has the second highest rate of debt in Europe and one of the lowest growth rates.

Cutting Aid to Pakistan More Than Justified

by Adam Cohen | Jul 13, 2011

A long-standing lenience towards Pakistan under both the Bush and Obama administrations has clearly done nothing to address its blatantly duplicitous nature.

WikiLeaks: Haiti Disaster Capitalism’s Latest Electroshock Patient

by Michael Busch | Jul 11, 2011

Documents from the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince paint a disturbing picture of American coercion of a struggling Haiti between 2004 and the month following the 2010 earthquake.

Oil Transparency Would Start South Sudan Off on Right Foot

by Simone D'Abreu | Jul 3, 2011

The South Sudan government has been pressured to make its oil industry transparent. But will that ensure its oil assets will be used for the good of Sudan?

Rethinking Sweatshop Economics

by Jason Hickel | Jul 1, 2011

The news that a Romanian sweatshop manufactured one of Kate Middleton’s most famous dresses has inspired renewed popular interest in the ethics and economics of outsourcing jobs to utilize super-cheap labor. This is only the most recent of a string of cases that exemplify the shocking proliferation of sweatshops — even across Europe — over the past few decades. But the truly troubling part of the story is the logic that Kate’s defenders have invoked to justify this trend, drawing on arguments made by allegedly “progressive” U.S. economists.

Apple: Crown Jewel of Technology or Human-Rights Abuser and Tax Cheat?

by Peter Certo | Jun 30, 2011

The path an ore for Apple’s batteries takes to the marketplace is roughly analogous to that of “Blood Diamonds.”

Europe Taking Lead on Speculations Tax

by Sarah Anderson | Jun 30, 2011

Out of the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis, an idea that progressives have been kicking around for decades – a financial transactions tax (FTT) – took on new life. There were high hopes that the G-20, which had declared itself the “premier forum for international economic coordination,” would take up the proposal as a way to raise massive revenues to pay for the costs of the crisis and also discourage reckless short-term financial speculation.

The Healthy Wage War

by Mark Engler | Jun 30, 2011

Eighty-four percent of all income growth in America between 1989 and 2007 went to the richest ten percent of households. That dramatic increase in inequality corresponds closely with the decline of organized labor—from covering 24 percent of workers in the late 1970s to just 11.9 percent in 2010.