The New Republic

If there is one trend in American life that most irks economic conservatives, it is probably rising inequality. It’s not the inequality itself that bothers them, as most will happily admit. It is the perception of inequality and, worse, the constant discussion of inequality that is so irritating. It offends their view of capitalism, helps justify all sorts of nefarious government interventions, and makes the conservative economic agenda (most of which tends to increase inequality) appear unfair. They would very much like for it not to be true. READ MORE >>

Few have ever accused Morgan Stanley, the white-shoe investment bank formed in 1935 by partners of the imperial J.P. Morgan & Co., of being solicitous toward the investing masses. And that hauteur was on full display last week. On April 29, appearing at the UBS Warburg Global Financial Services Conference, at Manhattan's gilded Pierre Hotel, Morgan Stanley CEO Philip Purcell was asked about the $1.4 billion "global settlement" that Morgan Stanley and nine other firms had just inked with state and federal regulators. READ MORE >>

In its dollar magnitude, it's almost certainly the biggest case of financial mismanagement in U.S. history. While a final tally is years away, in part because of suspiciously lost or missing documents, there's good reason to think that the dollar figures will dwarf WorldCom's $9 billion. It's a scandal that crosses partisan lines and reaches into high levels of both the Clinton and the Bush administrations. And it's got nothing to do with Wall Street. READ MORE >>

It's not hard to figure out why the Bush administration and the Republican congressional leadership are wooing the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. They want the union to lobby for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling. And they really want support and endorsements in states like Michigan and Ohio, where the union's members may hold the balance of power in key House and Senate races—and even in the 2004 presidential election. READ MORE >>

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Imagine that our European NATO partners announced that they would soon fuse their national armies into a single force under the command of a European general staff. Imagine further that they agreed to set up staff headquarters in Germany and chose the new force’s commanding officer. READ MORE >>

The recent Teamsters strike, The Los Angeles Times declared, "has served as a reminder of how much the union's influence has waned." The outcome, The New York Times wrote, showed how the union's "power has shrunk." There is some truth in these statements, but they reveal more about the national press's attitude toward labor than about the Teamsters union. During the twenty-four-day strike, the longest in Teamster history and the first since 1979, the union achieved almost 100 percent support from its rank and file, in spite of violent dissension in its upper ranks. In the READ MORE >>

Heard the latest one about William Aramony, the ousted head of the United Way of America?... He took at the office. READ MORE >>

Europe with a single currency sounds dandy. No more vacation hours spent paying unpredictable commission charges in bureaucratic European banks, no more coming home with pockets full of Monopoly-money notes. What could be simpler and saner than a single currency, legal tender from London to Lisbon? READ MORE >>