Obama and his economic team have proposed a new initiative to jump-start the economy and make borrowing easier for families and businesses. Many believe that the fundamental problem with the financial institutions is that their balance sheets are inundated with worthless and toxic assets. Is Obama and his economic advisors telling us the truth, when they try to sell us worthless and toxic assets?
A new poll released show that women still have a complex and contradictory relationship with their own image. More than twenty-five percent of those surveyed said they would make their best friend fat for life, if they could be thin. And Fifty percent said they would marry an ugly man if he were very rich.
Over the centuries, the United States has been most conspicuous for one trait: manic energy. Americans work longer hours than any other people. We switch jobs more frequently, move more often, earn more and consume more. We are now in an astonishingly noncommercial moment. Risk is out of favor. The financial world is abashed. Enterprise is suspended. The public culture is dominated by one downbeat story after another as members of the educated class explore and enjoy the humiliation of the capitalist vulgarians.
African American politics in America is proving the notion, that we can be successful at the highest levels of government. All around the country, we are breaking that glass ceiling and inspiring each other that every office is fair game. With Obama leading the way, legislators around the country are taking over positions of leadership.
I don't know about you, but watching my savings evaporate in the stock market and listening to more than a few friends talk about the very real possibility of losing their jobs has given me an epic case of the blues. So, while we're all waiting for that shiny new stimulus package to kick in, what better antidote for malaise than adorable animals pics and some feel-good fluffy prose?
When the community venues project was originally announced, the platitudes and high fives were everywhere. Talk was that there would be a 30% minority participation, with job training for everyone interested, and we’d all be happy forever after.
On Wednesday March 3, 2009, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, Africa’s largest country. This in itself is not amazing, given the zeal and selectivity with which the West has pursued and dragged Africans to court on various charges of genocide, recruiting child soldiers and rape, among others.
The restaurant chain Hooters had the market cornered when it came to affordable food and a scantily clad, attractive wait staff. While the downturn in the economy has forced many chain restaurants to close, Hooters brought in a billion dollars in sales in 2008, a 2 percent increase from 2007.
I have played around with this idea for hours now, on whether or not to write this piece. But the events of the last few hours, I believe, mandate that I raise my voice once again. We heard the same palaver in 2001 from the same forces inside our country, basically that a discussion of Zionism, in the context of such a Conference, would be anti-Semitic; therefore all the world's dispossessed and marginalized people must continue to suffer and sacrifice while muting their grievances so that no discussion of Israel would take place on the world stage in this context
February 25, 1870, marks one of the most dramatic moments in American history. The First Black American to ever serve in the U.S. Congress was sworn in on that date at 4:40 PM. U.S Senator Hiram Revels, this day 139 years ago, became the first of only 6 African Americans who ever served in the Senate in almost 150 years, while during the same century and one half, a few thousand White Americans have.
Worldwide, industrial production has ground to a halt. Goods are stacking up, but nobody's buying; the Washington Post reports that "the world is suddenly awash in almost everything: flat-panel televisions, bulldozers, Barbie dolls, strip malls, Burberry stores."
Across the nation, hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs -- a record 2.8 million in 2008 -- and some of the newly unemployed are gaining social lives.
People are traveling more, taking up hobbies, dating and having more sex.
It is only with a sense of optimism, preferably accompanied by a sense of energy and laughter, that we will be able to pick ourselves up from a broken Humpty Dumpty.
Yet another reason why bank nationalization is a good idea, Mr. Roubini continues, is that "we started with banks that were too big to fail, but what has happened, in the process, is that these banks have become even-bigger-to-fail. J.P. Morgan took over Bear Stearns and WaMu. BofA took over Countrywide and then Merrill. Wells Fargo took over Wachovia. It doesn't work! You can't take two zombie banks, put them together, and make a strong bank. It's like having two drunks trying to keep each other standing.
Today, as the market continues to sell off and we plumb 12-year lows, we wish we had a different explanation. But like the U.S., which built the mightiest, most prosperous economy the world has ever known, is about to turn its back on the free-enterprise system that made it all possible."
Many of our political leaders have stated that the passage of the second recovery plan is: “the beginning of the turnaround for the American economy.” This spending package coupled with the first stimulus plan will keep our country from avoiding an economic meltdown or catastrophe. This second stimulus plan costing $790 billion will supposedly save or create 3.5 million jobs.
Despite of our political success and the increased number of mega black churches, millions of African Americans still live below the level of poverty, our teenage ladies are still having babies out of wedlock, our rap music still degrade our women, our homes are broken, our high school drop-out rate is enormous, our rate of imprisonment is staggering, our black on black crime is embarrassing, and our gang activity is increasing.
If things continue on their current trajectory, Mr. President, we will soon be facing a great national catastrophe. And it's your job — a job no other president has had to do since World War II — to head off that catastrophe.
