People in Korea now have a new vocation available to them: snitching on other civilians for cash payouts from the government.
posted by reenum on Oct 17, 2011 - 83 comments

Patsy Campbell has been fighting her foreclosure in Florida courts for the past 25 years. She has not made a mortgage payment since 1985 while foiling the efforts of several banks to evict her from her home in Okeechobee, Florida.
posted by reenum on Dec 30, 2010 - 150 comments

The New York Times visualizes the proposed $3.83 trillion budget for 2011.
posted by Joe Beese on Feb 1, 2010 - 61 comments

Governments around the globe are opening up their data vaults allowing us to check out the numbers for ourselves. This is the Guardian’s gateway to that information. Search for government data here from the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand — and look out for new countries and places as they are added. Read more about this on the Datablog. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jan 25, 2010 - 13 comments

"The Lighter Side of Pain: What’s Up with Our Global Economy" with P.J. O'Rourke. The keynote talk at the annual Tom Wolfe Weekend Seminar at Washington & Lee University. Prefaced by some rambling remarks by Tom Wolfe '51 himself.
posted by inkyroom on Apr 6, 2009 - 62 comments

The Right to Walk Away Has panarchist thinking finally come of age in 2009? With world leaders of big governments failing to find any new solutions to old problems, should we have the right to walk away from those governments?
posted by stuffedspacedog on Feb 2, 2009 - 35 comments

TARP, SSFIP, EESA, CPP, TALF, MMIFF... Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the new acronyms coming out of the US Treasury Department lately? Here's a handy PDF reference guide to untangling the US government efforts to rescue banks, financial corporations, and other companies.
posted by Asparagirl on Dec 29, 2008 - 10 comments

"Real unemployment right now -- figured the way that the average person thinks of unemployment, meaning figured the way it was estimated back during the Great Depression -- is running about 12%. Real CPI right now is running at about 8%. And the real GDP probably is in contraction." Bill Fleckenstein, writing at MSN Money, provides a summary of an interview with economist John Williams on government number crunching. The full interview, with Kate Welling can be found here (PDF link) . More from John Williams at Shadow Stats.
posted by Zinger on Mar 8, 2006 - 64 comments

I'm curious, isn't this exactly opposite of what we're being told? I'm always hearing the wealthy are benefitting somehow from GWB's new tax plan. I'm certainly no-where near the top 5%, and now I don't want to be.
posted by the_0ne on Apr 9, 2002 - 54 comments

Well this is is odd
posted by delmoi on Apr 4, 2002 - 20 comments

The need for an economic stimulus bill appears to have taken on new urgency, now that the recovery is already underway. I'm glad both parties found enough irrelevent stuff they wanted to pass anyway that they could get a bill through.
posted by electro on Mar 8, 2002 - 1 comment

The House has passed the bankruptcy reform bill that Clinton vetoed at the end of the last session. I'm mildly optimistic that it won't pass the Senate, given that the Democratic vote in the House was split. But should we be worried at all? At first glance, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. But so many consumer groups are against it, and it seems to benefit credit card companies while hurting individuals, so I'm inclined to think we should leave things as-is. Especially since personal bankruptcies are down and credit card issuers' profits are up. Anyone know more about this?
posted by aaron on Mar 1, 2001 - 7 comments