How to Wreck the Economy

Everything you ever wanted to know about the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression but were afraid to ask. Read more »

Economy Wreckage Slideshow

From the IndyBlog

National

• Wail Street
  By John Tarleton, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  "Hand over the money. Or else.” That was the message, in so many words, that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson delivered to Americans after the financial markets went into a free-fall in mid-September. Paulson’s demand for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street had all the subtlety of a convenience store stick-up, and the two major presidential candidates quickly acquiesced. (1 comment)
• Back to the Future: U.S.A.–Company Town (WEB EXCLUSIVE)
  By Donald Paneth, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  As Congress prepares to hand over $700 billion to Wall Street, Joseph Keptler’s famous 1889 cartoon,“The Bosses of the Senate,” offers a glimpse into an earlier Gilded Age when powerful industrialists used political influence and ruthless business practices to amass vast fortunes in an unregulated economy that saw frequent financial panics. (0 comments)
• How to Wreck the Economy
  By Arun Gupta, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Everything you ever wanted to know about the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression but were afraid to ask. (8 comments)
• The Economy is Dying
  By Max Fraad Wolff, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Your national economy is dying. Credit is the blood that pumps through the veins of our economy. The banking system is the heart that pumps that blood. America is afflicted with economic heart disease resulting from decades of gorging on high credit, low wages, low regulation and debt-driven consumption. We are having a national heart attack, and the heart must be shocked back to life. (1 comment)
• The Road to Recovery
  By Arun Gupta, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  As The Indypendent goes to press, it appears Congress will pass a bailout for Wall Street. But even those who support it, many tepidly, believe it’s just a bridge fund to the next presidency. (2 comments)
• It’s Housing Stupid!
  By Max Fraad Wolff, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  The housing crisis has been the elephant in the room that neither major presidential candidate will acknowledge. But now our debt sickness has moved beyond housing default into a credit crisis and financial meltdown. (0 comments)
• Hispanic Panic: GOP Stokes Fears of ‘Illegal’ Voters
  By Renee Feltz, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  PHOENIX—While both presidential candidates avoid discussing immigration reform, Republican pundits are stirring up concern about non-citizens throwing the election. (3 comments)
• THANK YOU, SARAH PALIN
  By Alex Kane, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  A month after Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin trashed community organizers as a way to attack Barack Obama, activists and individuals around the country have responded by raising more than $7,500 for the "Community Organizers Fight Back Fund." The Chicago-based Midwest Academy is managing the fund and will use the money to train future organizers. During her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention Sept. 3, Palin remarked that being the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was "sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." (0 comments)
• The Illusion of Post-Racial America
  By Aman Gill, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  It’s increasingly popular to argue that the fuel for unrest has disappeared because the problem of racism has receded into America’s past. This idea has long held sway on the right, but, paradoxically, it’s taken Barack Obama’s candidacy to elevate this persistent right-wing myth into conventional wisdom. (2 comments)

Local

• CUNY Rising: College Activists Mobilize Campus-Wide 3-Day Social Forum
  By Chris Cascarano and John Tarleton, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Battered by budget cuts and burdensome tuition costs while facing an indifferent administration, students at the City University of New York (CUNY) will hold a three-day gathering to chart a course for reviving campus activism. (0 comments)
• A Green Outpost Grows in Brooklyn
  By Richard Solash, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  The Back to School Bash marked the first time that Habana Works had teamed up with the Brooklyn Public Library. “It’s important for everyone to learn about environmentalism, but especially children,” said Zidar, standing in the herb-filled Kid’s Corner. (0 comments)
• Wall Street Bailout May Hammer Tenants
  By Bennett Baumer, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Wall Street’s mortgage and credit crisis will have a huge price tag and tenant advocates fear one casualty could be a swath of New York’s affordable housing stock. Call it Wall Street stabilization over rent stabilization. (2 comments)
• Digital Gold up for Grabs
  By Joshua Breitbart, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  In late October, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC ) will decide on an issue that could completely change how you talk on the phone and connect to the Internet. They are weighing what to do with the “white spaces,” which are unused TV channels and spaces in between channels. (0 comments)
• Community Calendar: October 7-23, 2008
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Events in and around the New York City area from October 7th through October 23rd. (0 comments)
• Reader Comments
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Readers respond to the September 12th issue of The Indypendent (0 comments)
• Right-Wing Forces Send Shockwaves Through Bolivia
  By Alexander Van Schaik, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  The battle over Bolivia’s proposed new constitution worsened dramatically during September as opponents of leftist President Evo Morales ransacked government offices, sabotaged a key natural gas pipeline and massacred scores of peasants in a wave of violence intended to destabilize his government. (0 comments)
• South Bronx Rhythm Resistance
  By Timothy Murray, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  The legal struggle continues for South Bronx-based hip-hop activists Rodrigo and Gonzalo Venegas, who were aggressively arrested by New York Police Department officers June 18. The brothers, members of the popular group Rebel Diaz, said they were trying to help a street vendor on Southern Boulevard in Hunts Point who, they felt, was being harassed by police officers. (0 comments)
• City Pushes Arab-American School to the Brink
  By Alex Kane, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  Designed to be a beacon of multiculturalism, KGIA was surrounded by controversy from its inception (see below). Parents, students and educators say that inadequate classroom resources, an unresponsive school administration, lack of support from the New York City Department of Education (DOE) and teacher firings pushed the school to the brink of failure. (1 comment)

International

• Right-Wing Forces Send Shockwaves Through Bolivia
  By Alexander Van Schaik, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  The battle over Bolivia’s proposed new constitution worsened dramatically during September as opponents of leftist President Evo Morales ransacked government offices, sabotaged a key natural gas pipeline and massacred scores of peasants in a wave of violence intended to destabilize his government. (0 comments)
• Bordering on a Humanitarian Crisis
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid organization based in Tucson, Ariz., has supported three aid stations in border cities that receive deported migrants dropped off at the ports of entry by U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Border Patrol officials. (0 comments)
• Starting Fresh: Ecuador Launches New Era After Approving Leftist Constitution
  By Daniel Denvir, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  QUITO, Ecuador—Ecuador approved a new constitution on Sept. 28 with a 64 percent “yes” vote, scoring a major victory for President Rafael Correa. Constitutional provisions expand access to healthcare, social security and education while increasing state control over the economy. (0 comments)
• World Briefs
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  News briefs from around the world including: Military Ready to Quell Protests; A Surge in Skepticism; Afghanistan Starves; and U.S. Activist Murdered. (0 comments)
• Zardari and Pakistan: The Godfather as President
  By Tariq Ali, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  Asif Ali Zardari — singled out by fate to become Benazir Bhutto’s husband and who, subsequently, did everything he could to prevent himself from being returned to obscurity — was sworn in as president of Pakistan on Sept. 9. (0 comments)
• International Briefs
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  The Other September 11ths; FBI: Neo-Nazis Infiltrating the U.S. Military; Contaminated Water in Iraq Leads to Cholera Outbreak; Questions Raised Over "Suicide" of Female Soldiers in Iraq. (0 comments)
• Never Forgetting the Fist
  By Dave Zirin, in the Aug 8, 2008 issue
  The image lasted for only as long as it took to play the National Anthem — yet it still resonates four decades later. Black American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, winners of the gold and bronze in the 200-meter race, respectively, bow their heads and raise their black-gloved fists in protest during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. (0 comments)
• Beijing Summer Olympics
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Aug 8, 2008 issue
  More a mirror on the world than a refuge from it, the Olympics have always been about more than gold medals. All eyes will be on China as many aim to use the spotlight of the Games to bring change. (3 comments)
• John Carlos, 40 Years Later
  By Nicholas Powers, in the Aug 8, 2008 issue
  Now an in-school suspension supervisor who works with troubled youth at Palm Springs High School (Calif.), Carlos recently reflected on his Olympic journey with The Indypendent’s Nicholas Powers. (1 comment)

Culture

• The Scars of War: A Review of In Conflict
  By Liana Grey, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Tulley (Sam Paul) is one of 17 actual Iraq War veterans featured in In Conflict, an eye-opening show currently playing at the Culture Project. Like previous Culture Project productions, In Conflict was adapted from a piece of journalism, a book of the same title by reporter and New York University professor Yvonne Latty. (0 comments)
• Mean Streets, One World: A Review of Elite Squad (”Tropa de Elite”)
  By Kenneth Crab, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Everyone in Elite Squad, which won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, works the system of pervasive drug trafficking that extends its stranglehold out of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to implicate even the members of BOPE (Special Police Operation Battalion), the roughest, toughest and least corruptible ranks of the city’s police corps. (0 comments)
• The Great Divide: A Review of This Land is Their Land
  By Eleanor J. Bader, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Most of the 62 essays in This Land is Their Land are op-eds previously published in the New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation or on Ehrenreich’s blog. But even if you’ve read them before, they’re still a poke in the ribs to get us off our duffs and into the streets. (0 comments)
• The A-String: Purple Haze
  By Steven Wishnia, in the Oct 3, 2008 issue
  Nostalgia gets on my nerves. I’ve been to too many punk-rock shows where kids walk around in the T-shirts of bands that broke up before they were born, recycling costumes and musical formulas that were very well worn 20 years ago. You can never relive history, but you can buy all the artifacts and refine the poses. (0 comments)
• Artist’s Journey to 21st Century Motherhood
  By Talia Page, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  Finding health information in New York City can be maddening — documentation and assistance are scarce and scattered. Compound that with language barriers and workers’ time constraints, and it’s easy to be lost in an alienating system. One artist is aiming to share her experience of trying to have a baby with the assistance of the New York health system — and all the ensuing consequences. (1 comment)
• American Perspective: Creating a New New Journalism
  By Donald Paneth, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  Journalism in America today is a primitive craft. Corrupted by monopoly ownership, it is uninformative and belligerent. It manipulates the truth on behalf of political power, social control, money-making and military enterprises. (0 comments)
• Reagan Legacy Counters Biblical Parable
  By Eleanor J. Bader, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  Stone rightly credits Ronald Reagan and the New Rightists who got him elected with promulgating a “help is harmful” mantra that both parties have since put forward. To wit, most Republicans and more than a few Democrats now argue against government aid. (0 comments)
• Big Squeeze More Like a Bear Hug
  By Bennett Baumer, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  Today most newspapers have no labor reporters. New York Times correspondent Steven Greenhouse’s new book, The Big Squeeze, makes the case that the media should pay more attention to the plight of the working class and the labor movement. (0 comments)
• Covert Ops Hit Chavez
  By Sam Alcoff, in the Sep 12, 2008 issue
  A review of Bush vs Chavez: Washington’s War on Venezuela By Eva Golinger and Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left By Nikolas Kozloff (1 comment)