The banking crisis was not cataclysmic; the financing bubbles that caused it had been developing for many years. So where were the banks’ auditors? Why were bank financial statements showing high levels of profitability right up to the point of the financial collapse? What went wrong with the audit of these banks? Could it have had something to do with excessive standardization? Less than a decade after Arthur Andersen, has the CA profession learnt anything?

By Paul Street - December 2009

The profit system's smarter defenders grasp the need to demonstrate openness to the worries and anger of the populace...To keep the business order intact...Obama needed to occasionally rebuke (and perhaps even mildly half-"regulate") the nation's financial overlords.

By ELLEN BROWN - March 2, 2010

Rather than saving the future for our grandchildren...[“fiscal responsibility”] appears to be a code word for delivering public monies into private hands and raising taxes on the already-squeezed middle class. In the parlance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these are called “austerity measures,” and they are the sorts of things that people are taking to the streets in Greece, Iceland and Latvia to protest. Americans are not taking to the streets only because nobody has told us that is what is being planned.

Capitalism is destroying us.

While this will not be a full list by any means, it seems relevant to note that Canadian banks, especially the Bank of Montreal, have a large presence in Haiti. The Montreal-based Gildan Activewear, the largest blank t-shirt manufacturer in the world, has production based out of Haitian sweatshops...Finally, there is the issue of how Canada ‘aids’ Haiti. For starters, Canada has mostly provided tied aid – a full 66% of Canadian aid must be spent in Canada...[I]t seems that it is in Canada’s [economic] interest to keep Haiti poor.

This agreement will 'temporarily' bind Canadian municipal and provincial governments to guarantee U.S.A companies access to most Canadian municipal and provincial infrastructure spending projects until Sept. 2011. It will also permanently bind the Canadian Provincial Governments to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement...The current canadian conservative government has an agenda to reduce the role of Government in Canada, and supports private economic growth at the expense of the Canadian economy and the Canadian public.

By Rick Wolff - February 12, 2010

...[T]he Greek government and its business leaders are now forced to make a big decision...Will they force the mass of Greek workers and their families to pay higher taxes, earn lower incomes, and lose government services to "service Greece's creditors"? Or will they be blocked from doing so by the Greek peoples' resistance? That's what is at stake in the mass strikes now rocking Greece.

By MICHAEL HUDSON and JEFF SOMMERS - February 15, 2010

While most of the world’s press focuses on Greece...as the most troubled euro-area, the much more severe, more devastating and downright deadly crisis in the post-Soviet economies...somehow has escaped widespread notice...Latvia has experienced one of the world’s worst economic crises...Yet nobody in the West is asking why Latvia has suffered this fate, so typical of the Baltics and other post-Soviet economies but only slightly more extreme.

By Am Johal - January 30, 2010

Not since Rowdy Roddy Piper attacked Jimmy 'Superfly' Snuka on Piper's Pit has there been such a grave injustice in modern sports - the 2010 Olympics have been that bad to the people of Vancouver.

By Ish Theilheimer - January 14, 2010

Leading economists predict massive cuts to political targets with Canada's next federal budget...The Conservatives will utilize any pressure on them to cut Canada's $50 billion deficit by axing programs they don't like or that threaten their ideology...The Conservatives' constituency "will want to see blood on the streets," and the government will willingly oblige in keeping with its unspoken but ongoing efforts to "defund the left".

By Stefan Steinberg - 19 January 2010

When it comes to weaker economies with high levels of indebtedness, European bankers and political leaders are making it clear that they are opposed to any bailout. Instead, these countries are expected to impose the type of “pain” which will stretch levels of “social tolerance” to the breaking point.

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - January 27, 2010

...Democrats are as dependent as Republicans on corporate interest groups for campaign funding...The Democrats have to support war and the police state if they want funding from the military/security complex. They have to make the health care bill into a subsidy for private insurance if they want funding from the insurance companies. They have to abandon the American people for the rich banksters if they want funding from the financial lobby.

By Paul Street - January 25, 2010

"What makes Americans so stupid and reactionary? The Republicans advanced the free market ideology that caused the economic meltdown...and cling to a religious zealotry that works against...the interests of ordinary Americans. Why would they be having a comeback?"...[Such] things are being asked and said in elite liberal circles...in the U.S. The arrogant "tsk tsk"-ing about "stupid" and "reactionary" ordinary Americans is quite audible from privileged academic Democrats...Yes, worried liberals...the Republican comeback is real.

Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at is a proud Baba (father), son, veteran justice, community, labor, international and environmental rights organizer, author, journalist and musician. He has helped lead successful campaigns on a variety of important issues while residing and working in Chicago, New York, Kansas City and the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area. He is the past elected National Co-Chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) and was editor/publisher of REPARATIONS NOW! for nearly a decade.

There are many different ways that the corporate media continues to misrepresent the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Many critics of this biased media coverage have directly challenged the demonization of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but very few critics, if any, have exposed the media’s virtual erasure of the vibrant and growing participatory democracy in Venezuela (also featuring a video interview with co-author Carlos Martinez).