Stories by Les Leopold
Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It (Chelsea Green, 2009).
Posted on Jan 31, 2012, Source: AlterNet
Without a dramatic rethink, our "free-enterprise" system may never again provide enough decent jobs for those who need them.
Posted on Jan 17, 2012, Source: AlterNet
If Goldman Sachs is a vampire squid, as Matt Taibbi so aptly named it, then hedge funds are like piranhas or sharks, eager to strip the financial carcass to the bone.
Posted on Jan 4, 2012, Source: AlterNet
We're talking about how to save democracy from the plutocratic rule of elite financiers. It's time to think big.
Posted on Dec 21, 2011, Source: AlterNet
America is filthy rich, but the money is hidden away by the 1 percent while poverty rises all around.
Posted on Dec 20, 2011, Source: AlterNet
We are told to appease the market gods or face eternal financial damnation.
Posted on Dec 13, 2011, Source: AlterNet
History suggests that it will take significant hard-core organizing lasting years if not decades to create the infrastructure for a new movement.
Posted on Nov 30, 2011, Source: AlterNet
Top officials willfully concealed the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailouts from Congress and the public.
Posted on Nov 21, 2011, Source: AlterNet
Is democracy compatible with a financial system run by billionaires? Maybe not.
Posted on Nov 8, 2011, Source: AlterNet
How can the rest of the 99 percent demonstrate our outrage? Here are five things we can do, without parking a tent in the street.
Posted on Oct 23, 2011, Source: AlterNet
The corporate media may obsess about what Occupy Wall Street is all about, but these images should make it clear.
Posted on Oct 19, 2011, Source: AlterNet
Nomi Prins' new novel is about the 99 percent of us who get screwed by the big boys, and about the kind of courage it will take to reclaim our country.
Posted on Oct 6, 2011, Source: AlterNet
But now Americans are fighting back and there's no telling where Occupy Wall Street can lead.
Posted on Jul 9, 2011, Source: AlterNet
What notion of economics or ethics justifies the fact that it would take the average family more than 35,000 years to earn as much as the top hedge fund managers earn in one year?
Posted on Jun 23, 2011, Source: AlterNet
How does it feel to have the jobs gun pointed at your head? Because that’s what this is: a stickup.
Posted on Jun 13, 2011, Source: AlterNet
JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon hopes we’ll forget that we bailed out his bank along with all the other big players on Wall Street.
Posted on May 17, 2011, Source: AlterNet
We are the richest country in the world, and we have the means to create employment for the 20 million who are without work.
Posted on May 11, 2011, Source: AlterNet
The billionaire head of the Galleon hedge fund was found guilty of 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy, but he's not just an isolated "bad apple."
Posted on May 3, 2011, Source: AlterNet
Washington is talking about balancing the budget on the backs of the elderly, but the economic security they enjoyed at one time is already imperiled.
Posted on Apr 25, 2011, Source: AlterNet
If we don't bust up Big Finance, there soon will be another financial crisis that will destroy what's left of our middle-class way of life.
Posted on Apr 15, 2011, Source: AlterNet
It’s high time that the $2.2 trillion sloshing around in hedge funds supported real job creation and debt repayment instead of enriching a handful of billionaires.
Posted on Apr 11, 2011, Source: AlterNet
How do they make so much money? Where does it come from? How can hedge fund firms with fewer than 100 employees make as much profit as firms with thousands of employees?
Posted on Mar 31, 2011, Source: AlterNet
Warren and the AGs are demanding that the banks pay for the damage they have done AND create jobs. How refreshing!
Posted on Mar 30, 2011, Source: AlterNet
It's up to us to embarrass lawmakers into making financial elites pay their fair share.
Posted on Mar 23, 2011, Source: AlterNet
For more than a quarter century after WWII the fruits of America's productivity were shared with average working people, year in and year out. Not anymore.
Posted on Mar 9, 2011, Source: AlterNet
The latest jobs report indicates that the unemployment and job creation rates are better than a year ago, but there are problems with the numbers.
Posted on Jan 21, 2011, Source: AlterNet
Most Americans rightly sense that our middle-class dominated economy has devolved into a system of financial socialism by and for elites.
Posted on Dec 29, 2010, Source: AlterNet
What a great year for Wall Street: profits up, bonuses up and, best of all, criticism down. Somehow Wall Street has much of America believing its lies and rationalizations.
Posted on Oct 16, 2010, Source: AlterNet
The top 10 hedge fund honchos each averaged $1.87 billion in 2009 -- wouldn't you like to know their secrets? Here are a few.
Posted on Sep 17, 2010, Source: AlterNet
Instead of showing their outrage about the spread of poverty in the richest nation on Earth, the super-rich want us to pity them?
Posted on May 9, 2010, Source: AlterNet
Buffett has taken to arguing that his own questionable derivatives should be shielded from government regulators.
Posted on May 5, 2010, Source: AlterNet
Something is really screwed up when we award billions to Wall Street elites for doing things we don’t comprehend, even as we lay off teachers by the thousands.
Posted on Apr 10, 2010, Source: AlterNet
"It’s going to take a lot of political will — over a long period of time — to reorder our most basic economic values."
Posted on Mar 12, 2010, Source: AlterNet
We are told that we’re already living well beyond our means we’ve got to cut back on government programs at all levels. Meanwhile, the super-rich are still having a ball.
Posted on Mar 1, 2010, Source: AlterNet
I wish this were just a bad joke, but Beck isn't messing around -- he's painting bull's-eyes on the backs of progressives.
Posted on Jan 29, 2010, Source: AlterNet
There's rising populist anger against the bailed-out billionaires -- they're only going to get more angry as the same folks who crashed the system are now making record bonuses.
Posted on Jan 20, 2010, Source: AlterNet
You can blame Obama for the Senate loss in Mass, but much of the failure also rests with the progressive community.
Posted on Jan 12, 2010, Source: AlterNet
By all means, let's fire Geithner -- and let's also target Wall Street as a whole. Also: MSNBC Host Dylan Ratigan's case against Geithner.
Posted on Jan 7, 2010, Source: AlterNet
Real change seems almost impossible. What are we doing wrong?
Posted on Dec 28, 2009, Source: AlterNet
The disillusioned masses don't just need more morale, as Levine claims. We also need more truth and more intelligence.
Posted on Oct 22, 2009, Source: AlterNet
We force very low income single moms to jump through hoops to get their welfare checks, but we let Wall Street's welfare kings walk all over us.
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