On the same day the Obama Administration put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline, two engineering contracts totaling $12.2 billion were awarded to two U.S. companies for work in the Alberta oil sands. One included a $750 million contract to a Chicago-based company for work on Exxon’s huge Kearl Oil Sands project, one of [...]
You might have thought things had changed in world financial markets since the U.S. subprime mortgage disaster. After all, we were told at the time that if taxpayers didn’t open their wallets and bail out the banks, we could face a complete meltdown of the global financial system and an economic fate rivaling the Great [...]
At the recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke signalled that he plans to keep interest rates effectively at zero for as long as possible, and that he’s ready to stand by with more quantitative easing (i.e. printing money) if necessary. But if the Fed’s blaming the last recession on [...]
If you listen to Ben Bernanke and Wall Street economists, it was the damage the subprime mortgage crisis inflicted on highly leveraged banks that deep-sixed the global economy. No one has to tell me about how severe the banking crisis was. Why the hell do you think I’m an author now? But blowing up bonuses [...]