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Ecuador to Default on External Debt

11:45 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Ecuador|Money · Comments Off

15 Dec 2008

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced that his country would not pay back the remaining balance on it’s external debt, saying that the debt is immoral and illegitimate.

The decision of defaulting on the global bonds (2012, 2015 and 2030) was taken by Correa after the official presentation of the final report from the Public Credit Audit Commission (Comision para la Auditoria Integral del Crédito Público, CAIC [es]) audit regarding Ecuador’s foreign debt. Ecuador’s decision to stop payments on the interest on its national debt is it’s second in two decades, the other coming in 1999, when it defaulted on $10 billion. In 2008, the figure stands at $3.9 billion.

Do You Have a Question for the Obama – Biden Transition Team?

11 Dec 2008

The Obama Transition team launched its new “Open for Questions” tool today on Change.gov. This new tool will allow anyone to ask and vote on questions they have for the transition team. Popular questions selected by the community of web users on Change.gov will be answered on a regular basis by the Obama team.

I suggest going online and asking/voting questions about immigration and hate crimes.

While You Were Eating Turkey, The President Elect Speaks

10:27 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Politics · Comments Off

28 Nov 2008

Would it have been so bad for the President Elect to mention Indigenous People?

Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day?

8:26 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|economy|Marketing|Money|Shopping · 4 Comments

28 Nov 2008

Growing up with a mom who worked in retail, the day after Thanksgiving meant watching my single mom wake up before the sun, before the crazy shoppers, to open up whatever store she worked in at an unholy hour. We never shopped for bargains because it was my mother’s job to make sure others could. Even today, as my mom approaches retirement age, she moved her tired body in the dark, towards the city of Manhattan to unlock doors and fill shopping bags. Black Friday gets no love from me.

My sister and I celebrated Buy Nothing Day before it was even officially a day.

Food Stamp Use Reaches Record Numbers

11:05 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Food|Money · Comments Off

26 Nov 2008

Once upon a time when I was a teen, food stamps were actually like stamps, well actually more like coupons on Monopoly money colored paper and I remember being ashamed when my then boyfriend’s mom sent me to the corner bodega to buy something with them. While sadly the stigma still exists with using food stamp benefits, even if they no are accessed via an atm like card but for more and more familias, food stamps are a need not a want if they want to keep their family fed.

“We soon will have the most food stamps recipients in the history of our country,” said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a D.C.-based anti-hunger policy organization. “If the economic forecasts come true, we’re likely to see the most hunger that we’ve seen since the 1981 recession and maybe since the 1960s, when these programs were established.”

The Agriculture Department is set to release the new numbers as early as this week. Agency officials declined to confirm the figures but outlined them in a briefing last month for advocates and administrators of state food stamp programs. Breaking the symbolically important 30 million mark comes on the heels of government data showing that 11.9 million people went hungry in the United States at some point last year. That included nearly 700,000 children, up more than 50 percent from the year before.

Via / The Washington Post

President Elect Barack Obama’s Weekly Address : This Week The Economy

9:10 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Money|US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off

17 Nov 2008

This past weekend, President Elect Obama gave a weekly address to the U.S. and in what seems unprecedented, put it up on YouTube. Not surprisingly, the topic of this week’s address was the economy.

Bush Links Auto Industry Bailout to Colombia Trade Bill

9:51 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Colombia|economy|Labor · 3 Comments

11 Nov 2008

Remember how we all felt so good that Obama recognized that Colombian union leaders were getting murdered by corporations and stated as such during the debates? Remember how the Colombian organization, Association of Indigenous Couincils, wrote their letter to Obama detailing their lives and what they’d like to see happen under an Obama presidency?

Well, now we have President Bush’s response to their reality:

Bush said he would back demands for an auto industry bailout if Democrats support the stalled “free trade” deal with Colombia. Congressional Democrats have held up the deal over human rights concerns. Obama cited the repeated killings of Colombian union leaders during his final debate with John McCain last month. Democrats want to use some of the $700 billion in bailout money for major car companies like General Motors.

Basically, what this boils down to is if people in my community wants jobs, we must sign on to the murder of fellow workers down in Colombia. I vote an emphatic no on that choice. I hope that the unions in my area stick to their pre-election guns and recognize the blatant violent racism they will be participating in if they too, do not reject such a compromise.

via Democracy Now!

Real Scary Stories: CNN ‘forgets’ that they broke the story on the chained-to-the-house woman

12:42 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · economy · Comments Off

31 Oct 2008

Remember how I was critical of CNN’s reporting on the woman who had chained herself to her house in an effort to prevent foreclosure? I said at the time:

Since the segment didn’t more closely examine the woman’s profession as it connected to her foreclosure status, it gives the viewer an easy way to explain her foreclosure status: she’s just a bad business woman (and a slightly comical one at that). Or, on other words, it’s not that foreclosures could happen to anybody and we all should be worried about it–it’s that people in foreclosure didn’t read their papers closely enough and somehow thought they were above making mistakes.

Well, look at what I came across on the CNN site today:

Interestingly enough, the CNN follow up offers no mention of the fact that they were the ones that *broke* this woman’s story or that hm, that simple online search of public records should have revealed the problems with this woman’s story enough to make it into their first broadcast. CNN did not present the follow up story as a follow up story or as an update–but as a brand new story about some woman they’d never heard of before!

I wonder why that is? I wonder if it links back to my original thought–that this sort of coverage makes it very easy for the viewer to blame the victims of foreclosure rather than the banks that are profiting off of the foreclosures?

Woman Chains Self to Home in an Effort to Stop Foreclosure

11:48 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · economy · Comments Off

28 Oct 2008

I appreciate that mainstream news sources are finally reporting on the stories of people who lose their homes to foreclosures. It’s well past time, especially considering that home foreclosures are reaching Great Depression levels.

I dunno though, this CNN clip irritated me. For one thing, the voice over was smarmy–I was reminded of a Saturday Night Live skit through the whole segment.

Along with the smarmy voice over there was the way the woman was presented–as sort of a sad screw up that we can laugh at. That is, what sort of screw up that runs a business on how to prevent foreclosures gets foreclosed on??

Since the segment didn’t more closely examine the woman’s profession as it connected to her foreclosure status, it gives the viewer an easy way to explain her foreclosure status: she’s just a bad business woman (and a slightly comical one at that). Or, on other words, it’s not that foreclosures could happen to anybody and we all should be worried about it–it’s that people in foreclosure didn’t read their papers closely enough and somehow thought they were above making mistakes.

I’m still waiting for the day when a mainstream news source will compassionately and with *nuance* examine the effect of the foreclosure crisis on U.S. citizens. Something tells me that I’m gonna be waiting a while.

Thought Things Were Settling Down?

11:42 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · economy · Comments Off

23 Oct 2008

lv_greenspan_081023.300w.jpg Well, prepare to huddle back into your fetus position. Economic (supposed) guru wizard, Alan Greenspan just gave testimony in front of Congress about the state of the economy. His news is, of course, terrifying.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday the current financial crisis is a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami” which will have a severe impact on the U.S. economy, driving unemployment higher.

Greenspan, who headed the nation’s central bank for 18½ years, said that he and others who believed lending institutions would do a good job of protecting their shareholders are in a “state of shocked disbelief.”

He said that the current crisis had “turned out to be much broader than anything that I could have imagined.”

I’d offer you one of my thumbs to suck on while in your fetal position, but I need it myself.

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