What Did the Pentagon Do With That Extra Trillion Dollars?
The Surge in Defense Spending
By WINSLOW T. WHEELER
EXTRACT: Finally, that $102 billion efficiency drive being pursued by Secretary Gates is over five years. The current Pentagon budget plan is to spend $3.245 Trillion over that period. In other words, the much touted Gates plan would shift from overhead to hardware just 3 percent of the planned spending.
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The Angelides Commission Squints Back at the Bank Bailout and the Fall of Lehman
Does Our Economy Really Have to Run on Fraud?
By MICHAEL HUDSON
EXTRACT: Given today’s florid emotionalism when it comes to discussing Wall Street finances, it hardly is surprising that the Angelides hearings do not dare venture into such territory as to ask whether the bottom 90 per cent of the U.S. economy might need to be bailed out with debt relief just as Wall Street’s elites were.