economy | economy
Nov.26.2012
“How would you like your cash?” I hear from the next bay’s speaker at the bank drive-through. I am depositing $250 in a variety of crumpled bills culled together moments ago at home after I realized I didn’t have enough in my account to cover mine and my husband’s health insurance premium and a...
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Oct.26.2012
When I was a kid, going broke was caused by bad luck, bad choices, or bad habits. Now days, it happens by good luck, good choices, and good habits. I know because it happened to me.
Here’s how it works. First, be a working-class child from a broken home. Then, without therapy or support...
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Oct.25.2012
They have been married so long they barely remember the good times. Now, they haunt the untidy gravel lot hidden behind neglected commercial buildings on the outskirts of town and try to ignore the present. Blasted by freezing winds, they scour dilapidated cardboard boxes, seeking some...
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Oct.09.2012
How much should we gamble with the future.
Ballot measures 82 and 83 have shown up in Oregon. 82 is about amending the state's constitution to authorize private casinos. Tribal casinos are currently the only authorized casinos in Oregon and gambling isn't authorized, except for the state's...
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Sep.18.2012
The Occupy Wall Street movement began in New York last September and quickly spread around the country -- then, inevitably, in the age of instant information, the world. But just as quickly, it petered out.
Here in San Francisco, the protest began the same week the iPhone 4S came out and...
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Sep.05.2012
Michelle Obama did what any good wife does – made her husband look like he needed her. By default, America needs her. Apparently, her speech at the Democratic Convention was a huge hit. Political spouses play a major role in US politics.
So, did her human interest angle make sense? As...
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Aug.19.2012
I’ve been spending long delicious hours in a tiny world, the space bordered on one side by my computer and the other by my chair. I’m doing a last pass through my manuscript, reading aloud as I edit. In a week or two, I will send it to a few lovely people who’ve agreed to read and respond, and...
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Jun.16.2012
I am a tad chagrined about this play depicting Kafka's last year of life. He indeed moved to Berlin, finally getting away from family and Prague (about which city he said: "The little mother has claws.") And he did move to be with his last and young lover. However, I also plan to write a novel...
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Jun.05.2012
Since leaving a major daily newspaper in 2009 (through a voluntary buyout), it's been a long,arduous journey to reinvent myself and navigate the choppy waters of this new landscape we call journalism. It's been a fun adventure at times, and it's also been a little scary. Uncertainty is not an easy...
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Jun.04.2012
Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and globalization critic, has a must-read essay in the current Vanity Fair, excerpted from his forthcoming book. He analyzes the consensus among plutocrats that our ever-widening wealth disparity is a jolly good thing,...
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