A debate now rages in Europe over whether fiscal austerity—that is, higher taxes and less spending—helps or hinders growth. That's progress of sorts. Not long ago, European policy makers seemed stuck on the notion that austerity promotes growth. Yes, we were supposed to believe that countries grow faster when their governments spend less and tax more.

The U.S. Supreme Court may still retain some familiarity with the Constitution when it comes to deciding the nuances of cases involving immigration policy and lifetime incarceration. But when it comes to handing off control of American democracy to corporations, the court continue to reject the intents of the founders and more than a century of case law to assure that CEOs are in charge.

n a scathing op-ed in Monday's New York Times, former US president Jimmy Carter issued a sharp rebuke against a series of Obama administration policies and positions that he described as an affront to human rights and argued are helping to create a US foreign policy that "abets our enemies and alienates our friends."

Last week, nurses rallied, bank staff marched, conservatives coalesced and finance professionals petitioned—all in support of a global tax on Wall Street speculation. You wouldn’t know it from the headlines (Financial Times: “Push for EU-wide ‘Robin Hood Tax’ ends”), but by week’s end, that elusive goal was closer than ever.

or the purpose of our analysis here, an individual as "extremely poor" if he or she resides in a family unit whose income is less than half of the federal poverty threshold. To give you a sense of what that means, the awful extremity of extreme poverty: a single person under 65 must have made less than $5,851, and a family of four must have made less than $11,509. (In my opinion, it is likely that for the majority of the extreme poor, taxable income is zero.)

The Supreme Court's decision to strike down most of Arizona's immigration law won't slow the movement it provoked.

The Supreme Court ruling to uphold a key provision in Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law may send out a last shred of hope to “attrition through enforcement” Republican candidates like Mitt Romney and other states’ rights champions to unbuckle their own immigration policies.