On March 1st, Bill Moyers gave his first public speech in three years, as the final speaker in the Dowmel Lecture series. In his speech, he addressed what he feels is "the greatest threat" to our country: the staggering inequality of wealth and the death of the middle class.

Read the full six-part report in one post. You can also download the full report with links and graphics or as a print-friendly document. HELP SPREAD THE WORD!

David DeGraw appeared on the Keiser Report to discuss his new book, "The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the USA." DeGraw: "The American public needs to understand that we have been attacked. We are in an economic war right now and all economic indicators say that things are going to get worse...."

These are the core common-ground issues that we must urgently rally around and support. Unless we organize and take decisive action on all these issues, we will all suffer the consequences of our collective inaction.

The most significant bias in the mainstream media is not the liberal or conservative views propagated to divide, distract, confuse and create apathy among the populace; the ultimate bias is in what is missing from the coverage...

The entire bailout is strategically designed to eliminate the US middle class. Every time you hear the word "bailout," you should think "coup d’état."

Now that we have a better understanding of how the Economic Elite dominate our lives, let’s take a look at exactly who they are…

As a record number of US citizens are struggling to get by, many of the largest corporations are experiencing record-breaking profits, and CEOs are receiving record-breaking bonuses. How could this be happening; how did we get to this point?

AmpedStatus Report: It's time for 99% of Americans to mobilize and aggressively move on common sense political reforms. This is the first part of a six-part report. Introduction & Part I: Casualties of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage.

AmpedStatus Report: The economic elite have escalated their attack on the U.S. public by surging military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The implosion of Lehman Brothers was in part triggered by excessive capital demands from JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, and in part by the manipulation of its balance sheet by leading directors, a wide-ranging official report into the investment bank's collapse has found. With JP Morgan Chase requesting $5bn (£3.3bn) just three days before Lehman's bankruptcy filing. At the same time, Lehman directors, including chairman Dick Fuld and former finance director Erin Callan, failed to disclose key practices, and certified misleading statements. The astonishing claims are made in a 2,200-page, nine-volume report written by court-appointed examiner Anton Valukas, which Judge James Peck admitted read "like a best seller". Tags: JP Morgan Citigroup Economic Death Squad Posted by: ampedstatus

The Business Roundtable is the most powerful activist organization in the United States. Their leaders regularly lobby members of Congress behind closed doors and often meet privately with the President and his administration. Any legislation that affects Roundtable members has almost zero possibility of passing without their support. For three major examples, look at healthcare and financial reform, along with the military budget. The healthcare reform bill devolved into what amounts to an insurance industry bailout and was drastically altered by Roundtable lobbyists representing interests like WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. Obama and Congress are trying to please the Roundtable with a bill that supports their interests. This led to the dropping of the public-option put forth in the House bill. However, when it came to finishing the bill, Roundtable members began to walk away from the process. That’s the real reason why the reform bill has stalled. Obama met with the Roundtable on February 24th, in hopes of getting healthcare reform back on track. After that meeting, he held a bipartisan healthcare meeting with members of Congress. Tags: Business Roundtable Economic Death Squad campaign finance lobbying Posted by: ampedstatus

There's no doubt that Fannie and Freddie now enjoy an explicit guarantee, according to most observers. "This means that the U.S. Taxpayer now stands behind $5 trillion of GSE debt," according to the Congressional Research Service. The problem is that $5 trillion of so-called agency paper is not treated as if it is a debt of Uncle Sam for accounting purposes, says Richard Suttmeier, chief market strategist at Niagara International Capital and ValuEngine.com. "Get it on the balance sheet - that's where it belongs," Suttmeier says. "Add it to the $14.2 trillion in [federal] debt and let's move on." Another Time Bomb Ticking: But $5 trillion is a lot of money - even by government standards -- and moving on may be the problem because of ongoing problems in the housing market, Suttmeier says. "There's a general concern on Main Street U.S.A. that ‘my neighbors are throwing in their keys, there's more for sale signs in my community...do I want to buy a new home, risking there's still downside risk to housing?' " Tags: Economic Death Squad Debt Posted by: ampedstatus

Living in these United States, there comes a point at which you throw your hands up in exasperation and despair and ask a fundamental question or two: how much excess profit does corporate America really need? How much bigger do executive salaries and bonuses have to be, how many houses or jets or artworks can be crammed into a life? But since greed is not self-governing, hardly anyone raking in the dough ever stops to say, "That's it. Enough's enough! How do we prevent it from sweeping up everything in its path, including us?" Look at the health care industry saying to hell with consumers and then hiking premiums - by as much as 39% in the case of Anthem Blue Cross in California. According to congressional investigators, over a two-year period Anthem's parent company WellPoint spent more than $27 million dollars for executive retreats at luxury resorts. And in 2008, WellPoint paid 39 of its executives more than a million dollars each. Profit before patients." Tags: Economic Death Squad Health care Posted by: ampedstatus

Chances of a broad overhaul of U.S. financial regulation dimmed after bipartisan Senate talks collapsed, helping boost bank share prices and jeopardizing a top Obama administration priority. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, warning that time was running out to pass legislation this year, said he would unveil his own bill on Monday and aim to get it to the Senate floor by Easter. "The real problem I am facing is the clock," Dodd said at a news conference. Earlier, Senator Bob Corker, a Republican who had tried to hammer out a compromise with Dodd, said a simultaneous White House push to get healthcare reform through Congress had thrown a wrench into their effort. Tags: Economic Death Squad Economic Reform Congress Posted by: ampedstatus

The forensic autopsy of Lehman Brothers appears to have found the many causes of death. The scathing report details a series of balance-sheet shenanigans that could land the former top brass and their auditor, Ernst & Young, in court. Among the toxins discovered was something called Repo 105. This accounting gimmickry masked the size of Lehman’s balance sheet as the pressure grew for investment banks to reduce their leverage at the end of 2007 — which Lehman also was doing at the time. Even if Repo 105 wasn’t lethal it was certainly poisonous. Lehman had been abusing it as far back as 2001, using repurchase agreements to finance assets but, unlike with typical repo transactions, treating them for accounting purposes as sold. This enabled Lehman to cover up its true leverage, making it seem lower than it actually was. Lehman even needed its overseas subsidiary to make it work sometimes. Bart McDade, the Lehman executive in charge of shrinking the balance sheet disparagingly referred to Repo 105 as “another drug we r on.” Tags: Economic Death Squad Lehman Brothers Posted by: ampedstatus

Protesters clashed with riot police as more than 10,000 people marched through central Athens during a nationwide general strike against the government's harsh new austerity measures. The strike grounded all flights and brought public transport to a halt. State hospitals were left with emergency staff only and all news broadcasts were suspended as workers walked off the job for 24 hours to protest spending cuts and tax hikes designed to tackle the country's debt crisis. Riot police fired tear gas to disperse rock-throwing protesters at one point of the demonstration as more than 10,000 strikers and protesters marched through central Athens, banging drums and chanting slogans such as "no sacrifice for plutocracy," and "real jobs, higher pay." People draped banners from apartment buildings reading: "No more sacrifices, war against war." Tags: EU Economic Justice Posted by: ampedstatus

A quintet of Democratic senators introduced legislation to specifically prohibit investment maneuvers that have been likened to "selling a car with faulty brakes and then buying an insurance policy on the buyer of those cars". Senators Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Ted Kaufman (Del.) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) are pushing the Obama administration's proposal to rein in banks' Wall Street-like practices, such as trading securities for their own profit, while they enjoy the protections afforded by U.S. taxpayers through deposit insurance and access to cheap funds courtesy of short-term loans from the Federal Reserve. Their legislation also attempts to sever the ties between banks and largely unregulated hedge funds and private equity funds -- firms that invest and bet for the benefit of their investors." Tags: Economic Justice Congress Economic Reform Goldman Sachs Posted by: ampedstatus

After years of fighting in court, lawyers representing the city, construction companies and more than 10,000 ground zero rescue and recovery workers have agreed to a settlement that could pay up to $657.5 million to responders sickened by dust from the destroyed World Trade Center. The settlement was announced Thursday evening by the WTC Captive Insurance Co., a special entity established to indemnify the city and its contractors against potential legal action as they moved to clean up the site after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The deal, which still must be approved by a judge and the workers themselves, would make the city and other companies represented by the insurer liable for a minimum of $575 million, with more money available to the sick if certain conditions are met. Tags: 9_11 Pollution Posted by: ampedstatus

Ours is now a Ponzi nation. There is a new mood in the land. A sense of having been conned is still spreading -- as if not just surprising numbers of investors, but the whole country had experienced the last days of a giant Ponzi scheme. With it goes a feeling that what we’ve been living through, even in “the best of times,” wasn’t an American dream, but pure nightmare. Welcome to America, sucker. Tags: Economic Death Squad Stock Market Posted by: ampedstatus

By sending UBS informant Bradley Birkenfeld to prison, the Obama Justice Department discouraged more financial insiders from exposing malfeasance. When President Barack Obama's jobs bill passed the House in early March, it contained a little-noticed provision to recover part of its $35 billion price tag by cracking down on offshore tax evasion, which costs the US some $100 billion a year in lost revenue. The provision, which requires foreign financial institutions to report more data to the Internal Revenue Service, was likely prompted by a 2008 Senate investigation that revealed the systemic efforts made by Swiss bank UBS to help moneyed Americans hide massive sums from the IRS." Tags: Economic Justice Obama Illusion Posted by: ampedstatus

US corporations are beginning to release figures on CEO pay for last year. Multi-million dollar packages are the norm in a year that saw the continued deterioration in the living conditions of the vast majority of the population. Each of the top five executives at Wells Fargo at least doubled their compensation last year over 2008. The five men each received over $11 million in 2009, while Wells Fargo’s chief executive, John Stumpf, took home $21.3 million, far higher than his 2008 package of $8.8 million. Mark Oman, the head of consumer business for Wells Fargo, nearly quadrupled his previous pay package to $13.5 million. Howard Atkins, the chief financial officer, received $11.6 million. The other Wells Fargo executives who received huge payouts were David Carroll, the head of the brokerage unit ($14.3 million), and David Hoyt, the head of wholesale banking ($13.5 million). Tags: Economic Death Squad Bonuses Economic Inequality Posted by: ampedstatus

A rash of new layoff announcements and government reports on job losses give the lie to the claims of the Obama administration and the media that the employment situation is “stabilizing.” Last Friday, the administration hailed the Labor Department’s report that US payrolls shrank by “only” 36,000 jobs in February and the official jobless rate remained at 9.7 percent as proof that its policies are working and the economy is recovering. In fact, the so-called “recovery” is limited to the big banks and major corporations, which are profiting from trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, virtually unlimited and cheap credit, and the use of mass unemployment to drive down wages and increase the exploitation of the working class. An unprecedented assault on the living standards of the vast majority of the American people is being carried out under the direction of the Obama administration, creating a social crisis without parallel since the Great Depression. Tags: Unemployment Obama Illusion Posted by: ampedstatus

Change will happen only if we, the people, demand it -- from our politicians, our economists, our financial institutions and our businesses. The future of our economy is simply too important a question to leave to Washington or Wall Street. Main Street America has to take the lead in getting our economy in shape for the next fifty years. Our politicians and business leaders seem to think they can ignore this wake up call, so it is going to be up to the rest of us to demand real, far-reaching change, now -- and, where we can, through what we do with our own money, to make the change happen ourselves. In our next blog post we will launch our Road From Ruin action plan for every citizen to take back control of our economic system. This economic catastrophe has proven that there are fundamental flaws in the way we do capitalism. Yet all of these flaws can be fixed. Let's get to work. Tags: Economic Justice Economic Reform Posted by: ampedstatus

82% of the American public wants tougher regulation of Wall Street. Most top independent financial experts say that we need to break up the big banks and otherwise rein in the financial giants in order to save the economy. But Summers, Geithner, Bernanke and Congress like things just the way they are. Of course they do … they’re bought and paid for: * Lobbyists from the financial industry have paid hundreds of millions to Congress and the Obama administration. They have bought virtually all of the key congress members and senators on committees overseeing finances and banking. The Congress people who receive the most money from lobbyists are the most opposed to regulation. See this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. * Obama received more donations from Goldman Sachs and the rest of the financial industry than almost anyone else" Tags: Economic Death Squad Economic Justice Economic Reform lobbying campaign finance Posted by: ampedstatus

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated by Congressional Democrats: all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster: sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted. Democratic pundits used that claim to push for "filibuster reform," arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents. In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation -- where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required -- but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous. But all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes." Tags: Health care Business Roundtable Obama Illusion Posted by: ampedstatus

For the first time in more than four decades, a militant student movement is taking shape across the country. This movement is in direct response to the IMF-style "austerity measures" being waged against all American citizens in the form of new mandatory taxes and a range of government-imposed belt-tightening measures designed to restore "fiscal responsibility." Students are facing astronomical increases in tuition (32% in California's famed UC system), expanding class sizes, loss of vital programs in the arts, music, technical and physical education. 19,000 California public school teachers have received pink slips and 20,000 students will be turned away from community colleges next fall. Add in thousands more support staff facing layoffs, cutbacks, and shrunken benefit packages and you have a mass of angry students, educators, and workers. Tags: Economic Justice Posted by: ampedstatus

Most big employers plan to shift a larger share of health-care costs to their workers next year, according to a survey. Many say they may charge more to cover spouses, tighten eligibility standards for their health plans and dispense financial rewards or penalties based on the results of certain lab tests. At some companies, employees who are overweight could be excluded from the most desirable plans. Meanwhile, employees at many companies can expect significantly higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments, according to the annual survey by the National Business Group on Health, a coalition of big employers, and Towers Watson, a consulting firm that advises companies on employee benefits. " Tags: Health care Economic Death Squad Posted by: ampedstatus

The Kansas City school board narrowly approved a plan Wednesday night to close nearly half the district's schools in a desperate bid to avoid a potential bankruptcy. The board voted 5-4 after parents and community leaders made final pleas to spare the schools even as the beleaguered district seeks to erase a projected $50 million budget shortfall. The approved plan calls for shuttering 29 of 61 schools _ a striking amount even as public school closes rise nationwide while the recession eats away at academic budgets. "The urban core has suffered white flight post-the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, blockbusting by the real estate industry, redlining by banks and other financial institutions, retail and grocery store abandonment," Kansas City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks said to applause from a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people. Tags: Education Economic Death Squad Debt Posted by: ampedstatus

[Editor's Note: The bonus tax failed Tuesday.] Few topics have generated as much political heat between Main Street and Wall Street as the billions of dollars in bonuses handed out at financial companies that received federal bailouts. But Washington’s efforts to claim some of that money for taxpayers continue to falter. The latest attempt is a measure authored by Democratic Sens. Jim Webb of Virginia and Barbara Boxer of California. It would impose a one-time 50 percent tax on 2009 bonuses of more than $400,000 paid by the 13 firms receiving the most federal bailout money. The plan appears to be crumbling amid opposition from two financial industry-lobbying powerhouses and hesitation among moderate Democrats and key New York politicians, including Sen. Charles Schumer. It has little chance of surviving a procedural vote expected late Tuesday, according to legislative aides and industry lobbyists. Tags: Economic Death Squad Congress Bonuses Economic Inequality Economic Reform Posted by: ampedstatus