Main Street

Interesting Things Around the Internet

• How much responsibility do the ratings agencies bear for the financial crisis, and did Moody’s “purg[e] analysts and executives who warned of trouble and promot[e] those who helped Wall Street plunge the country into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression”?
• Remember the New York Times story about how super-rich people were somewhat less super-rich than they had been? The reporter who wrote it seems to think that the only reason you’d be annoyed that that was seen as the big story, rather than the struggles of everyday working people, is because you don’t like rich people. Not because, you know, you think the problem of having only $300 million instead of $500 million is not such a big problem in actuality. http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=28346
• Schmatta, a documentary playing tonight on HBO, is about the New York City garment industry and comes highly recommended.
• Matt Yglesias: Higher taxes for the highest earners.
• Nice strategy:
  

  The White House and congressional Democrats are working to marginalize the Chamber of Commerce — the powerful business lobby opposed to many of President Barack Obama’s first-year priorities — by going around the group and dealing directly with the CEOs of major U.S. corporations.

  Since June, senior White House officials have met directly with executives from more than 55 companies, including Chamber members Pfizer, Eastman Kodak and IBM.

  “We prefer the approach — particularly in this climate — where the actual people who are on the front lines, running businesses, trying to create jobs, come and advise us on policy,” senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett told POLITICO in a not-so-subtle effort to portray the Chamber as out of touch with business reality.

• Promising signs about job growth.
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand writes about the fight to extend unemployment benefits.