The passage of the House climate bill — discussed in our first hour today — has been greeted with enthusiasm in many quarters. But in some ways, the real question is whether a global framework can be established in Copenhagen in December.

In the New Deal era, the Democrats owned the white working class. In the Civil Rights era, they lost them. Not all, of course, but enough to give Republicans win after big win.
This year, with economic challenges front and center again, the math could change. But in West Virginia and North Carolina, in Kentucky and [...]

Nan Mooney is thirtysomething, well-educated, the child of baby boomers who herself grew up with all the accoutrements of what was very recently thought to be a regular middle-class American life. Nothing fancy, but the full basics: a nice little home with steady income, housing, health insurance, and a summer vacation somewhere.
Now, Nan Mooney and [...]

Hillary Clinton and John McCain say they want to drop federal gas taxes for the summer. Barack Obama says no.
If you’re strapped for cash and struggling with higher food and energy prices, it can sound like a good idea. But step back just half an inch from presidential campaign follies, and the idea can look [...]

We’ve heard it again and again, but seldom laid out with the clarity Steven Greenhouse brings. The American worker is getting crunched. Corporate profits are up. Productivity is up. CEO pay is way up. But the American worker is getting squeezed.
Greenhouse is labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times. He’s brought home the [...]

For a long time, American well-being has been measured by GDP. By personal income. By cold, hard numbers. Not anymore.
Now, a field of economic study — the measurement of happiness — is coming of age. It’s providing new insights into who we are, and the roots of what really makes us happy. Money, politics, family, [...]

The language out of Wall Street today is enough to scare you silly. Crisis. Fire sale. Brink of collapse. Titanic mess.
Late last night the news spread that JPMorgan Chase and the Fed have engineered a takeover of floundering Wall Street bad boy Bear Stearns.
A year ago, when the bonuses and bull were flying high, Bear [...]

A big sister’s nailpolish and eyeshadow. Mom’s high heels. Rites of passage–and good fun–for many young girls.
But these days, girls are digging deep into their piggybanks and hitting the malls. Glitter products, pedicures, mini-makeovers.
These tweens, as they’re called, are now spending $51 billion of their own pocket money. And marketers, sponsoring birthday parties and sleepovers, [...]

Here’s a little something to chew on while you get your income tax files together this season. Median income in the USA is $48,000. Average annual income of the top four hundred taxpayers? Two hundred and fourteen million dollars. Yep. Two hundred and fourteen million.
Their share of the nation’s income has doubled since 1995. And [...]

Despite all evidence, for a lot of Americans, the world — or their sense of it — and the American place in it seems frozen in about 1999. The Soviet Union — vanquished. The American economy — number one, of course. American might and influence — unchallenged. The USA — a master superpower.
Scholar Parag Khanna [...]

If you want to see the madness and the grisly aftermath of the U.S. housing boom and bust, look at Florida. It’s not alone. Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, Detroit — they’ve all got horror-story numbers now. But the biggest home price drops in the country were in Miami last year.
Empty condos, collapsing values. The heart [...]

It is scary out there in the world of economic indicators.
Inflation is at its highest rate in a quarter century. Home prices are getting low and lower. Factory orders are lousy. The U.S. dollar is plummeting.
It’s no wonder consumer confidence is on the rocks. Never mind recession — some days it sounds like we should [...]

In China, pork has become so expensive they’re stealing pigs by the truckload. In Kansas, it’s wheat. In Mexico, they’ve got tortilla riots over the cost of corn. In American supermarkets, the price of milk and eggs has soared.
All over the world, the price of food is headed up. Sometimes way up. And an era [...]

In 1758, Benjamin Franklin published a collection of homey aphorisms that Americans may soon be re-reading around their 2008 kitchen tables.
“A penny saved is a penny earned,” wrote Franklin. And “the Borrower is the slave to the Lender.” And “be frugal and be free.”
Truth is, old Ben knew how to live high on the hog, [...]

The travel posters from Kenya are all “Out of Africa” beauty, safari paradise shots and handsome Masai tribesmen with their red robes and spears. And for decades, Kenya was held up as East Africa’s great hope for democracy and development.
But in the last month, after a disputed — observers say stolen — presidential election, the [...]

From the misty, half-attuned, still-in-the-American-Century shores of the United States, China and India can look like peas in a pod: two rising Asian giants with screaming growth rates and lots of what used to be American jobs.
Look closer, and these are very different cats. China is the factory floor and India the back-office, software shop. [...]

If you were off planet the past few days and returned to Wall Street this morning, you might be forgiven for thinking that all was well this week. The market tanked just a few days ago but by yesterday it had all but recovered.
So what happened? That’s among the big stories under our microscope today.
Also, [...]

In the world’s hyper-ventilating global stock markets, the bleeding has slowed, for the moment.
After two days of outright panic on markets in Bombay and Hong Kong and across Europe, the US Federal Reserve Bank jammed through a huge rate cut. President Bush and Henry Paulson and Congressional leaders hustled to a big photo op, talked [...]

OK, here’s the blue economy scenario for 2008. Housing prices keep falling. Credit stays tight. Consumers choke. In retailing, restaurants, travel and more, jobs vanish. In real estate, construction and banking, investment seizes up. Money retreats. Growth is gone. And we’ve got a recession on our hands.
For months, economists have debated whether it’s here already. [...]

Lucky you, if you rode the red-hot Chinese stock market over the last few years. Between 2003 and last fall, the Shanghai index was up 300 percent. Domestic A shares were up 500 percent in two years. We’re talking epochal money here.
Now, with money pros wondering if it’s about to go bust, super-investor Jim Rogers [...]