The report, from the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, finds that between 2009 and 2011, top executives at the 90 publicly held corporate members of the Fix the Debt coalition raked in at least $953 million -- and as much as $1.6 billion -- through the “performance pay” loophole, which counts some executive compensation as a tax-deductible business expense, instead of a salary. Fix the Debt, founded by Alan  Simpson and Erskine Bowles, is one of the many groups tied to Wall Streeter cum policy entrepreneur Pete Peterson, who has spent the last 20 years trying to reduce the debt, in large part through cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare. The group has attracted some of the largest corporations in the country as sponsors, as well as former lawmakers, giving it serious clout in Washington.

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Simpson and Bowles have been speaking to the people, and the people agree with them!

No matter our audience, those we spoke with shared two things: a thirst for the truth about what it will take to right our fiscal ship and a willingness to be part of the solution so long as everyone is in it together.

Basically these two are nostalgic for December when it seemed like a "grand bargain" might actually happen:

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First, you’ve got the Reinhart/Rogoff (R&R) dustup which is generating lots of ink in the AMs papers—more on that in a moment.  Second, indicators once again show that the ongoing expansion in American economy continues to underperform, with weak readings on jobs, retail sales, and inflation.

The connective tissue here is contractionary fiscal policy.  And while no one or two individuals gets the blame for that, R&R’s work, with its arbitrary threshold (remember, they’re the ones purveying the debt/GDP-above-90%-slows-growth thesis), non-contextualized broad averages across countries, and data errors, is a  good example of how economists have misled the debate.

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But! Whoops, turns out they were wrong, about that one central fact that has been repeated as the gospel truth by purveyors of Tough Talk on debt the world over for the last three years. They screwed up their spreadsheet. Turns out average GDP growth in countries with debt-GDP ratios 90 percent and higher is positive, not negative.

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How did we get into this situation?

The trail leads through federal-state interactions, like so much of American history. States were largely independent of the federal government until the 1960s. The federal government began at that time to provide resources for states to expand their activities in healthcare and then other activities as well. These grants have risen from well under $1 billion a year to around $500 billion in recent years. States rely on these funds to give grants to cities and for helping with many other expenses.

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In a statement from NETWORK, the Sister Simone Campbell-led social justice organization denounced Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget as creating "untenable situations for those struggling to survive" through cuts to Medicaid and the social safety net.

In a multi-state, grassroots effort against austerity cuts, a coalition of faith leaders have organized events around the country on Wednesday, including delivering loaves and fishes to members of the House of Representatives (a reference the Biblical story of having enough during a time of scarcity).

They've also released an animated message about "finding the political courage to pass a moral budget."

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At the rank-and-file voter level, this is, of course, a cartoon version of ideologies; many self-described liberals are hardly dreaming of turning America into a giant kibbutz while many self-described conservatives just want the government out of their face. However, at the elected official level in Washington, the conservative cartoon in particular is no comedic caricature: As Rep. Paul Ryan's new House Republican budget shows, it is an actual worldview, with specific legislative proposals in tow.

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ROME, Italy — Rome is awash in political posters.

They're plastered on buses, billboards, even the Segways that bear footsore tourists through ancient cobbled streets, with messages from a seemingly baffling array of 25 parties and coalitions — from the Workers' Communist Party to the neo-Fascist Tricolor Flame — competing in parliamentary elections on Sunday and Monday.

Although actually a relatively simple contest, the elections could have a profound impact on the future of Italy and the entire euro zone.

The results will determine whether Italy maintains its policies of fiscal restraint and economic liberalization that have restored its credibility on financial markets over the past year, or if voter anger with austerity will usher in a government that would spend its way out of recession at the risk of clashing with Italy's euro zone partners, especially Germany.

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But for a president himself, the State of the Union provides a unique opportunity to focus the entire nation’s attention on the central issue you want the nation to help you take action on.

President Obama has been focusing his (and therefore America’s) attention on immigration, guns, and the environment. All are important. But in my view none of these should be the central theme of his address Tuesday evening.

His focus should be on the joblessness, falling real wages, economic insecurity, and widening inequality that continue to dog the nation. These are the overriding concerns of most Americans. All will grow worse if the deficit hawks, austerity mavens, trickle-down charlatans, and government-haters who have commanded center stage for too long continue to get their way.

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The report found that even many Americans who would consider themselves middle class, with household incomes of $55,465-$90,000, qualify as “liquid asset poor,” with less than three months' savings for basic expenses. One-quarter (26 percent) of households were found by CFED to be  “net worth asset poor,” meaning that the few assets they do have are overwhelmed by their debts.

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The Office for National Statistics said Friday that there was no growth in the nation's big services industry while output of production industries fell by 1.8 percent, including a 1.5 percent drop in manufacturing.

Britain emerged from a nine-month recession in the third quarter, when GDP grew by 0.9 percent. But if the economy shrinks again in the first quarter of 2013, it will be officially back in a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

"Today's numbers have greatly increased the risk of a new recession and a downgrading of the U.K.'s AAA credit rating," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at financial data company Markit.

All three of the big rating agencies — Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch — have placed Britain's rating on negative watch.

The latest figure was worse than the market consensus of a contraction of 0.1 percent, and came just two days after the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund said it was time for the government to reassess its focus on spending cuts.

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“Forecasters significantly underestimated the increase in unemployment and the decline in domestic demand associated with fiscal consolidation,” Blanchard and co-author Daniel Leigh, a fund economist, wrote in a paper on growth forecast errors. The authors essentially admit that they failed to consider important factors about how regions might react to austerity in times of financial crisis when they advised IMF austerity policy.

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December’s payrolls were up 155,000 and the unemployment rate held steady at 7.8 percent.  Factories and construction sites added jobs — 25,000 and 30,000, respectively — an improvement over recent months.  On the other hand, the public sector shed another 13,000 jobs, driven exclusively by local governments, the continuation of a longer-term negative trend as localities struggle with budget constraints.

Hourly wages and average weekly hours got a bit of a bump up as well, so weekly earnings are up 2.4 percent over the past year.  Since inflation recently has been tracking at around 2 percent, that’s a slight gain in real pay (important, because starting this month, most workers will take a 2 percent hit to their paychecks due to the expiration of the payroll tax break, a casualty of the fiscal cliff deal).  There was also some evidence of more folks moving from part-time into full-time jobs.

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And yet the pit exists.  It goes by the name of “austerity.” However, it didn’t just appear in time for the last election season or the lame-duck session of Congress to follow.  It was dug more than a generation ago, and has been getting wider and deeper ever since.  Millions of people have long made it their home.  “Debtpocalypse” is merely the latest installment in a tragic, 40-year-old story of the dispossession of American working people.

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“After five years of crisis, the global economy is weakening again. The risk of a major contraction cannot be ruled out,” OECD chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan said Tuesday in the organization’s semi-annual Economic Outlook report. The Paris-based OECD advises its 34-member governments on economic policy.

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And with surveys pointing to increasingly depressed conditions across the 17-member group at a time of austerity and high unemployment, the recession is forecast to deepen, and make the debt crisis - which has been calmer of late - even more difficult to handle.

Official figures Thursday showed that the eurozone contracted by 0.1 percent in the July to September period from the quarter before as economies including Germany and the Netherlands suffer from falling demand.

The decline reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, was in line with market expectations and follows on from the 0.2 percent fall recorded in the second quarter. As a result, the eurozone is technically in recession, commonly defined as two straight quarters of falling output.

The eurozone economy shrank at annual rate of 0.2 percent during the July-September quarter, according to calculations by Capital Economics.

"The eurozone economy will continue its decline in Q4 and probably well into 2013 too - a good backdrop for another debt crisis," said Michael Taylor, an economist at Lombard Street Research.

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Krugman argued for reframing the idea of a "fiscal cliff" in terms of an "austerity bomb" (a term he attributes to Brian Beutler). His (ever-Keynesian) point is that we do not risk tumbling off some metaphorical cliff of towering deficits -- far more threatening is an explosion of austerity. Krugman wrote:

The cliff stuff makes people imagine that it’s a problem of excessive deficits when it’s actually about the risk that the deficit will be too small; also and relatedly, the fiscal cliff stuff enables a bait and switch in which people say “so, this means that we need to enact Bowles-Simpson and raise the retirement age!” which have nothing at all to do with it.

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No matter where we live, we face the same struggle against national state and profit driven interests, and their hold on education. Increasing tuition fees, budget cuts, outsourcing, school closures, as well as other phenomena are linked to an increasing commercialization and privatization of education.

This month, ISM hosted Web-based chats with students from Morocco, Bangkok, Vienna, New York and many other locales leading up to today's “Global Day of Action to Reclaim Education.” The blend of high tech and grass-roots activism is still being tested, but it has already emboldened students to coordinate a Global Education Strike for Nov. 14-22.

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ATHENS, Greece –  Hundreds of youths pelted riot police with petrol bombs, bottles and chunks of marble Thursday as yet another Greek anti-austerity demonstration descended into violence, less than a month after more intense clashes broke out during a similar protest.

Authorities said around 70,000 protesters took to the street in two separate demonstrations in Athens during the country's second general strike in a month as workers across the country walked off the job to protest new austerity measures the government is negotiating with Greece's international creditors.

A 65-year-old protester suffered a fatal heart attack during the demonstration but efforts to revive him failed. The organizers of the protest march he participated in said the man had fallen ill before any rioting had broken out.

The measures for 2013-14, worth €13.5 billion ($17.7 billion), aim to prevent the country from going bankrupt and potentially having to leave the 17-nation eurozone.

Riot police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades in the capital's Syntagma Square outside Parliament as protesters scattered during the clashes, which continued on and off for about an hour. Another general strike in late September had also seen limited, but much more intense, clashes between protesters and police.

Four demonstrators were injured after being hit by police, volunteer paramedics said. The Health Ministry said two of the protesters were treated in hospital and that their injuries were not serious.

Hundreds of police had been deployed in the Greek capital ahead of the demonstration, as such protests often turn violent. Police said about 50 people were detained Thursday.

A similar demonstration by about 17,000 people in the northern city of Thessaloniki ended peacefully.

Thursday's strike was timed to coincide with a European Union summit in Brussels later in the day, at which Greece's economic fate will likely feature large.

The strike grounded flights, shut down public services, closed schools, hospitals and shops and hampered public transport in the capital. Taxi drivers joined in for nine hours, while a three-hour work stoppage by air traffic controllers led to flight cancellations. Islands were left cut off as ferries stayed in ports.

Athens has seen hundreds of anti-austerity protests over the past three years, since Greece revealed it had been misreporting its public finance figures. With confidence ravaged and austerity demanded, the country has sunk into a deep economic recession that has many of the same hallmarks of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"We are sinking in a swamp of recession and it's getting worse," said Dimitris Asimakopoulos, head of the GSEVEE small business and industry association. "180,000 businesses are on the brink and 70,000 of them are expected to close in the next few months."

Higher taxes expected to be levied in the new austerity program will destroy many of the struggling businesses that have managed to weather three years of the crisis so far, he said.

"In 2011, only 20 percent of businesses were profitable. So these new tax measures present small businesses with a choice: Dodge taxes or close your shop."

The country is surviving with the help of two massive international bailouts worth a total €240 billion ($315 billion). To secure them, it has committed to drastic spending cuts, tax hikes and reforms, all with the aim of getting the state coffers back under some sort of control.

But while significantly reducing the country's annual borrowing, the measures have made the recession worse. By the end of next year, the Greek economy is expected to be around a quarter of the size it was in 2008. And with one in four workers out of a job, Greece has, along with Spain, the highest unemployment rate in the 27-nation European Union.

The country's four-month-old coalition government is negotiating a new austerity package with debt inspectors from the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. The idea is to save €11 billion ($14.4 billion) in spending — largely on pensions and health care — and raise an extra €2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) through taxes.

After more than a month and a half of arguing, a deal seems close. On Wednesday, representatives from the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, said there was agreement on "most of the core measures needed to restore the momentum of reform" and that the rest of the issues should be resolved in coming days.

Greece is also seeking a two-year extension to its economic recovery program, due to end in 2014. Without the extension, it would need to take €18 billion worth of measures instead of the €13.5 it is currently negotiating.

Athens hopes to get the next loan installment around mid-November. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said the country will run out of cash by the end of that month, meaning Greece would most likely have to default on its debt and potentially end its membership of the euro currency.

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Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki, and Elena Becatoros and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens contributed.

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