Stories by Steve Fraser

Steve Fraser is a historian, writer, and editor-at-large for New Labor Forum, co-founder of the American Empire Project, and TomDispatch regular. He is, most recently, the author of Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace. He teaches at Columbia University. subscribe to Steve Fraser's feed

From the San Francisco Earthquake to Superstorm Sandy, How Disaster Capitalism Makes Money off of Tragedy

Posted on: Apr 4, 2013, Source: Tom Dispatch

Doesn't matter if the disaster is man-made or natural, wealth always triumphs.

America Is Turning Into One Big Prison for People in Debt

Posted on: Jan 29, 2013, Source: TomDispatch

From debtor’s prison to debtor nation.

Financial Firms Have Been Hollowing Out America for Decades -- Now We're on the Verge of a Debtpocalypse

Posted on: Dec 2, 2012, Source: TomDispatch.com

40 years of austerity politics have hollowed out the heartland, as financial wizards of Wall Street gobbled up ever more of the nation's resources.

Getting Paid 93 Cents a Day in America? Corporations Bring Back the 19th Century

Posted on: Apr 19, 2012, Source: TomDispatch.com

Nearly a million prisoners are working in call centers, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73.

America Returns to Our Proud History of Hating -- and Fighting -- Wall Street

Posted on: Oct 13, 2011, Source: TomDispatch.com

Only weeks ago, an eerie unprotesting silence still blanketed the country. That's all over now.

Massive Unemployment: Proof That Global Capitalism Doesn't Work

Posted on: Sep 11, 2011, Source: TomDispatch.com

We may be witnessing the birth of a new permanent class of the marginalized.

The Strange History of the Tea Party Crowd & America's Right Wing Know-Nothings

Posted on: May 5, 2010, Source: TomDispatch.com

Today’s Tea Party movement is a bewildering network of crosscutting political emotions, ideas, and institutions -- just like its 18th century predecessors.

Is Obama Trying to Dismantle Roosevelt's New Deal?

Posted on: Feb 11, 2010, Source: TomDispatch.com

FDR, he is not. Obama and his team read the lesson of humiliating defeat in Massachusetts and conservative hostility as an advisory to move further to the right.

To End This Financial Crisis, Americans Are Going to Have to Get Angry

Posted on: Feb 10, 2009, Source: TomDispatch.com

FDR alone didn't pull America out of the Great Depression. The passion of ordinary citizens did. Can we do it again?

Is the 'Good Life' as America Knows It Over?

Posted on: Sep 18, 2008, Source: TomDispatch.com

The relationship between Washington and Wall Street has changed fundamentally, and as a result, the road ahead is dark and unknown.

In the Last Gilded Age, People Stood Up to Greed -- Why Aren’t We?

Posted on: Apr 27, 2008, Source: TomDispatch.com

Why don't Americans rise up against the kleptocracy like they did in the late nineteenth century?

The Perfect Storm of Campaign 2008

Posted on: Dec 9, 2007, Source: TomDispatch.com

War, economic collapse, and the political implosion of the Republican Party will make 2008 a year to remember.

Why the Mad Rush to the '08 Elections?

Posted on: Feb 23, 2007, Source: TomDispatch.com

We've already been swamped by 2008 presidential madness -- by Hillary, by Obama(mania), by Fox News smears and Republican pandering to religious extremists -- which suggests that a turning-point election is on the way.