In the 4th century BC, Athens and nine other Greek city states defaulted on their loans from the Temple of Apollo at Delos. It was the first recorded financial crisis. Nearly 25 centuries of human evolution, progress and technological advancement later, the modern nation of Greece defaulted in 2012 as a sovereign debt panic seized Europe.

Has the United States finally reached peak sprawl? Recent research, including a new study out of the George Washington University School of Business, suggests that the end of the era of automobile-oriented suburban growth is upon us.

Having poor people in the richest country in the world is a choice. We have the money to solve this. But do we have the will? Inequality and poverty are suddenly hot topics, not only in the United States but also across the globe.

Recently we have seen, at the level of city government, all around policies designed to build community wealth and encourage the growth of cooperative local economies. The work of grassroots developers, local foundations, community activists, and field builders is beginning to gain a foothold in the world of municipal policy...

Cooperative Home Care Associates has 2,300 workers who enjoy good wages, regular hours, and family health insurance. With an investment of $1.2 million into the cooperative sector, New York City is hoping to build on the group's success.

The summer employment rate for U.S. teens held steady at around 50% from 1950 to 2000, but began to decline dramatically in the 21st century. By 2009, it had fallen below 33%. The decline has been most pronounced for more educated and economically advantaged teens.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) management just ran into a possible game-changing obstacle to its shameful pursuit of a fully privatized post office: labor solidarity.

Over the past two decades, the amount of money a college student must borrow to pay for their education has doubled. The graduates of 2014 now sit at the top of the class in student debt. Tuition fees have risen dramatically as household incomes have stagnated, at best, causing some 70 percent of students to fund their higher educations through loans.

In the 1980s, corporate CEOs were paid, on average, 30 times what their typical worker was paid. Since then, CEO pay has skyrocketed to 280 times the pay of a typical worker; in big companies, to 354 times.

Throughout history, local currencies have been used not only as a way to survive during periods of economic uncertainty, but also as a bold way to opt out of a global monetary system that many find exclusionary and, in some cases, corrupt. The only thing that gives modern money value is the fact that...

The pertinent question is not whether income and wealth inequality is good or bad. It is at what point do these inequalities become so great as to pose a serious threat to our economy, our ideal of equal opportunity and our democracy.

In Missouri thousands of independent small and mid-size family hog farmers have gone out of business because they don’t have access to a fair market. “Because of massive corporate control of the market, we’ve lost 91 percent of hog producers in Missouri since 1985. That’s over 20,000 farmers and many, many jobs in our rural communities.”

Thomas Piketty's "Capital In The 21st Century"  is certainly the the biggest economic book sold in this century, having reached # 1 book status on Amazon. It may also be the most important book. No doubt it will become the book some in the "money class" most love to hate.

The fact that McDonald’s can consistently sell a Bacon McDouble burger for a dollar seems preposterous; it’s a wonder we have a large-scale meat industry at all, much less a highly profitable one.

For centuries, coastal wetlands were considered worthless. A mounting body of research is demonstrating that coastal habitats are vital, valuable components of healthy coastal communities and economies. It’s time to acknowledge the environmental and economic value of restoring these ecosystems...

We’re in a new gilded age of wealth and power similar to the first gilded age when the nation’s antitrust laws were enacted. Those laws should prevent or bust up concentrations of economic power that not only harm consumers but also undermine our democracy

One of the worst epithets that can be leveled at a politician these days is to call him a “redistributionist.” Yet 2013 marked one of the biggest redistributions in recent American history. It was a redistribution upward, from average working people to the owners of America.

Though it’s certainly easier to find local, sustainably grown meat and produce in America than it was 20 years ago, the deck nevertheless remains stacked against small farmers and sellers who would feed the steadily increasing demand for such fare. Many of our food-production system’s most dangerous and unsustainable practices...

In a way, nothing could be simpler. I can still hear Carol Peppe Hewitt saying at a Slow Money na­tional gathering: “It really isn’t complicated. There are local food en­trepreneurs who need money and local investors looking for good places to put their money. We just need to connect them.”

As far as Mark Dimondstein is concerned, the members of the Postal Workers are going to be out in the streets even more than they already are. Their causes? Increasing revenues for the Postal Service, stopping its creeping privatization, via Staples stores, by the Postmaster General

America has a serious “We” problem — as in “Why should we pay for them?” The question is popping up all over the place. It underlies the debate over extending unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed and providing food stamps to the poor.

Your instincts may be telling you otherwise, but the global economy will be strengthening in 2014, according to two major reports released in recent weeks. In an improvement over 2013’s global economic growth of 2.1 percent, we will see a 3 percent rise this year and a bump up to 3.3 percent in 2015...

Why has America forgotten the three most important economic lessons we learned in the thirty years following World War II? Before I answer that question, let me remind you what those lessons...