Two Americas

Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter:

The nation's workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms.

Corporate profits have been going gangbusters for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.

This is the master the GOP has been serving (and the Democrats, to a lesser extent). All the nonsense about abortion rights and kissing boys is just subterfuge, designed to get gullible US workers to vote against their own best interests.

Deregulation, privatization, corporate personhood, the veneration of avarice, the conflation of wealth with morality, and the myth of a market that solves all problems. That's what got us here.

The US public has told itself a lot of lies. The truth is this: The invisible hand belongs to a thief.