Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist and Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. One of the youngest economics professors in the history of Harvard University, Sachs became known for his role as an adviser to Eastern European and developing country governments in the implementation of so-called economic shock therapy during the transition from communism to a market system or during periods of economic crisis. Some of his recommendations have been considered controversial. Subsequently he has been known for his work on the challenges of economic development, environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, debt cancellation, and globalization.

In a 25 minute interview, AlJazeera talks to Sachs, describing him as "an academic 'superstar' known for his controversial work on shock therapy, a theory that was applied and tested in dramatic fashion with the privatisation of state resources in South America and Russia", who describes the development of the current global economic crisis this way...

Elizabeth Warren discussing the debt crisis, fair taxation and other important issues as part of her Senate campaign talking tour.

Under the first U.S. income tax law that was passed in 1913, only 1 percent of Americans were required to file income tax returns, and to be liable to file you would have had to be earning an annual income of about $120,000 in todays dollars. It was passed during a period called the Progressive Era: "a period of social activism and reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s" during which there were widespread "efforts to reform local government, education, medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, churches, and many other areas" of American life.

Among other things, Hartmann reports today on a warning from Brzezinski...

The President is trying to pitch a $4 trillion deficit reduction package over the next 10 years – that slashes away at programs mostly affecting the working class and even cuts up the social safety net in America – trimming $400 billion from Medicare and Medicaid. All of these tough cuts will be in exchange for closing a few tax loopholes for corporations, millionaires, and billionaire. Ultimately, President Obama’s deal is heavy on spending cuts, light on tax hikes. But don’t expect Republicans to like the deal – they’d rather crash the Americans economy than see tax rates for their millionaire and billionaire campaign donors go up a measly 3% - to where they were under Bill Clinton when we had a budget surplus and created 23 million jobs. Right now – government revenue in America is at a 60-year-low – and Republicans are refusing to acknowledge that our government is going broke because of 3 decades of Reagan’s “starve the beast” economics and an army of corporate lobbyists that have blown holes in the tax code. We don’t have a spending problem in America – we have a revenue problem – and a debt-limit deal needs to focus on this reality. Roll back the Reagan tax cuts – and make billionaire hedge fund managers on Wall Street - who pay less in taxes than their janitor – cough up their fair share like the rest of us. That’s what shared sacrifice looks like.