Auto workers are fighting back. Over the past weeks, right-wing pundits, the mainstream media, and many in Congress have opposed providing the automakers with a requested $34 billion loan as part of the $700 billion package already passed last October to help the companies avoid looming bankruptcy.

The global financial crisis, with its enormous proportions that is storming capitalist economies today, is an expression of the internal contradictions of globalized capitalism, revealing once again the inability of the system to resolve these contradictions.

As appointments and stories of appointments to President-elect Obama’s cabinet fill mass media, the interest in Doris Kearns Godwin’s fascinating study, Team of Rivals, which deals with Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War cabinet has been mentioned prominently.

The world is facing a grave economic and financial crisis of large proportions. A capitalist crisis, which cannot be dissociated from its own nature and from its unsolvable contradictions, that is probably the gravest crisis since the Great Depression commenced by the 1929 crash.

Nobel Economy Laureate Josepth Stiglitz said in the Dominican Republic that the way of the current world economic crisis entails a difficult and long process.

Make no mistake about it, this election was won on bread and butter economic issues. While John McCain and Sarah Palin focused on the rhetoric of patriotism, "trickle-down" economics, "staying the course" on Bush's tax cuts and family values; they also embraced the very economic policies that both undermine the middle class and subvert the security of American family life.

Understanding the impact of technological revolutions on major financial booms and busts, including the ongoing crash of 2008, from the standpoint of historical materialism allows us to understand the causes of economic crisis as well as what can be done to change the system we live in and reduce the turmoil.

The financial meltdown on Wall Street has provoked a severe ideological crisis. Capitalism itself is under scrutiny. In the corporate media, one can now find regular discussions of Marxism, capitalism and socialism – not always positively presented to be sure, but at times the discussion has been thoughtful.

The violent explosion of this crisis did not surprise us; I mentioned it a few months ago while the conventional economists were ignoring its coming development and consequences, especially in Europe.

In his weekly address posted to YouTube.com, President-elect Barack Obama discussed the economic crisis and the need to invest federal dollars in creating new jobs.

Emerging nations need their own stabilization funds, independent of the IMF, and its parent – the US Treasury which provides most of its financing. That was the conclusion of two experts at a seminar sponsored by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) this week in Washington, D.C.

Testifying before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this afternoon, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger didn’t mince words about the auto industry’s need for Congress to approve a bridge loan.

A raging debate is underway across the country, in Congress, and between the incoming Obama and outgoing Bush administrations on the fate of the US auto industry.

Critics argue that for over a decade, the United States has been striving to create commercial inroads into Latin America by way of bilateral free trade agreements that benefit US economic interests to the detriment of those of Latin America.

The market mechanism is an effective control device for a myriad of unimportant decisions, and as an arbiter of the economic value of a commodity. But it fails important equity, efficiency, and stability tests.

The battle to define the outcome of the 2008 elections began in earnest just seconds after the TV networks projected Barack Obama the winner. Most commentators focused on the historic nature of Obama's win, while conservatives immediately dropped their accusations that Obama advocated socialism.

More than 1.1 million jobs have been lost since the beginning of 2008, according to the latest data from the Department of Labor released Nov. 7th.

In a letter circulated this week to the staff and leadership of the United Steelworkers union (USW), USW President Leo Gerard expressed jubilation at the election of Barack Obama.

HAVANA, Cuba, Nov 6 (acn) Michael Mauricio, president of the Florida Produce company from the US, participating in Havana's International Trade Fair (FIHAV 2008), said he was in favor of an improvement of trade relations between Cuba and his country.

Striking a unifying theme, President-elect Barack Obama told a crowd of an estimated 1 million people in Chicago, Illinois and millions watching and listening around the world, that "America is not and never has been just a collection of red states and blue states."