Dear Friend,

Thank you for the outpouring of letters to Capitol Hill last week in response to our special appeal against a “blank check for Wall Street.” IPS is now working with a broad range of allies to adapt our Sensible Plan for Recovery into a broad popular movement to press for a people-based economic plan for Main Street and the rest of the unfinished agenda from last week’s bailout vote. You can check out all the press coverage of our work below, as well as view the terrific C-SPAN event that IPS sponsored on the bailout with Barbara Ehrereich, Dean Baker, and others.

This week, as the world’s financial authorities descend on Washington for the World Bank annual meetings, IPS released a new report on the obscene growth of World Bank fossil fuel lending. We are also celebrating the release of Development Redefined: How the Market Met its Match, the new book by Robin Broad and myself on the end of market fundamentalism and the rise of sustainable alternatives.

Let me end by urging you all to join IPS next Wednesday, October 15, at the National Press Club for a celebration of human rights at our 32nd annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards, followed by a joint viewing of the final presidential debate. You can buy your tickets by clicking here.

PUBLIC WORKS

The Institute’s Articles, Books, and Reports

Report
Dirty is the New Clean
OCTOBER 9 - A Critique of the World Bank’s Strategic Framework for Development and Climate Change. By Janet Redman.

Report
World Bank Group Fossil Fuel Financing, 2004-2008
OCTOBER 8 - From the report “Dirty is the New Clean,” new facts about the World Bank Group’s lending to coal, oil, and gas which is up 94% from 2007. By Elizabeth Bast, Elena Garabizza, Steve Kretzmann, Janet Redman.

Op-Ed
Truth, Lies, the Bailout, and CEO Pay
OCTOBER 6 - The bailout does precious little to limit the extravagant pay that gives top executives the incentive to behave outrageously. By Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati, published in AlterNet.

Declaration
IPS Statement on the Congressional Bailout of Wall Street
OCTOBER 3 - Congress needs to address the bailout’s unfinished agenda and fix our broken financial system. By Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins, Karen Dolan, Sam Pizzigati.

Commentary
South Korea: Still Dreaming of Regionalism
OCTOBER 3 - Collaboration in Northeast Asia is crucial to the future of South Korea and its allies. By John Feffer, published in Inter Press Service.

Report
A Sensible Plan for Recovery
SEPTEMBER 30 - Americans recognize the need to act on our current crisis but detest the idea that ordinary taxpayers should bear the brunt of bailing out the kingpins of Wall Street. By Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins, Dedrick Muhammad, Sam Pizzigati.

Report
Reaction to Bailout Vote
SEPTEMBER 29 - IPS analysts say Wall Street, not taxpayers, should pay. By Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Dedrick Muhammad, Sam Pizzigati.

Op-Ed
U.S. Should Boost Nonmilitary Security
SEPTEMBER 29 - Foreign aid and diplomacy are key to strategic success. By Lawrence Korb and Miriam Pemberton, published in Defense News.

Op-Ed
Surrounding China’s String of Pearls
SEPTEMBER 29 - The United States’ “rimland strategy” highlights the ambiguity of its relationship with China. By John Feffer, published in Mother Jones.

Talking Points
IPS Plan to Pay for Recovery
SEPTEMBER 26 - Where to Find $900 Billion from the Wall Street Speculators. By Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Dedrick Muhammad, Sam Pizzigati.

Magazine Article
Secretary of Commerce: Margot Dorfman; Secretary of State: Jim McDermott
SEPTEMBER 26 - Our Picks for an Obama Cabinet: Parts 1 & 2. By Phyllis Bennis and Chuck Collins, published in In These Times.



IN THE MEDIA
Quotes and Interviews

Editorial in USA Today
In Ways Large and Small, Washington Coddles Rich
OCTOBER 9 - “Taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to subsidize outsized pay packages to the tune of more than $5 billion a year.”

Nicholas Kristof column in The New York Times
Save the Fat Cats
OCTOBER 2 - “If the Congressional critics of the bailout want to do some lasting good, they should come back in January - after approving the bailout now - with a series of tough measures to improve governance and inject more fairness in the economy. A starting point would be to remove tax subsidies on executive pay…The Institute for Policy Studies in Washington estimates that U.S. taxpayers every year progvide more than $20 billion in tax subsidies for executive pay.”

Article in The Washington Times
As Palin’s Star Dims, Fey Turns Superstar
OCTOBER 9 - “‘It used to be that prospective politicians chose law school as the first step in their career path,’ John Feffer wrote in analysis of the rising role of comedians in modern media politics. ‘Future politicians may skip law school altogether and try out for the ‘Saturday Night Live’ team instead.’”

Article in The Guardian (UK)
Environmentalists Criticise World Bank on Climate Ahead of Annual Meeting
OCTOBER 8 - “‘The Bank is proposing that the solution to this problem of climate change is advocating cheap energy in the form of coal, that coal is integral in overcoming poverty,’ Janet Redman, a research director at the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal-leaning U.S. think tank, told reporters today.”

Segment on NPR’s “News and Notes”
Africa Update: AFRICOM Now In Full Operation
OCTOBER 7 - “I think people see [AFRICOM] as an expansion of the U.S. military footprint on African soil. They see it as the U.S. interested in Africa because of all these strategic assets. Clearly oil is at the top of the list, with 24% of U.S. oil now coming from the African continent. Controlling oil is key for this administration and for the U.S. in general…At a time when there is a global financial crisis, when people are facing not only the fuel crisis but food, global food crisis, this is the last thing Africa needs: more support, training, equipment for militaries on the continent and increasing also the U.S. military presence there,” said Emira Woods.

Article in Network World
Will the Bailout Have Any Impact on Executive Pay?
OCTOBER 6 - “Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Program at the think-tank Institute for Policy Studies, says the bailout’s provisions on executive pay have both strengths and weaknesses. Anderson sees the restrictions on golden parachutes and caps legislators placed on corporate income tax deductions as positive steps. But she also believes the law gives too much power to Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, to define excessive pay.”

Article in the UN Dispatch
A Better National Security Budget
OCTOBER 3 - “Foreign Policy in Focus, a think tank that promotes diplomacy and international cooperation, has released a ‘Unified Security Budget’ in which they outline their ideal foreign policy budget for the just begun 2009 fiscal year. The report argues - echoing a broad consensus that includes both presidential candidates as well as the current Secretary of Defense - that the United States should temper its military defense spending with increased investment in diplomacy and other crucial non-military tools for achieving our foreign policy priorities.”

Article in Reuters
Americans Query CEO Pay Scales as Crisis Deepens
OCTOBER 3 - “Last year CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index on average took in $10.5 million in pay, 344 times that of the typical U.S. worker, according to the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, two groups that focus on social justice issues.’It’s an issue that people are outraged about across the political spectrum,’ said Sarah Anderson, an IPS analyst specializing in executive pay.”

Segment on Counterspin
Phyllis Bennis on the Presidential Debate
OCTOBER 3 - “I think [the debate]…did reflect the reality of where political discourse is in this country, in elite circles of both parties, about how to think about the world, and that is the privileging of military involvement over diplomacy, the privileging of the Pentagon over the State Deparment in how political affairs in the rest of the world get dealth with,” said Phyllis Bennis.

Column in Reuters
John McCain and Big Stick Foreign Policy: Bernd Debusmann
OCTOBER 2 - “‘We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact - a League of Democracies - that can harness the vast influence of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world,’ McCain said. Foreign Policy Magazine, an independent publication, described such a league as one of his 10 worst ideas. Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington research group, said the league was ‘a polite way of saying ‘club of all countries we like, designed to exclude and probably gang up on all the countries we don’t like.”‘

C-SPAN Video
Institute for Policy Studies Panel on the Economics of Inequality
SEPTEMBER 30 - “The Institute for Policy Studies published a new book entitled, ‘Mandate for Change: Policies and Leadership for 2009 and Beyond,’ which follows the U.S. presidential election. The panel is one in a series discussing policy solutions for pressing local, national, and international issues. Panelists focus on the issue of economic inequality, market instability, in the 2008 presidential race.” With panelists Barbara Ehrenrich, Dean Baker, and Jared Bernstein, and Chuck Collins as moderator.

Column by Derrick Z. Jackson in The Boston Globe
The Nation’s Social Bargain with the Rich
SEPTEMBER 30 - “Institute senior scholar Chuck Collins said that would be a much more fair way to deal with the consequences, and discourage a worsening of ‘casino capitalism,’ than the rush to dump this on the taxpayer. ‘Many of these things have been examined, but not implemented,’ Collins said, ‘But Congress essentially punted on how to pay for the bailout.’ If Congress is the punter, the people are the football being kicked once again far downfield as Congress and the CEOs high-five with relief from the skybox.”

Article in the Christian Science Monitor
Could Bailout’s Pay Caps Launch Wall Street Trend?
SEPTEMBER 30 - “‘Congress missed a golden opportunity to use the leverage of the bailout to put tough controls on an out-of-control executive pay system,’ said Sarah Anderson, project director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive think tank in Washington. “Without clear limits on pay, the public is being asked to put their trust in Secretary [of the Treasury Henry] Paulson, a man who made hundreds of millions of dollars as a Wall Street CEO, to decide what’s ‘excessive,” she said in a statement Monday.”

Column by George Monbiot in The Guardian (UK)
The Free Market Preachers Have Long Practised State Welfare for the Rich
SEPTEMBER 30 - “A new paper by the US Institute for Policy Studies shows that, through a series of cunning tax and accounting loopholes, the US spends $20bn a year subsidising executive pay.”

Article in Yes! Magazine
They Stood Up to the Banks
SEPTEMBER 30 - “The trouble with the bailout package, besides its breathtaking size and poor overall design, is that it asks those in the real economy - now and indefinitely into the future - to once again prop up the speculative system that is concentrating wealth and power at the top. So what do we do instead of a bailout? Three principles proposed by the Institute for Policy Studies stand out as good guidelines…The Institute for Policy Studies is promoting these principles among lawmakers, along with specific ways of implementing them.”

Article in CFO.com
Critics Call Out Bailout Plan’s Exec-Pay Provisions
SEPTEMBER 29 - “At present a $1 million cap is required for CEOs and the next four highest-paid executives, but does not apply to performance-based pay and commissions. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, most companies cap executives’ base salaries to $1 million and then add other types of compensation that are deductible. Under the proposed bill, those performance-based compensation and commissions would not not have been deductible. ‘What I find disappointing is that they didn’t put a clear limit on what executives can make,’ says Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy project at the Institute for Policy Studies.”