Since the Mayan calendar didn’t usher in an end to the Great Recession, we still have to figure out why it happened. We could boil it down to two deadly sins (greed and pride) and two groups of culprits (financiers and legislators). The typical storyline is that greedy financiers worked around too-loose regulations in creating subprime mortgages that were grouped together and packaged as mor... More

Welcome to the Lunchtime Reader, where we assemble important stories to keep your eyes on. Michael Sean Winters is not a right-winger. Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter rails against the Obama administration for not providing a true religious exemption in their contraception mandate and also calls it bad politics. http://is.gd/WaNb1l Even Commonweal magazine published an ed... More