Global Economy

For more than a quarter century, IPS has been a leader in strengthening citizen responses to the global economy through research, writing, film, education, and coalition building. The project has produced dozens of books, articles, films, and educational materials.

Executive Excess 2012: The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket

Cover: The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket

Nationwide, budget cuts have axed 627,000 public service jobs just since June 2009. Schools, health clinics, fire stations, parks, and recreation facilities—virtually no public service has gone unsqueezed. Tax dollars haven’t seemed this scarce in generations.

Yet tens of billions of these scarce tax dollars are getting diverted. These tax dollars are flowing from average Americans who depend on public services to the kingpins of America’s private sector. They’re subsidizing, directly and indirectly, the mega-million paychecks that go to the top executives at our nation’s biggest banks and corporations.

Read the report and take action.

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Recent Work

Report
Mining for Profits in International Tribunals - Updated
May 9, 2013 - How transnational corporations use trade and investment treaties as powerful tools in disputes over oil, mining, and gas. / Como las empresas mineras transnacionales utilizan las reglas de los acuerdos de inversión y de comercio como poderosos instrumentos a su favor en las disputas por el petróleo, la minería y el gas. By Sarah Anderson and Manuel Perez-Rocha

Op-Ed
Pro-Austerity CEOs Rake in Taxpayer-Subsidized Pay
May 2, 2013 - Ordinary Americans who rely on government retirement benefits are actually subsidizing runaway CEO pay. By Sarah Anderson, published in The Kansas City Star and The Bradenton (FL) Herald and The Merced (CA) Sun-Star

Report
"Fix the Debt" CEOs Enjoy Taxpayer-Subsidized Pay
May 2, 2013 - A new report by IPS and Campaign for America's Future shows that America’s top CEOs are pocketing massive taxpayer subsidies at the same time they’re pushing austerity cutbacks in government programs that benefit ordinary citizens. By Sarah Anderson, Scott Klinger, Javier Rojo, published in Common Dreams and AFL-CIO and Daily Kos and Think Progress and Dow Jones and The Hill and The Huffington Post and Salon.com and Fox Business News and Marketwatch and Business Insider

Blog
Inside-outside Strategy on Wall Street Tax
April 24, 2013 - countries are already raising significant revenue from national financial transaction taxes. By Sarah Anderson

Blog
How About a Tax System for the 99 Percent?
April 17, 2013 - Feeling like taxes are more unfair than ever? By Robin Broad and John Cavanagh

Report
Corporate Tax Dodgers: 10 Companies and Their Tax Loopholes
April 15, 2013 - A new report looks at 10 U.S. corporations that have used an array of tax loopholes and corporate subsidies to slash their tax bills: Bank of America, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, Merck, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Verizon. By Sarah Anderson, Scott Klinger, Javier Rojo

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Download
- Released April 15, 2005
Wal-Mart's Pay Gap
By Sarah Anderson

This short report shows how Wal-Mart’s generous compensation for top executives contrasts sharply with the wages of the people who produced or sold the goods that earned the company $10.3 billion in profits on sales of $285 billion in 2004.
- Released August 31, 2004
Executive Excess 2004
By Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Chris Hartman, Scott Klinger

A climate of anxiety has enveloped the country over the past year. Workers are increasingly anxious about their job security and the rising cost of basics like health insurance, housing, college, and gasoline. Many military families are facing particularly difficult financial strains at home as they grapple with the dire risks to their loved ones far away. And through it all, too many corporate executives remain removed from such cares and worries. As they demand costcutting on the factory floor and in the back offices, costs in their own executive suites continue to soar. And as the Iraq conflict rages on, many corporate leaders are personally profiting from the suffering through war-related contracts.
Download Executive Excess 2003
- Released August 26, 2003
Executive Excess 2003: CEOs Win, Workers and Taxpayers Lose
By Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Chris Hartman, Scott Klinger

Since we began tracking executive pay 10 years ago, the public image of CEOs has risen and fallen, roughly in tandem with the economy. In the early 1990s, with the economy in recession, CEOs and their lavish pay packages were a potent political issue, the object of scorn from presidential candidates and members of Congress alike. In the late 1990s, as the stock market took off, CEOs became modern-day heroes. Few really seemed to mind that CEO pay was rising much faster than worker pay, much faster even than corporate profits or the stock market.

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Buy This Book
- Published January 28, 2009
- ISBN 978-0-7391-3167-1
Mandate for Change: Policies and Leadership for 2009 and Beyond
By Chester Hartman

Three decades ago, conservative ideologues at The Heritage Foundation produced a primer on the Reagan Revolution entitled Mandate for Leadership, which offered an overarching philosophy against the role of government and in favor of markets.

Today, IPS has taken on the same task for the Obama administration. Mandate for Change is aimed at strengthening the new administration at a time when the need for progressive policies — and appointing progressive people to lead such efforts—is most urgent.
Buy This Book
- Published September 16, 2008
- ISBN 978-1-59451-523-1
Development Redefined: How the Market Met its Match
By Robin Broad and John Cavanagh

Rejecting the “flat worldism” of the globalists as well as the peaks and valleys of trade and aid policies over the years, Robin Broad and John Cavanagh guide us through the raging debate over the best route to development for the poorer nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

This book takes readers on a journey through the rise and fall of the one-size-fits-all model of development that richer nations began imposing on poorer ones three decades ago. That model — called the “Washington Consensus” by its backers and “neoliberalism” or “market fundamentalism” by its critics — placed enormous power in markets to solve the problems of the poor.

The authors have stood at the epicenter of these debates from their perches in the United Nations, the U.S. government, academia, and civil society. They guide us back in time to understand why the Washington Consensus dominated for so long, and how it devastated workers, the environment, and the poor. At the same time, they chart the rise of an “alter-globalization” movement of those adversely affected by market fundamentalism. Today, this movement is putting alternatives into action across the globe, and what constitutes development is being redefined.
Buy This Book
- Published April 1, 2005
- ISBN 978-1-56584-956-3
Field Guide to the Global Economy (Second Edition)
By Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Thea Lee

This fully updated and expanded second edition of The Field Guide to the Global Economy presents the latest facts to help make sense of the rapidly changing international economy. Illustrated throughout with charts, graphs, and cartoons, the book documents new trends, including the foreign “outsourcing” of U.S. service jobs, as well as the increasing influence of mega-firms like Wal-Mart and labor union–free China on workers around the globe.

Published in conjunction with the Institute for Policy Studies, an independent research institute based in Washington, D.C., this accessible guide explains how global institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and North American Free Trade Agreement affect communities, workers, the poor, and the environment. The book dispels the widely disseminated propaganda about current globalization policies and provides an update on the burgeoning movement that is challenging them, from Bolivian water warriors to U.S. student anti-sweatshop activists.

November 27, 2012

Think Progress features report “A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
"These CEOs have little cause for concern if government retirement assistance is cut, as they have millions of dollars squirreled away in their personal retirement accounts."
November 27, 2012

The Huffington Post features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
As negotiations to avert the so-called fiscal cliff intensify, corporate lobbying groups are pushing key tax perks that benefit the wealthy. A coalition of financial institutions, fossil fuel companies, telecommunications firms and even the cigarette company Altria are teaming up to block a tax increase on dividends -- a policy that overwhelmingly aids the rich.

The corporate coalition, known as The Alliance for Savings and Investment, is composed exclusively of corporations and lobbying groups.

The Alliance for Savings and Investment, which declined to comment for this article, is just one of several corporate lobbying groups that are pushing to include tax perks for the wealthy and large corporations in any deal to avert the fiscal cliff. The Campaign to Fix the Debt has organized dozens of corporate CEOs to advocate for $134 billion in tax breaks for Fortune 500 companies as part of any deal to avert the fiscal cliff, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank.
November 27, 2012

Mother Jones features report “A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
November 27, 2012

The (San Francisco) Beyond Chron features report “A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
A new Institute for Policy Studies report released on November 27 examines CEOs of public companies who have endorsed the “Fix the Debt” campaign. It finds that these CEOs, while calling for ordinary Americans to take cuts in Social Security and Medicare, are sitting on an average of $9 million each in retirement funds. Most are also running large deficits in their own employees’ pension funds.

“These CEOs paint a stark picture of hypocrisy,” said Scott Klinger, a report co-author. “They are feathering their own retirement nests while trying to deny ordinary Americans — including their own employees — their hard-earned nest eggs. They’re simply taking advantage of the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ to push the same old agenda of more corporate tax breaks while shifting costs onto the poor and elderly.”
November 26, 2012

Fortune features report “A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
What should boards pay CEOs for anyway? A new study raises questions about the structure and size of CEO pay that deserve answers -- and fast.

An analysis from the Institute for Policy Studies' (IPS) released earlier this month shows that CEOs will reap huge personal moolah if a fiscal cliff campaign some of them are undertaking is successful. According to the report, the Fix the Debt campaign "has raised $60 million and recruited more than 80 CEOs."

. . . Certainly, putting people to work just because is not on many company agendas. The IPS study states that the "63 public companies in the Fix the Debt campaign" currently have more than "$480 billion in cash on their balance sheets, enough to pay living wage salaries for 10 million workers."
November 26, 2012

Fortune features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
"An analysis from the Institute for Policy Studies' (IPS) released earlier this month shows that CEOs will reap huge personal moolah if a fiscal cliff campaign some of them are undertaking is successful. According to the report, the Fix the Debt campaign 'has raised $60 million and recruited more than 80 CEOs.'"
November 26, 2012

Bernie Sanders Senate Page features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
[Reprint from Huffington Post]

The corporate CEOs who have made a high-profile foray into deficit negotiations have themselves been substantially responsible for the size of the deficit they now want closed.

. . . As part of their push, they are advocating a "territorial tax system" that would exempt their companies' foreign profits from taxation, netting them about $134 billion in tax savings, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled "The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks" -- money that could help pay off the federal budget deficit.

Yet the CEOs are not offering to forgo federal money or pay a higher tax rate, on their personal income or corporate profits. Instead, council recommendations include cutting "entitlement" programs, as well as what they call "low-priority spending."

Many of the companies recommending austerity would be out of business without the heavy federal support they get, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which both received billions in direct bailout cash, plus billions more indirectly through AIG and other companies taxpayers rescued.
November 25, 2012

The Huffington Post features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
The corporate CEOs who have made a high-profile foray into deficit negotiations have themselves been substantially responsible for the size of the deficit they now want closed.

As part of their push, they are advocating a "territorial tax system" that would exempt their companies' foreign profits from taxation, netting them about $134 billion in tax savings, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled "The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks" -- money that could help pay off the federal budget deficit.

Many of the companies recommending austerity would be out of business without the heavy federal support they get, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which both received billions in direct bailout cash, plus billions more indirectly through AIG and other companies taxpayers rescued.

Just three of the companies -- GE, Boeing and Honeywell -- were handed nearly $28 billion last year in federal contracts alone.

[Honeywell executive] Cote ranked 11th on a list compiled in a recent study conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies of executives who have saved the most from the Bush tax cuts. According to the IPS, Cote's taxable compensation for 2011 was a bit more than $55 million, and he did not pay about $2.5 million thanks to the Bush tax cuts.
November 19, 2012

Al Jazeera features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”
Visit the publisher's website • See the report
If politics were truly rational and truly democratic, the tax-cutting Santa would be history. We've run the experiment not once, but twice, and the results were exactly what you'd expect in the first place: It didn't work. Revenues go down, deficits go way up: The tax-cutting Santa brings diamonds for millionaires, but only lumps of coal for the rest of us.

But politics is neither rational nor democratic - at least not without a great deal of struggle to make it so. It is a game of power, which usually means a game that those with money control. A classic example of that is the "bipartisan" "Fix The Debt" campaign, the subject of a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies,
November 18, 2012

The Athens News
Visit the publisher's website
Back in the U.S., a group from Occupy Wall Street, which itself was inspired in part by the Spanish M-15 movement against austerity that began on May 15, 2011, has taken a creative approach to the blight of debt that is afflicting millions. Calling itself "Rolling Jubilee," after the ancient practice of forgiving all debts every 50 years, the group is buying debt from lenders, for pennies on the dollar, and canceling it.

The amount may be symbolic, but an important message to President Obama and House Republicans as they wrangle over the future of the U.S. tax rates, deficit reduction and how to fund so-called entitlements. Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies prefers to call Social Security and Medicare "earned benefit programs, because these are programs that American workers are paying into over their lives, and they have a right to that money, to have these basic social programs that have made us a much stronger society with a stronger middle class." Anderson told me, "The approach to the debt should be to look at the ways that we could raise revenues through ... taxing financial transactions ... cutting fossil-fuel subsidies and using carbon taxes, and cutting military spending. That kind of combination could raise trillions of dollars over the next decade."

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IPS'er Kevin Shih takes to the street to advocate for a financial speculation tax. In many countries around the world, there is growing momentum behind proposals to place a very small tax on transactions of stock, currency, derivatives, and other financial assets. Such financial speculation taxes are one of the few available options that could generate the enormous financial resources required to pay for the continuing costs of the global financial and economic crisis, including reducing the high rate of job loss, and to achieve key development, health, education and climate change objectives in developing countries. Even at very low rates, such taxes could also discourage the type of short-term financial speculation that has little social value but poses high risks to the economy.

Learn More:

Blog
Conservative Candidate Supports Wall Street Speculation Tax
April 5, 2012 - The right-wing in France seeks popular support by getting behind a transactions tax on securities trades. By Sarah Anderson

Magazine Article
Nurses Fight for a Dose of Tax Justice
February 23, 2012 - Before there was Occupy, thousands of nurses were already taking on Wall Street to demand a financial transaction tax. By Sarah Anderson

Interview
[VIDEO] Why a Financial Transaction Tax?
January 11, 2012 - A 0.25% tax on financial transactions could raise $150 billion a year in the United States alone. By Sarah Anderson

Commentary
VIDEO: Why a Financial Transaction Tax?
December 4, 2011 - In an interview on The Real News, Sarah Anderson discusses how a tax on financial transactions could raise $150 billion a year in the US alone. By Sarah Anderson.

Commentary
Europe Taking Lead on Speculations Tax
June 30, 2011 - Out of the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis, an idea that progressives have been kicking around for decades – a financial transactions tax (FTT) – took on new life. By Sarah Anderson.

Blog
U.S. Nurses Bring Global Call to Tax Speculators to Wall Street
June 22, 2011 · National Nurses United stands with activists across the globe to bring attention to the need for a financial speculation tax. By Sarah Anderson and Marlee Blasenheim.

Magazine Article
Cut Wall Street Down to Size With a Financial Speculation Tax
June 9, 2011 · A financial speculation tax might not have stopped those greed-crazed fools, but at least Uncle Sam would've taken in about $1.1 billion on the deals. By Sarah Anderson, originally published in The Nation.

Blog
Nurses Join Call to "Tax Wall Street"
June 7, 2011 - A swarm of around a thousand nurses in scarlet scrubs descended on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in downtown Washington to call for a new economic agenda.By Sarah Anderson.

Talking Points
Seven Innovative Mechanisms of Development Finance
April 18, 2011 - As governments look for new options for public revenue stream, this table by IPS Global Economy project director Sarah Anderson shows which options can be considered, their potential revenue, and their administrative and political feasibility.By Sarah Anderson.

Talking Points
Financial Transaction Taxes and the Global South
April 8, 2011 - This downloadable pdf fact sheet answers frequently asked questions about the implications for the developing world of taxing financial speculation. By Sarah Anderson.

Blog
Europe Takes the Lead in Drive to Tax Speculators
March 10, 2011 - There are still places in the world where folks from across the political spectrum can have a rational discussion about fair taxation. By Sarah Anderson.

Article / Declaration
U.S. Groups Join Global Call to Tax Speculators
February 16, 2011 - Over 30 national organizations signed a letter urging President Obama to take action at home and abroad to stop rampant financial speculation.

Article / Op-Ed
Taxing Financial Speculation, Raising Funds for Critical Needs
February 14, 2011 - Levying a tiny tax on financial transactions could help build a healthier and more stable future. By Paul R. Epstein and Janet Redman, published in The Huffington Post.

Report / Report
Taxing the Wall Street Casino
June 17, 2010 - In the United States and many countries around the world, there is growing momentum behind proposals to place a very small tax on trades of stock, currency, derivatives, and other financial assets. By Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Scott Klinger, Janet Redman, Kevin Shih.

Media / Quote
The Growing Push to Impose a Transaction Tax - NYTimes.com
Jun 17, 2010 - The Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank, issued a report on Thursday promoting the benefits of such a tax.

Video / Interview
May 17, 2010 - IPS video on global day of action on financial speculation taxes:

Petition
Wealth for the Common Good petition for a financial speculation tax

Article / Column
Fighting Finance from Below
November 22, 2010 - Since the crash of 2008, writes guest columnist Sarah Anderson, global justice activists have begun to make progress in reining in the excesses of the financial industry. By Sarah Anderson

Article / Commentary
Unpopular Sarkozy Gets it Right on Financial Transactions Taxes in the G-20
November 4, 2010 - The French President is standing tough in his push to increase taxes on the financial sector. By Sarah Anderson

Article / Declaration
G-20: Take Action on Financial Transaction Taxes
October 27, 2010 - International civil society organizations urge G-20 leaders to make progress on taxing financial speculation at summit in Seoul. By Sarah Anderson, et al

Article / Op-Ed
It's Time We Taxed Financial Gambling
June 21, 2010 - A tiny tax would make purely speculative investment less profitable and encourage long-term, patient investment. By Sarah Anderson

Article / Op-Ed
Proving That Tea Partiers' Anti-Tax Extremism Isn't Even Loved by All Conservatives
June 18, 2010 - Taxing speculation could take us a long way toward reining in Wall Street. By Sarah Anderson

Article / Media Advisory
Taxing the Wall Street Casino
June 17, 2010 - Report looks at how speculation taxes might have changed the outcome of recent global financial fiascos By Sarah Anderson

Blog / Blog
Tax Wall Street to Pay for Jobs
June 17, 2010 - The Senate should be looking for ways to jumpstart the economy -- but not at the expense of those who suffered the most from the crisis. By Sarah Anderson and Kevin Shih

Article / Commentary
Reining in Wall Street: Round 1
May 27, 2010 - A May 17 rally in Washington, DC brought more than a thousand people into the streets, calling for a "financial speculation tax" as part of a broader financial reform agenda. By Sarah Anderson

Blog / Blog
Global Activists Coordinate Actions to Tax Speculators
May 20, 2010 - From Australia to Canada, activists are taking to the streets in cities around the world this week to hold the financial sector accountable for the costs of the global crisis. By Sarah Anderson

Article / Commentary
The Unfinished Business of Financial Reform
May 6, 2010 - Lawmakers will need to consider financial speculation taxes in the next round of the fight to rein in Wall Street. By Sarah Anderson

Global Economy

Executive Excess 2012: The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket

Recent Work

Think Progress features report “A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts”

The Huffington Post features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”

Mother Jones features report “A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts”

The (San Francisco) Beyond Chron features report “A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts”

Fortune features report “A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts”

Fortune features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”

Bernie Sanders Senate Page features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”

The Huffington Post features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”

Al Jazeera features report “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks”

The Athens News

Project Staff

Associate Fellows

Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging

Trade Agreements and Financial Crisis