Senator Sanders

Unemployment The broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department reached its highest level in decades. More than one out of every six workers - 17.5 percent - was unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982. This includes the officially unemployed, discouraged workers, amd part-time workers who want to be working full time. "We simply cannot leave families in the lurch," Sen. Bernard Sanders said in the Rutland Herald about a step taken by Congress to extend jobless benefits. LINK

Too Big to Fail Sen. Sanders introduced legislation that would force the Treasury Department to break up all financial institutions whose failure could cause a major disruption to the nation's financial system, The  New York Times, The WallStreet Journal. Bloomberg, Fox Business News, Reuters, MarketWatch and The Huffington Post reported. "If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," Sanders said. In less than 24 hours, more than 5,100 people signed an online petition supporting the proposal. LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK

Sanders Unfiltered "President Bush and Ben Bernanke told us we needed to bail out Wall Street because we could not allow big financial institutions and insurance giants to fail because if they failed it would have led to the collapse of the U.S. and global economies. Today, most of the huge financial institutions still standing have become even bigger -- so big that the four largest banks in America...now issue one out of every two mortgages; two out of three credit cards; and hold $4 out of every $10 in bank deposits in the entire country," Sen. Sanders said in the weekly Web video on The Huffington Post. LINK

Climate Change "If we get our act together as a nation and start addressing the major environmental problems of our time, global warming and our continued dependence on fossil fuels, we can create millions of good-paying jobs. In other words, good environmental policy is good economic policy," Sen. Sanders said in an editorial that first appeared in Burlington Press, also in the Brattleboro Reformer. LINK

Fed Secrecy Robert Auerbach, author of "Deception and Abuse at the Fed," argued for an audit of the Federal Reserve as he spoke Friday at an event sponsored by the Henry B. Gonzalez Foundation. (Auerbach served on the House Banking Committee staff when Gonzalez was chairman.)  He said an audit would require the Fed to reveal what it has done with the $2 trillion it has distributed into the economy. Bills to conduct an audit, are sponsored in the U.S. House by Rep. Ron Paul and Sen. Sanders,  the San Antonio Express-News reported. LINK

International

Brown Calls for Global Transaction Tax The Group of 20 leading economies should consider applying a global financial transactions tax to pay for the cost of future banking crises, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Saturday in St. Andrews, Scotland. Brown said G20 members should discuss whether they need some kind of "insurance fee to reflect systemic risk or a resolution fund or contingent capital, The Wall Street Journal reported. LINK

National

Health Care - House Vote President Obama headed to Capitol Hill for talks with House Democrats as they scramble to find enough votes to pass landmark legislation to overhaul the nation's health care system. The House scheduled a rare Saturday session. Late Friday, House Democrats cleared an abortion-related impasse blocking a vote and officials expressed optimism they had finally lined up the support needed to pass Obama's signature issue, The Associated Press reported. LINK

Treasury Blocks Fannie Deal The U.S. Treasury blocked Fannie Mae's proposed sale of nearly $3 billion in low-income housing tax credits to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on Friday after concluding that the deal was too costly for taxpayers. The extraordinary move was the latest sign of tensions within the Obama administration over how to balance political and financial pressures resulting from the housing crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. LINK

Vermont

Dairy Crisis Dairy farmers are to vote today on a proposal to impose mandatory limits on milk production. Farmers from around the state are in Rutland this weekend for the 94th annual meeting and Conference of the Vermont Farm Bureau, at the Holiday Inn, and this morning, delegates are expected to decide if they would like to impose government-supervised limits on the amount of milk they produce, according to the Rutland Herald. LINK

Vermont Yankee Democratic gubernatorial candidate Susan Bartlett says there is no compelling reason for the Legislature to extend the license of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Bartlett told Vermont Public Radio that Vermont's long-term energy goal should be to renewable energy. LINK