"Consumer packaged goods" is the technical term for everything you buy when you go to "the store" to "get some stuff." For years now, you, the consumer, have been buying less of this stuff. What gives?

Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, spent yesterday being grilled by Congress for her company's years-long failure to fix a known safety defect in its cars. Barra's lack of answers is being blamed on the size of the organization she leads. Which is a great argument against the salaries that CEOs earn.

In 2010, federal regulators banned some of the more egregiously customer-screwing bank fees. In response, banks are just using overdraft fees to continue sucking you dry.

Michael Lewis's new book Flash Boys, about the inherent unfairness of high speed trading, is the talk of Wall Street and the financial media. The backlash to the book is a familiar refrain: "Everyone already knows that." Well, that's the point, isn't it?

The young adults of America have been sold a dream for their entire lives: go to the right school, get the right job, buy a house, and live the American Dream. Ha. The American Dream is dead, school is a debt trap, and young people are losing the economic race with the old.

Vice Media, a company that sells cool kids to corporations for marketing purposes and does good journalism on the side, is a legitimately profitable business. Makes a lot of cash. But is Vice really worth one jillion skillion bazillion dollars? Hmm...

America's student debt burden has been on the rise for years, along with America's class of incredibly well-educated retail workers. A new report reveals who's driving the train to debt hell: grad students. Don't do it!

Today in Ways the United States Tax Code Benefits the Rich: a new study indicates that the politically popular mortgage-interest deduction is useful mostly for helping affluent people buy larger homes.

Robert Marcus took over as CEO of Time Warner Cable in January. Six weeks later, the company was sold to Comcast. When the deal goes through, Marcus will receive $80 million, "a severance payment that amounts to more than $1 million a day in compensation for the less than two months he ran the company." He earned it.

Everyone who bothers to punch a few numbers into a calculator can tell you that most Americans have absolutely no hope of saving enough money for retirement. It's dog food days all around. The latest figures show that we are more confident about our retirement prospects, but just as broke as ever.

Consider us, the average American consumers: couch-bound, sluggish, overweight, grazing on a steady diet of heavy meats, hormone-laced milk, and refined sugars. An economically required fast is the best thing that could happen to us.

"The odds that Congress will pass an increase in the U.S. minimum wage before the November elections are so low that even the nation's lobbyists are largely ignoring it."

As memories of the harsh recession years are washed away by a wave of stories about the soaring stock market and hot tech IPOs, it is worth noting that the death of America's mythical "middle class" continues apace.

It's not just America suffering from levels of economic inequality that threaten the very fabric of society. It's the whole world. So the rich need to pay the piper. That is the considered opinion of the International Monetary Fund, which is not a revolutionary organization.

President Obama plans to use executive action to expand the number of American workers eligible for overtime pay. For those conservatives whose hackles are raised, take heart: Obama is tossing pebbles against a huge, advancing monster of inequality that may not be slain in this generation.

Each year, Warren Buffett—a folksy folk who has built a $60 billion fortune on pure folksiness—writes a letter to shareholders that is prized for its folsky wisdom. This year, he shares some news that even you, the poor average bastard, can use.

A new research paper says there is evidence that five major banks may have been improperly colluding to manipulate the price of gold for the past decade. Shocking behavior, if true.

Last year, hedge fund founder George Soros made $4 billion. Five other hedge fund men made more than $1 billion. This, while hedge funds on the whole did much, much worse than a simple stock fund. Which brings us to the topic of socialism.

The year 2013 may go down as the peak of the post-recession boom. The S&P 500 stock index rose by 30%, its best year since before the first tech bubble burst. And hey, home prices did better than they have since before the housing bubble burst. The top... or just another stair, to heaven?

Hindsight is 20/20. And that's what makes it so great. It allows us to chastise those who were wrong in the past.