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Blog Syndicate

Double Eagle

Yesterday I drew two cartoons with eagles. The first one is in response to the news of additional economic sanctions against North Korea, including banking restrictions that should put a crimp in the wallets of North Korea’s elites.

The next one is a Mexican eagle cartoon (the eagle and snake characters on the Mexican flag). Next to a weeping Statue of Liberty, weeping eagles are an editorial cartooning standard – so much so that we should probably avoid these cartoons, but when the times call for weeping eagle it is hard to say “no.”

About a month ago I vacationed in Mexico City with my family, staying in an Airbnb apartment in the La Condesa neighborhood which was one of the hardest hit in the earthquake. The scenes on TV look terribly familiar. It is a lovely neighborhood and the neighbors were all very nice; I’m not surprised to see the residents all pulling together in these difficult days. Such a horror.

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Blog Syndicate

Obama and Payday Lenders!

Payday lenders are a blight on society, charging the poor hundreds of percent interest rates and trapping them in a never-ending spiral of debt. I hadn’t been aware of the problem until I first moved to Nashville and was stunned to see a payday lender on almost every block. There must be more payday lenders than restaurants in Tennessee!

Today I’m taking a holiday from my usual Obama bashing as the president is using his executive authority to impose proposed, crippling regulations on the payday loan industry that may put the whole, evil vampire’s nest out of business. Bravo, Obama!
payday-lenders750

See me draw this one in the live-stream video below!

And watch me color it in Photoshop on my Wacom Cintiq in the live-stream video below while I chat with fans from Twitch.tv/darylcagle

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Blog Syndicate

Tubman Boots Andrew Jackson off of the $20 Bill!

I think Harriet Tubman was a good choice for the $20 bill. I drew her booting President Andrew Jackson out of his perch. This is really a local Nashville cartoon as Jackson is Nashville favorite son; his slave plantation, the “Hermitage” is an impressive local attraction. Some critics have complained that Jackson’s great legacy is the “trail of tears” where displaced native Americans were marched to reservations in Oklahoma as Jackson broke treaties with the “indians” and sent many to their deaths. The “trail of tears” ran very close to the Hermitage, and Jackson reportedly didn’t bother to walk outside to take a look. Critics thought a native American choice would have been better than Tubman, given Jackson’s history.

See me draw this one in real time, in the video below.

I color the cartoon in the live-stream video below.

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Blog

Jenet Yellen and the Fed

Wall Street types are holding their breath, eagerly awaiting a new pronouncement from the Federal Reserve Bank’s meeting that’s going on now. Those Wall Street “bulls” are  looking for the word, “patience” in a Fed statement, as a clue to whether interest rates will go up, or stay low longer.

Janet Yellen is a rather dull character, but she is delightfully easy to draw. I wash more readers could recognize her so that I wouldn’t have to put a label on her expressive torso. I always feel like I’ve somehow failed in a cartoon when I have to use labels, even when I have a caricature right and the character should be recognizable. Here’s the cartoon in black and white line art, which most readers will see in the newspaper.

…and here it is in color, which most people prefer. Notice that the Wall Street bulls are all brown, St. Just style cattle, ready to slaughter for their delicious beef.

 

yellen-fed-wall-street

 

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Columns

Greedy Bankers Devour Cyprus

The banking crisis in Cyprus is great fun and a gift to editorial cartoonists — like me! It is a story of crazy economic collapse, with Russian mobsters laundering money in secret accounts and crooked Cypriot bankers who gambled the dirty cash away on risky Greek bonds, bringing down the economy of their tiny nation.

The sordid tale reminds me of Greek mythology and Francisco Goya’s famous painting Saturn Devouring his Child, that the Spanish master painted on the plaster wall of his dining room at home, charming his guests when they came over for dinner. I love to draw editorial cartoons that deface masterpieces; editors seem to like these cartoons the best, reprinting them much more than my other cartoons.

Saturn knew that one of his children was going to kill him, so, of-course, he ate all of his kids, except for one that his wife, Rhea, hid from him. Rhea slipped a rock into swaddling clothes and gave it to Saturn, who swiftly swallowed the rock, thinking he was eating his son, Zeus.

Years later, Zeus grew up and confronted his Dad, by some accounts slicing Dad’s belly open and freeing his siblings, the Titans, who emerged no worse for wear after their years of digestive confinement. By other accounts, Zeus slipped his Dad something that made Dad vomit up his Titanic siblings — either way, this Greek myth is a perfect metaphor for Cyprus and the EU.

Spurred on by Russian mobsters, greedy, giant, Greek bankers devoured the little economy of Cyprus and soon the EU will slice open the bankers’ belly (or induce them to vomit, depending on which version you prefer) freeing the Cypriot economy which will be no worse for wear from its digestive confinement.

Another interesting element in this mythical cartoon comparison is that Zeus also castrated his father, just as the EU will metaphorically castrate the Cypriot bankers and give those Russian mobsters a “haircut.”

In cartoons, mythology, masterpieces and economics, what goes around comes around.

Daryl Cagle is a cartoonist who runs the CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate distributing editorial cartoons to more than 850 newspapers around the world including the paper you are reading now; he is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society. Comments to Daryl may be sent to [email protected]. Read Daryl’s blog at www.cagle.com/daryl.