Adam Levitin: Fighting for the Middle Class
How the deck is stacked against the middle class, and what it takes to change that.
Read more...Category Archives: Economic fundamentals
Michael Hudson: The Paradox of Financialized Industrialization
The great question today is whether post-feudal rentier capitalism will stifle industrial capitalism instead of serving it. The aim of finance is not merely to exploit labor, but to conquer and appropriate industry, real estate and government. The result is a financial oligarchy, neither industrial capitalism nor a tendency to evolve into socialism.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Debt Fueled Stock Buybacks Now Eating into Earnings
Companies with investment-grade credit ratings – the cream-of-the-crop “high-grade” corporate borrowers – have gorged on borrowed money. Interest on that mountain of debt, which grew another 4% in the second quarter, is now eating their earnings like never before.
Read more...Michael Perelman: The Essential Handbook for Engineering an Unequal Society
While the thrust of Perelman’s post is no doubt familiar to readers, take note of how simple and few in number are the essential principles for creating a highly unequal society, and how easy it is to describe them them in antiseptic language.
Read more...Michael Hoexter: Should the US Federal Government Invest $4-$6 Trillion Per Year on Climate Protection? (Part 2 of 2)
Further discussion of why the excuses to do nothing or too little on the climate change front don’t hold up to serious scrutiny.
Read more...Michael Hoexter: Should the US Federal Government Invest $4-$6 Trillion Per Year on Climate Protection? (Part 1 of 2)
Why the excuses to do nothing or too little on the climate change front don’t hold up to serious scrutiny.
Read more...Mark Blyth: “Austerity Cures Nothing”
This is a bracing, no-nonsene talk from economist Mark Blyth of Brown University, who is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century and Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.
Read more...The Financial Sector is Too Big
Has the financial sector become too large, absorbing too many resources, and enhancing instabilities?
Read more...Trans-Pacific Partnership: Should the Key Losers – China and Europe – Join Forces?
Can China and Europe forge a pact to undercut the impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Read more...Could The Syrian Conflict Irrevocably Change Global Geopolitics?
A concise, high-level overview of the main issues at play in the Syrian conflict.
Read more...Michael Hudson on Parasitic Financial Capitalism
An interview with Michael Hudson on his latest book, Killing the Host, which focuses on the destruction wrought by financial capitalism.
Read more...Is Russia Plotting To Bring Down OPEC?
Can Russia succeed in creating an anti-Saudi bloc to split OPEC by taking advantage of having oil supplies less vulnerable to transit risk?
Read more...Wolf Richter: This Chart Truly Depicts a New, Terrible Trend in Jobs Mess
As Oregoncharles put it, in terms of labor force participation, “Obama has now cancelled out the entire effect of the Women’s Movement.”
Read more...Who Needs Balanced Trade? Who Needs Balanced Budgets?
Who needs balanced trade? It’s time to challenge the premises of “trade” deals like the TransPacific Partnership.
Read more...Frances Coppola: The Great Yield Divergence
Puzzling over the Great Divergence of real and nominal yields. Ever since the Great Depression, nominal yields have been persistently above real yields Yet in the previous 200 years, despite periods of fiat currency and high inflation, real and nominal yields didn’t diverge. Why do they now?
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