Apparently, the most important criterion for getting an important post in the Obama Administration is telling Big Lies, better yet with data. Jason Furman claims Walmart is a “progressive success story.”
Read more...Yves here. Reader From Mexico often chides readers in comments who like try to depict Argentina and other Latin American states as failures, when the ones who have distanced themselves from American/neoliberal policies have made solid social and economic progress.
This piece highlights a tangible indicator of the wane of US influence in the Americas.
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness
Read more...We discuss how outsourcing and offshoring are more about transferring income from low-level workers to middle and senior level managers than cost savings.
Read more...An important article in the Latin American press peculiarly has not gotten the attention it deserves. Or perhaps not so peculiarly, given the Obama administration’s intention to keep the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations as far out of the public eye as possible.
Read more...Yves here There’s been a great deal of consternation over a report that found that the median Spanish and Italian households are more than three times as wealthy as the median German household. This report says that these differences aren’t what they seem to be.
Read more...The status of the US dollar as the world reserve currency gives the US tremendous advantages. Among them: it allows the Fed to export inflation, while the Federal Government can run a huge deficit with impunity. But now an angry Russia has had enough!
Read more...By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
This Real News Network video on resistance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Japan (one of our military protectorates) explains some implications of TPP for health care policy, but also gives a glimpse of how our post-national global elites would like the nature of the State to change. Of course, the TPP negotiations are secret, which cannot but give the impression that TPP’s advantages are not likely to be readily apparent to the citizens who putatively give sovereign states their legitimacy. So, although US discussions have focused mainly on content and intellectual property issues, it would seem that the powers that be have bigger fish to fry.
Read more...It’s a sign of the times that a reputable economist, Dean Baker, can use the word “corruption” in the headline of an article describing two major trade deals under negotiation and no one bats an eye.
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/02/europe-waits-for-italy/“>MacroBusiness.
Another chapter in the Italy political story comes to a close as a government is formed, for how long who knows, but a familiar figure appears to be playing puppet master…
Read more...By Eric Yeldan, Professor of Economics and Dean at the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences Yasar University. Cross posted from Triple Crisis
The IMF released the April edition of its World Economic Outlook (WEO). One of the key analytical chapters (Chapter 3) of the Report is titled “The Dog that Didn’t Bark: Has Inflation Been Muzzled, or Was It Just Sleeping?” Its main argument (or rather sort of a mystery that needs to be resolved, in the words of its authors) is that over the course of the previous crisis episodes we used to witness severe increases in unemployment along with a simultaneous fall in inflation. Yet, during the current great recession there has been very little movement in inflation, while unemployment rates soared almost everywhere; —hence the metaphor: inflation (the dog…) does not respond (… bark). And the alleged mystery is but why?
The WEO suggests two candidates for explaining the mystery. Perhaps instead of looking for dogs, they should stop ignoring the elephant in the room.
Read more...This Real News Network interview with Peter Lee, an Asia Times Online columnist who has been covering China for 30 year, is a welcome antidote to some of the superficial, stereotype-laden coverage of North Korea, not just what its posturing means for the US but other major players in East Asia.
Read more...Whither gold?
Read more...I’ve mentioned repeatedly that Germany wants contradictory things: it wants to stop financing its trade partners (the periphery countries in Europe) and yet wants to continue to run large trade surpluses. I took this to be a sign of German wishful thinking, or just politicians figuring the incoherent strategy can still be maintained for the duration of their time in office.
A post by Yanis Varoufakis show that the Germans at least have better delusions that I realized.
Read more...A good piece in the Nation by Bill Greider, which focuses on Krugman’s long standing support of free trade, and how, contrary to his predictions, the results were not positive for ordinary American workers.
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