Puerto Rico Defaults a Second Time; Claims of “Scheming” Designed to Crush Island Citizens
Puerto Rico fails to pay $37.3 million in bonds due today. While investors and analysts call it a bluff, the stakes are quite real.
Read more...Category Archives: Infrastructure
Michael Hudson: The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia
How the West is deploying the IMF to fight the nightmare scenario of US geopolitical strategists: foreign economic independence from the US.
Read more...From G20 to Labour20
Labour20 set forth important goals not just for labor but for the economy and broader society. But does organized labor have the credibility to promote these aims?
Read more...The Bigger Significance of CalPERS’ Private Equity Carry Fee Release: Another Nail in the Carried Interest Tax Loophole Coffin
Why the CalPERS carry fee disclosure could affect the debate over ending the carried interest loophole.
Read more...Corbynomics 101: A Guide to People’s QE (PQE)
Why the three big charges commonly made against Corbyn’s “People’s Quantitative Easing” or PQE, are all wet.
Read more...Why Bernie Sanders Should Add a Job Guarantee to His Policy Agenda
Bernie has unapologetically rejected sclerotic visions of what is ‘politically possible’. And now he should add the Job Guarantee to his list of issues.
Read more...Dutch Pension Fund Escalates War Against Private Equity Secrecy, Won’t Invest in Funds that Fail to Disclose All Fees and Costs
By challenging the private equity secrecy and fee-gouging regimes, a major Dutch pension fund shows how craven its US counterparts are.
Read more...Why the Greek Government Rejects a Grexit
Why the Greek government and Greek citizens recognize that a Grexit is a terrible idea for them.
Read more...Detroit: A Case Study of Oligarchs and Vigilantes Taking Over Public Safety in a Big City
In Detroit, safety is a privilege enjoyed by the white and wealthy.
Read more...The Decline and Fall of American Public Space as Shown in #BlackLivesMatter Tweets
Looking at the backgrounds of #BlackLivesMatter images shows America’s decaying infrastructure.
Read more...Michael Hudson: Europe Tilts East Towards China
The sudden rush of countries joining China’s infrastructure bank, including supposed US allies like the UK, Germany, and France, demonstrates the desire of not just emerging but also advanced economies to have access to international institutions that are not dominated by the US. Whether the infrastructure bank actually winds up being better, as opposed to simply different than existing institutions remains to be seen. But as Hudson describes, the World Bank sets a low bar.
Read more...Major American Allies Ignore U.S. Pleas and Join China’s Development Bank
China’s development bank is a salvo at America’s dollar-driven financial hegemony. The US has good reason to worry about its apparent appeal.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Presenting an Agenda for Europe at Ambrosetti
If you followed Yanis Varoufakis before he became a household word (at least in Europe and in finance circles), you’ll recognize that he is making a layperson-friendly case for the Eurozone reforms that he, Stuart Holland, and Jamie Galbraith call A Modest Proposal. A new wrinkle is that he argues that the scarcity of bonds eligible for QE argues for one of its ideas, infrastructure spending funded by the EIB (those bonds would presumably be eligible for QE purchases).
Read more...Joe Firestone: The Interactive Voter Choice System: A Technological Fix for Failing Democracies
Joe Firestone has been persistent in doing the very important work on the IVCS (Interactive Voter Choice System). We could probably build a full-scale IVCS for the price of a single F-35, and it wouldn’t even catch on fire! We could pilot one for a fraction of the cost of the ObamaCare Marketplace. So why don’t we?
Read more...Two Detroits, Separate and Unequal: A Journey Across a City Divided
Rather than growing closer in the coming post-bankruptcy era, many residents fear that these two Detroits — already so separate and unequal — will have increasingly divergent futures.
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