I’m not old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era, but memories of it were strong enough that it left an impression on my generation. Moyers’ gentlemanly manner leads him to understate how rabid and extreme the red-baiting of that period was.
Read more...By Michael Hoexter, a policy analyst and marketing consultant on green issues, climate change, clean and renewable energy, and energy efficiency. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
There is no unified theory in our popular understanding of value: there are the market values of goods and then there are our “values” which we consider to be some of the most personal and even sacred aspects of ourselves. In practice, these beliefs and ideology are filtered through a process by which powerful and wealthy interest groups influence and shape the behavior of lawmakers.
Read more...Now, if only anyone had listened….
By Michael M. Thomas, who figured out Wall Street was not all it was cracked up to be before most of you were born. Originally published at his Midas Watch column at the New York Observer, March 10, 2009
Read more...By Jennifer Clapp, Professor in the Environment and Resource Studies Department and CIGI Chair in Global Environmental Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, Canada. Cross posted from Triple Crisis
NGOs have stepped up their critique of large investment banks’ involvement in agricultural commodity derivatives markets in recent months. Now, it appears that the banks are starting to fight back.
Read more...With public companies fixated on quarterly profits, which results in underinvestment and treatment of employees as disposables, companies who (gasp) pursue a long-term strategy and invest in their workforce should have a real competitive advantage. Thus worked owned enterprises aren’t simply a way to contend with the program to disempower labor; it’s also a way to take advantage of the inefficiencies of rentier capitalism.
Read more...One of the canards libertarians like to sell is that the state has a monopoly on violence.
Read more...Yves here. This is a pet topic of mine. Participants in public policy debates are often insensitive to how much ground they cede when they embrace the nomenclature used by their opponents. My personal bete noire is “free markets” which is actually an oxymoron. Another is “entitlements” which is code for “welfare”. Why don’t people who favor programs like Social Security call them “social insurance’? Or “economic stabilizers”?
Read more...Please download and enjoy this ebook, which is a joint project of Alternet and Econ4, an organization of heterodox economists promoting social change.
Read more...As important as it is to see the white paper DOJ gave Congress to explain its purported legal rationale, it is just as important to make clear what this white paper is not.
Read more...Dystopian technology fantasies are flooding the media, to the delight of the 1 percent.
Read more...Nathan Tankus found this archival video (you are going to get a gas out of the production values…and be patient with the set up, it takes a few minutes for the video to get going).
Read more...A new paper by Mark Weisbrot and Helene Jorgensen of CEPR have managed to unearth a dirty little secret: the IMF doesn’t just prescribe broadly similar policies in its Article IV consultations, it looks like its hands out the same medicine. We’ve used the metaphor of breaking countries on the rack, but cutting them to fit a Procrustean bed might be more apt.
Read more...A recent podcast with Philip Pilkington expanding on a recent piece discussing Hayek and the foundations of neoliberalism got very positive comments, and also covered more ground than his post on this topic on Naked Capitalism, so we thought readers would enjoy it. Plus the Irish accents are a nice change of pace from bland standard ‘Murkican.
Read more...Americans are cynical about politicians. Congressional approval ratings were mired just above single-digit levels in 2012, hitting 10% twice. An expression of utter disdain. But the French—with their economy spiraling deeper into crisis—expressed disdain for their political class, as they call it, in another way: with a desire for authoritarian leadership, a “real leader” who would “reestablish order.”
Read more...Econ4, a group of heterodox economists who “believe that the economy should serve the people, the planet, and the future,” has released its latest video, on regulation. Yours truly has a bit part.
Read more...