Yves here. This article by Michael Ventura, on the degeneration of representative process in the US and the rise of oligarchy, calls for new terminology and frameworks in order to describe our current political and economic conditions accurately, which Ventura contends is a necessary condition for action.
Read more...With Argentina’s payment to the holders of its restructured debt on June 30th in limbo at the Bank of New York Mellon, blocked by Federal Judge Thomas Griesa, and the 30 day grace period to official default ticking away, financial pundits have taken a keen interest in the biggest debt struggle in memory.
Some have been very critical of both the judge’s interpretation of the pari passu clause that created this mess and, more importantly, of his damaging precedent. But no one seems able to resist adding digs at Argentina, even when generally supporting its position in the litigation.
Read more...You must go, now, and read a critically important piece questioning the logic of sending American manufacturing jobs offshore. It’s titled Losing Sparta (hat tip Dikaios Logos) by Ester Kaplan in VQR. We have written regularly about how we have been repeatedly told by managers and executives that the case for offshoring was often not compelling, particularly when risks, such as higher financing and shipping costs, exposure to foreign exchange losses, and inventory risk were included. This makes perfect sense when you consider that for most manufactured goods, factory labor is a mere 10-15% of total wholesale cost, and any savings in factory labor will be offset by higher shipping and greater managerial costs (more coordination, performed by much more highly paid workers). It is thus more accurate to regard a lot of offshoring as not being about cost savings, but a transfer from ordinary workers to managers and executives.
The article focuses on a world class manufacturing plant in Sparta, Tennessee, owned by Phillips that made florescent light bulbs.
Read more...Yves here. I suspect many will take issue with the cheery view expressed in this article. The authors contend that reformist candidates in the post-crisis era do better at polls than status quo types. That makes sense, but the authors appear to define “reform” in terms in more modest terms than most readers would deem to be sufficient. But this finding sounds correct, intuitively. Look at Elizabeth Warren. Even though she has made great use of her Senate bully pulpit, and has kept a focus on bank re-regulation, her policy proposals, such as her student loan fixes, have been cautious. A frame-breaking reformer, such as a Huey Long, would require a far more divided electorate with geographic concentrations of radicalized voters to be viable.
Read more...Bill Moyers’ current show focuses on how formerly disparate grass roots groups are starting to work together to shift cultural values away from greed and towards social and economic justice.
To Naked Capitalism readers, this notion may seem a bit quixotic. But Jim Hightower, who has been working with populist movements for over 30 years, sees these groups starting to collaborate on broad-based issues.
Read more...This video is a great, accessible discussion by Michael Hudson on the Real News Network about how the widely-touted EU deal with the Ukraine is actually an exercise in looting by kleptocrats. Hudson explains that unlike earlier pacts, the EU is making no investment in Ukraine, nor is it allowing Ukraine, which has an agricultural producing region, to have the benefits of the CAP that French farmers enjoy. Hudson point out that the supposed benefit of Ukraine having access to the EU for exports is a smokescreen, since Ukraine is going to lose its main export market, Russia, and the Europeans don’t want to buy Ukraine’s products. Hudson contends that this deal is a de facto takeover, with kleptocrats to be installed in key governmental positions. He anticipates that the result will be mass unemployment and unrest.
Read more...Yves here. This article pokes at a topic near and dear to my heart, which is the generally reverential treatment of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. It appears to be a classic example of the cognitive bias called halo effect, in which people have a tendency to see things as all good or all bad. Because there is a lot to recommend Piketty’s work, for instance, the fact that it is exceptionally written, that it has made inequality into one of the hottest topics in economics, and that Piketty has done an admirable and exhaustive job of finding and analyzing the returns on certain types of income producing assets are all highly commendable.
But as readers may know, one of my pet peeves is that Piketty has made a very strong claim, in the form of his formula r>g, or the rate of return on capital (which he also calls “profit”) exceeds the growth rate of the economy, when his data falls short of what would be necessary to prove that assertion.
Read more...Joel Rogers, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Wisconsin, calls it “the most important labor law case the court has considered in decades.”
Remember! “Sanctity of contract” never applies if you’re a worker!
Read more...Yesterday, the New York Fed released a new report by Jaison R. Abel and Richard Dietz, Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs? which is getting good coverage in the mainstream media. Its major finding is that despite the fall in wages to college graduates due to the crappy economy, a college degree is still worth the expense because wages of high-school graduates have fallen too, keeping the wage premium of a college education high while reducing the opportunity cost of staying in school.
But while the media is repeating the findings of this report uncritically, in fact it relies on a discredited methodology for calculating returns, and also promotes the view that the only reason to get a higher education is to get a better job.
Read more...The New York Times has provided us with an invaluable column about the interactions of the EU’s rightist and ultra-rightest parties. It is invaluable because it is (unintentionally) so revealing about the EU’s right and ultra-right parties and the NYT’s inability to understand either the EU economic or political crises. The NYT article illustrates its points by presenting a tale entitled “A German Voice, Hans-Olaf Henkel, Calls for Euro’s Abolition.” It treats Henkel, an open racist and austerian, as a reputable figure, apparently because he is wealthy.
Read more...The role of lax antitrust enforcement and the resulting rise in oligopolies is sorely neglected in most analyses of the rise of inequality and America’s flagging competitiveness.
Read more...Not only do the long-term unemployed suffer the loss of income, but they often are in worse health. They show markedly higher rates of obesity, elevated cholesterol levels, and high blood pressure.
Read more...Adam Smith’s pin factory is more a charming tale than a representative of early industrialization or contemporary pin making.
Read more...Libertarians are profoundly anti-democratic. The folks at Cato that I debate make no bones about their disdain for and fear of democracy. Friedrich von Hayek is so popular among libertarians because of his denial of the legitimacy of democratic government and his claims that it is inherently monstrous and murderous to its own citizens.
Read more...The recent European elections were a decisive victory for the right, and the craven, co-opted left has no one but itself to blame.
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