Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class

Troika Tightening the Noose on Greece as Government Cash Crunch Worsens

“I begin to discern the profile of my death.” That arresting sentence, culled from early drafts, served as the anchor for one of the finest novels ever written, Margarite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian.

The Troika and Eurogroup look to be working towards the Greek government to start having similar thoughts. However, given the high level of popular support for Syriza, and press reports that Greek citizens fully expect that the new government to at best only be able to deliver on a small portion of its campaign promises, the end game for Greece is looking more and more likely to be a failed state rather than a more neoliberal-friendly government.

Look Who is Selling the TransPacific Partnership

Some Serious Economists have signed a letter supporting the TransPacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The missive says a lot about the discipline, and not in a good way.

Bill Black: Scott Walker’s War on Workers and the Wall Street Journal’s Cleaned-Up Coverage

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has channeled his inner Mitt Romney and written off an immense swath of Americans as people he would not represent if he were elected President.

The Administration’s Dishonest Response to Elizabeth Warren’s Attack on Secret Investor Arbitration Panels in Trade Deals

Elizabeth Warren is clearly getting on the Administration’s nerves.

Mathew D. Rose: Greece – Dead Man Walking

Rose focuses on an issue that reader Swedish Lex and other have pointed out: the heavy-handed actions of Germany in the tempestuous negotiations between the Eurozone and Greece have wound up being a major own goal.

But the bigger issue that Rose raises is that last week’s ugly negotiations, in combination with the fiasco in Ukraine, is exposing Germany as a lousy hegemon, which he argues is producing a political crisis in Germany and fracture lines in Europe.

TransPacific Partnership: Fast Track to Financial Instability

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama said he would submit a bill to Congress that would grant him the fast track authority to finalize the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)—a trade pact with Pacific Rim countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Peru, and Chile. While free trade has brought benefits in the past, tariffs in the world economy are at an all time low and new deals like the TPP offer few new gains in terms of growth and jobs for the American people. And the TPP in particular comes at unacceptably high cost.

Negotiation Breakdown Exposes Widening Rift Between Germany and Greece

The negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup are on a worse trajectory than conventional wisdom would have you believe.

How Third Way Trade Agreements Study Distorts Via Omission to Pave Way for TTP and TTIP

Even cherry-picked data shows only modest gains for trade agreements, and more comprehensive looks tell a very different tale. And that’s before you get to all the nasty sovereignty-gutting provisions of the TTP and TTIP.

Joe Firestone: Return of the Platinum Coin?

Just as sumer is icumen in, so to are budget fights. And that means another opportunity to talk up the platinum coin as a way around budgetary tactics designed to inflict austerity on ordinary Americans.

Why is It Hard to Land a Well-Paid Job After Losing One?

Yves here. I sometimes run posts from orthodox economic sites as exercise in critical thinking, or to remind readers of what passes for research in economics, since economic work is treated with undue reverence in policy circles.

Here, the issue at hand is why people who have well paid jobs take a while to land another one, of course assuming that they manage to land well. The analysis by the author is not bad, save its rather frightening level of abstraction. But take a good look at his summary of conventional assumptions about how job-finding and wage-setting for the unemployed is supposed to work.

Is Syriza About to Score a Tactical Win Against the Troika?

Those who were hoping that Syriza would be cowed by the ECB’s aggressive moves to shut Greece out of bond markets and Eurozone finance ministers’ unified resistance to the new government’s proposals are no doubt frustrated by its refusal to capitulate. On Sunday, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras gave a rousing speech reaffirming Syriza’s plans.

What Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers Don’t Tell You About Income Inequality

In a new paper for the Institute For New Economic Thinking’s Working Group on the Political Economy of Distribution, economist Lance Taylor and his colleagues examine income inequality using new tools and models that give us a more nuanced — and frightening —picture than we’ve had before. Their simulation models show how so-called “reasonable” modifications like modest tax increases on the wealthy and boosting low wages are not going to be enough to stem the disproportionate tide of income rushing toward the rich. Taylor’s research challenges the approaches of American policy makers, the assumptions of traditional economists, and some of the conclusions drawn by Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers. Bottom line: We’re not yet talking about the kinds of major changes needed to keep us from becoming a Downton Abbey society.