Mark Ames: Why Finance is Too Important to Leave to Larry Summers
Mark Ames explains why the left became stupid about finance and why that was a very costly mistake.
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
Michael Hudson: The Paradox of Financialized Industrialization
The great question today is whether post-feudal rentier capitalism will stifle industrial capitalism instead of serving it. The aim of finance is not merely to exploit labor, but to conquer and appropriate industry, real estate and government. The result is a financial oligarchy, neither industrial capitalism nor a tendency to evolve into socialism.
Read more...How Much Money Does the 1% Have Hidden in Tax Havens?
UC Berkeley professor Gabriel Zucman is doing pathbreaking work on tax havens. HIs estimates of how much the rich hide in them are eye-popping.
Read more...Michael Perelman: The Essential Handbook for Engineering an Unequal Society
While the thrust of Perelman’s post is no doubt familiar to readers, take note of how simple and few in number are the essential principles for creating a highly unequal society, and how easy it is to describe them them in antiseptic language.
Read more...Sanders Debate “Results” as Case Study of the Modern Versailles Hall of Mirrors
Bernie Sanders by all objective measures “won” the first Democratic party debate. Yet pundits almost universally said the reverse. What does that tell us about the state of American politics?
Read more...Mark Blyth: “Austerity Cures Nothing”
This is a bracing, no-nonsene talk from economist Mark Blyth of Brown University, who is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century and Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.
Read more...Clinton Outdoes Tsipras in Kolotoumbas with Her Reversals on TPP, Bank Regulations
The big problem with Hillary is it is hard to believe she stands for anything other than her desire to exercise power. Her latest bout of opportunism only reinforces that notion.
Read more...Michael Hudson on Parasitic Financial Capitalism
An interview with Michael Hudson on his latest book, Killing the Host, which focuses on the destruction wrought by financial capitalism.
Read more...Richard Richard Wolff on Jobs Now, and David Cay Johnson and Jobs Then
By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Typically, when we post a video, we post only one. But I felt these two posts were more powerful combined than separately. First, Richard Richard Wolff, in 38% of American Workforce Still Jobless. Wolff is a Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently a Visiting […]
Read more...Wolf Richter: This Chart Truly Depicts a New, Terrible Trend in Jobs Mess
As Oregoncharles put it, in terms of labor force participation, “Obama has now cancelled out the entire effect of the Women’s Movement.”
Read more...Who Needs Balanced Trade? Who Needs Balanced Budgets?
Who needs balanced trade? It’s time to challenge the premises of “trade” deals like the TransPacific Partnership.
Read more...Gaius Publius: What’s Called “Capitalism” Is Far from Any Model of Capitalism or Market
Tony Benn and Noam Chomsky take a hard look at what passes for capitalism.
Read more...More Proof That Economic Policies Have Failed Workers: Median Real Incomes Stagnant for Last Two Decades
Sometimes one chart really does tell you what you need to know.
Read more...Chris Hedges and Leo Panitch: We are All Greeks Now
Leo Panitch and Chris Hedges discuss how nature of imperialism today is financial power.
Read more...Doug Smith: Labor Day? Let’s Tell The Truth And Call It “Assets Day”
It’s not for nothing that Ambrose Bierce wrote in The Devil’s Dictionary: “Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.”
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