Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class

Marx Versus Capitalism Versus You

By Sell on News, a macro equities analyst. Cross posted from MacroBusiness

It is a measure of how un-self critical modern economics has been, that the Marxists are starting to appear to be making the most sense of the current crises. The supine acceptance that “the market is always right” — a truism only to traders and vested interests — means that there has been precious little understanding developed about how markets can go wrong. Or what is wrong, as well as right, with markets and the modern practices of capitalism. An article in the London Review of Books came to my attention recently by Benjamin Kunkel that shows how Marxist analysis is actually looking quite pertinent to the current mess.

Steve Rattner, Card Carrying Member of Top 1%, Tells Us We Should Lie Back and Enjoy Much Lower Wages Resulting From Globalization

A corollary to Upton Sinclair’s famous saying, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it” is “People promote ideas that help them secure or preserve a privileged position on the totem pole.”

A glaring example of these observations came in an op ed in the Sunday New York Times by Steve Rattner, former Lazard mergers & acquisition partner, later head of the private equity firm, Quadrangle Partners. He is best known as the chief negotiator in the auto bailouts (and he was criticized for not involving any auto industry experts). He paid $10 million to settle a kickbacks investigation and agreed not to work for a public pension fund in any role for five years. I happened to see Rattner on a panel at a Financial Times conference earlier this week and he elaborated on some of the themes in this piece, “Let’s Admit It: Globalization Has Losers,” which reader Brett asked me to debunk line by line. I’ll spare you and focus just on the most critical and bald-facedly dishonest bits.

Call or Go to Zuccotti Park to Protest Removal of #OccupyWallStreet From Zuccotti Park

I’m sorry to be late to this item which broke this afternoon, but I’ve been off the grid all day, and hope readers seeing this now have or will take action to support OccupyWallStreet.

Bloomberg has decided to crack down on OccupyWallStreet, and the ruse being used is that Zuccotti Park needs to be “cleaned” as in cleared. I was down at OWS on Tuesday and remarked that it was notably cleaner than most New York City streets.

The cleaning is device to force the removal of the belongings of people encamped there; they will not only not be permitted to bring their goods back, but even lying down on the ground or benches or putting a covering on the ground will be prohibited going forward.

Will internal devaluation work?

Edward here again. I was talking to my friend Rob Parenteau about internal devaluation. He doesn’t think it will work. His argument against it is similar to the one I have been making about the origins of this crisis. Here’s what I said. I do not believe this private sector balance sheet recession can be […]

Manufacturing inflation in a wage deflationary world

Edward here. Earlier in the month, I wrote how the currency is the real release valve for a credit based economy using a nonconvertible freely floating currency. It’s not about interest rates. If currency revulsion takes hold from negative real rates and people want to flee a country’s assets, this will be reflected in the […]