Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class

Germans and Eurocrats Throw Hissy Fits Over Italian Elections

It’s unlikely that the destabilizing of the political calculus in Europe resulting from impressive showing of anti-austerity candidates in Italy will end prettily or nicely. However, Europe had already put itself in the position of having only bad choices. So the question is who suffers, and the public in periphery countries are starting to rebel against being broken on the rack while Eurocrats and pampered German and French bankers feel no pain.

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Richard Wolff Discusses the Failure of Capitalism with Bill Moyers

The fact of this talk is telling in and of itself: that a mainstream commentator would devote an entire segment to the idea that capitalism isn’t working. While that idea may seem obvious to many NC readers, it was supposed to remain relegated to the sphere of deviance (see Daniel Hallin’s spheres of discourse for more detail).

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Why Obama Refuses to Kill the Sequester

The game of chicken both the Republicans and Democrats are playing with the sequester and the budget/deficit talks is striking. One of the truly bizarre elements is that neither side is signaling the faintest interest in dealmaking of any kind. As I indicated the week before last, the lack of any sense of urgency was obvious: Congress had a holiday last week, and there were no real negotiations or even an exchange of proposals, virtually guaranteeing the sequester would take place as scheduled.

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Via Government’s Fiscal Policy and Regulatory Oversight, Ethical Values Shape Monetary Value

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.

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Worker Owned Businesses Point to New Forms of Ownership

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.

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NC Crowdsourcing! Whither the Deficit Cliffhanger?

I’m obviously removed from the action, but I’m surprised at the complacency in DC and in the markets over the fact that the sequester is a comin’ soon. Next week Congress is out of session, and the media messaging from both sides at this point lacks the sense of urgency (in particular, front page reports of intense pow-wows) that I’d expect if a deal were to be done by the sequester deadline of early March.

So I have these questions for the NC commentariat:

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Quelle Surprise! IMF Always Prescribes the Same Austerity Hairshirt

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.

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Wolf Richter: Could 87% of the French Really Want A Strongman To Reestablish Order?

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.”

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