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The current issue:
July/August 2010

Ampersand

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By B. Deutsch | July 7th
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Financial
crisis
Articles
and posts



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Deficits
Articles
and posts



economics of war

Economics
of War
Articles



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Immigration
and migration
Articles



health care in the United States

Health
care
Articles
and links



Political Economy of the Prison Crisis

Prison
crisis
Articles



predatory lending

Predatory
lending
Articles
and links



teaching economics

Teaching
economics
Resources
and links



35th Anniversary Retrospective

Retro articles


Keynes in 1918

An article series by
Alejandro Reuss


Financial Crisis Tracker






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From the D&S Blog:

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  • banks

    Employers Strike—Because They Can

    By John Miller | July 28th

    Employers are refusing to hire, even though their costs are down and their profits are back to pre-recession levels. Why? Read more »

  • Valdez birds

    A Tale of Two Spills

    By Antonia Juhasz | July 19th

    Want to know how long it will take to clean up the BP spill, and how little BP could end up paying? Take a look at the Exxon Valdez spill, 20+ years on. Read more »

  • banks

    Not Too Big Enough

    By Rob Larson | July 12th

    How the “too-big-to-fail” banks got that way, and why the current banking reform won’t solve the problem. Read more »

  • ecuador

    Keep It in the Ground

    By Elissa Dennis | June 30th

    Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s (sometimes) left-leaning president, has spearheaded a plan to keep some of that country’s oil in the ground, in exchange for international payments to be used for sustainable energy. Read more »

  • Bottari thumb

    Of Bubbles and Bailouts

    By Mary Bottari | June 28th

    A new analysis of the dollars disbursed in the bailout of Wall Street graphically illustrates the extraordinary lengths to which the federal government has gone to bail out the financial sector. Read more »

  • Sciacchitano thumb

    W(h)ither the Dollar?

    By Katherine Sciacchitano | June 2nd

    The United States has recently faced a vacillating dollar, calls to replace it as the global reserve currency, and a consensus that it should spend less and save more. This all comes at an awkward time given the level of public outlays required to deal with the crisis and the need to attract capital to pay for them. But the pressures also highlight the central role of the dollar in the crisis. Read more »

  • Dancs thumb

    The True Cost of Oil

    By Anita Dancs | May 21st

    Oil creates huge costs because of pollution and global warming. But how much more do we, as taxpayers, have to pay for the U.S. military to secure and defend “our” oil? Read more »

  • Dr. Dollar

    “Pressure from the Bond Markets”

    By Arthur MacEwan | May 6th

    With the crisis in Greece and other countries, commentators have said that governments are “under pressure from the bond market” or that bond markets will “punish” governments. What does this mean? Read more »

  • We Trust

    Myths of the Deficit

    By Marty Wolfson | April 23rd

    Why do people think that it is more important for the government to reduce the deficit now, rather than to spend money to create jobs? Read more »

  • Greece-Europe

    Greece as a Demonstration Project

    By Mike-Frank Epitropoulos | April 14th

    Will the Black Sheep Bite Back? Will the PIIGS? What about US? Read more »

  • ASARCO smelter

    Bankruptcy as Corporate Makeover

    By Mara Kardas-Nelson, Lin Nelson, and Anne Fischel | April 3rd

    The recent bankruptcy of ASARCO offers a chilling glimpse into the world of corporate irresponsibility allowable under U.S. bankruptcy provisions and environmental policy. Read more »

  • missile

    Synergy in Security

    By Tom Barry | March 17th

    The military-industrial complex has morphed into a new type of public-private partnership that might be better called a “national security complex.” Read more »

  • tank

    Is Military Keynesianism the Solution?

    By Heidi Garrett-Peltier | March 3rd

    At a time when unemployment in the domestic economy remains near 10%, it may seem convenient to fall back on the principle of military Keynesianism: War is good for the economy. But it’s not. Read more »



Special to the Web:

  • Canadian Flag

    Arctic Power...with Added Cleansers

    By Maurice Dufour | February 17th

    All the negative press over Canada’s dirty oil is taking its toll on our national psyche. For years, our self-image as responsible environmental stewards had made us smug; now Canada’s just another carbon thug. Read more »

  • Haiti earthquake

    Haiti’s Fault Lines: Made in the U.S.A.

    By Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly | February 4th

    Pace Pat Robertson, the devil had little to do with Haiti’s underdevelopment. Instead, the fingerprints of more mundane actors—France and later the United States—are all over the crime scene. Read more »

  • Howard Zinn

    A Vision of Economic Justice

    By Howard Zinn | January 29th

    For our 30th-anniversary issue (Nov/Dec 2004), we asked prominent leftists to “describe their vision of a more economically just world 30 years hence, and to outline what they consider the most important steps to take today to move toward that vision.” Here’s the still-timely contribution from Howard Zinn, who died on January 27th. Read more »


  • FDR in 1941

    Economic Rights, Then and Now

    By Susan Feiner | January 11th

    What is the state of the economic rights that FDR unveiled in his “Second Bill of Rights” 66 years ago? Read more »


  • Poster at Nov. 12th Rally in Kolkata

    The Developmental Terrorism of the Post-Colonial Indian State

    By The Sanhati Collective | December 14th

    The Indian government is planning an unprecedented military offensive against alleged Maoist rebels, using paramilitary and counter-insurgency forces, possibly the Indian Armed Forces and even the Indian Air Force. Reportedly, the offensive has been planned in consultation with U.S. counter-insurgency agencies. To put this proposed military offensive in proper perspective one needs to understand three key but often overlooked dimensions of the crisis: (a) the development failure of the post-colonial Indian state, (b) the continued existence and often exacerbation of the structural violence faced by the poor and marginalized, and (c) the full-scale assault on the meager resource base of the peasantry and the tribal (indigenous people) in the name of “development.” Read more »

  • MST logo

    Land Reform Under Lula

    By Chris Tilly, Marie Kennedy,
    and Tarso Luís Ramos | September 29th

    As Brazil’s president finishes up his second term, land redistribution has stagnated, the government continues to bet on agribusiness as a development strategy, and powerful regional politicians are moving to criminalize the land seizure movement as “terrorist.” Read more »

  • Keynes in 1918

    Keynes, Wage and Price “Stickiness,” and Deflation

    By Alejandro Reuss | September 7th

    Did Keynes think that ‘sticky’ wages and prices were the cause of depressions? No. Did he think falling wages and prices could be the solution? No again. Keynes argued that in fact deflation is likely to deepen economic depressions. Read more »

  • Olmsted thumb

    The Physical and Economic Devastation of Gaza

    By Jennifer Olmsted | July 7th

    Israel’s three-week military attack against the Gaza Strip last December came at a time when the Palestinians—on the West Bank and all the more so in Gaza—already faced dire economic circumstances. Read more »

  • Bichler-Nitzan thumb

    Contours of Crisis III: Systemic Fear and Forward-Looking Finance

    Third in a series of articles on the current crisis.

    By Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan | June 11th

    The rituals of finance condition investors to look forward and price assets based on expected future earnings. But what happens during a systemic crisis, when the future of capitalism itself is in doubt? Read more »

  • Goldman Sachs logo

    All That Glitters Is Goldman Sachs

    By Robert Zevin | May 20th

    “When I told a friend who runs a program in community economic development the subtitle of my talk, ‘A Primer on Skullduggery in High Finance,’ he replied, ‘Isn’t that redundant?’” Read more »

  • auto worker

    Changing the Auto Industry from the Wheels Up

    By Alejandro Reuss | May 13th

    The problems of the U.S. auto industry call for radical solutions. Read more »


  • Bichler-Nitzan thumb

    Contours of Crisis II: Fiction and Reality

    Second in a series of articles on the current crisis.

    By Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan | April 28th

    Economists tell us that the current crisis is our punishment for letting the fiction of finance distort the real economy. But what exactly is this “real” economy and how does finance distort it? Do the economists have a clue? Read more »

  • Canadian flag thumb

    Shovel-Ready in Canada

    By Maurice Dufour | February 19th

    Pundits are praising the financial health of the United States’s northern neighbor—but should they? Read more »

  • humpty dumpty thumb

    Picking Up the Crumbling Pieces

    Sixth and Final Installment in a Series on the Subprime/Securitization Panic

    By Larry Peterson | February 4th

    A look at the medium- and longer-term significance of the crisis, and specifically at what must be dealt with comprehensively to avoid serious long-term economic weakness. Read more »

  • wage theft thumb

    A New Vision for the Department of Labor

    By Kim Bobo | January 28th

    Billions of dollars in wages are stolen from millions of workers every year. Here’s how the Department of Labor could stop it. Read more »


All web-only articles, mostly on the financial crisis, dating back to December 2007.