Archive for December, 2008
ASSA and Jet Blue
Things may be relatively quiet on the D&S blog for the first week of 2009, as our busiest blogger (yours truly, D&S co-editor Chris Sturr) will be at the annual economics meetings, grandiosely named the Allied Social Sciences Association meetings (as if economists were the only social scientists!) in San Francisco. I am excited to ...Read more.
Contours of Crisis
We just posted a great web-only article by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan, co-authors of Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder, RIPE series in Global Political Economy (London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2009). Read the article here.
3M CEO on Plant Closings
This is via Doug Henwood at lbo-talk, posted under the heading “Capitalist Thought.” He says he doesn’t know the origin of it, but that it’s from a reliable source. In 3M Co.’s quarterly update this month, Chairman and CEO George Buckley talked about how the company had closed 16 plants over the last year and ...Read more.
Left Economics Education Gets a Nod
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was in the news (and under arrest) last week after he disrupted a Bureau of Land Management auction of oil and gas leases on large tracts in southern Utah — by walking into the auction and bidding on multiple leases. He won some leases, of course with no intention of paying ...Read more.
Economics of Immigrant Detention in R.I.
This is a pretty horrifying piece from Saturday’s Times–excellent reporting. We covered the Rhode Island ICE raids mentioned in the article in ICE Descends on Rhode Island, and our January/February issue will include a feature article by Tom Barry on the economics of immigrant detention. Leaning on Jail, City of Immigrants Fills Cells With Its ...Read more.
WaMu Reckoning
This is from a series from the New York Times called “The Reckoning” exploring the causes of the financial crisis. Gretchen Morgenson continues to be impressive in her coverage of the crisis. The opening anecdote of the article and the idea that WaMu was “all about saying yes” is interesting: in the new Jim Carrey ...Read more.
Rebuild the Economy: Invest in People
The New York Times published my letter below December 26, 2008. Meanwhile, Mother Jones has just published (not yet online) a first class piece by David Cay Johnston, “Fiscal Therapy.” He details how we can rebuild the economy without increasing the deficit by a dime, simply by reversing the great tax and subsidy machine that ...Read more.
Judge Finds Starbucks Guilty of Union-Busting
Some good news: an NLRB victory for Starbucks workers, organizing with the Industrial Workers of the World, aka the Wobblies. The baristas at the Starbucks on Winter St. seemed unaware when a couple of us stopped in for eggnog lattes, but I am considering heading back to post a copy of this article on their ...Read more.
FT Falls Down on IndyMac Fraud
The Financial Times had a rather pithy piece (see below in full) on the fraud at IndyMac, reported in yesterday’s New York Times (and re-reported here). A reminder about what this story is all about: apparently, last May the western regional director/senior regular from the Office of Thrift Supervision, Darrel Dochow, allowed IndyMac “to record ...Read more.
Iceland Gives Christmas Frosty Reception
A grim story from today’s Financial Times (posted to their website yesterday). Best quote, from the end of the article: “Sitting in an old fisherman’s cafe by the port, Orn Svavarsson shakes with rage. He sold his health food business three years ago when he was 54 and, like many of his countrymen, put the ...Read more.
