Why Is the Government Buying Long-Term Bonds?
By Alejandro Reuss | January 19th, 2011
Questions and Answers on the Fed’s “QE2” program. Read more »
The Greatest Recovery, Part II
By Mark Provost | January 19th, 2011
The Greatest Recovery in corporate profits and the Great Recession are two sides of the same coin. Read more »
The Greatest Recovery, Part I
By Mark Provost | December 16th, 2010
The Greatest Recovery in corporate profits and the Great Recession are two sides of the same coin. Read more »
The Deficit Commission and Redistribution
By Darwin BondGraham | November 23rd, 2010
President Obama’s Deficit Commission has proposed a plan to rewrite the social contract, and to make the poor and middle class pay. Read more »
Laffer’s Latest Curve Ball
By John Miller | October 18th, 2010
Arthur Laffer is peddling more of the same bad tax policy as he inveighs against Washington State Initiative 1098, which would tax state residents with incomes over $200,000. Read more »
The Jobs Crisis and the Art of Flexible Labor
By Dan DiMaggio | October 18th, 2010
The bizarre experience that over 500 other workers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area had recently sheds some light on the growing expectations of absolute “flexibility” if you want a job. Read more »
Arctic Power...with Added Cleansers
By Maurice Dufour | February 17th, 2010
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’s Fault Lines: Made in the U.S.A.
By Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly | February 4th, 2010
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 »
A Vision of Economic Justice
By Howard Zinn | January 29th, 2010
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 »
Economic Rights, Then and Now
By Susan Feiner | January 11th, 2010
What is the state of the economic rights that FDR unveiled in his “Second Bill of Rights” 66 years ago? Read more »
The Developmental Terrorism of the Post-Colonial Indian State
By The Sanhati Collective | December 14th, 2009
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 »
Land Reform Under Lula
By Chris Tilly, Marie Kennedy,
and Tarso Luís Ramos | September 29th, 2009
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 »
The Physical and Economic Devastation of Gaza
By Jennifer Olmsted | July 7th, 2009
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 »
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, 2009
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 »
All That Glitters Is Goldman Sachs
By Robert Zevin | May 20th, 2009
“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 »
Changing the Auto Industry from the Wheels Up
By Alejandro Reuss | May 13th, 2009
The problems of the U.S. auto industry call for radical solutions. Read more »
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, 2009
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 »
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Shovel-Ready in Canada
By Maurice Dufour | February 19th, 2009
Pundits are praising the financial health of the United States’s northern neighbor—but should they? Read more »
Picking Up the Crumbling Pieces
Sixth and Final Installment in a Series on the Subprime/Securitization Panic
By Larry Peterson | February 4th, 2009
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 »
A New Vision for the Department of Labor
By Kim Bobo | January 28th, 2009
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 »
Contours of Crisis
By Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan | December 31st, 2008
First in a series of articles on the current crisis. The series aims to outline some of the important contours of the crisis, to situate these patterns in historical context, and to reflect on their possible causes and implications.
Read more »
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama’s “Change”?
By Ismael Hossein-zadeh | December 23rd, 2008
The market meltdown has made change an urgent universal demand, but the question is: what kind of change? Whose mandates or interests will guide the course of the urgently needed change? The answer depends on the outcome of the balance of power, or the outcome of the ongoing (though largely submerged) class struggle.
Read more »
Contagious Defections
By Mark Engler | December 18th, 2008
How far will mainstream economics go in breaking with the increasingly discredited Washington Consensus?
Read more »
The Impasse Ahead
By Korkut A. Erturk | December 12th, 2008
Government efforts to stimulate demand won’t be enough to stop the downward recessionary spiral. While the stock market searches for its own bottom, the fate of the economy depends on the health of the dollar.
Read more »
Ten Weeks That Shattered a World
Fifth in a Series on the Subprime/Securitization Panic
By Larry Peterson | November 7th, 2008
Make no mistake about it. The world has experienced in the last few weeks events comparable in historical significance to the fall of the Berlin Wall. As in the fall of the Wall, there was an exceptionally sudden collapse of an hegemonic system that had seemed, to the vast majority of observers, and only weeks before the event, to be at least somewhat secure in its continued existence, if irreversibly committed to an inevitable, fundamental process of reform. Read more »
Notes on the Foreclosure Crisis
By Tom Weisskopf | November 7th, 2008
The number of home foreclosures across the United States is now approaching 2 million, and economists expect that several million more borrowers may default within another year as job losses rise and housing prices continue to fall. This constitutes a crisis that must be addressed as soon as possible, for multiple reasons. Read more »
Commercial Paper
Financialization’s (Latest) Weak Link
By Max Fraad Wolff | October 29th, 2008
There may be no better illustration of the staggering pain emanating from financial market turbulence than the carnage experienced recently in commercial paper markets worldwide. Read more »
Notes on the Financial Crisis, #3
Third in a Series
By Tom Weisskopf | October 15th, 2008
The last 10 days have brought further news of economic disaster, highly volatile stock market movements (most of them sharply downward), and indisputable evidence that the crisis is world-wide in scope. It’s no longer just Hank Paulson and his associates trying to figure out what the U.S. Government should do to stem a collapse of the U.S. financial system. Read more »
Notes on the Financial Crisis, #2
Second in a Series
By Tom Weisskopf | October 5th, 2008
Barack Obama has shown stronger signs of readiness to pursue the measures needed to make the bailout effort succeed, and in a way that is fair to all concerned. In order to follow through, he needs to be prodded and supported by substantial Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Read more »
Notes on the Financial Crisis, #1
First in a Series
By Tom Weisskopf | October 1st, 2008
The current financial crisis is broadly attributable to the system of (relatively) deregulated and globalized capitalism into which the U.S. economy is now thoroughly integrated. Read more »
Banking on Bankruptcy
Fourth in a Series on the Subprime/Securitization Panic
By Larry Peterson | August 11th, 2008
In order to understand how an unstable situation at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac tipped over into a rout that threatened the whole global financial system, we have to focus on a charming investment strategy that is becoming more and more popular every time a major financial firm finds itself under mortal attack. Read more »
Bear Stearns: Not Your Average Bailout
Third in a Series on the Subprime/Securitization Panic
By Larry Peterson | May 13th, 2008
The Fed-led rescue of Bear gave investors an unmistakable signal that the central bank would not allow what had long ceased to be perceived as a “mere” liquidity (involving availability of funds to carry out current business) crunch to finally, however belatedly, tip over into a full-blown solvency (involving conditions pertaining to whether or not business could be carried on or not at all) crisis. The unique thing about this shift was that any prior distinction between systemic solvency and the solvency of one particular institution was reduced to precious little. Read more »
Finding Spare Change for the Invisible Hand
Second in a Series on the Subprime/Securitization Panic
By Larry Peterson | March 3rd, 2008
Since our first piece on the subprime/securitization crisis came out, we’ve seen official proposals to confine the damage come and go, with price tags going up each time, while the contagion itself continues to infect regions of the financial world most people never even knew existed. Read more »
The Subprime/Securitization Market Panic
A Guide for the Perplexed
By Larry Peterson | December 14th, 2007
What does the swindling of financially benighted, sometimes greedy, and even gullible American homeowners have to do with collateral used by mysterious funds which promise outsized returns to the incredibly wealthy? And how on earth can developments in these markets cause a bank run (Northern Rock) in England, which hadn’t seen anything similar since the 1860s? Moreover, who are those even more shadowy characters lurking on the horizon—Sovereign Wealth Funds and private equity investors to name two—who stand to capitalize on the mess? Read more »
