Archive | Commentary

The new regulations on banks’ capital requirements known as Basel 3, made known to the public in mid-September, are a major institutional boost to the monopolistic position of the largest banks.1  In the new framework the capital that banks must hold against lending activities has been raised from a ratio of 2%, established by Basel […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 17 September 2010.  | Print

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.3 percent in August, for the second consecutive month.  The rise is almost entirely attributable to the recent increase in energy prices, which jumped another 2.3 percent in the month.  Outside of food and energy, the core price index of consumer goods remained unchanged.  Over the last 12 months, core […]

I.  Prologue Pakistan is in a state of crisis.  The history of Pakistan, looked at from a human perspective, has been a perpetual crisis since its birth.  The ruling elite have operated — from the very beginning — on cronyism, nepotism, and legal and illegal corruption.  They have always been inefficient and indifferent to the […]

  Jordan Flaherty: I think some of the voices that really haven’t been heard in these five years of recovery are those that are still displaced: a hundred thousand or more former residents who were dispersed around the country in the aftermath of Katrina and still have not been able to come home.  One recent […]

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based neoconservative “think tank” that has consistently promoted hard-line policies against the Islamic Republic, came out with what it describes as “a comprehensive report . . . identifying 10 major Chinese energy companies that continue to do business with Iran in spite of international sanctions.”  According […]

Today the Census Bureau released a report on trends in income, including median income, income inequality and income poverty, and health insurance coverage between 2008 and 2009.  As expected given the increase in unemployment — which grew from 7.4 percent in December 2008 to 10 percent in December 2009 — the report shows a substantial […]

  Listen to MC Kash’s song “I Protest (Remembrance)”: They say when you run from darkness All you seek is light But when the blood spills over You’ll stand and fight Threads of deceit Woven around a word of plebiscite By treacherous puppet politicians Who have no soul inside My paradise is burning With troops […]

For several centuries — between the 15th and the early 19th centuries — mercantilist theories dominated the attitude to trade in Europe.  This was the belief that an economy that had positive net exports (through exports being greater than imports) would be wealthier because it would lead to an inflow of bullion, or assets, and […]

As Mahmoud Abbas chases after money, the Palestinian cause veers off course. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 10 September 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above is an interpretation of the cartoon by Yoshie Furuhashi. | Print

As if Illinois didn’t have enough real scandals, the state’s political and journalist classes — Democratic and Republican — created another one out of whole cloth, and it’s a whopper.  It has led to the firing of a respected chair of the Prisoner Review Board, the forced resignation of a newly appointed and progressive director […]

José Serra on the sinking ship of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, whose mascot is a blue and yellow tucano (toucan). . . . Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print

  Paul Jay: So there’s elections coming up in Venezuela, September 26, for the National Assembly.  Tell us who controls the National Assembly now in Venezuela and what’s at stake in these elections. Gregory Wilpert: Well, right now the National Assembly is entirely controlled by Chávez supporters.  That’s because the last elections, 2005, the opposition […]

We are being told that Germany is successfully recovering from the crisis.  However, despite the recovery, the German economy is below most other countries’ in relation to the pre-crisis levels of output.  When the crisis began the German economy’s dependence on exports caused a sharp fall in industrial production.  The initial liquidation and the subsequent […]

Arnaldo Testi.  Capture the Flag: The Stars and Stripes in American History.  Translated by Noor Giovanni Mazhar.  New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.  165 pages, $22.95, cloth. There’s no shortage of iconic images featuring the United States flag — Washington Crossing the Delaware, The Spirit of ’76, Iwo Jima, and the moon […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 10 September 2010.  | Print

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) was established at Bretton Woods in July 1944, at the initiative of forty-five countries that had come together for the first monetary and financial conference of the United Nations.  In 2010, it had 186 member countries, with Kosovo its latest addition (it joined in June 2009). The […]

This is the clear implication of a new industry funded study, even if USA Today essentially ran an ad for the pharmaceutical industry by headlining its piece: “growing problem of fake drugs endangers consumers’ health.”  The article highlighted the fact that unauthorized copies of drugs sometimes do not meet the same standards as the official […]

(PU) After two thousand years of looking forward to the return of Jesus Christ, Christians were extremely disappointed today to learn that their born-again Lord and Savior had died again, this time at the hands of author, talk-show host, and entrepreneur Glenn Beck.  News of the “Messiah-cide” leaked out this morning when Mr. Beck was […]

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) clips the wings of the military by constitutional amendments. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 11 May 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above is an interpretation of the cartoon by Yoshie Furuhashi.  Turkish voters approved […]