Archive | Commentary

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.2 percent in October as the inflation in the price of energy rebounded to 2.6 percent in the month.  The overall price of core consumer goods and services remained virtually flat for the third consecutive month.  Over that time, the core rate of inflation has been only 0.2 percent, annualized. […]

  Juliana Ruhfus: In these elections Haitians actually have a choice between no less than 19 different presidential candidates. . . .  Haiti’s political history has been one of revolt, dictatorship, and violence. . . .  Democracy arrived in the country in 1990, with the election of the priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  But, over the following […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Nina Power, “Student Protest: We Are All in This Together” (Guardian, 10 November 2010); and Richard Seymour, “Tories Fall Back in the Polls” (Lenin’s Tomb, 17 November 2010). | Print

  Paul Jay: On November 7, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, issued a statement calling for the reintroduction of some form of gold standard to establish the value of money.  Why now? . . .  Is Robert Zoellick’s proposal grasping at straws? Jane D’Arista: Well, what you’re saying is quite right.  The […]

Have governments everywhere simply lost their marbles?  Not much emerged from the Seoul G-20 Summit — and definitely not anything really desirable in the form of coordinated Global Keynesian policies (of the kind that Matías Vernengo has advocated in the TripleCrisis blog).  But then, quite frankly, not much was really expected to come out, given […]

If Sudan gets carved up, it won’t be common people in southern Sudan who will benefit. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 13 November 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.   The text above is an interpretation of the cartoon by Yoshie Furuhashi. | Print

In underdeveloped countries the appropriation of the economic surplus by foreign capital or its absorption by nonessential consumption of the parasitic upper classes is emphasized, the repercussions being a low level of investment and slow economic growth.

It has long been argued that expanding commercial relations between countries acts as an incentive for nations to avoid hostilities up to and including armed conflict.  Indeed this was a major impetus behind the economic integration of Europe1 after World War II, which led to the European Union and more recently the currency union of […]

  Excerpt: The first objective of an audit is to clarify the past, to untangle the web of debt, thread by thread, so as to reconstruct the sequence of events which has led to the present impasse. . . .  Who has loaned and what was his role?  How did the State find itself committed, […]

“Elections come and go, but the United States is still careening toward bankruptcy.  By 2020, the U.S. will be spending $1 trillion a year just to pay the interest on the national debt.  Sometime between now and then the catastrophe will come.  It will come with amazing swiftness.  The bond markets are with you until […]

Paul Jay: Certainly President Obama had more support for the war in Afghanistan from the Republican Party than he ever did from within his own party.  But might this mean increased pressure for a more aggressive stance towards Iran? . . .  What’s your take?  How do you think this election might affect US foreign […]

  So there are no technological fixes [to the environmental problem caused by increasing consumption] in sight? I’ve gone on from the basic footprint concept to demonstrate a couple of other interesting spin-offs.  The assumption seems to be, in the mainstream, that improved technology, improved material and energy efficiency will help to solve this problem. […]

OK, folks.  It’s time for a refresher on basic national accounts.  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is interested in reducing current account surpluses around the world without devaluing the dollar.  Good luck with that. Even worse, Geithner reiterated that the U.S. “will bring our fiscal position back to a sustainable balance.” Loosely speaking, our national income […]

The government of the USA has planned for India to become an important consumer of its agricultural exports and crop science.  India has also been planned as a host country for an agricultural research agenda directed by American crop-seed biotech corporations.  This is to be achieved through a variety of programmes in India, some of […]

Part 1 Part 2 Part 1 Tom Corbett, Governor-Elect for Pennsylvania: It’s now time to come together, to tell the rest of the world — to tell the rest of the world Pennsylvania is open for business. Jesse Freeston: And that business is natural gas.  Pennsylvania’s race was unique in that it was fought primarily […]

There has been a serious effort by many on the right to claim that public sector workers are overpaid.  The typical way that critics make this argument is to simply compare the average wage of workers in the public sector and the private sector.  This comparison does indeed show that public sector workers are paid […]

If the G-20 is going to be nothing more than a talking shop on economic issues, they ought to at least talk about the economic problems that really matter, and the ones that they can do something about.  Not that currency values don’t matter — they are actually very important.  And it is interesting to […]

Chicago. During the 1970s, a small slice of the trade union left was able to tap into working-class discontent and workplace militancy in a very enduring way.  The result, in the unlikely venue of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), was an on-going “Tea Party” in the best and original sense of that Boston-based organizing […]

  Paul Jay: You recently wrote a piece in the Guardian.  The title is “Who Pays the Bill for the Fed’s QE2?  By Depressing US Interest Rates, Quantitative Easing Forces Developing Countries to Defend Their Currencies at Crippling Cost.”  What do you mean by that? Kevin P. Gallagher: One of the unintended effects of QE2 […]

“We have overcome four phases [Resolution 1559, sponsored by France and the United States, imposing the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon; the French temptation, i.e. Jacques Chirac’s offer of power in exchange for disarmament; Israel’s July War, backed by the United States, against Lebanon in 2006; the 5 May 2008 decision of the Lebanese government, prodded […]