Archive | Commentary

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 […]

“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. […]

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 […]

  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 […]

  This letter invites you to join what will be the largest veteran-led civil resistance to U.S. wars and occupations in recent history, Washington, D.C., December 16: <www.stopthesewars.org>. During the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King called our government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”  That was true then — and is even […]

A strange thing happened on the way to the G-20 meetings: world elite opinion has turned against the Federal Reserve’s “Quantitative Easing” (QE) program, the only significant “Keynesian” macroeconomic policy being implemented anywhere in the face of massive unemployment in much of the developed world; and this criticism is garnering some support from strange places, […]

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 […]

November 10, 2010 Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles appeared to have largely ignored economic reality in developing the proposals they presented to the public today. The country is suffering from 9.6 percent unemployment with more than 25 million people unemployed, underemployed, or who have given up looking for work altogether.  Tens of millions of […]

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is in the United States this week, but few observers expect an immediate or significant breakthrough in the stalled peace talks with the Palestinian leadership. In public, Mr. Netanyahu maintains he is committed to the pledge he made last year, shortly after he formed his right-wing government, to work towards […]

with an IMF/WB/WTO trap baited with hard currency. . . . This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 10 November 2010.   Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

Tony Karon has another sharp piece this week, entitled “Israel Pressed for a Tougher U.S. Line on Iran.”  For some time now, we have been forecasting an intensification of pressure on the Obama Administration, by Israel and pro-Israel constituencies in the United States, for U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It appears that the […]

November 9, 2010 The Honorable Michael Bennet 702 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Bennet: I heard you say during your interview on National Public Radio this morning that if nothing is done, there will be no Social Security for people your age.  This is badly mistaken.  You should know, both for […]

Introduction Many policymakers and analysts are arguing that there is an urgent need to make changes to Social Security.  They point out that the projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Trustees show the program to be out of balance in the long-term, therefore we would be best advised to make changes […]

  November 8, 2010 — Young Jews challenged leadership at the Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans.  They disrupted PM Netanyahu’s speech to say: “Israel’s actions delegitimize it, not those working to put an end to its violations of international law.” YoungJewishProud.org is a project of young leaders of Jewish Voice for Peace. | […]