The President, Senators, Congresspersons, media representatives, and many ordinary people speak often, these days, about Washington “learning to live within our means.” Last Friday, the private rating company, Standard and Poor’s (S&P), said the riskiness of lending to the US had risen because the US was not living within its means (i.e. borrowing too much). […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
On the S&P Downgrade
The decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade U.S. government debt reflects its own failings as a credit rating agency. It says nothing about the creditworthiness of the U.S. government. The Treasury Department revealed that S&P’s decision was initially based on a $2 trillion error in accounting. However, even after this enormous error was corrected, […]
Cautionary Tales for Would-Be Weather Engineers
James Rodger Fleming. Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control. Columbia Studies in International and Global History Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Illustrations. xiv + 325 pp. $27.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-14412-4. In Fixing the Sky, James Rodger Fleming traces human efforts to control weather and climate from ancient […]
Listening to What Iranians Say about Their Nuclear Program Instead of Relying on “Intelligence” and Agenda-driven “Analysis”
As part of the current and ongoing effort to demonize further the Islamic Republic, there has been an uptick in media stories, drawing on conveniently leaked Western intelligence assessments, highlighting Tehran’s allegedly looming acquisition of nuclear weapons. One of these stories, from the Associated Press, seems particularly emblematic, so we want to look at it […]
What America’s Debt-Ceiling Crisis Reveals
The United States has an archaic piece of legislation, passed in 1917, which puts a ceiling on the magnitude of the debt of its federal government in absolute dollar terms. (Since the various state governments in the US are not allowed to run fiscal deficits and hence incur debt, the federal debt is synonymous with […]
The Great Unity of the Libyan Rebels
Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela. His cartoons frequently appear in Aporrea and Rebelión among other sites. Cf. C. J. Chivers, “Libyan Rebels Accused of Pillage and Beatings” (New York Times, 12 July 2011); Kim Sengupta, “Libyan Rebels Have Conceded Ground since Bombing Began” (Independent, 27 July 2011); David D. Kirkpatrick, “Death of Rebel […]
The Struggle against Stupidity: European and U.S. Governments Continue Wrecking Their Economies
All money managers’ eyes were on the U.S. jobs report this morning after the U.S. stock market yesterday suffered its biggest drop since 2009 and panic surged through financial markets worldwide. The headline numbers were not as bad as many had feared: the U.S. economy added 117,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate edged […]
Cuba Opposes Any Attempt to Undermine the Independence, Sovereignty, and Territorial Integrity of Syria
We wish to express our deep concern for the treatment of Syria’s internal situation at the United Nations Security Council, beginning with strong pressures exerted by the Western powers who are members of this organ, in order to adopt decisions against the legitimate government of Syria. Taking into account the experiences of, and precedents […]
Unraveling the Unemployment Insurance Lifeline: Responding to Insolvency, States Begin Reducing Benefits and Restricting Eligibility in 2011
Excerpt: State lawmakers enacted a range of policies in 2011 to amend their unemployment insurance (UI) programs, most of them motivated by insolvent state trust funds. Most notably, six states passed unprecedented cuts in the duration of benefits, for the first time reducing benefit weeks to less than the decades-long accepted standard of 26 […]
What Everyone Should Know about the “Debt Crisis” in the U.S.
Since the U.S. “Debt Crisis” has been a big international story for the last few weeks, it is worth clarifying what is real and what is not. First, the U.S. government does not have a “debt crisis.” The U.S. government is paying net interest of just 1.4 percent of GDP on its public debt — […]
Labor Idle As Obama, Democrats Back “Raw Deal” for Working People
After it was too late to make a difference, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry denounced the debt-ceiling agreement as “a raw deal for working people and the 30 million Americans who are still looking for work.” In fact, neither SEIU, the AFL-CIO, nor AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka aggressively mobilized union members against the deal […]
Iran and al-Qa’ida: Can the Charges Be Substantiated?
Last week, the Obama Administration formally charged the Islamic Republic of working with al-Qa’ida. The charge was presented as part of the Treasury Department’s announcement that it was designating six alleged al-Qa’ida operatives for terrorism-related financial sanctions. The six are being designated, according to Treasury, because of their involvement in transiting money and operatives for […]
Venezuelan Government Condemns Bombing of Libya’s State Television
Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, in the name of the Venezuelan people and government, categorically condemns the illegal bombing perpetrated on Saturday, 30 July 2011 by the NATO military forces against the installations of the Jamahiriya, the Libyan state television. This barbaric act of the NATO constitutes the […]
Why Does the Guardian Ignore the Assassination of Peasant Activists in Venezuela?
Dear Guardian editors: We, the undersigned, ask why the Guardian has ignored one of Venezuela’s most serious human rights problems — the assassination of hundreds of peasant activists since 2001 by gunmen hired by wealthy land owners. On June 8, VenezuelaAnalysis.com reported a 10,000 person march on the National Assembly to demand justice for the […]
India: Saying No to Iranian Oil to Please America
“[A]n assessment of whether India is fully and actively participating in United States and international efforts to dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran for its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons capability (including the capability to enrich uranium or reprocess nuclear fuel), and the means to […]
U.S. Sanctions and China’s Iran Policy
The Financial Times reports that Iran and China are “in talks about using a barter system to exchange Iranian oil for Chinese goods and services, as U.S. financial sanctions have blocked China from paying at least $20 billion for oil imports.” According to the story, Tehran and Beijing are now discussing how to “offset” the […]
Workers’ Assemblies: A Way to Regroup the Left?
Herman Rosenfeld is a member of the Canadian Socialist Project and the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly, a new initiative aiming to reinvigorate working class and radical politics in the city. He spoke to Tom Denning about the methods and activities of GTWA and the challenges it faces. Who initiated the GTWA, and with what […]
From Lender of Last Resort to Global Currency?Sterling Lessons for the US Dollar
Financial crises are bad news for the status of the currency in which the turmoil is denominated, right? So the US-made financial crisis must be bad for the dollar, right? And especially so because of the expansive dollar monetary policy that has ensued, right? Ambiguity on What “Strong Currency” Means Several economists appear to […]
Sense and Nonsense in the Balanced Budget Debate: A Socialist Response
The Republicans have successfully changed the main emphasis of the economic debate from job creation to deficit control. Why the urgency for balanced budgets? After all, this anemic “recovery” has set itself apart from all previous post-war turnarounds precisely by its manifest failure to generate jobs. Economic growth needs to considerably exceed 3% per […]
The Debt Ceiling: A Guide for the Bewildered
It is very difficult to explain American politics to those who are not Americans and/or have not lived here long enough. Add to that the confusion over basic economic principles, and it becomes almost impossible to explain the debt-ceiling debate to rational people. As noted by James Galbraith, this is not a fiscal crisis, […]
