The thunderous events set in motion by Israel’s storming of the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the peace flotilla challenging the blockade of Gaza, have thrown important light on the overall situation in the Middle East. Turkey has emerged as the major protagonist among the forces that support the Palestinian cause. This is extremely […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
The Deficit, the Debt, and the Real World
The latest fad in business journalism is to sound the alarm about the United States having become the biggest debtor in the world. This is intended to bring visions of our country sliding into a third world-type debt trap. But even those who don’t draw such dire inferences nevertheless assume that a ballooning U.S. debt […]
Minnesota Nurses Association Provides Rx for Union Revival
The last thirty-five years have been disastrous for American unions. The percentage of the workforce represented by unions has declined from about 30% to barely 10%. As the unionized island in the center of the workforce has shrunk, every element of labor relations affected by unions — job security, promotions and lay-off, job descriptions, wages […]
Fun with Money
The deficit hawks have been working themselves into a frenzy in recent weeks over the prospect that the country will come out of the recession with a huge debt. They have convinced much of the policy elite (admittedly, a very gullible crew) that the United States is on the edge of becoming Greece, unable to […]
Don’t Let Deficit Demagogues Scare You into Accepting Austerity
The U.S. and European Union together make up about half of the global economy, and recovery is quite uncertain in both of these big economies. Contrary to a lot of folk wisdom and political posturing, the problem is not irresponsible government spending in either case, but a lack of commitment by the authorities in both […]
Listen, Keynesians!
There is a remarkable consensus among economists of all ideological and political persuasions — conservative, liberal, and radical — that capitalist economies must grow to be healthy, and that the key to growth lies in the capital accumulation or savings-and-investment process. Accepting this view, we have long been arguing in effect that capitalism, like living […]
Iran’s Authorities Say Greens Feared Low Turnout and Cancelled Demonstrations
. . . Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, de facto leaders of the Green Movement, had issued a statement on June 10 asking their supporters to stay home. According to Fars, a semi-official news agency with intimate ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Moussavi and Karroubi were afraid of low turnouts and […]
Debt Management in Latin America: How Safe Is the New Debt Composition?
. . . Public debt levels as a share of GDP declined substantially in the Latin American region during the five years preceding the great global crisis of 2008 and 2009. Data available for the largest seven countries in the region (LAC-7)1 show that the ratio of total public debt to GDP fell from […]
A Threatened Blow
On Tuesday, June 8, I wrote the Reflection “On the Threshold of Tragedy” around midday; later I watched Randy Alonso’s “Roundtable” television program, broadcast at 6:30 p.m. as usual. That day, the eminent and distinguished Cuban intellectuals taking part in the Roundtable replied to the program director’s acute questions with eloquent words which greatly respected […]
Persistent (and Game-Changing) Myths: Iran’s 2009 Presidential Elections, One Year Later
Since manufactured claims about Iraqi WMD led the United States to invade Iraq in 2003, no analytic line about developments in the Middle East has had a bigger impact on American foreign policy than the assertion that the outcome of Iran’s June 12, 2009 presidential election — held one year ago tomorrow — was a […]
Turkey: Media’s Latest Target for Terrorist-Baiting
The Israeli raid on the Gaza flotilla that resulted in the deaths of eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American has led Israel and its supporters to argue (see The Weekly Standard, 5/31/10) that the Turkish government and a prominent Turkish humanitarian organization are “terrorist” sympathizers with ill intentions toward Israel and the United States. […]
About Keynes and Keynesians
Did you ever accept Keynesian economics, or did you go beyond Keynesian economics and feel his approach had lost the essence of what the problem was? One thing you should understand is that Keynesian theory permits an enormous variation in political and ideological positions. Later on what Joan Robinson came to call Bastard Keynesianism […]
Bolivia and Its Lithium: Can the “Gold of the 21st Century” Help Lift a Nation Out of Poverty?
Excerpt: . . . Finally, there are concerns about the chronic problems faced by the Bolivian government to manage such an ambitious program — problems that pre-date President Morales. To pull off its lithium ambitions, Bolivia will need highly trained and qualified experts, in the technical and scientific aspects of lithium, in business management […]
The Greenest Building in New York (and Maybe the World)
If it were set in, say, Manhattan, Kansas, it would be a spectacular sight: a twisting, shimmering 51-story tower of glass. As it is, though, it doesn’t stand out in Midtown Manhattan, New York — a stylized office tower, topped by a harpoonish spire. In short, another glass office building that screams “architecture” while exuding […]
Three Protests and What They May Mean for Immigrant Rights
The immigrant rights movement is moving to a new level of militancy, at least to judge by events in New York City the first week of June. At noon on June 1 several hundred people gathered in front of the Jacob Javits Federal Building in Lower Manhattan for a press conference and a civil disobedience […]
Brazil and Turkey Defy Washington on Iran Sanctions
The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution calling for new sanctions against Iran today. Wait, did you just yawn? Pay attention, there’s real news here. The man-bites-dog story is that two countries — Brazil and Turkey — voted no, while Lebanon abstained. That’s a record. There’s never been more than one no vote before; […]
The Dictatorship of the Market: Interview with Colin Leys
Colin Leys is an honorary professor of politics at Goldsmiths College London, who has worked in the UK, Africa and Canada. He was until recently the co-editor of Socialist Register. One of Colin’s books is Market-Driven Politics. A week before the UK general election Edward Lewis spoke to him about some of the themes […]
Obama’s Charade on Iran Sanctions
Today, the United Nations Security Council will adopt a new resolution imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear activities. Predictably, the Obama Administration is working to spin its “victory” in New York as both a great diplomatic achievement and a serious intensification of international pressure on Iran over the nuclear issue. […]
The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration
Executive Summary: The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. The U.S. incarceration rate — 753 per 100,000 people in 2008 — is now about 240 percent higher than it was in 1980. We calculate that a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate […]
Supporting Occupation and Motivating New Terrorists: Obama’s Failure to Deliver on His Cairo Speech
President Obama’s first half year in office was singularly focused on reviving America’s desultory standing in the Muslim world. Last week marked the first anniversary of Obama’s Cairo speech — his widely heralded address “to the Muslim world” — which was intended as the culmination of a series of important steps. These included: Obama’s appointment […]
