Subjects Archives: Political Economy

  • The Machinery of Hopelessness

      Excerpt: For at least 5,000 years, before capitalism even existed, popular movements have tended to center on struggles over debt.  There is a reason for this.  Debt is the most efficient means ever created to make relations fundamentally based on violence and inequality seem morally upright.  When this trick no longer works everything explodes, […]

  • Brazil’s “Independent” Central Bank: Independent from Whom?

    In recent days the press has reported that President Dilma Rouseff has denied having tried to influence the Brazilian central bank to lower short-term interest rates, as the bank did on August 31 from 12.5 to 12.0 percent.  The fact that she would feel obligated to make such a statement shows that there is a […]

  • Brazil’s “Wall Street” Problem

    Brazil’s economy is slowing, but the government is increasing its primary surplus by cutting spending, which could slow the economy more.  In June, industrial production fell by 1.6 percent, and economic activity fell for the first time since 2008.  Although monthly figures are erratic and don’t necessarily indicate any trend, the overall picture raises questions […]

  • Two Decades of Neo-Liberal Reforms in India: The Worsening Employment Situation

    Two decades after neo-liberal economic reforms started in India as part of the agenda of imperialist globalisation, the condition of the masses of the labouring poor is worse in every part of the country except where some positive intervention has taken place to stabilise livelihoods.  The richest minority at the top of the income pyramid […]

  • Fred Magdoff on What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism

    What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism is a short, accessible introduction to the ecological crisis that is intended for a wide audience — why did you decide to write a book like this, and why now? In the fall of 2008 I attended a conference where discussion of the environment was prominent, although […]

  • Deficits, Debts, and Deepening Crisis

    Standard and Poor’s downgrades US debt, stock markets gyrate around the world, Sarkozy and Merkel perform yet another empty summit, the Chinese and Japanese economies look worrisome.  Serious commentators worry about global recession, another global banking collapse, eurozone dissolution, and austerity programs that only make matters worse.  Nouriel Roubini, famed Professor at NYU’s Stern School […]

  • A First Ever Default?  Closing the Gold Window, Forty Years On

    During the recent “Debt Ceiling” debacle, many warned that the failure to lift the debt ceiling would lead to a “first ever” US default and to numerous financial catastrophes, including the demise of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. “First Ever Default?”  Think again. Forty years ago this month, on August 15, 1971, […]

  • The “Debt Crisis” Myth

    The prevailing understanding of economic troubles in the U.S. and Europe, the world’s two largest economies, is mistaken in a number of ways.  First: Imagine that you are driving a car down a road packed with snow and ice and you are worried about an accident.  At the same time you are ignoring the fact […]

  • Venezuela and Iran to Raise Levels of Coordination at OPEC in View of Financial Crisis

    Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, communicated by telephone with the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the afternoon of the 15th of August, 2011. President Ahmadinejad said to President Chávez that, in this sacred month of Ramadan, he and millions of Iranians are praying […]

  • Looking Back for Insights into a New Paradigm

    It is becoming widely acknowledged that the leading ideas of some of the most prestigious late-20th-century economists (such as Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers in the American government) are outmoded and that a new paradigm of economics is needed.  Part I of this essay will focus on two issues which we think it has to […]

  • 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 […]

  • Health Economics

    Terry Everton is a cartoonist.  Visit his blog Working Stiff Review at .  Cf. “State of Working America Preview: A Staggering Rise in Health Insurance Costs” (Economic Policy Institute, 15 December 2010); Don Trementozzi and Steve Early, “Romney, Obama Health Care Reforms Offer No Relief for Unions” (Labor Notes, 22 June 2011). | Print

  • 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 […]

  • Weak Consumption and Shrinking Government Slow GDP in Second Quarter

    Consumption grew at just a 0.1 percent annual rate in the second quarter, while government spending shrank at a 1.1 percent rate, holding GDP growth to 1.3 percent in the quarter.  This report also revised down first-quarter GDP growth to just 0.4 percent from a previously reported 1.9 percent.  Together, these numbers indicate that 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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, […]

  • Jamaica Remains Buried Under a Mountain of Debt, Despite Restructuring

    As the eurozone authorities move closer to accepting the inevitable Greek debt default/restructuring, there are some who have pointed to the Jamaican debt restructuring of last year as a model.  It’s hard to imagine a worse disaster for Greece.  It is worth a closer look at what has been done to Jamaica, not only as […]

  • Credit Rating Agencies

      Rating Agency: “Don’t take it wrong, but some companies are paying me to come here to tell you that you have no future.” Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 14 July 2011 under a Creative Commons license.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | […]