Subjects Archives: Political Economy

There has been considerable discussion of basing the Social Security cost of living adjustment (COLA) on the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U) as a “painless” way of generating large budget savings.  This view reflects serious confusion about what the switch to the C-CPI-U involves.  (The switch would also lead to higher […]

There is a pervasive view that growth under capitalism, though it may worsen poverty, even absolute poverty, to start with, eventually leads to a lowering of poverty.  The experience of the English Industrial Revolution is invoked in this context.  There has been a huge debate among economic historians about the impact of the Industrial Revolution […]

  Much of the discussion surrounding the Greek crisis revolves around the probability and implications of a sovereign default and on whether the introduction of a national currency (which, for simplicity, we could call the new drachma) would help pull the Greek economy out of recession (see for example Manasse 2011 on this site).  Less […]

  Default is not the dirty word that nobody wants to say.  Almost everybody now accepts that Greece will default.  Several people will prefer to use the euphemism of “re-profiling debts,” but we all know what it means.  The interesting thing is that at least some authors, like Martin Wolf in a recent Financial Times […]

  Much of the left has, mostly without debating it, coalesced around “jobs” as a unifying political demand.  The motivation for this is clear: one of the biggest problems the country faces is that there are 20 million people who are unsuccessfully seeking full time employment.  But while it may seem obvious that the solution […]

Iran’s biggest economic problem is the growing production slump at its factories and workshops.  For both workers and the business elite, Iran’s domestic industrial troubles are far more pressing — and generating far more public anxiety — than international sanctions. The biggest danger for Iran in 2011 is the combination of higher unemployment and inflation […]

The Crisis, especially in Europe, is all-consuming.  Every day our minds are hijacked by its latest twist.  Here in Athens, a general strike almost brought the government to its knees and has kick-started a process that will, inevitably, lead to what can only be described as regime change. While history is preparing the next regime […]

  In March 2011, a group of people from different political backgrounds took the initiative to demand the formation of an Audit Committee in Greece.  Academics, writers, artists, union representatives all over the world supported this initiative.  The Audit Committee will find which parts of the debt are odious or illegitimate and will prove that, […]

The anti-colonial struggle in the third world countries had brought together workers, peasants, agricultural labourers, artisans, middle class intellectuals, and even the national bourgeoisie into one camp, demanding decolonisation.  This was a reflection of the fact that colonialism, or imperialism (if one uses the term in an inclusive sense to refer to all stages of […]

  David A. Kideckel.  Getting By in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.  xii + 266 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-34957-6; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-21940-4. During the last twenty years, Romanian mass media and most Romanian intellectuals have typically portrayed the miners of the Jiu Valley in Romania […]

Introduction There are seven key points about the national debt, budget and trade deficits, and the dollar, that the public needs to understand in order to be well-informed and prepared to choose among various policy options: 1) The national debt is not literally a generational transfer.  This is easy to see because everyone who holds […]

From 2004 to 2010, Brazil’s economy grew at an average of 4.2 percent annually, or more than twice as fast as it had grown from 1999-2003; or for that matter, more than twice as fast as its annual growth from 1980-2000.  This was despite the impact of the world recession of 2009, which left Brazil […]

On Friday, the blogs which are guiding the movement of “indignant” citizens published a statement of the “indignant” citizens in Syntagma Square that called on the left forces to leave the squares.  Thus, the “anonymous” leaders of the “movement of the squares,” the “non-partisan,” “spontaneous,” “non-politicized” citizens, appear to be politicized, declaring themselves “anti-left.” Perhaps […]

Capitalism is supposed to bring in modernity, which includes a secular polity where “babas” and “swamys”, qua “babas” and “swamys”, have no role.  Many have even defended neo-liberal reforms on the grounds that they hasten capitalist development and hence our march to modernity.  The Left has always rejected this position.  It has argued that in […]

  Executive Summary: The Brazilian economy grew by 4.2 percent annually from 2004-2010, more than double its annual growth from 1999-2003 or indeed its growth rate over the prior quarter century.  This growth was accompanied by a significant reduction in poverty and extreme poverty, especially after 2005, as well as reduced inequality.  This paper looks […]

The term financial liberalisation is used to cover a whole set of measures, such as the autonomy of the Central Bank from the government; the complete freedom of finance to move into and out of the economy, which implies the full convertibility of the currency; the abandonment of all “priority sector” lending targets; an end […]

Since early this morning, PAME members have symbolically occupied the Ministry of Economy and Finance, calling upon workers to rise up and stop the government’s barbaric anti-labor measures.  All out for the demonstration today, Omonoia Square, 7 PM.  General Strike! The All Workers Militant Front, PAME, is a coordination center of Greek trade unions, founded […]

Just as in past periods of rising struggle, the democratic social and anti-imperialist movement in Egypt is up against a powerful reactionary bloc.  This bloc can perhaps be identified in terms of its social composition (its component classes, of course) but it is just as important to define it in terms of its means of […]

One less emphasised lesson from the global financial crisis was that developing countries that are successful in attracting foreign financial investors take a hit when such a crisis occurs because of a reverse flow of capital.  Foreign financial firms needing to cover losses or meet commitments at home withdraw their capital, generating a credit crunch […]

In just a few days, on June 5th, an election will take place that will have a significant influence on the Western Hemisphere.  At the moment it is too close to call.  Most of official Washington has been relatively quiet, but there is no doubt that the Obama Administration has a big stake in the […]