Subjects Archives: Political Economy

The AFL-CIO has announced that it now supports nationalizing the nation’s banks rather than continuing to spend billions of dollars in repeated efforts to restore them to solvency. The American labor federation, which represents 10 million workers, released a draft statement expected to be approved by its executive council today stating, “We believe the debate […]

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob, When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job. They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead, Why should I be standing in […]

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.  He is the coauthor with Fred Magdoff of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, recently published by Monthly Review Press. MW: Do you think that the American people have been misled into believing that the current financial […]

Statement by James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr., Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin and Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute, before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings on the Conduct of Monetary Policy, February 26, 2009. Mr. Chairman and […]

  As the financial crisis that erupted in 2007 unfolds in an economic cataclysm which, it is now clear, is unprecedented in the history of capitalism, world leaders without exception reveal themselves as politically and ideologically bankrupt in their efforts to bring it under control.  This is most obviously demonstrated by their insistence on the […]

Delegates to the World Economic Forum at Davos this year came despondent and left in despair.  Both the discussions and the new evidence released at and during the Forum indicated that the global crisis was not just bad, but worse than originally anticipated.  One damaging projection came from the IMF in its January 2009 Update […]

  Economic ignorance is widespread in the United States. People think they know something about the subject, but few do.  My mother is convinced that China is the cause of all our economic problems.  When I challenge her, she doesn’t think it matters that I have spent forty years studying and teaching the dismal science.  […]

  The 4th quarter US GDP figures confirm that the economic downturn, in its domestic aspect, is taking the classic form of an investment-led decline. As seen in Figure 1 US fixed investment already started to fall from the 1st quarter of 2006 onwards — US consumer expenditure and GDP, in contrast, continued to rise […]

The text below is composed of short excerpts (abstract, introduction, conclusion) from Jörg Bibow, “Insuring Against Private Capital Flows: Is It Worth the Premium?  What Are the Alternatives?” published online by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College in December 2008.  The full text of “Insuring against Private Capital Flows” is available (in PDF) at […]

There are, of course, other ways to “support and stimulate” the declining US economy: those that congressional debaters, presidential advisors, and the dutiful media never discuss.  All the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury ever do is justify their functions as lenders and spenders “of last resort” (when the private sector will not).  Neither ever […]

Over 1,500 students demonstrated in Helsinki on 19 February 2009 against the proposed reform of higher education.  After the demonstration, the students proceeded to occupy the administration building of the University of Helsinki.  Students in Tampere, Turku, Joensuu, Rovaniemi, and Oulu also organized walkouts. The new Universities Act proposed by the Finnish government, if enacted, […]

This is the longer version of an essay by the author released by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on 6 February 2009. Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than predicted by the gloomiest analysts.  We are now, it is clear, in no ordinary recession but are headed for […]

  ‘I didn’t know Che had any economic ideas’ has been a frequent reply I’ve received when telling people about the topic of my research and my book Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution.   It reflects the caricature of Guevara as a romantic guerrilla fighter with idealist notions of how human beings are motivated […]

The end of eight years of neoconservative belligerence in the White House came with a financial crisis exacerbated by decades of neoliberal economic policies.  As a result of this coincidence, the ideological winds in the United States are blowing powerfully to the left. The possibility of another great depression looming over the economy,1 left-wing and […]

  Japan’s economy shrank at an annual rate of 12.7 percent last quarter, the worst decline since 1974.  It is estimated that 125,000-400,000 more workers will be jobless by the end of March.  Japanese capitalism is visibly incapacitated, and so is its finance minister. Minister Nakagawa at a Post-G7 Press Conference Rome, 14 February 2009 […]

One of the greatest insights of Karl Marx was his perception of the capitalist system as a self-acting, self-driven and “spontaneous” order.  Far from being a malleable system, where intervention by the State could be used for bringing about basic changes in the mode of its functioning, in which case of course the need to […]

  After a decade of political polarization and international standoff, the debate on Zimbabwe has finally been opened up to a wider reading public, thanks to Mahmood Mamdani’s “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” appearing in the London Review of Books (04/12/2008).  Renowned scholars, within and without Africa, have broken their silence and have taken public positions.  The […]

  CP: After twenty-five years of sporadic growth and extreme polarization of income and life conditions around the world, actually existing neoliberalism seems to be on the verge of collapse.  Where do you situate the current crisis in the history of the development of global capitalism? JBF: Neoliberalism has clearly collapsed.  But as Fred Magdoff […]

The other day I noted some of Obama’s ideas that point to his role within a system that is the negation of every just principle.

  In 1997, the AFL-CIO established the American Center for International Labor Solidarity by merging its four regional institutions that had operated around the world.  Solidarity Center stated its mission: “to help build a global labor movement by strengthening the economic and political power of workers around the world through effective, independent and democratic unions.” […]