Testimony at the Hearing Entitled “Taking Stock: Independent Views on TARP’s Effectiveness,” before the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, 19 November 2009 Thank you, Chairwoman Warren for inviting me to share my views on the success of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to date and its impact on the broader […]
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
The Recovery in Asia
As the world looks to full stabilisation and a rebound from the crisis due to the efforts of governments, clearly, it is finance rather than the real economy that has benefited more from those initiatives. In fact, the turnaround in the financial sector, which was responsible for the crisis in the first instance, has been […]
The Demise of the Death Penalty in the USA: The Politics of Capital Punishment and the Question of Innocence
The Killing Continues Since the suspension of the death penalty in Japan in September of 2009, the US is the only developed nation in the world that continues to execute its citizens — but, perhaps, not for long. The unmasking of the political agenda behind state-sanctioned killing during the past 25 years and the growing […]
They Pledged Your Tuition to Wall Street
This open letter was published on 9 October 2009, before the University of California Regents voted to approve a 32% tuition hike on 19 November 2009. — Ed. As students, you pay tuition in order to get an education at UC, and you know that the Regents plan to raise your tuition even higher. […]
The Invention of the Jewish People
Introduction to Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People by Bertell Ollman The Invention of the Jewish People is divided into two parts. The first is a long section on the theory of nationalism, whose main characteristic, according to Sand, is the tendency to invent a past that suits the current needs and […]
Negotiating in a Difficult Economic Environment
“[I]t may be surprising to learn that faculty salaries are not a major component of the total costs at most universities. For instance, at my institution, Eastern Michigan University, faculty salaries make up only 24 percent of total expenses. So where is the money going?” — Howard Bunsis Conclusion: Yes, these are bad economic […]
Public Sector Workers: The Recession’s Next Victims?
I fear that Tom Walkom of the Toronto Star is bang on when he argues that the next victims of the recession will be public sector workers. As he writes: The federal government has already signalled plans to get tough with its workers. In Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty gave notice this week that the […]
Roots of Capitalist Stability and Instability
Prabhat Patnaik. The Value of Money. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2008/New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Excerpt: “Introduction.” Prabhat Patnaik is an eminent and prolific economist who has worked creatively for 40 years at the intersection of Marxian and Keynesian theoretical traditions. In addition to his writings on Marxism and Keynesianism per se, he has […]
U.S. Must Solve Its Own Economic Problems
President Obama will go to Asia and has promised to say something about the exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the U.S. dollar. It would be good if some enterprising journalist asked him why the United States is worried about the Chinese dumping their dollars, and why U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently said […]
International Tribunal on Trade Union Freedom Condemns Mexican Presidency
In Mexico City on October 28, the International Tribunal on Trade Union Freedom (October 26, 2009-May 1, 2010) concluded its first of two public sessions with a scathing preliminary report that condemned President Felipe Calderón for his violent union-busting measures since taking office after his questionable 2006 election. The Tribunal had been organized in […]
Crisis of the Capitalist System: Where Do We Go from Here?
The Harold Wolpe Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 5 November 2009 In 1982, I published a book, jointly with Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, and Andre Gunder Frank, entitled Dynamics of Global Crisis. This was not its original title. We had proposed the title, Crisis, What Crisis? The U.S. publisher did not like that title, but we […]
A Failed Economy
Amandla: Early in 2009 you published your book The Great Financial Crisis (coauthored with Fred Magdoff). Could you reflect now almost a year later on what made the current recession more severe than previous recessions? Why has it been compared to the Great Depression and what type of recovery are we likely to see? […]
The Failure of Capitalism after the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Interview with Victor Grossman
Play now: “Not everybody is happy about what happened after the Wall went down. In fact, it’s often referred to in East Germany not as German reunification but as West German annexation or even colonization, because the economy in East Germany took a nosedive after the two joined, the East and the West joined — […]
U.S. Public Diplomacy toward Iran: Structures, Actors, and Policy Communities
Abstract: This dissertation is an in-depth study of the structures, actors, and policy communities associated with U.S. public diplomacy toward Iran. Since 2006, the U.S. government has spent more than $200 million for its Iran-related public diplomacy via State Department “democracy promotion” programs, National Endowment for Democracy, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. These […]
Green Shoots, Profits, and Great Depressions (or Recessions)
In the months following the outbreak of the financial crisis in late 2007, the general climate among economists and economic commentators was kind of a stupor. Mainstream economists and conservative politicians — who had clamored for decades for the government to keep its hands off the economy, for balanced budgets, and for taxes as low […]
Neoliberalism as Hegemonic Ideology in the Philippines
Paper delivered at the plenary session of the 2009 National Conference of the Philippine Sociological Society held at the PSSC Building on 16 October 2009 Why does the ideology of neoliberalism still exercise such influence in the Philippines despite the challenges it has faced from both the Asian and now global financial crisis? This paper […]
‘The Dangers Are Great, the Possibilities Immense’1: The Ongoing Political Struggle in India
“What made Spence dangerous to the bourgeoisie was not that he was a proletarian nor that he had ideas opposed to private property but that he was both.” — Peter Linebaugh.2 ‘Poorest of the Poor’ and Politics It is always easy to criticize and dismiss an argument in its weakest formulation. Attacking the policies of […]
The Armed Face of Neoliberalism
Jasmin Hristov. Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia. Ohio University Research in International Studies Series. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009. xxiii + 263 pp. 28.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-89680-267-4. Jasmin Hristov’s book is an exploration of the history and evolution of armed paramilitary forces in Colombia, focusing primarily on the past two decades. […]
What Is Maoism?
The Maoist movement in India is a direct consequence of the tragedy of India ruled by her big bourgeoisie and governed by parties co-opted by that class-fraction. The movement now threatens the accumulation of capital in its areas of influence, prompting the Indian state to intensify its barbaric counter-insurgency strategy to throttle it. In trying […]
The Economic Crisis: How It Impacts African-Americans and Labor
Lecture delivered at the Economic and Black Labor Forum, the Philadelphia Community Institute for Africana Studies, 22 October 22 2009 The present Great Recession is the latest and largest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s. During the Great Depression over half of all African-American men were unemployed. The present Great […]
