The Venezuelan minimum wage, including the value of food vouchers, will reach $636 in September this year, when the process of raising it by 20% gets completed; the second highest minimum wage in South America is Argentina’s $310 per month. The anti-crisis measures announced by the Bolivarian government last Saturday, although affecting Venezuelans negatively […]
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
Osvaldo Martínez: “The Crisis Is Not an Abnormality in Capitalism”
2009 started off badly. The international economic crisis is the top priority of governments, companies, international organizations, and individuals preoccupied with having a roof to sleep under and food on the table. The situation has surprised almost everybody, albeit Cuba to a lesser degree. Almost a decade ago, Comandante Fidel Castro warned that the […]
Marxism and the Crisis of Capitalism
Capitalism is going through its greatest crisis since the 1930s or before. The banking system has been saved from meltdown (at least for the time being) only by extensive government intervention in the USA, Britain, and a number of other countries. Stock markets all over the world have plummeted. A long and deep recession […]
There Is No Zombie Free Lunch
It is a story that could make The Return of the Living Dead 6. A group of good people huddle on a roof, with a limited supply of raw meat. A crowd of zombies surrounds the house: hungry, mad, aggressive. Fear spreads and bodies collapse; the odour is terrible. The zombies smell blood and […]
Keynes, Capitalism, and the Crisis
The essence of Keynes’s contribution was the demolition of Say’s law of markets. Say’s Law argued that supply created its own demand, so that there could never be an actual glut of production. Marx had rejected Say’s Law from the beginning, calling it “the childish babbling of a Say, but unworthy of Ricardo.” But neoclassical […]
From the Crisis of Distribution to the Distribution of the Costs of the Crisis: What Can We Learn from Previous Crises about the Effects of the Financial Crisis on Labor Share?
Abstract The paper analyzes the possible distributional consequences of the global crisis based on the lessons of the past crises experiences. The decline in the labor share across the globe has been a major factor that led to the current global crisis. What we are going through is a crisis of distribution, and similarly the […]
Why Labor Doesn’t Need a “House of Lords”
“Also being debated [at the AFL-CIO executive council meeting] is whether to create a mechanism to nudge past-their-prime union presidents to retire so unions are not stuck with tired, uninspired leaders. One negotiator [of AFL-CIO/ Change-to-Win/NEA unity] talked of creating an advisory ‘Labor House of Lords’ to encourage older union presidents to step aside.” — […]
Feminist Organizing against the Gaza Conflict
Throughout the seemingly intractable Israel-Palestine conflict, civil society has been active in responding to crises and advocating for peace and justice. Kathambi Kinoti of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) interviewed Eilat Maoz, a general coordinator of the Coalition of Women for Peace, an Israeli organization that works for peace in Israel and […]
Interview with Eric Toussaint
Interview with Eric Toussaint, President of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), in Havana. Obama Picked People Who Brought You This Crisis as His Advisers What is your opinion of Team Obama? Toussaint: Obama picked the very people who are responsible for this economic fiasco. Some hoped that Obama would appoint […]
The Reasons for Mobilization in Réunion
Jean-Hugues Ratenon is President of the “Agir Pou Nou Tout” [Act for All of Us] Association, which is part of the Collective of Trade Unions, Political Organizations, and Community Associations of Réunion (COSPAR), the organizer of the social movement. The prefect of Réunion announced, on Thursday, 5 March, a decrease in the price of […]
AFL-CIO Supports Nationalizing the Banks: But Who Will Control and Run Them?
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 […]
Industrializing amidst a Global Financial Crisis: Is It Possible?
The Center for Economic and Policy Research, Center of Concern and Heinrich Böll Foundation cordially invite you to: Industrializing Amidst a Global Financial Crisis: Is it Possible? with featured speakerHa-Joon Chang, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge and remarks byRogerio Studart, Alternate Executive Director for Brazil, World BankandMark Weisbrot, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy […]
American Nightmare
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 […]
Redistribution and Stability: Beyond the Keynesian/Neo-liberal Impasse
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 […]
Interview of John Bellamy Foster on The Great Financial Crisis
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 […]
We Are at the Beginning of a Long, Profound, Painful Process of Change
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 […]
The Asian Face of the Global Recession
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 […]
Michael Steele Is a Nitwit and Wolf Blitzer Is a Jackass
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. […]
Will Keynesianism Be Enough to Halt the Investment Decline?
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 […]
Insuring against Private Capital Flows: Is It Worth the Premium? What Are the Alternatives?
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 […]
