Category Archives: Free markets and their discontents

Burning Books (or Rather Book Companies)

Silence is ultimately the opposite of what any decent book or book publisher stands for.

Mission Accomplished: “Super Mario” Draghi’s Legacy and the Italian Election

Turnout in Italy’s election was the lowest since WWII as voters lose faith in a system unable to reverse a declining standard of living.

Michael Hudson Discusses Debt, Financial Surveillance, the Fed and More With Ralph Nader

Michael Hudson has a wide-ranging talk with Ralph Nader.

Free Market Genocides: The Real History of Trade

How so-called free trade has often brought large scale death, sometimes by design.

Satyajit Das: Emerging Market Crisis Pathologies

Why emerging markets look set to suffer a world of hurt.

Private Equity Sees the Billions in Eye Care as Firms Target High-Profit Procedures

Private equity continued to buy up and crapify more medical specialist practices. The latest target is eye care, particularly surgeries.

New USPS Delivery Network: Radically Cutting Rural Service, Headcount; Likely to Further Slow Delivery

The gutting of USPS is accelerating. A step backwards for what passes as American civilization.

Yanis Varoufakis: Time to Blow Up the Electricity Markets

How the EU’s neoliberal Rube Goldberg electricity market has made the energy shortage problem much worse than it needed to be.

Truss’s Plan to Hike Defence Funding and Ignore the Climate Is a Disaster

How Liz Truss’ defense budget math does not work…or does really well if the point is to roll social support back to Victorian workhouses.

Using the Payments System to Enforce an Russian Oil Price Cap Likely to Cause Supply Shock

The G7 plans to use its payments system to enforce a Russian oil price cap, because that worked so well in the shock and awe sanctions.

The Russian Situation Comedy Is No Lying Matter – The Joke Is on the Office of Foreign Assets Control

How Russian comedy producers and broadcasters are laughing their way to the bank thanks to Western sanctions.

US Is Becoming a ‘Developing Country’ on Global Rankings that Measure Democracy, Inequality

High levels of inequality are correlated with poor social indicators, so the US falling in global scores should come as no surprise.