Category Archives: Free markets and their discontents

Can Antitrust Law Rein in Facebook’s Data-Mining Profit Machine?

Facebook engaged in an elaborate bait and switch on user data: Privacy disappeared when competition did. Laws governing competition could change that.

‘The Greed of UnitedHealth Is Killing Americans’: Progressives Hit Back as Insurance CEO Bashes Medicare for All

The health care industry’s first salvo against Medicare for All did not go well.

Warren’s Antitrust Proposal: Should We Break Up Big Tech, or Just Regulate It Better?

While it is gratifying to see Senator and presidential contender Elizabeth Warren focusing on antitrust and the abuse of monopoly power, her $25 billlion fix looks too simplistic.

A Veblen Moment: Thorstein Veblen’s Lessons from the First Gilded Age Even More Relevant Today

Veblen was early and accurate about the behaviors and dangers of the super rich. Tthe advanced world is re-living his warnings.

Italy: How to Ruin a Country in Three Decades

How Italy became an economic mess.

Gail Tverberg: The True Feasibility of Moving Away from Fossil Fuels

Why our societies will remain dependent on fossil fuels much longer than we’d like.

MMT, Models, Multidisciplinarity

Pavlina Tcherneva does the heavy lifting of debunking an off-the-mark attack on MMT by Noah Smith.

World Bank Financialization Strategy Serves Big Finance

The World Bank continues its proud tradition of making the world safe for rentiers, um, financiers.

We Need to Stop the Overdiagnosis Disease. Step 1: Remove Vested Interests

Time to stop treating people as targets for disease treatments.

Bill Black: Tom Friedman Just Noticed that the UK “Has Gone Mad”

Bill Black uses Tom Friedman’s recognition just this week that Brexit is a mess as the foundation of a detailed takedown of Friedman’s propaganda, um, views.

New York Sues Big Pharma for Opioid Crisis

The Sackler family and PurduePharma profited from opioid-related “suffering and death,” NYC AG Letitia James charges. White collar criminologist and law professor Bill Black weighs in.

3 Questions That ‘Created Havoc’ in Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education

Betty DeVos has trouble answering questions on charter school fraud. Quelle surprise!

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos: A Four-Part Interview With Michael Hudson: A New “Reality Economics” Curriculum Is Needed (Part 4)

How mainstream economics ignores the lessons from antiquity on the destructiveness of oligachies, and how early industrialists and business schools promoted anti-rentier, socialit policies.