How Puerto Rico’s Death Toll Was Ignored, and Could Have Been Avoided
Why the death toll in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria was so disgracefully high.
Read more...Category Archives: Free markets and their discontents
NIRP’s Revenge: Italian Bonds Plunge, Worst Day in Decades
Markets wail and gnash their teeth as normalization of Italian yields sets in.
Read more...How Media Amnesia Has Trapped Us in a Neoliberal Groundhog Day
How the media became the useful idiot of neoliberalism.
Read more...Italy’s Political Crisis….How Ugly Might It Get?
Identifying issues that may influence how Italy’s political crisis over the rejection of a Lega Nord-5 Star economy minister plays out.
Read more...Stock Market Borrowing at All Time High, Increasing Risk of Downdrafts
I find it hard to get excited about stock market risks unless defaults on the borrowings can damage the banking/payments system, as they did in the Great Crash. This is one reason the China perma-bears have a point: even though the Chinese government has managed to do enough in the way of rescues and warnings […]
Read more...How Institutional Dysfunction Has Enabled Poor Economic Policy Thinking
How economic research practices and the role of academic journals helped create and reinforced an orthodoxy that was able to miss that the crisis was coming.
Read more...Do Fewer Settlements by Pharmaceutical Companies Mean Even Less Accountability for Their Execs?
Drug company settlements with the Feds, which never were very tough to begin with, are also becoming less frequent.
Read more...Understanding Right and Left Populism
Experts appear to have understated the role of economic insecurity in sparking the rise of populism.
Read more...Lib-Pop Politics: Italy’s New Government Is More Neoliberal Than Populist
Italy’s much ballyhooed populism is looking a lot like a sellout.
Read more...EU Shows Up UK Brexit Trade Fantasies by Opening Bi-Lateral Negotiations With Australia and New Zealand
Yet another Brexit black eye.
Read more...How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public
Why “shareholders come first,” an ideology that became widely accepted only in the last 30 years, is a poor guide for managing companies.
Read more...The Populism Backlash: An Economically Driven Backlash
Quelle surprise! The rise of populism correlates strongly with increases in economic insecurity.
Read more...To Reform Capitalism, Look to Marx
A high-level discussion of the re-imaging of the word “capitalism”.
Read more...California Hospital Giant Sutter Health Target of Anti-Trust Suit, Legislation for High Prices. Will It Set a National Precedent?
Will California officials succeed in curbing aggressive pricing by hospital network Sutter Health? Could these efforts set a precedent for other markets?
Read more...Yes, Neoliberalism Is a Thing. Don’t Let Economists Tell You Otherwise
Now that people have started to discover what neoliberalism is, denialism is the rage.
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