Cut Flowers, Coffee, and a Geopolitical Shock
Colombia and coffee and flowers, or how successful bullying does not necessarily translate into durable wins.
Read more...Category Archives: Guest Post
2:00PM Water Cooler 1/27/2025
~ Today’s Water Cooler: Politics, Syndemics; Trump’s first week; Democrats for 2028;
Surviving pandemics ~
What France Loses by Closing Its Military Bases in Africa
What happens when a former colonial power like France loses one of the key implements of its control?
Read more...Links 1/27/2025
A Trump Pivot Away From Europe? Not So Fast: The Plunder Is Too Lucrative for American Plutocrats
Europe is now largely an American colony where the tech, energy, weapons, and financial industries are making a killing, so it’s no wonder Trump isn’t going to substantially shift US policy.
Read more...Tariffs Are Coming: How Trade Dynamics Will Shape Aggregate Demand and Inflation
Consumers may not suffer from more inflation per official data if Trump imposes tariffs. But that does not mean they won’t be worse off.
Read more...Will the Newly Declassified CIA “Assessment” of Covid Origins in Wuhan Include the Possibility of Early Spread in Italy?
The possibility of early Covid spread is unlikely to mentioned in the newly released CIA assessment of Covid origins, since ths alternative hypothesis clearly contradicts the timeline held today as canon.
Read more...Links 1/26/2025
Michael Hudson: Trump’s Balance-of-Payments War on Mexico, and the Whole World
Why US trade and economic threats against Mexico could trigger a financial/currency crisis that may propagate across the Global South
Read more...President Trump Promises to Make Government Efficient − and He’ll Run Into the Same Roadblocks as Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, Among Others
Why “make government efficient” and cost cutting programs are close to destined to come up short.
Read more...How Much Will Trump’s Bark Exceed His Bite? Doubts About Whether Disruptive Federal Hiring and Spending Pauses Will Produce Lasting Changes
Trump is adept at using his willingness to be wildly inconsistent to destabilize opponents. But he is unduly fond of using blunt instruments like tariffs that he can impose unilaterally, with insufficient consideration of whether they will work all that well, let alone what bad unintended effects they might generate. What Trump has done so […]
Read more...Links 1/24/2025
At Davos, Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud on Online Anonymity and Digital Identity
“In our countries, no one can walk the streets with a mask on their face,” and “yet we allow people to roam freely on the Internet without linking their profiles to a real identity.”
Read more...The Curse of the Household Analogy
It can’t be said too often: national government spending is not like household spending, and acting as if it is is damaging.
Read more...Building a Movement for Social Justice in the Time of Trump
Unlike many who are upset about Trump’s win, Liz Theoharis and William Hartung focus building a broad-based opposition with policy goals
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