Are the Davos Men Getting a Bit Nervous?
Normally I try not to pay much attention to Davos because it is meant to reinforce the idea that plutocracy is simply a manifestation of natural aristocracy.
Read more...Category Archives: Social values
Gar Alperovitz on Mondragon and the Potential of Worker Owned Co-ops Economy
Gar Alperovitz, professor of economics at the University of Maryland, speaks on Real News Network about the potential and limits of worker cooperatives like Mondragon.
Read more...The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
So many of the assertions made about “maximizing shareholder value” are false that they should be assumed to be a lie until proven otherwise.
Read more...Michael Hudson: The Insider’s Economics Dictionary – L is for Land, M is for Marginalism
Yves here. Two new entries in Michael Hudson’s answer to Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, his The Insiders Economic Dictionary.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Behavioral Economics as Victorian Moralizing
Why behavioural economics is nothing but Victorian morality passed down to the modern age.
Read more...Why Germans Should Stop Mowing Their Own Lawn
Yves here. I’m featuring this post in part as a development exercise to Cliff, a German economist who has been blogging off and on since 2011 and plans to post on a more consistent basis. He has been warned that the NC readership can be rough. His thesis: “Home production may be a popular or cultural preference, economically sensible it is not.”
Read more...Alain Damasio on the NSA: “701,000 Hours in Custody”
Yves here. Reader Mike M highly recommended what he called “one kick-ass anti-NSA/call to revolt article.” Even though my once-pretty-good French has eroded due to lack of use, from what I could read I agreed and asked for reader help with translation.
Aside from its merit as a stand-alone work, I also thought this article was noteworthy as an indicator of sentiment in France about the Snowden revelations.
Read more...Gaius Publius: `Wall Street & the Security Apparatus Want a Real SOB… Chris Christie`
So now we know why the Republicans have been going to such extreme lengths to try to preserve embattled New Jersey governor Chris Christie as a national figure…
Read more...Has the Developed World Hit “Peak Car Use”?
Yves here. While this piece provides a solid overview of the fallen status of cars, it misses an obvious contributor to the lack of enthusiasm for them among the young: with weak incomes and in many cases, heavy student debt loads, an automobile is too large an expense relative to what they get out of it.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Greek Finance Minister Reveals Advanced Case of Stockholm Syndrome
This is a stupendous story. Possibly for the first time in its tainted history, the International Monetary Fund had a major change of heart and tried to do the right thing by a ‘program’ country, only to be turned down by that very same country’s finance minister!
Read more...Frigid Weather Puts Homeless at Risk
Yves here. Although the current spell of nasty cold weather isn’t unusual by the standards of three decades ago, in the intervening years we’ve also had a big increase in homelessness, which means a lot more people are at risk of freezing to death.
Read more...The Three Card Monte of Generational Warfare
Stock speculator Jay Gould remarked, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” That, sports fans, is the real foundation of the generational warfare propaganda effort.
Read more...Death By A Thousand Cuts: The Silent Assassination Of European Democracy
The European Union is riddled with fatal flaws and defects. Chief among them is the single currency which, rather than serving as the Union’s springboard to global dominance, could well be its ultimate undoing.
Read more...The Misdirected Outrage Over The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese’s film about a boiler-room stockbroker who managed to reach the major leagues of financial services industry swindling, The Wolf of Wall Street, has garnered both strong box office sales and heated denunciations.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Seven Economic Views on Christmas Presents
A cheeky take on the usual clash between different ‘schools’ of economics, focusing on how each of seven such ‘schools’ might view Christmas…presents.
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