Category Archives: Social values

Scotland Debates Independence and Launching New Currency

Introduction by Philip Pilkington

The Real News Network has recently run an excellent piece on Scottish independence. As this clip shows, the Scottish National Party is a breath of fresh air given the destruction of the British Labour Party by arch-imperialist Tony Blair and his Thatcherite cronies during the 1990s. The SNP is not only offering Scots a break with a past that was, on occasion, less than edifying but they are also offering them a new form of politics — that is, a return to the sort of social democratic, forward-looking governance that Britain lost after New Labour solidified the victory of neoliberalism in the elections of 1997.

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Is a Great Grey Exodus from America Starting?

Although there is no shortage of victims of the financial crisis, one group that has generally been missed is the middle aged and elderly. Yes, there are reports of people in their 40s and 50s moving in with their children or other relatives, but for the most part, this cohort does not get much attention.

Yet it isn’t hard to see how grim their prospects are.

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“Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals?”

Luigi Zingales, who teaches at the University of Chicago’s business school, had an op-ed in Bloomberg provocatively titled “Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals?” He argues that business schools are “partly to blame” for the decline in ethical standards in the business world, and urges that ethics not be taught as a separate course by lightweight profs, but integrated into all courses.

This piece is so backwards I don’t quite know where to begin.

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Is Public Ownership A Solution?

Real News Network presented a two part interview with Gar Alperovitz, professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, on why and where public provision of services might be preferable to private sector solutions. Alperovitz pointed out how the growth expectations for public companies are at odds with resource conservation and how their rampant short-termism stunts investment. Some economists have recently taken a systematic look at the latter problem.

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Fifty Shades of Capitalism: Pain and Bondage in the American Workplace

By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet

If the ghost of Ayn Rand were to suddenly manifest in your local bookstore, the Dominatrix of Capitalism would certainly get a thrill thumbing through the pages of E.L. James’ blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey.

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Is a New “Take No Prisoners” a Model for Social Change?

Lambert pointed to a recent Harvard Business Review blog post that posited the question of whether it would be possible to engineer a mirror image of the Stanford Prison experiment, in which subjects were put in a mock prison setting, cast either as guards or inmates. The experiment had to be aborted within days as the guards quickly became sadistic. But could a setting be created in which good behavior would be fostered? The pitch from the post:

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How Out-of-Control Credit Markets Threaten Liberty, Democracy and Economic Security

By Ed Harrison, the founder of Credit Writedowns. Cross posted from Alternet.

The awful experience of the Great Depression made clear to many economists and laymen alike that credit is at the heart of a functioning capitalist system. Without access to credit, many businesses die and many individuals and households run out of money and go bankrupt.

Yet in popular media accounts from the Great Depression, the focus is almost always on the stock market and the Great Crash of 1929. You hardly ever hear that it was the contraction of credit and the seizing up of credit markets that made the Great Depression so traumatic.

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Is Spain Going the Way of Greece?

In the “great minds work alike” category, both some readers (Hugh and LaMarchaNegra) and some of my investor e-mail correspondents (Scott, Ed Harrison, Marshall Auerback) took notice of how things are looking bad on the way to worse. Despite an unemployment rate of 25% and rising social unrest, the government just increased sales taxes to 21%. Ed Harrison sent a note to his Credit Writedowns Pro customers describing how Spain’s problem isn’t its government debt levels per se, but its deficits and the way it is soon to be saddled by regional debts and bank bailout costs. And because some of the creditor nations are dead set against debt mutualization, Spain will need to find a way to deal with its banking system losses.

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Eurozone Screws Spain’s Citizens

Yves here. Delusional Economics discussed earlier how hapless Spanish depositors, who’d been sold bank equity products as deposit equivalents, were at risk of being crammed down en masse. That move appears to be proceeding as planned. NC readers confirmed his earlier take, that this abuse of unsophisticated savers was likely to have serious social and political repercussions.

By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

A draft Memorandum of understanding for the Spanish bank bailout became available overnight (available below).

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Profiting From Market Failure: How Today’s Capitalists Bring Bad Things to Life

By Douglas K. Smith, the co-founder of Econ4 and author of “On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me. Cross posted from Alternet

The long-running General Electric slogan sums up what capitalist cheerleaders love to say about markets: "We bring good things to life."

But is it really true? In reality, some capitalists have figured out how to profit by actually bringing bad things to life.

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America’s Broken Jobs Engine

There was rending of garments and wearing of sackcloth last week when the jobs report came in at only 80,000 new jobs created in June, the third disappointing report in a row. Pundits looked to find cheer despite the disappointing outcome. For instance, the number of hours worked rose, and 25,000 temps were added, which the optimists used to contend that employers saw more demand, but weren’t quite confident enough to make permanent hires. Citigroup’s Tobias Levkovich argued that more firms are planning to add jobs. The gloomsters pointed out that global manufacturing output is weakening, and new orders in particular are signaling contraction. And John Hussman noted (hat tip Scott):

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The Great Capitalist Heist: How Paris Hilton’s Dogs Ended Up Better Off Than You

By Gerald Friedman, who teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author, most recently, of “Reigniting the Labor Movement” (Routledge, 2007). Edited by Lynn Parramore and produced in partnership with author Douglas Smith and Econ4. Cross posted from Alternet.

Summer 2009. Unemployment is soaring. Across America, millions of terrified people are facing foreclosure and getting kicked to the curb. Meanwhile in sunny California, the hotel-heiress Paris Hilton is investing $350,000 of her $100 million fortune in a two-story house for her dogs. A Pepto Bismol-colored replica of Paris’ own Beverly Hills home, the backyard doghouse provides her precious pooches with two floors of luxury living, complete with abundant closet space and central air.

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The Economist, Then and Now, on Bankers

Last week, the British press was in full-throated cry on the Libor scandal , both as a political story (the connections to the Conservative party; the questions over the Bank of England’s role) and for its economic repercussions (who else was involved, who wound up on the losing side). Many commentators took note of the Economist’s cover:

But despite the dramatic image and the use of the pejorative “banksters,” the article combined some helpful analysis with a call not to act against banks in haste

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Satyajit Das: Mr. Smith Goes to Leaves Wall Street

By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011)

Barclays Bank’s admission that they “fixed” money markets rates and JP Morgan’s admission that so called hedges were “incorrect” are merely symptoms of a deeply compromised global financial system. Significantly, even The Economist, sympathetic to capitalism and finance generally, resorted to the word “banksters”. Something is rotten it the state of global finance.

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