Bill Black: Why the World Economic Forum and Goldman Sachs are Capitalism’s Worst Enemies
Bill Black discusses the basis for giving the “Private Eye” award to Goldman at the counter World Economic Forum gathering at Davos .
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
All Good Democrats Applaud Republicans Rearranging Battle Lines in Austerity Phony War
As we anticipated, the Republicans have climbed down on making the debt ceiling the key battle line in their plan to impose spending cuts. Good Democrats applauded that move as a sign that Obama had displayed toughness and prevailed.
It’s not quite that simple.
Read more...What are the German Bankers Thinking?
Some readers would probably come up with less polite versions of the question above, but regardless of how one states it, policy in the Eurozone is very much driven by both the needs and the wants of German banks.
Read more...Joe Firestone: The Great Austerity Swindle!
By Joe Firestone, Ph.D., Managing Director, CEO of the Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI), and Director of KMCI’s CKIM Certificate program. He has taught political science as the graduate and undergraduate level and blogs regularly at Corrente, Firedoglake and Daily Kos as letsgetitdone. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
Our Congresspeople, corporate CEOs, tea partiers, most economists, Pete Peterson’s minions, and even our President, tell us that we’re running out of money; and that we can’t keep running huge deficits, and increasing our national debt forever, because eventually, our creditors will just cease lending us our dollars back….
Read more...Republicans Backing Away from Debt Ceiling Brinksmanship, to Hold Line on Sequestration and Budget
A important shift in the Republicans’ negotiating stance over the austerity fight (do we go Dem lite or Republican high test?) was duly noted in the Financial Times a day ago, but a search in Google News (“debt ceiling”) suggests a lot of other commentators have not yet digested its significance, so it seemed worthy of a short recap here.
Read more...Bill Black: German Growth Goes Negative but Merkel’s Press Remains Glowing
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
It is good to be Angela Merkel.
Read more...Joe Firestone: Austerian Obama Kisses Platinum Coin Bargaining Chip Goodbye, but the Coin May Rise Again
By Joe Firestone, Ph.D., Managing Director, CEO of the Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI), and Director of KMCI’s CKIM Certificate program. He has taught political science as the graduate and undergraduate level and blogs regularly at Corrente, Firedoglake and Daily Kos as letsgetitdone
Yesterday, Ezra Klein mouthpieced for Treasury and Fed reported in the Washington Post that:
The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it.
Needless to say, it’s not surprising that a reading of the underlying statutes suggests Obama was free to use the platinum coin to circumvent the debt ceiling, and conveniently scapegoats the Fed to hide his own preference for imposing austerity.
Read more...Untold History: The Coup Against Wallace and What Might Have Been
Real News Network has run an occasional series based on an interview with Peter Kuznick on what he calls “untold history,” which are important junctures in American history that are airbrushed out of the mainstream narrative. Here, Paul Jay and Kuznick continue their discussion of Roosevelt’s wildly popular vice president Henry Wallace and how he was shoved aside in favor of Harry Truman.
Read more...Bill Black: Krugman and Obama’s Dangerous Austerity Myths
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/12/kill-the-fiscal-cliff-instead-of-the-economy.html“>New Economic Perspectives
Austerity in response to the Great Recession has proven to be an economic weapon of mass destruction.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: The Origins of Neoliberalism, Part III – Europe and the Centre-Left Fall under Hayek’s Spell
By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil
In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.
– Sun Tzu
Read more...Dan Kervick: US Double-Dip Death Watch Continues
By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
I thought I would take a break from the latest outburst of debt ceiling mania to call attention once again to the bipartisan plan of budget austerity and recession-tempting economic devastation that will be implemented in March in one form or another, and from which the debt ceiling debate is designed to distract us.
Read more...Why Corporate Subsidies in the Fiscal Cliff Bill Matter: We Can Stop Corruption If We Understand It
Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.
Three days ago, Naked Capitalism published a story, Eight Corporate Subsidies in the Fiscal Cliff Bill, From Goldman Sachs to Disney to NASCAR. Basically, when everyone else was focused on taxes for the wealthy or spending cuts, we actually looked at the underlying bill. And loh and behold, the corporate extenders were egregious and included cash for NASCAR, Hollywood, mining companies, GE, Citigroup, and so on. The reaction has been swift, and is useful to understand, because it points to an underlying political dynamic. And that is, change is possible, and “the system” isn’t inherently dirty. We can make a difference, if we try.
Read more...Eric Zuesse: Understanding President Obama’s Strategy to Force Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (Updated)
By Eric Zuesse, an investigative historian and the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
In order to be able to understand the current debt-limit battle in Washington, here is the essential historical background….
Read more...Yes, Virginia, The Rich Did Very Well With the Fiscal Cliff Deal
The Real News Network has conducted a series of interviews on the fiscal cliff deal, and the two most recent are worthwhile in and of themselves, and are also good tools for persuading those who fallen for the idea that Obama got a good deal to reexamine their view. With the Vichy Left now trying to soften up the public for Social Security and Medicare “reform,” it’s particularly important to keep an accurate scorecard on what has already gone down.
Read more...Michael Hudson: America’s Deceptive 2012 Fiscal Cliff, Part IV– Why Financial and Tax Reform Should Go Together
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond.”
Taxes pay for the cost of government by withdrawing income from the parties being taxed. From Adam Smith through John Stuart Mill to the Progressive Era, general agreement emerged that the most appropriate taxes should not fall on labor, capital or on sales of basic consumer needs. Such taxes raise the break-even cost of employing labor. In today’s world, FICA wage withholding for Social Security raises the price that employers must pay their work force to maintain living standards and buy the products they produce.
However, these economists singled out one kind of tax that does not increase prices: taxes on the land’s rental value, natural resource rents and monopoly rents.
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