When I was young, one of the cartoons I enjoyed was Rocky and Bullwinkle. An occasional character was Wrong Way Peachfuzz, who made enough of an impression on other children to merit an entry in Wikipedia:
Read more...By Randy Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, New York. Cross posted from Economonitor
OK, I know you think this is yet another critical column on Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Read more...Even though most economic commentators focus on the deterioration of the periphery and are nervously taking note of how that is coming to impair the core countries, the strength of the German economy is nevertheless seldom questioned outside the Eurozone.
This Real News Network segment focuses on a generally-overlooked issue: wage suppression and the increasingly precarious conditions that German workers face, and how that plays into Eurozone politics.
Read more...Doug Short at Global Economic Intersection has a must-read post that pulls together some Census Report data on US incomes since 1967 and draws some conclusions. He looks first at real, rather than nominal, incomes, and shows how income in the top 5% and top quintile have grown faster than for the rest of the population
Read more...We are delighted to post the latest offering of Project S.H.A.M.E., a media transparency initiative led by Yasha Levine and Mark Ames.
Read more...Yves here. As much as I agree with the Black on how remarkably revealing and self-destructive Romney’s claim that nearly half of America consists of economic parasites is, it’s too soon to declare his presidential bid dead. Past studies show that many voters make their decision in the final six weeks before election. Even though Obama looks to be solidly placed, and Romney keeps throwing Hail Mary passes that go awry, you’d expect a sitting President to be further ahead given the caliber of campaign Romney has run. Obama is still exposed to negative events, such as further deterioration in Europe hitting US markets (and it does not necessarily take a full bore crisis, just enough nagging doubt to offset the equity market goosing of QE3), escalating hostility in the Middle East producing a credibility-sapping event, or successful voter suppression and other election day chicanery (just look at how many swing states have Republican governors). Mind you, we believe in keeping pressure on Obama since the Romney horrorshow gives Obama plenty of room to be merely less visibly awful in catering to plutocrats. So it’s important to repudiate the Romney message without giving Obama a free pass.
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
Charles Murray’s newest book: Coming Apart: The State of White America proves two classic truths. First, it is impossible to compete with self-parody. Second, be careful what you ask for; for you may receive it.
Read more...This edited transcript is expanded from a live phone interview with Michael Hudson by Dimitris Yannopoulos for Athens News. It summarizes some of the major themes from Hudson’s new book, The Bubble and Beyond: Fictitious Capital, Debt Deflation and Global Crisis, which is available on Amazon.
Q: How has the financial system evolved into the form of economic servitude that you call “debt peonage” in your book, implying a negation of democracy as well as free-market capitalism as classically understood?
Read more...Even in the cases where the outsourcing cost savings were significant, the idea that American wages were way out of line with Chinese wages and the only future for American workers was grinding wages lower and lower to compete with China has been oversold.
Read more...Since when are Americans required to carry and show ID to the police to go about their daily business?
Read more...The anniversary of Occupy Wall Street is September 17. While there will be public events in New York, it’s likely that number of people that will be involved will not be large enough to impress the punditocracy (multi-citi militarized crackdowns have a way of discouraging participation), leading them to declare OWS a flash in the pan.
That conclusion may be premature.
Read more...By Delusional Economics. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
While we wait for tonight’s announcement from the German constitutional court, there are some interesting developments in the Troika’s latest review of Portugal:
Read more...Bloomberg has developed a more detailed approach to looking at “misery” than the traditional “misery index,” which looked only at unemployment and inflation. They took their more granular method and used it to rank states in the US. This looks like a reasonable and useful metric, so I wish they had written a story detailing their approach and publishing the full ranking, but this TV clip gives the high points.
Read more...The economics discipline has for the most part managed to ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room: that of the role that the financial services industry has come to play. Astonishingly, even though the reengineering of the world economy along the lines preferred by mainstream economists resulted in a prosperity-wrecking global financial crisis and a soft coup by financiers, the discipline carries on methodologically as if nothing much had happened. And one of its huge blind spots is its refusal to acknowledge the role of banking and finance in modern commerce.
Read more...By Nathan Tankus,s a member of Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking working group. He is also deeply involved in the heterodox economics community and plans to have a PhD in economics before the decade is done. Cross posted with View From the Metropole.
In accounts of American economic history, the early days of banking are typically described as chaotic, contradictory and many decisions are depicted as awful, stupid mistakes. That period certainly included all these things, but looking at Europe now, one can’t help but feel that many back then (especially the elites) understood money better and were much better pragmatists.
Read more...Yves here. You too can get your own set of Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking limited edition playing cards prominently featuring many of the people you’ve learned to love to hate, like Timothy Geithner, Jamie Dimon, Angelo Mozilo, and Dick Fuld.
This is the overview:
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