I hung out a while yesterday at the Vancouver Occupation, and was impressed with their efforts at radical democracy. Many in the mainstream press have been quick to pile on for how time-consuming decision-making can be under this model, but perhaps they have not spent enough time in legislatures and committee meetings and public consultations. […]
Continue readingTag: economic crisis
Occupy Movement: Inequality in Newfoundland and Labrador
Apparently the policy brief I wrote for the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour has been picked up by the Occupy Wall Street movement. The brief can be found here. The money shot from that brief would be the graph … Continue readin…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Occupy Wall Street
In search of some background on the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, I recently caught up with Rick Wolff. He is a progressive economist and rising alternative media celeb in NYC (you can hear his entertaining weekly radio discussion of economic news at http://rdwolff.com/). He (with others like Stiglitz) among other spoke to the Occupy Wall […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The State of the Economy and Labour’s Response
The advanced economies, including Canada, risk falling back into recession because of government spending cuts and a looming financial crisis. The Canadian Labour Congress has been calling for our federal government and the G20 governments to respond by putting jobs first. This paper summarizes the economic situation as of the end of September, 2011 and […]
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Not Seeing The Trees For The Forest
Paul Krugman’s analysis of the European Debt Crisis, in this morning’s New York Times should be required reading — not just for the movers and shakers in Europe, but for our own so called wise men. Krugman’s critics on the right accuse him of fi…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Falling Real Wages Signal Trouble Ahead
The Labour Force Survey for August showed that average hourly wages were up by just 1.4% from a year earlier, the same low level of increase as was registered in July. Consumer price inflation was 2.7% in July, a bit down from 3.1% in June and 3.7% in May, but it seems that we have […]
Continue readingDelicious and dangerous irony: China to buy Italisn bonds
How much of a disaster is the EMU? Look no further than the spectacle of the Italians going cap in hand to the Chinese for a bail out. The fact that the Italians are tapping the Chinese is not the … Continue reading →
Continue readingThe irony of greed: The end game for Neoliberalism?
The global economy is in the toilet and the Boomers’ representatives are chanting: “flush, flush, flush.” Me? I am eating cigarettes and wine while admiring the remarkable consistency in the myopia of all of it. In the name of fisca…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Money Runners for Marx
On Bloomberg today is a piece by George Magnus, senior economic advisor at UBS, on the relevance of Marxian ideas. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-29/give-marx-a-chance-to-save-the-world-economy-commentary-by-george-magnus.html Give Karl Marx a Chance to Save the World Economy: George Magnus By George Magnus – Aug 28, 2011 Policy makers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting […]
Continue readingRedBedHead: "Karl Marx, it seems, was partly right…"
Well, there’s something you only ever hear from economists when they’re pooping their pants because the system is going in to meltdown. We heard it in the early 1990s and again when the financial crisis hit in 2008. And now Nouriel, who resists the del…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: MMT: What it Means for Canada
Arun Dubois’ blog post yesterday on Modern Monetary Theory has prompted me to write my own take on the subject. For those interested, an interesting thumbnail sketch of MMT, essentially functional finance augmented by a full understanding of monetary operations, is explained at http://johnsville.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-in-nutshell.html. While MMT deals with the details of monetary and fiscal matters, […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Japanizing the World Economy
This guest post is from PEF members Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia, both of whom are full professors of economics at the University of Ottawa. The “Japanization” of the World Economy Over the last twenty years, the Japanese economy underwent a long period of economic stagnation that some economists have characterized as a protracted “balance-sheet […]
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Inherit The Wind
Forty two years ago, I was preparing to teach my first classes. I had spent the summer at the University of North Carolina, studying John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, Carl Rogers and American Literature. I was one of about fifty students who were about to ent…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The New Phase of the Crisis
The Great Recession was followed by an anaemic recovery in the advanced economies, which threatens to be followed by a double dip or worse now that the fiscal stimulus measures of 2009 and 2010 have been succeeded by austerity programs. Now we face a new financial crisis, or at least a stock market correction of […]
Continue readingRedBedHead: Capitalism vs Democracy
This article in the Globe & Mail about the ongoing debt crisis in the USA and Europe caught my attention. Not because it offered any interesting or unique insight into the origins or solution to the present debt crisis facing western capitalist nat…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Second Great Contraction
The American economist, Kenneth Rogoff suggested this week that we stop referring to our present economic woes as The Great Recession, and instead label the present situation The Second Great Contraction. The first Great Contraction occurred in the 193…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: It’s Always Been About Jobs
Many people criticize Paul Krugman for being too shrill. But, after all, the policy elites have chosen not to take his advice; and, as economies around the world continue to deteriorate, he has become increasingly frustrated. He writes this morning tha…
Continue readingThe Right Wing Commentariat is getting Desperate
JuysTerence Corcoran Just go read Terence Corcoran’s latest in the National Post. Never mind that the world was plunged into economic crisis by unregulated financial institutions; and near fully captured regulators never mind that by most accou…
Continue readingRedBedHead: After The Debt Ceiling: Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Economic Meltdown
It must have been pretty weak pixie dust, that debt ceiling agreement that was supposed to stave off imminent collapse, put America on a sound economic footing and bring sunshine and joy to the democratic peoples of the earth, because its affect on the…
Continue readingThe ‘debt crisis’ and the undermining of democracy in Europe
While CK’s on the road, she’s invited me to blog and cross-post here. So I’m recycling this tasty little item, which I found via @NaomiAKlein. (They say she’s polarizing … )
A sample:
Vast swathes of public policy have already been closed off and rendered inaccessible to conventional democratic processes. Anyone who’s seen . . . → Read More: The ‘debt crisis’ and the undermining of democracy in Europe
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