This and that for your Sunday reading. – Larry Elliott writes that a corporate-centred model of globalization is unlikely to survive the Trump regime. And Jeff Spross proposes an alternative which allows for people to be free and capital to be controlled, rather than the other way around. – But
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Canadian Dimension: Non-Aligned Movement gathers in Venezuela to resist dictatorship of dollar
Late in the evening on July 19, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif stepped out of a plane and met his Venezuelan counterpart, Jorge Arreaza, on the tarmac outside Caracas with an enthusiastic embrace. Zarif was in town to participate in the ministerial conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). “Today in
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Global Currency War Has Begun
Over this weekend, China’s Yuan currency broke out of its band and devalued to more than 7 to $1. At the same time China announced it would not purchase more US agricultural goods. The Trump-US Neocon trade strategy has just imploded. As this writer has been predicting, the threshold has
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: NAFTA renewed. Now what?
Photo by The White House When Donald Trump declared NAFTA to be “the worst deal” in American history (and the worst deal ever signed “by any country”), those who had long opposed NAFTA found themselves in a bind. They could hardly side with Trump and be identified with the imperial
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Thoughts from the road: General Motors, China and Alberta, a new landscape emerges from Monday’s dust
OTTAWA Now that the dust is settling from Monday’s announcement General Motors Corp.’s last auto assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., will soon be closed, the emerging landscape is not promising for Alberta. Leastways, it’s not hopeful from the perspective of an Alberta that has no plan to transition from a
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
Book Review Adam Tooze. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Viking. New York. 2018 The global economic crisis is now more than a decade old, and is far from definitively behind us. Indeed, many fear, with good reason, that the recent, uneven and lethargic global recovery
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Review of the Renegotiated NAFTA: Benefits and Drawbacks to Canada
Trudeau and Freeland praise USMCA trade deal There is something strange about this. Other than Maude Barlow and of Sujata Dey of the Council of Canadians, it appears that no other journalists or columnists from the mainstream media have mentioned two significant features in NAFTA 2.0 that are of considerable
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on NAFTA 2.0
Photo from Public Domain At midnight last night, Canada and the U.S. agreed on a new deal on NAFTA, one which would now be called the USMCA, the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, as if that was easier to pronounce. Use May Ca? Here is the good, the bad, and the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Lucas Chancel points out the myths underlying any claim that corporate globalization does anything but voluntarily exacerbate inequality: It is often said that rising inequality is inevitable — that it is a natural consequence of trade openness and digitalization that governments are powerless
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Impact of growing opioid crisis on life expectancy in the United States is more evidence that neoliberal austerity kills
PHOTOS: This scene is in Paris. It could be anywhere in our “globalized,” that is, neoliberalized world. (Photo: Eric Poulhier, Wikimedia Commons.) Below: Rundown but dignified Havana, high-profile U.S. economist Paul Krugman (Photo: Flickr, Commonwealth Club) and political economist Alan Nasser (Photo: Evergreen State College). Will Mexico eventually decide it
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Smooth Sailing Ahead For the Global and Canadian Economy?
The consensus forecast of just about everybody – the IMF, the OECD, the Bank of Canada, the Canadian banks – is that Canada will share in a global recovery from the stagnation which followed the financial crisis of a decade ago. All of the major economies – the US, the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Airbnb: short-term rentals, short-term thinking
Photo by Open Grid Scheduler The idea of home sharing is a great one. Cities thrive on density, on different people doing different things but in close proximity to each other. If one family leaves town for a week, there would be nothing better from the city’s perspective than to
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Radical Municipalism: The Only Solution to Amazon’s Extortion of Cities
Photo by Mike Seyfang Last week saw a flurry of humiliating pitches by North American cities for Amazon to pick them as the location of the corporation’s second headquarters. New Jersey committed a phenomenal $7 billion in tax breaks if picked. Stonecrest, Georgia, pledged to annex 345 acres to create
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Trump in the Time of Trumpism
“Trailer of Globalization” by Piotr Mamnaimie We live in an “age of anger”, to borrow the title of a recent book by Pankaj Mishra – an India-born public intellectual well connected in the U.S. and the U.K. – which sets the tone for this posting. Take Trump (you can have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Dennis Howlett writes that a properly designed and fair tax system can reduce inequality both by ensuring support for the people with the least, and ensuring that the people capable of contributing the most actually do so: We need to tackle inequality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Josh Bivens notes that international trade deals have been structured to maximize the cost of globalization for the workers excluded from the bargaining table. And Jon Queally points out that a massive majority of Americans see power disproportionately hoarded by the rich at
Continue readingMichal Rozworski: Neoliberalism restructures work and pensions
On today’s show, two sociologists talk about aspects of neoliberal restructuring. First, Nicole Aschoff, sociologist, author of The New Prophets of Capital and until very recently managing editor of Jacobin magazine speaks with me about the auto industry, Trump and why globalization shouldn’t be solely blamed for the destruction of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Neil Irwin writes that many progressive policies – including child care and income tax credits – serve the goal of facilitating economic participation far better than their right-wing “supply side” counterparts. – Ann Pettifor examines the future of globalization, and warns that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Katha Pollitt reviews Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, and identifies the problem that profiteers have a vested interest in perpetuating poverty: What if the dominant discourse on poverty is just wrong? What if the problem isn’t that poor people have bad morals – that they’re
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz write that we shouldn’t let governments and businesses off the hook for regressive policy choices by blaming technology. And Ben Tarnoff points out that any effects on the distribution of income and wealth can be dealt with through
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