The Rumpelstiltskin Effect
“Rumpelstiltskin,” 1957 Once upon a time in a distant land, a miller boasted to his king that his daughter could spin straw into gold. Intrigued, the king locked her up…
economic crisis
US family net worth crushed by financial crisis
The US Federal Reserve today released its triennial examination of incomes and net worth of American households in the Survey of Consumer Finances. It shows the crushing effects on net…
Complete details of 2008-09 Bank Support
Readers of this blog will have hopefully read my report “The big banks big secret” which examines the $114 billion that Canada’s banks received during the 2008-09 financial crisis. Its…
Krugman: End This Depression Now!
I am an enthusiastic reader of Krugman’s columns and, especially, his economic blog. And I certainly side strongly with him in the intellectual and political struggle against “the Austerians” and…
From Financial Crisis to Stagnation
I am enjoying Tom Palley’s new book – and would post an enthusiastic review except for the fact that I have been unable to find the time to finish it.…
Travels in Harperland
On my recent book tour to promote “Thieves of Bay Street” I have journeyed to Alberta, Montreal and Ottawa. In so doing, I have gotten a taste of the Canada…
The Big Banks’ Big Secret
The CCPA today released my report: “The Big Banks Big Secret” which provides the first public estimates of the emergency funds taken by Canadian banks. The report bases its estimates…
Quebec Tuition: Between a Rock and Hard Place?
In the context of student protests over Quebec tuition fees, my friend Luan Ngo has just written a very informative blog post on Quebec’s fiscal situation. While I encourage readers…
Should Ontario Become an Independent Country?
Ok just forget how crazy the questions sounds. The recent wrangling between Ontario and Alberta over the value of the Canadian dollar, oil output and the decline of manufacturing in…
Gordon V Jackson: the corporate tax cut myth
Apparently Stephen Gordon is having a hard time figuring out where Andrew Jackson, the chief economist for the CLC, got the bizarre idea that: The argument for corporate income tax…
The Global Economic Crisis—Part 3
CD: The financial sector has been remarkably successful in shifting the debt burden into the public sector which also bears much of the cost of “recapitalizing” the banks. But what…
Austerity: Making the Same Mistake Again?
There is a special, free on line, issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics with what look to be very interesting contributions from the progressive side of the spectrum.
Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy
December marked the three-year anniversary of Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. While I believe there is much to celebrate, much remains to be done. The Strategy surprised a lot of observers,…
Apocalypse Soon?
The OECD’s new assessment of the macro-economic situation makes for pretty grim reading. And their forecast of very sluggish global growth (just 1.6% for the OECD area in 2012) is…
Towards a Wage-Led Recovery
A new issue of the International Journal of Labour Research has been published “While a lot of attention has been deservedly given to the financial roots of the current economic…
NGDP targeting: wither monetarism?
Monetarism is like a Zombie: it can be found theoretically wanting, empirically false and technically infeasible but in one form or another it just soldiers on. In some ways the…
Stimulative austerity bearing fruit in Britain? Not. Nor globally
George Osborne was quick out of the gates with the austerity as stimulus gambit. Which as everybody from myself to Paul Krugman predicted was going to be a flop. Osborne…
Gangster Capitalism: Same as it ever was?
If you are going to read one thing and just one thing on the financial crisis and how it is working itself out you need to read this blog post…
Occupation, democracy and coops
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…