Economics

The Reality Of Bidenomics: How Good Was Biden For The Economy?

February 28, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Economics, Finance and the Economy, Geopolitical Economy Hour, Joe Biden, Michael Hudson, Radhika Desai

2024 is being billed as the greatest election year in history. More than 50 countries are going to the polls, that’s 7 out of its 10 most populous countries, with a combined population of 4.2 billion, that is more than half the world’s 8 billion population. Among these, for good or ill, one might add, the US election will be the most consequential, deciding life and death questions such as how much war the world will witness, how well its economy will do. This is not because the US is a force for peace and development. On the contrary, it’s been weighing down on the prospects of peace and development for decades.

Reimagining Economics Education

January 1, 2024 David Bollier. Strategize! Economics, Education, Finance and the Economy, The Commons

Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann, an international secondary school educator and curriculum developer, had long been appalled by the dismal state of economics education for young people. Students at middle and high schools learn about a "degenerative economic system," as she puts it, in which "the economy" is framed as something separate from society and nature. With little sense of contemporary realities, economics courses assume that endless economic growth is desirable and possible. It focuses on businesses and markets, ignoring the vital role that household care and the commons play.

The Process Of Consumption And The Means Of Achieving Well Being

December 19, 2023 Luis Razeto Migliaro and Matt Noyes, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Strategize! Capitalism, Consumers, Economics, Workers

In the previous sections we examined the processes of production and circulation, laying out the foundations of their respective general theories. We now turn to the central questions of a general theory of economic consumption. In Economics, the theme has scarcely been considered from a theoretical standpoint. Consumption is taken into account as a relevant economic variable, but in a very restricted sense – as “consumer spending” – as opposed to savings and accumulation. At the micro-economic level, the focus has been on consumer behavior in an effort to understand consumers’ disposition to spend, in relation to their drive to accumulate revenue and wealth, as well as the way variations in price affect spending.

Why Mainstream Economics Got Inflation Wrong

November 20, 2023 James K. Galbraith, Portside. Educate! Big Banks, Economics, Inflation, Media

Austin - In his November 7, 2023 New York Times newsletter, the economist Paul Krugman asks a good, albeit belated, question: Why did so many economists get the inflation outlook wrong? After all, the near-consensus among mainstream economists in recent years was that inflation would persist – and even accelerate – and that this justified substantial interest-rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve. Yet the quasi-inflation of 2021-22 proved transitory. Krugman poses his question with impeccable diplomacy, professing “respect” for three authors of a September 2022 paper published by the Brookings Institution (which was then promoted by Harvard University’s Jason Furman) projecting that it would take at least two years of unemployment at 6.5% to bring inflation back to the Fed’s self-imposed 2% target.

Towards An Indigenous Economics

September 19, 2023 Herbert Girardet, Resilience. Create! Economics, Forest Dwellers, Indigenous Communities, Sustainability

With a profound sustainability crisis facing humanity, it may be useful to try and glimpse what a sustainable relationship between people and planet might actually look like. This essay explores how cultures and their host environments mesh together in pre-industrial societies. It seeks to show how cultural beliefs and practices reflect and reinforce the environmental adaptations of seven different community settings – the Mbuti forest people in central Africa, the Kayapó people in the Brazilian Amazon, the Nuer cattle herders in South Sudan, the Chagga agro-foresters on Mount Kilimanjaro, Asian peasant farmers, and European small-scale urban systems.

The Rise Of US Dollar Imperialism, And Why It Failed

February 28, 2023 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Economics, Geopolitical Economy Hour, Michael Hudson, Radhika Desai, US Dollar

Today we are continuing our discussion of de-dollarization. As many of you know we have structured our discussion around some ten questions, and last time we dealt with the first five. What is money? What is the relation between money and debt? Is money a commodity? What is the theory of how the dollar serves as world money? And then because this theory so much relies on the sterling system we discussed the sterling system. What is it? What was this real basis not gold but actually empire etcetera. And then we decided that in this show we will discuss the next five questions which are, how did the sterling system end? What really happened between the world wars?

A Economist That Future Economists — And Societies — Will Dare Not Ignore

November 5, 2022 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! climate crisis, Economics, Environment, Herman Daly

Great thinkers, down through the ages, have regularly had to watch the movers and shakers of their epochs shrug off their core insights. One of our contemporary great thinkers who suffered that fate — the 84-year-old economist Herman Daly — died just last week. Daly did not, to be sure, go totally unrecognized during his lifetime. In 1996, he won the “alternate Nobel Prize,” Sweden’s annual Right Livelihood Award. “Herman Daly redefined economics, forging a way forward that does not include the destruction of our environment for economic gain,” Ole von Uexkull, Right Livelihood’s executive director, noted after Daly passed. But Daly’s death has, by and large, gone unnoticed. No obit has so far appeared in the New York Times or Washington Post or any other major mass publication.

Putting A Face Onto The Corporation

February 6, 2020 Nick Buxton, Roarmag.org Educate! Corporations, Economics

Corporations account for 78 of the world’s 100 largest economies, yet they remain cloaked in mystery. TNI’s State of Power 2020 report takes a deep dive into capitalism’s preeminent institution. On November 5, 2015 a failure at the Germano iron ore mine’s tailings dam in Mariana, Minas Gerai state, Brazil caused hundreds of tons of toxic mud to sweep downstream, killing 19 people and contaminating the Doce River for many hundreds of kilometers.

The Push To Create Co-ops Is Energizing A New Generation Of Socialists

February 6, 2020 Richard D Wolff, Truthout.org Create! Cooperatives, Economics, New Economy, Socialism

On the other hand, socialism was the name adopted by Western European — and especially Scandinavian — “welfare-state” governments, which aimed to regulate markets comprised still mostly of private capitalist firms. This led many people to associate socialism with robust public spending and government intervention in the marketplace.

The “Repo” Fiasco; The Fed’s Cash Injections Send Stocks Soaring

February 5, 2020 Mike Whitney, Informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Currency, Economics, New Economy

A five-alarm fire has broken out in a little known, but critically important area of the financial system where high-quality bonds are swapped for cash. The “repo” market, which is short for repurchase agreements, is part of the nondeposit, shadow banking system that remains largely unregulated despite the fact that it was ground zero in the 2008 financial crisis.

Sustainability In A Small Place: The Spanish Basque Country As A 21st Century Model

January 9, 2020 Bruce Rich, Opendemocracy.net Create! Economics, Neoliberalism, Spain

Things aren't working out the way many of us hoped. But we could learn something from this small entrepreneurial nation. The 21st Century is not working out the way many of us hoped: we witness the failure of nations and politicians to address the climate crisis, as well as social unrest in many countries over the failure of a neoliberal economic model that has neglected social equity and environmental sustainability. The Financial Times has even called for “a more sustainable and inclusive form of capitalism.”

Thirteen Charts That Clarify What Our Economic Priorities Need To Be In 2020

December 28, 2019 Staff, Epi.org Educate! Economics

We’re in the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, but the top line numbers don’t tell the whole truth. Low unemployment is finally starting to produce some wage gains, but it is going to take much more to raise living standards for wide swaths of the workforce. Black unemployment and underemployment is still too high, black college graduates have seen their wages fall, inaction from federal policymakers on the minimum wage has dropped the wage floor from under workers at the low end of the wage ladder, and workers are still thwarted in their efforts to bargain collectively for better wages from their employers.

How The U.S. Military Undermines The American Economy

October 21, 2019 By David Rosen, Counterpunch.org Educate! Economics, US military

Eisenhower surly must be spinning in grave given how much influence the military industrial complex wields today. In 1960, the military budget stood at $344 billion; today, the military complex, including the ever-growing intelligence apparatus, cost taxpayers over $1 trillion. Military spending for the period October 1, 2019, through September 30, 2020, is at $989 billion and covers the Dept. of Defense, veterans’ benefits, international military assistance, nuclear weapons spending and military intelligence.

Can An Economic Stat Help Narrow Our Grand Economic Divide?

October 19, 2019 By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org Strategize! Economics, Inequality, New Economy

Why do so many Americans deeply distrust government? One part of the reason, two top economists suggested to a key congressional committee this week, just might be the most basic — and familiar — of the economic statistics the federal government produces. That stat — gross domestic product, or GDP — “measures the market value of the goods, services, and structures produced by the nation’s economy,” as calculated by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. The Bureau generates new GDP figures for every quarter of the year, and the release of these figures regularly makes headlines.

Economics Of Poverty, Or The Poverty Of Economics

October 18, 2019 Staff, Anticap.wordpress.com Educate! Economics, New Economy, Poverty

As every year, mainstream economists lined up to laud the choice. Dani Rodrik declared it “a richly deserved recognition.” Richard Thaler, who won the award in 2017 (here’s a link to my analysis), extended his congratulations to the Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer and to the committee “for making a prize that seemed inevitable happen sooner rather than later.” While Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel laureate, refers to it as “a very heartening prize—evidence-based economics with a real social purpose.”

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