Economics

  • Pretty Bubbles Turning Into Grime

    Michael Hudson has a new book out so I thought it was high time I posted some thoughts I’ve been meaning to write up about his last one, The Bubble and Beyond. I’ve posted before about Hudson’s 1973 classic Superimperialism, whose analysis of the economic strategy of American Empire was followed by a terrific 1977…

  • Organize 2020 and Durham’s Tipping Point

    I’m posting today to ask folks to consider supporting an Indie Go Go campaign currently heading into its final week by Organize 2020, the social justice caucus of the North Carolina Association of Educators.  As an active member of this group, I have been impressed by the commitment, vision and integrity of people involved in this…

  • Dirty Harry Does Diversity.2: Indicting Invictus

    (Like the original Magnum Force, this post is a sequel to the first Dirty Harry.) Of all of Clint Eastwood’s “Sympathy for the Other” movies, Invictus was the most popular in the Land of the Liberals.  J. Edgar (gays), Million Dollar Baby (women), and Gran Torino (SE Asians) all did well but received more criticism than…

  • Sunday Paper with the BPF: Ahhh, Mindfulness

    Well, I don’t really read a Sunday newspaper anymore.  Either they’ve been driven out of business by the internet or intellectually eviscerated by corporate centralized ownership.  But I’ve been kicking back and checking out some posts on the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF) website after renewing my membership today.  Among them was a piece with a…

  • Corporate Welfare.8: Twitter Takes

      There’s a new story out today from Julia Wong of In These Times about how Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco “have become a symbol of gentrification and displacement for housing activists and community organizations in the city. ” I asked a friend of mine who had moved from the Bay Area to New York fairly recently…

  • Corporate Welfare.7: Walton Welfare

    Tens of thousands of protestors participated in some 1,500 strikes initiated by the organization OURWalmart against the largest private employer in the country yesterday, which of course was Black Friday, known as the “Super Bowl of Shopping” in this country.  To mark the occasion, Amy Goodman interviewed Catherine Reutschlin, a policy analyst at Demos who…

  • Corporate Welfare.6: Pulling a Fast One

    UC Berkeley’s Labor Center has published a new study on the role public subsidies play in the business model of fast food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s.  Like the other corporations in this series of posts, it turns out that these firms surreptitiously pocket billions in public subsidies while preaching the doctrine of…

  • Corporate Welfare.5: Pigskin welfare

    Some corporations, like GE and Bank of America, have to resort to creative accounting to make it look like they lost money to avoid paying federal taxes.  The National Football League is not one of them.  A recent Change.org petition reads as follows: “Despite the fact that it is a $9Billion/Year industry, the National Football…

  • Corporate Welfare.3: Welfare Wings

    Today the Real News Network, who I encourage you to support during their current drive to win a matching gift, is reporting that “the Michigan strategic fund has decided to issue $450 million in bonds for a new stadium for the Detroit Red Wings, 44% of which will be financed publicly,” while the city is…

  • Corporate Welfare.2: Subsidizing Sallie Mae

    Continuing this series on the publicly funded nature of so called private enterprise in this country…. Sometimes subsidies know how to disguise themselves.  Blackwater’s defense contracts bring them direct cash payments for no-bid contracts.  But student lenders like Sallie Mae get their government cheese in the form of regulations on interest rates.  In a double…