Daily Archives: October 24, 2012

The Social Economics of Thorstein Veblen

By Michael Hudson
(Cross posted from eh.net)

Author: Reisman, David
Reviewer: Hudson, Michael

David Reisman, The Social Economics of Thorstein Veblen. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2012. vii + 338 pp. $150 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-85793-218-1.

Reviewed for EH.Net by Michael Hudson, Department of Economics, University of Missouri – Kansas City.

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The Central Fact that Folks Don’t Get about Fannie and Freddie’s Role in the Crisis

By William K. Black

Here’s the central thesis of the far right about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  It is taken from the web site: The Neville Awards (as in Neville Chamberlain), which gives “awards” to Democrats for their cowardice and other mortal and venal sins.  This particular article claims that the damnably clever Democrats, while the Republicans controlled the Presidency, House, Senate, Supreme Court, and all the regulatory agencies, pulled off a deliberate plan to destroy the economy in order to elect Obama. “Obama, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac – How the Democrats Brought Down the Economy in Time to Elect Obama.”

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Neoliberalism Kills: Part Two

By Joe Firestone

During Part One of this series,  I approached the end of my post with this paragraph.

Apart from the political opposition from the insurance companies that Medicare for All would have engendered, I think the main justification for abandoning Medicare for All and switching to the PO and eventually the PO-less ACA, was actually neoliberalism. The President, his main advisers, the Democratic leaders in Congress, and most progressives working for Washington progressive organizations were steeped in neoliberal doctrine. They viewed the Bush tax cuts and the two Wars as unpaid for. The ARRA stimulus Act was similarly unpaid for and added to deficit spending and to the debt-subject-to-the-limit. They believed and most believe today that the Federal Government can have solvency problems if the debt-to-GDP ratio increases too much, and interest rates on the national debt are driven up by the bond vigilantes.

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