Monthly Archives: February 2014

Correcting the Poor: The Civilizing Impulses of Homo Corporatus and Private Charities

Posted on February 20, 2014 by | 14 comments

By Falguni A. Sheth
Crossposted at Translation Exercises

Should anyone—the state or any other source–have an obligation to interfere with you to bring your best, flourishing, self about?

Certainly, this is the debate that philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin and libertarians such as Robert Nozick have engaged in heartily, with a view to socialist frameworks that redistribute resources in order to produce selected kinds of outcomes. Should the state impose certain ideals and goals upon you, and why? There are also numerous examples of good state-imposed expectations such as seatbelts or prohibitions against drunk driving, as well as terrible examples, such as state-imposed prohibitions on certain kinds of drugs.

In a neoliberal era, the corollary to above question is whether non-state organizations should have the ability to interfere with you in order to bring your best, flourishing, self about?

Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Falguni A. Sheth

Tagged , , ,

Dear Dr. Krugman: Please Let Me Explain

Posted on February 13, 2014 by | 15 comments

By Joe Firestone

Paul Krugman can’t explain why the deficit issue has suddenly dropped off the agenda. He says:

. . . quite suddenly the whole thing has dropped off the agenda.

You could say that this reflects the dwindling of the deficit — but that’s old news; anyone doing the math saw this coming quite a while ago. Or you could mention the failure of the often-predicted financial crisis to arrive — but after so many years of being wrong, why should a few months more have caused the deficit scolds to disappear in a puff of smoke?

Why indeed are they so quiet? Could it be because the deficit hawks have succeeded in getting the short-term result they want, which is a likely deficit too small to sustain the private savings and import desires of most Americans, and also because the political climate is such right now that they cannot make progress on their longer term entitlement-cutting program until after the coming elections have resolved the issue of whether there will be strong resistance to such a campaign if they renew it? Let’s look at the budget outlook first.

Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Essays in Monetary Theory and Policy: On the Nature of Money (10)

Posted on February 13, 2014 by | 19 comments

By A. Clayton Slawson III*

In today’s economic market, people tend to think excessively about money whether to spend on essential or discretionary goods and services, savings or which investment options to choose, or even the current topic du hour in Washington, whether there is too much or too little money floating around! Many “arm chair” economists, lacking the knowledge of our economic history, stop at these basic thoughts however, and thus never fully understand money in terms of its identity, origin, or even how today’s currencies became of value in the first place. Just as these concerns can vary person to person, so too can the very definition of money and how currency adopts value. In order to better understand the “nature of money,” this paper will utilize the frameworks of both the Orthodox school and the Heterodox schools of thought to provide a basic understanding of money in their respective approaches, which will set up a clear argument for why one approach is more advantageous for guiding economies toward full employment. Undoubtedly, any weekend warrior economists will be better prepared for discussions on money at the conclusion of this paper.

Continue reading →

19 Comments

Posted in Guest Blogger

Tagged

Spain, Italy, and France: Economic Failures that Will Soon be Political Failures

Posted on February 13, 2014 by | 16 comments

By William K. Black

The troika has consigned one-third of the Eurozone to a gratuitous Great Depression

I have written several articles recently describing Spain’s continuing Great Depression levels of unemployment and the absurdity of the troika’s policies with regard to the “threat” presented by “deflation.”  The troika consists of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged , , , , , ,

Consumer Activism and the Biopolitics of Consumption

Posted on February 13, 2014 by | 8 comments

By Falguni A. Sheth
This post was originally posted Translation Exercises on Feb. 12, 2014

Last month, I wrote an article about former financier Sam Polk, whose move from Wall Street to Groceryships has been celebrated as an example of the 1% awakening to a moral conscience.  Groceryships is a charity that gives “grocery scholarships” to “poor moms” in order, ostensibly, to alleviate their meager budgets for healthy foods. But the scholarships come with many strings attached: to swear an allegiance to want to be healthy; commitments to attend weekly nutrition classes, do homework, take cooking classes. More on Groceryships in my next piece.

Continue reading →

8 Comments

Posted in Falguni A. Sheth

Tagged , ,

What Now?

Posted on February 12, 2014 by | 61 comments

By Joe Firestone

Today, John Boehner bowed to the inevitable logic of the impending political season and placed a “clean” debt ceiling increase bill on the floor of the House. At this writing, the bill passed with 28 Republican and 193 Democratic votes. Now it moves on to the Senate, where it is expected to pass in time to allow the Treasury to keep issuing debt instruments.

Continue reading →

61 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Edwin Sutherland: The 75th Anniversary of His Coining The Term White-Collar Crime

Posted on February 10, 2014 by | 1 comment

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

Introduction

This year is the 75th anniversary of Edwin Sutherland’s presidential address to the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in 1939.  In the course of beginning to write a book from a white-collar criminological perspective about our modern financial crises I decided to reread Sutherland’s address (which was published as an article in 1940) to see how it stands up in light of modern white-collar criminological research and theory.  It reads exceptionally well today.  It is not even archaic in tone.  Sutherland begins by listing eleven (there were two van Sweringen brothers involved in their scam) examples of the kind of criminals he was referring to.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged

The Debt Crisis in Puerto Rico: Why Is It Not More Newsworthy?

Posted on February 9, 2014 by | 8 comments

By Robert E. Prasch

Anyone who follows the news periodically, if not more often, wonders about the criteria making certain issues or persons “newsworthy,” and others substantially less so. One reliable indicator of newsworthiness is that the story happens in Washington, D.C. A second is an unusual or counter-intuitive event (“Man bites dog”). A third is the prospect of large losses. This last quality, however, renders the relative neglect of Puerto Rico’s debt crisis an interesting anomaly.

Continue reading →

8 Comments

Posted in robert e. prasch

Tagged ,

The Troika and the New York Times Bury the Issues, not just the Lead

Posted on February 7, 2014 by | 7 comments

By William K. Black

On February 6, 2014, Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB said a series of contradictory things each of which indicated a failure to understand economics – and the BBC article about his policies failed to point out or analyze this failure.  Draghi’s primary message, in response to news that “Eurozone inflation slowed to 0.7% in January from 0.8% in December” was:

“We have to dispense with this idea of deflation. The question is – is there deflation? The answer is no.

We have to treat the recovery with extreme caution. It is very fragile. It is starting from very low levels but it is proceeding.”

Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged , , ,

Wisse’s World: Where Feminists are Neo-Marxists and Inequality Critics are anti-Semites

Posted on February 7, 2014 by | 6 comments

By William K. Black

I chose not to respond to Thomas Perkins’ original letter to the Wall Street Journal claiming that the opponents of income inequality are “progressives” on the road to holding Kristallnacht on Wall Street.  He was too obvious a troll and the general rule is not to feed trolls.

The WSJ has decided, however, to make this claim its meme.  It is not clear to me why efforts to reduce our record levels of income inequality would be limited to “progressives.”  Surveys show that proposals such as providing jobs to everyone willing and able to work and providing a livable minimum wage have majority support among Republicans.  The WSJ, of course, is appalled that the “Occupy Wall Street” movement (a) generated a huge upsurge in the recognition of how severe inequality has become and (b) led the Democrats (finally) to pushing proposals such as the minimum wage that are favored by strong majorities of Americans.  They have three responses.  They repeat the economic claim that minimum wages can only damage lower-income workers.  The economic literature is increasingly dubious of that claim, and it does not convince many Americans.  The second response is that it is a Marxist interference with free markets.  That convinces a tiny percentage of Americans, and they were already convinced by the neo-classical economic dogma.

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged ,