Posted on 29 January 2013. Tags: Austerity, CEPR, International Monetary Fund
The obsession over balancing budgets and reducing debt is a foolish global exercise at a time when people need governments to spend more money to create jobs and demand. And one of the great wizards behind the curtain of the foolishness is the International Monetary Fund.
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Posted in General Interest
Posted on 21 January 2013. Tags: Austerity, Global Employment, ILO
Austerity is wildly successful — if you understand that the only logical outcome of austerity is higher unemployment. Take a bow, austerity. You did it.
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Posted in General Interest
Posted on 18 October 2012. Tags: Austerity, Greece
Austerity has to be fought. And at least the Greeks have the gumption, along with a measure of desperation, to pack the streets.
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Posted in General Interest
Posted on 25 September 2012. Tags: Austerity, hunger, Spain
All you need to know about what the elite are doing to the people is to understand what people in Spain are doing to feed themselves.
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Posted in General Interest
Posted on 22 August 2012. Tags: Austerity, Australia, Europe, Greece, Productivity, Spain
Austerity is a bad thing. As I’ve pointed out before, when an economy is suffering from lower demand, the last thing you want to do is squeeze the pocketbooks of the very people who you want to have out there spending money. But, here’s another thing: it makes you sick. Literally.
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Posted in General Interest
Posted on 28 June 2012. Tags: Austerity, Barclays, Carl Levin, Financial Crisis, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Lloyd Blankfein
You don’t have to look further than the utterly pathetic game of repeated “stay-out-of-jail” cards handed the global banker elite to understand why people are pissed—whether in the U.S., Greece or pick a country. Time after time, the guys who cratered the economy, and robbed people of their jobs and wealth, are given a pass […]
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Posted on 18 June 2012. Tags: Austerity, Barack Obama, Crisis, Debt, Deficit, Euro, Financial Transactions Tax, France, Francois Hollande, Germany, Jobs, Sanity, Socialists
So, it’s not all bad news in the world. Some sanity prevails when real-life economics, not blather about the glories of the "free market", triumphs and one can hope for a bit of truthiness to spread. First, the good news: President François Hollande’s Socialists and their allies won an absolute majority in runoff […]
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Posted in General Interest
Posted on 02 April 2012. Tags: Austerity, Europe, Poverty
Here is what austerity and the spread of the "American disease" does for people: Europe’s long-running euro crisis may be cooling. But the economic distress it has left in its wake is pushing a rising tide of workers into precarious straits in France and across the European Union. Today, hundreds of thousands of people […]
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Posted in General Interest
Posted on 23 March 2012. Tags: "Free Trade", Austerity, Barack Obama, Debt, Deficits, Europe, Markets, Pensions, Retirement, Taxes, The New York Times
Really. When I read The New York Times editorials about the economy, or the truly shallow reporting from most of the paper’s reporters, often I think: the people at The New York Times actually are dolts. They don’t understand economics–at all. But, more often, it’s worth considering–they actually believe what they write, even if […]
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Posted on 17 February 2012. Tags: Austerity, Barack Obama, Depression, economic crisis, George Bush, Greed, Health Care, Hillary Clinton, Iraq War, Jobs, Mitt Romney, OWS, Paul Krugman, Republicans, Wall Street
A few months ago, I spent 5-6 hours interviewing Paul Krugman for Playboy magazine. It’s now on-line here. He speaks candidly–surprise–about the economic misdeeds of Wall Street, the foolishness of the current austerity obsession and focus on the non-existent debt crisis, and a whole range of topics including his view that the Obama Administration […]
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Posted in General Interest