Working Life

A few of us have never bought the idea that the world economy has recovered from the financial crisis—mainly because people were struggling to make ends meet before the crisis. Add to that a mind-boggling obsession to impose austerity on the very people are struggling and, presto, you have the perfect storm for a mess. And just in the past 24 hours we get a flavor of this.

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   I took a longer break from blogging than I thought–to think, observe a bit, rest the brain, cycle New Zealand’s spectacular South Island. But, what stirred me to break this hiatus, at the very moment that people are switching off their computers to turn to libations and debauchery, was, well, the modest observation that […]

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   For all of those people who criticize empire and for those out there who correctly worry about the unequal distribution of economic power, come close and absorb another truth: the obsession around keeping the dollar high is not healthy. In fact, a lower dollar would be better for most of us–and for the environment… […]

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We have an affliction that really undermines a decent society. It’s a tendency to want to ignore inconvenient facts, either explicitly or because we are encouraged to look quite narrowly and myopically at a problem. Which brings me to Wal-Mart’s new attempt to whitewash its practices, using the First Lady as a prop.   We […]

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   I found this article in the Financial Times quite interesting: Coming out of the crisis, China wants to forge a new phase of globalisation where many of the roads – financial, commercial and perhaps eventually political – converge on Beijing.  China is not seeking a rupture with the international economic system (although some foreign […]

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While a bunch of elected "leaders" engage in a childish game of theater (reading the Constitution), while we flush down the toilet trillions of dollars in wealth on immoral wars, while one half of the working class is being turned against the other half and unions are being blamed for ills created by the incompetent, […]

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   I have made this point before–I know that it sounds counter-intuitive to say that a strong dollar is NOT a good thing but it isn’t–except maybe for Wal-Mart and American tourists. I certainly have sympathy for tourists, less so for Wal-Mart. I’m reminded of this because of this article in today’s Wall Street Journal: […]

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   I don’t have much to add on the extremely disappointing and inadequate health care bill that passed the Senate yesterday–it’s been said by others–so I turned my attention to a couple of international developments.    Every so often, when I discuss trade, here or in debates elsewhere, people say: well, we live in a […]

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   The obsession with the value of the dollar is kind of goofy. More than three years ago, not for the first time, I suggested that it would actually be a good thing if the value of the dollar declined significantly, particularly as it relates to the trade relationship with China. People in political circles […]

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   In our newest installment of false choices, from The Wall Street Journal: President Barack Obama’s decision to side with the United Steelworkers and impose temporary tariffs on Chinese car tires implies a potentially costly trade-off for the administration, trade and political experts said. In the near term, the move should consolidate the support of […]

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