24 Comments on “About Doug Henwood”

1. Hi Doug. I used to work at FAIR years ago and always tried to follow what you do. I still talk to Jim and Janine every now and then. Best of luck with your work. It’s great to know someone like you exists! (apologies to Pearlstine.)

2. Re: Rant on the TARP overhaul

   Doug, have you seen this and would you comment on it?

   Interview with Robert Brenner on the Current Crisis
   http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/335869.html

   Ralph

3. Having a quote from Susie Bright along with the expected Chomsky and (perhaps the most sincere) the Pearlstine is very impressive and, in a funny way, sums up for me why I like your work so much—that is, aside from the fact that you manage to explain the economic arcana in a comprehensible manner, neither dismal nor too scientific. It might very well have been interesting to read that dissertation, but as someone with a fairly useless PhD, I know how it goes.

4. Thanks for your clearly expressed
   economics.

   No one seems to be looking closely at the credit rating
   agencies-strange,considering
   how powerful they are.

5. hi Doug

   Would be great if you could cover the Carbon Finance America 2009 industry event in New York June 10-12.

   The for-profit Carbon Finance lobby is there in force and its the big money people.

   As background you might be interested in The Corporate Climate Coup.
   The corporate climate coup
   May 29, 2007
   | David Noble says that corporations are feeding the hysteria about global warming to undermine the global justice movement and to create a need for market-based solutions.

   [audio src="http://www.rabble.ca/audio/download/16435/rey-2007-05-29.mp3" /]
   http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15472

   http://www.environmental-finance.com/conferences/2009/CFNA09/intro.htm

   • Topical content – understand the implications of a new federal cap-and-trade system and learn, from your peers, the opportunities and challenges of trading in a recession
   • Packed agenda – US and global climate policy, impact of the economic crisis, pricing trends, CDM, regional and voluntary
   markets, forestry and agriculture, project finance +++
   • Superb networking opportunities – meet and do business with the key players and decision makers in the US carbon markets

   This is a must-attend conference for:
   • Utilities & energy companies
   • Manufacturers and other corporations seeking to reduce their emissions
   • Federal and regional regulatory bodies
   • Political think tanks, trade groups and investor coalitions
   • Emissions traders & fund managers
   • Investment banks & brokers
   • Developers & financiers of GHG emission reduction projects
   • Insurance companies
   • Law firms
   • Carbon finance consulting & advisory firms
   • Exchanges & registries
   • Verification and certification companies
   • Technology providers

6. Who exactly are the “bond
   vigilantes”,and what is their
   real agenda?

7. Hey Doug – I love your Behind the News podcast. So much so, that it features in the Pick of the Crop section of my website – a hub for left-leaning audio-journalism (http://my-left-ear.com/)
   So, thanks a lot, and I hope you keep going.
   Mick – Glasgow, Scotland.
   PS – On 4th Sept, you asked (in passing) what a pig-in-a-poke is? A poke is a bag… a pocket was originally a small bag. Hope that helps :-)

8. Still I come back, year on year, to read your insightful stuff. Thank you.

   (And now we have a non-HardCoreNeocon leader of the Brit Labour Party! Shock! Might there still be hope for UK civilization…?)

9. Thanks for the news from Wisconsin. I’ve been involved in the labor movement for over twenty years and have seen the sustained attack on unions in the private sector, so it doesn’t seem surprising that the right is now focusing on unions in the public sector. Amazing how the financial crisis brought on by Wall Street manipulations, aided by government policy, has now morphed into a crisis caused by public employee salaries and benefits.

10. Thanks very much for your segment today (Saturday, April 16, 2011) on what’s happened to opposition to the Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistani wars. This is far too often ignored in all media even Pacifica. On the subject of the influence of the draft on opposition to war (Vietnam vs. today’s) I believe your interviewee got it nearly all wrong. Since I was of draft age and a constant marcher and opponent of the Vietnam War I have a completely different take than your guest. For me the draft was a major (probably the major) threat (as your guest used the word) to my safety and life. I was scared as I believe were most of my peers as getting killed or possibly worse killing people who had as far as I knew not done any harm to me, my family or my country. I believe the absence of a draft is the single biggest factor in the current tepid opposition to the Obama wars. Far more needs to be said about this crucial part of the Military-Industrial Complex story.
    Thanks for continuing top notch reporting.

11. Pingback: Corey Robin

12. Doug Henwood writes:

    Why can’t they say something like this? “These gangsters have too much money. They wrecked the economy, got bailed out, and are back to business as usual. We need jobs, schools, health care, and clean energy. Let’s take their money to pay for them.” The potential constituency for that agenda is huge.

    Hopefully the constituency for this agenda is not huge because it is a louse agenda. Wall street is no great shakes and certainly contributed to the mess we are in but they are hardly the main problem or solution. It primarily a political problem – the power of the Republican party and the failure of “liberals” and/or the left to come up with a compelling alternative. Anti-corporate politics gets in the way of creating what we need.

    Also you will not fund jobs, health care schools etc etc by taxing Wall street. The numbers are simply not there and this rhetoric evades the problem. There will not be a great constituency for this agenda because 1) the vast majority of American people essentially support democratic capitalism, corporations and all and 2) the analysis doesn’t work. The most you will get is Ralph Nader’s 2.7% in 2000 Presidential election.

    Otherwise Henwood is a smart fellow and his comments on the New Left (that was me!!!) are thought provoking.

13. Instead of blowing up online, you might have been so kind as to answer our requests for comments about what exactly the DWG was being organized as, because the request for a national assembly annoyed a lot of people and sounded like it was official in the press, which helps no one. Then we have the issue of blocks being not only not taken in account, but in fact entirely ignored, if there are blocks, the least you can do is take them on record. There is only one mention of the DWG in minutes before the shit hits the fan and almost nobody realized it even existed. If the person we contacted about things had simply answered the questions from the people who contacted you (from the PR and internet committees) the farce would have ended then and there.

    Kindly learn the importance of actually communicating with people. Additionally, NYCGA.net and occupywallst.org are two entirely different sites. If you have complaints about either, learn the difference when you report as it took me two days before I realized that the complaint about us banning people related to the working group had to do with the GA website over which all but one person on the ows.org tech team has no control whatsoever (and this person has similarly no control over the ows.org website). If the person who is supposed to know what goes on the GA website (which has to be mandated by the GA) is not aware of who your team is, then there is a problem, and the good way to do damage control is not to scream about attempted coups after hanging up on other committees telling them they’re “not the assembly police” or something like this, which is what your people did. We reacted to this based on precautionary principles, as the last attempt to have a demands group led us to a bunch of Paulistas trying to take over and that was merely an online WG.

14. Also, I’d like to apologize for sounding so rude, but the way I got the news was from a mildly annoying opportunistic third worldist who gave the impression you were accusing us of a coup.

15. This is all so hard to follow, Laurence. I’m just not cut out for these sorts of baroque, self-reflexive, interminable procedures.

16. It’s not so much baroque as the fact that the website admin had no idea what things were about and the reaction from your team’s side led to many unrelated groups being smeared based on misunderstandings. I understanding that at times things lack clarity, but at the very least, if you still intend to work with OWS, there is a public google group where a lot of the discussions and workings on happen (september17) to organize groups and such (it doesn’t supercede the GA, but it gives a clearer view of the underpinnings of many of the groups and should allow contact with many of the major groups, and avoid misunderstandings. We’re not simply rejecting the idea of being characterized as left wing (far from it, we’re now stuck with damage control to do to get rid of Ron Paul and Elizabeth Warren).

    An affinity group could also be considered, the main problem there was a perception that the media was considering your group a “voice of the GA”.

17. wow, it must really get you all hot and bothered that Gary Null is broadcast on the same station(s) as you. Sad days.

18. Behind the News, April 7, 2012
    Interview with. College of Staten Island Associate Professor Dr. Saadia Toor

    This is quite good, a dispassionate presentation whose quality is rarely heard, almost a lecture, in the best sense of the word. You might want to consider publishing this terrific clip as a Behind the News Saadia Toor audio lecture (sprinkled with your questions) for wider distribution and listening.

    Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

19. Dear Doug, first I just want to thank you for the beautiful work you do for all of us as an intellectual whose comments on the current state of the economy makes us realize how we little we know; and for the excellent selection of interviewees who you have brought to your show for so long.

    I have a very simple request: can you please indicate a critical book or article on the insurance industry in the current stage of capitalism?

    thank you, celso

20. Sorry, no idea about the insurance industry.

    Thanks for the kind words.

21. I cannot find a simple link to contact the webmaster (or Doug) directly, so this will have to do.

    I simply wanted to let you know that your webpage should be corrected — the link label for the Alex Cockburn interview reads August 27 2012, not 2011.

    And, seriously, a prominent “Contact” link is needed on the site.

    (The entire site could use some work, I must say. The links at the bottom — automatically generated, I presume — are a confusing mess. And there’s not much other navigational help on the site.)

    From a longtime fan, and one who subscribed to LBO after reading Alexander Cockburn praise the newsletter in his Nation column, ‘Beat The Devil’, back in the 1980s, I think.

22. It’s WordPress’ doing.

23. Doug, Met you a million years ago at a Socialist Scholars’ Conference in NY, so hello. Read your blog about Ezra Klein. I’m writing, not to agree or disagree with it, but about the tone. One of the things that i most despair about is the way that progressives attack each other often on small points of disagreement. It’s painful just to read comments on progressive websites. I watch Klein on MSNBC. He is on our side. I think that he might even call himself progressive. He is certainly not someone who supports Walmart’s employee practices. So why attack him? Why not simply respectfully disagree without the invectives? The vitriol that progressives hurl at each other does not do our side any good, to the contrary, it makes it fairly impossible for us to organize, i.e. agree to disagree… with civility. Judith

24. Pingback: The Great Recession, Six Years Later: Uneven Recovery, Flawed Indicators, and a Struggling Working Class – The HI Blog