New radio product
Just posted to my radio archive: August 27, 2011 Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes, reflects on the state of labor as Labor Day approaches • Alexander Cockburn, occasional Nation columnist and co-editor of Counterpunch, on the media and the media criticism racket
Graeber & me on the TV
My interview of/conversation with David Graeber about his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years will be on C-SPAN 2’s BookTV on Saturday, September 3 at noon and 7 PM and again on Monday, September 5, at 7 AM. Here’s the C-SPAN page: Debt: The First 5,000 Years – Book TV.
Obama’s “progressive base”
I just read this in a magazine: “Obama will also need a push from the progressive base that elected him in 2008….” Wow. Sad. Give it up, guys. He’s just not that into you.
Me interviewing David Graeber
A reminder—this is tomorrow: Debt A Conversation with Doug Henwood and David Graeber August 23, 7:30pm Melville House Bookstore 145 Plymouth St, Brooklyn Debt is now the central issue of our time: With the rise of cheap and unsustainable credit, un-repayable mortgages collapsed the world economy in 2008. In Europe, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Portugal have pushed the European economy to a perilous point, threatening the Euro. And we’ve just lived through a debt crisis of our own, with congress nearly forcing U.S. default. We’ll be joined by two guests to… Read More
New radio product
Freshly posted to my radio archives: August 20, 2011 Max Ajl, the Jewbonics blogger, on why Israelis are in the streets and how talk of the Occupation is not welcome • Yanis Varoufakis updates the eurocrisis as it spreads westwards
New radio product
Freshly posted to my Radio archives: August 13, 2011 Dacher Keltner of UC–Berkeley on the psychology of class and social interactions • David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, provides an anthropologist’s POV on money and debt July 30, 2011 Joel Schalit on Brevik, the European right, its attitude towards Israel, and Israel’s own right • Brad DeLong on the political economy of austerity The audio files are often posted far more promptly than I update the web page, so if you’re into timeliness, subscribe to the podcast!
Christian Parenti in NYC
Alas, we’ll be out of town, but everyone without an excuse must go to this: Tropic of Chaos Christian Parenti in conversation with Vijay Prashad and David Harvey Sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics Co-sponsored by the Center for Humanities at the GC and The Brecht Forum Monday, August 29, 2011 from 7-9 pm The James Gallery CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue @ 34th Street In Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (Nation Books; July 1, 2011), award-winning writer Christian Parenti argues that the… Read More
Quoted by the John Birch Society!
Yesterday, Noam Chomsky. Today, the John Birch Society! My post about the SF Fed study on how less than 3% of U.S. consumer spending is on Chinese-made products got picked up by the JBS’s The New American: Everything’s Made in China? Not Quite. Who knew they still existed? Actually, I did, but it’s kind of easy to forget sometimes.
Chomsky cites LBO
In a recent talk he gave in Canada (Public Education Under Massive Corporate Assault), Noam Chomsky cites my LBO piece on the costs of college, and how easy it would be to make higher ed free in the USA: Now that’s one important way to implement the policy of indoctrination of the young. People who are in a debt trap have very few options. Now that is true of social control generally; that is also a regular feature of international policy — those of you who study the IMF and the World Bank and… Read More
Me, interviewing David Graeber
Debt A Conversation with Doug Henwood and David Graeber August 23, 7:30pm Melville House Bookstore 145 Plymouth St, Brooklyn Debt is now the central issue of our time: With the rise of cheap and unsustainable credit, un-repayable mortgages collapsed the world economy in 2008. In Europe, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Portugal have pushed the European economy to a perilous point, threatening the Euro. And we’ve just lived through a debt crisis of our own, with congress nearly forcing U.S. default. We’ll be joined by two guests to discuss the role of… Read More
Bernanke the steamroller
Comment on today’s Federal Reserve policy decision today, which among other things, included the extremely unusual statement that they’re likely to leave interest rates close to 0 through mid-2013, from Ricardo Perli of ISI, a very mainstream Wall Street research operation: For the first time in a long time, there were three dissents – Fisher (Dallas), Kocherlakota (Minneapolis), and Plosser (Philadelphia). Up to now, FOMC chairmen strived to avoid more than two dissents. The fact that this long-standing practice was disregarded means that Bernanke is becoming more determined to push through what in… Read More
Made in China: <3%!
Here’s something that should revise a lot of clichés, though it probably won’t: less than 3% of U.S. consumption expenditures are on goods made in China. Almost 90% are made in the USA. Of course, the domestic total is boosted by services—but even durable goods are 12% China, 67% U.S. And less than half the value of Chinese imports go to China—55% of the money spent on “Chinese” goods represent processing and other services (like distribution and retailing) provided in the U.S. This info comes from a new paper by Galina Hale and… Read More
Riots and stock values
An interesting comment from Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank in the wake of swooning stock markets and riots in London: Although not linked to the sell-off we can’t help thinking that we live in socially volatile times generally due to economic hardship. This is something that may eventually have ramifications for Europe’s future in the years ahead. If the person on the street and voters get fed up of the Euro straight [sic] jacket then days like yesterday in financial markets could look mild. Yup. There’s no doubt that the strength in… Read More
Rational markets (cont.)
So stock investors around the world panic on the S&P downgrade of the U.S. Treasury. And where do said investors flee for the proverbial “safe haven”? U.S. Treasury bonds, up almost 2 points on the day.
S&P: foreign agents
So the lead analyst on the S&P downgrade of the U.S. Treasury is based in…Toronto! What, they were afraid to have an American do the work? And you can download the report from S&P’s “BlobServer.” I’m not kidding. More on all this in the imminently forthcoming LBO #133.
LBO News from Doug Henwood 