Fresh audio product
Just posted to my radio archives: April 18, 2013 Minqi Li on the Chinese economy • George Ciccariello-Maher, author of We Created Chavez, on the social movements that allowed for Hugo Chavez’ emergence and he in turn stimulated April 11, 2013 Tom Mills (author of this article) and Richard Seymour (author of this one) on the dreadful Margaret Thatcher A reminder: sometimes I’m slower updating the web page than I am uploading the audio files. If you want quicker access, subscribe to the podcast. Details on the archive page.
Money porn
Institutional Investor’s alpha is out with its annual ranking (The Rich List) of top hedge fund earners, which always provokes meditation on our upper class. In 2012, the top 25 hedgies collectively earned $14.14 billion. That’s the lowest since 2008, but down only 2% from 2011. It is also equivalent to the collective income of 1.3 million of the poorer households in the U.S. In the magazine’s telling, this year the markets rewarded “the fearless investor,” who ignored all those macro worries—a crappy U.S. recovery, implosions on the periphery of Europe, etc.—and stayed boldly… Read More
The economic consequences of student debt
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is out with new research (“Young Student Loan Borrowers Retreat from Housing and Auto Markets”) showing that student debt is not merely painful to those owing it, but has also become economically damaging. The debt service burden is essentially neutralizing, or worse, the income advantage of having earned a bachelor’s degree or more, at least as measured by the ability to buy a house or a car. Over the last decade, the share of 25-year-olds with student debt has risen from about 25% in 2003 to… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just uploaded to my radio archives: April 4, 2013 Kate Losse, who spent five years at Facebook and wrote about it in The Boy Kings, on Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean-in”corporate feminism (which she reviewed here) • Ahmad Shokr, historian and journalist, on Egypt’s economic troubles
LBO News from Doug Henwood 