Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): April 30, 2020 Lauren Sandler, author of This Is All I Got, on homelessness in NYC • Cathy Cowan Becker, author of this review of the Jeff Gibbs–Michael Moore documentary Planet of the Humans, on why it’s so bad
Yanis Varoufakis on Larry Summers
More Larry Summers content. with him much in the news as a Biden adviser. From Yanis Varoufakis’s Adults in the Room, pp. 21–24: Determined to delay the serious business ahead of us a few moments more, I signalled to the bartender for a whiskey of my own and said, ‘Before you tell me about my “mistake”, let me say, Larry, how important your messages of support and advice have been in the past weeks. I am truly grateful. Especially as for years I have been referring to you as the Prince of… Read More
Larry Summers, 2000 vintage
With Larry Summers in the news as a Biden advisor, a check out this recounting of my encounter with him in April 2000.
Forced binaries, etc.
I’ve been hating on the Democratic party in public for almost 35 years, in private for longer than that. But I have to say, and I don’t see how anyone could deny this, if a Democrat were president now there just wouldn’t be anywhere near as many dead and doomed people. The CDC might not have been richly funded, but it certainly wouldn’t have been eviscerated, with talented people not wanting to go anywhere near it. The pandemic task forces wouldn’t have been disbanded, and probably would have been listened to from… Read More
Biden by 20
Based on historical patterns going back to 1948, Biden should beat Trump by almost 20 points in the popular vote. Of course, if anyone could blow this, it would be Biden. Back in 1996, when I was still doing Left Business Observer, I came across a 1993 paper by Andrew Gelman and Gary King, “Why are American Presidential Election Campaign Polls so Variable when Votes are so Predictable?” It cited research showing that despite all the volatility in the opinion polls during the campaign, the results were fairly easy to foresee months… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): April 16, 2020 Yanis Varoufakis talks about life under COVID-19, the economic crisis, vultures stripping Greece, and democratizing the EU (includes bonus audio clip of Jim Cramer recalling his Trotskyist past)
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): April 9, 2020 Jeb Sprague on CV19 in Haiti and the DR • Rossana Rodríguez- Sánchez on CV19 in Chicago and Puerto Rico • Josh White on the new leader of the UK Labour Party, Kier Starmer
Miserable employment report
This morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 701,000 jobs disappeared in March. Economists had been expecting about a third that number. Hardest hit were bars and restaurants, accounting for 60% of the loss. Also hit hard: retail, temp work, and, shockingly, health care. One reason job loss expectations were relatively low was that the survey of employers on which the count is based is done during the week containing the 12th—in this case, between March 8 and 14. (No one is expecting anything but a torrent of bad news in… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): April 2, 2020 Dania Rajendra of Athena on the walkouts at Amazon • Lauren Kaori Gurley on the walkouts at Whole Foods and Instacart • J.W. Mason on the World War II economic mobilization as a model for a Green New Deal
The hits keep coming
Goldman Sachs attracted a lot of attention with its forecast that US GDP will be off 34% in the second quarter of this year. That is a very big number. It’s three-and-a-half times the worst quarter in US economic history since quarterly GDP stats began in 1947. (That quarter, by the way, was the first of 1958, the onset of a sharp recession, which featured, among other things, an “Asian flu.”) Here’s a little perspective on that number. That 34% figure is annualized, meaning it’s what the total decline would amount to… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 