Nation pieces: inflation, AI
I had a couple of pieces in (on?) The Nation, recently. The first is on inflation, which is real, not easy to solve, and a potential problem for a green agenda. The standard remedy—raising interest rates and provoking a recession—would be disastrous in an economy still recovering from the Covid shock. But we can’t deny that huge deficit spending and an infusion of trillions of dollars conjured out of nothing has something to do with the problem. The deficit spending financed a remarkably generous, though too temporary, aid package. It boosted household… Read More
Market timing, lbo-news style
As I’m typing this, bitcoin is having another terrible day, trading at $10,050, down 11% from yesterday and 48% from its all-time high of $19,290. (For the latest price, click here.) Of course, it also had a spectacular upward run. On August 17, 2010, when the cryptocurrency’s price history begins, it was worth $0.08. Four-and-a-half months later, January 1, 2011, when the chart just below begins, it was worth $0.30, a gain of 290%. A year later, January 1, 2012, it traded at $5.20, a gain of 1,633%. Five years later, January… Read More
My review of HRC’s book
My review of Hillary’s What Happened has just been posted on Washington Babylon.
Zoë Heller on My Turn
It’s always a delight to read Zoë Heller, especially so when she says this about My Turn: “a solid and persuasive guide to what has been characterized as shady or shabby or unprincipled in Clinton’s political career.” Other, less personally relevant, highlights from the piece: …[her memoir Hard Choices] fairly brims with “aren’t women amazing?” sentiments of the sort one finds cross-stitched on decorative cushions. …her much-vaunted “women’s rights are human rights” declaration in Beijing in 1995 (a speech that her supporters characterize somewhat implausibly as a watershed moment in feminist history)… Just as in 2008,… Read More
Katha Pollitt on My Turn
Katha Pollitt reviews My Turn in the January 25 issue of The Nation. I suppose it’s undignified for an author to take issue with a reviewer, but I’m confident that I can transcend such petty concerns. I should say right away that Katha is a friend; not only am I very fond of her personally, I’ve admired her writing (both prose and poetry) for more years than either of us would probably like to count. But she got some things wrong, which I will enumerate politely. It’s funny how often defenses of Hillary Clinton begin with confessing a… Read More
My anti-Hillary book is shipping!
Have I mentioned yet that my critique of the presumed frontrunner, My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency, is shipping? Order it now on the OR Books website and it will be in your mailbox in about a week. My main thought after reading @DougHenwood’s My Turn is that this is the book that all Hillary supporters need to own, because it compiles all the credible criticisms of Hillary in one place, without mixing in a load of right wing dreck. So if something isn’t in Doug’s book, it can probably be safely ignored…. Read More
Unicorns
I’ve got a piece on The Nation’s website about the tech bubble. Funnily, Vanity Fair features many of the disruptive stars of that bubble, and of the sharing economy I wrote about for The Nation earlier this year, in their latest New Establishment list. How 2015 it all seems.
Me in Salon
Josh Eidelson interviews me about the shutdown, default, the Tea Party, and the rot of the American ruling class: “Tea Party’s shutdown lunacy: Avenging the surrender of the South” Josh and I had nothing to do with the headline.
Presidential economics, 2004 vintage
Mike Tomasky writes with some surprise in The Daily Beast (“The 24 and the 42 million, and Basic Competence”) that both the job market and the stock market have done better under Democratic presidents than under Republican. He comments: “ And yet, no one in America knows. No one.” That’s not true. Subscribers to Left Business Observer knew that years ago. I first reviewed the post-World War II record of the two parties in 1996, and updated the study in 2004. The results: Dems are better for growth in both jobs and GDP, and for… Read More
Wall Street (the book) going for almost $1,000
This screenshot just taken on Amazon.com: This is, of course, preposterous. But ego gratifying. And it also means that the four or five copies that were priced around $50 the other week just after the marvelous Justin Fox Review appeared actually sold. But really, how are these things priced? Are their bot-driven algorithms, like on the stock market?
“Behind the News” now on Stitcher
“Behind the News” is now available via Stitcher.com, a source for all kinds of radio shows. You can listen via the web, or on your iPhone or Android. For general info on Stitcher, click here.
Thank you, Justin Fox
About ten days ago, I posted a complaint (“Credit default”), which could perhaps be characterized as “petulant,” about the uncanny resemblance between a Harvard Business Review piece (“What Good Are Shareholders?”) by Justin Fox and Jay Lorsch and my book Wall Street. Justin Fox has just posted an extremely generous endorsement of my work: The Wall Street Book Everyone Should Read. I am very grateful and flattered and will even forgive his characterization of me as “crotchety.” Thank you, Justin. Verso let the book go out of print but you can download it here. I apologize for… Read More
Me in SoCal
I’m giving two talks in Southern California later this week (actually two versions of the same talk, “Reflections on the Current Disorder,” a title cribbed from William F. Buckley). Both are free and open to the public. Wednesday, January 25, 3:30–5:00 PM University of California–Riverside CHASS INTS 1113 Thursday, January 26, 4:30–6:00 PM University of California–Irvine 1030 Humanities Gateway I hope they won’t be too dull.
Me and some other guys on a panel
I’m going to be on a Platypus panel on the crisis of the left. Sorry it’s an all-male cast, but I had nothing to do with it. an international forum on the CRISIS OF THE LEFT Chicago*NYC*Philly*Boston*Thessaloniki, Greece Crisis: Pathol. The point in the progress of a disease when an important development or change takes place which is decisive of recovery or death. “…Existing strategies and theories seem inadequate in a bewildering contemporary political scene. Disparate groups have begun to show an interest in rethinking the fundamentals of Left politics…” @New York:… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 