Some of this just posted to my radio archives, and some of it’s been around for a while without being noted on the web page. Subscribe to the podcast (here’s the iTunes page—details on other portals on my archive page), and you’ll get the audio files right after they’re posted, instead of waiting for me to update the web index. Note: several of these shows were fundraisers for KPFA. I’ve cut out the pleas, but if you want to keep these coming, please support KPFA. October 25, 2012 Jodi Dean, professor of political science at Hobart & William… Read More

Back in 2009, Justin Fox, then of Time magazine, published a book called The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street. I interviewed him about it on my radio show in June of that year. It’s a pretty good book, but at the time, I thought it bore an uncanny resemblance to some of the arguments I made in my book Wall Street, published by Verso in 1997. (Verso let it go out of print, so it’s now available for free download at that link.) With the publication of the… Read More

Just posted to my radio archives: July 5, 2012 Adolph Reed, author of one of the pieces on this Nation thread, on the crisis in labor • Yanis Varoufakis, now economist in residence at Valve Software, talks about the economics of gaming, and the anarcho-syndicalist organization of the firm

Just posted to my radio archives: June 21, 2012 Yanis Varoufakis, now economist in residence at Valve Software, on the Greek elections and the reasons for German Sturheit • Amber Hollibaugh, co-director of Queers for Economic Justice, and Kenyon Farrow, former director of QEJ, on the New Queer Agenda

My latest radio show, a long chat with Adam Davidson, is up in my radio archives: June 9, 2012 Adam Davidson, host of NPR’s Planet Money and columnist for the New York Times Magazine, on finance, innovation, bourgeois ideology, journalism, and being mean on the Internet (a conversation that was prompted by this piece of mine) [Davidson columns discussed include: Wall Street, Bain dude, Honduras] • full conversation (unedited, except to remove some patter at the beginning and to suppress several volume spikes) is here

I could never bear to watch myself, but in case there’s someone else who might, the video of my Bob Fitch memorial lecture (Explaining what goes on in the world: in memory of Bob Fitch) is up here.

The New York Fed is out with a new paper (“Payment Changes and Default Risk: The Impact of Refinancing on Expected Credit Losses”) that shows that reducing monthly mortgage payments “significantly” reduces future default risks. (Abstract follows.) The details of the paper strike me as less interesting than the fact that this basilica of High Finance is arguing that some degree of debt reduction is prudent—bolder than anything that a mainstream politician would ever say. Remember, these are the folks who had David Graeber in recently to talk about debt (and debt forgiveness). Payment… Read More

I’m giving the Bob Fitch memorial lecture on Monday evening, 5-7 PM, LaGuardia College, 31-10 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City, Room E-500. New York city, unions, Democrats, stuff like that. Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=LaGuardia+College,+31-10+Thomson+Avenue,+Long+Island+City&aq=&sll=40.686987,-73.961261&sspn=0.012464,0.023389&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=29-10+Thomson+Ave,+Queens,+New+York+11101&t=m&z=14&iwloc=A&ll=40.744257,-73.937931&output=embed View Larger Map

…New York, not Switzerland. Not at all a disappointment, since Geneva, Switzerland, is one of the dullest major places I’ve ever been, and Geneva, New York, features the excellent Jodi Dean, who invited Liza Featherstone and me to speak at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Jodi’s announcement: Liza Featherstone and Doug Henwood on March 26 at 7:00 in Albright Auditorium, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY Liza Featherstone, “Occupy Schools: Education for the 99%” A contributing writer for The Nation, Liza Featherstone is the author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’… Read More

Has the Economic Policy Institute been hacked, or are they undergoing a curious transformation?s just appeared on their email list: 8/4 Moving Devotion: God wants you to stop at the beginning of each day and say, “Lord, what do you want to do through me today? What are you doing in the lives of the people around me and how do you want to do it through me? I am stepping out of the way in inviting your Spirit to lead my life today. If you received this from a friend and… Read More

So Obama’s going to nominate Larry Summers to be president of the World Bank. Recall this passage from 1991 memo, actually written by Lant Pritchett but signed by Summers when he was the Bank’s chief economist, on how “Africa is vastly under-polluted.” The last paragraph is important, and should not be overlooked in fighting these mofos. 3. “Dirty” industries Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [less-developed countries]? I can think of three reasons: 1) The measurement of the costs… Read More