This is worth re-reading about once every other week. From a letter written by Friedrich Engels in 1892: There is no place yet in America for a third party, I believe. The divergence of interests even in the same class group is so great in that tremendous area that wholly different groups and interests are represented in each of the two big parties, depending on the locality, and almost each particular section of the possessing class has its representatives in each of the two parties to a very large degree, though today big… Read More

Just uploaded to my radio archives: December 3, 2011 Michael Dorsey, professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth, on the Durban climate summit • Bélen Fernández, author of The Imperial Messenger, on that egregious blowhard Thomas Friedman November 26, 2011 Greg Graffin, lead singer of Bad Religion and author of Anarchy Evolution, on evolution and punk rock • Jeffrey Sachs, the economist formerly known as Dr Shock, on the mess that is the USA, a topic he explores in The Price of Civilization (see my review of his last book here)

Me and (one hopes) a bunch of other people talking about money, tonight at 7, 60 Wall St atrium. More here: Money: What is it? | The Public School

Freshly posted to my radio archives: November 19, 2011 Frances Fox Piven of the CUNY grad center—whose greatest hits are collected in Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven?—on the history of social movements and Occupy Wall Street

Freshly posted to my radio archives, ending a three-week fundraising hiatus: October 28, 2011 sociologist Alex Vitale on cops and protest • journalist Sarah Jaffe on OWS, mostly

…by the excellent Taryn Hart:

The OWS General Assembly disavows the Demands working group, saying, in a grandiose and narcissistic fashion, “We are our demands”: Demands Working Group. Is fame going to someone’s head?  

The anarchists are not happy about this, and are trying to block its adoption by the General Assembly. If you like it, please attend, agitate, comment, circulate, whatever. If you don’t like it, please reflect on the size of the potential constituency for this agenda compared with that for your own.   TEACH-IN: DEMANDS WORKING GROUP PANEL   Saturday 3:00-5:00 PM 66 W 12th St Rm 407  Part of Day-long Teach-in sponsored by the New School Senate   What’s the story about the proposed Jobs for All Demand?   The Demands Working… Read More

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

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.

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.

I’m scheduled to be on Sunday Edition on CBC Radio One this Sunday, discussing the debt melodrama with Jack Mintz of the C.D. Howe Institute, a right-wing think tank. Recorded it this afternoon. Canadian right-wingers just don’t seem as rabid as ours do.

A follow-up to the previous, inspired by another question from Corey: I should have said in there that the reason that quantitative easing hasn’t worked well is that monetary policy is ineffective when an economy is this sick. It’s the classic “pushing on a string” situation. Corps have lots of cash – they’re just not investing or hiring. The financial markets are flush. You need fiscal policy to mobilize all that festering cash. Inflation is now about 4% – all because of commodities, because “core” inflation (ex food and energy) is only… Read More

I just posted this to Facebook in response to a query by Corey Robin about the dismal “debate” on jobs hosted by  The Atlantic, and Matthew Yglesias’ side commentary on it. Corey’s question: why can’t the gov solve the unemployment problem by hiring people? My reaction: Wow, what a collection of tiny little “ideas” that “debate” gathers. It’s up there in tininess with Obama’s jones for patent law reform. Raising the inflation target implies that the Fed has been too tight, when in fact it’s been anything but. It’s been pumping like crazy since the financial crisis… Read More