Socialdem. 21st Century

The recent interview with Julian Assange on the US election and Wikileaks:[embedded content]

I limit myself to the great, older figures below.Good short biographies can be found in these works:Arestis, Philip and Malcolm Sawyer (eds.). 1991. A Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists. Elgar, Aldershot.Harcourt, G. C. 1993. Post-Keynesian Essays in Biography: Portraits of Twentieth-Century Political Economists. Macmillan, Basingstoke.Here is a list of biographies, and other relevant works:John Maynard Keynes Skidelsky, R. J. A. 1983. John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed...

Clinton in one of the Podesta emails dated to 2014 that can be read here admitted privately that the Saudi and Qatari governments fund ISIS:“While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”...

Listen here.A fascinating discussion.

Here is Foucault’s view on the nature of truth:“The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of...

I don’t agree with everything here (sure, there are some hysterical bits here and there), but this documentary by Peter Navarro called “Death by China” (2012) is food for thought:[embedded content]Curiously, Peter Navarro is now an economic adviser to Trump, and you can see why there is massive corporate hostility to Trump, who clearly wishes to end this corporate outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing to China.My discussion of Chinese mercantilism is here.Also, my own posts against free...

Some additional videos of Ian Fletcher, the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why (2nd edn.; 2011), criticising free trade:[embedded content][embedded content]An important point in the video above at the end is that today various forms of East Asian state capitalism (although they are by no means free from problems, e.g., the current property bubble and banking problems in China) are still killing the Western neoliberal version of capitalism. We in the West need a...

A nice critique of free trade here:Bill Mitchell, “The Case against Free Trade – Part 1,” Billy Blog, 27 October, 2016.Bill Mitchell analyses the Heckscher-Ohlin model of free trade, and notes that this model requires the following grossly unrealistic assumptions:“1. There is always full employment through price flexibility. Inputs can move freely within countries between technologies and commodities, which means that labour can move without any costs involved between two types of production...

Here:[embedded content]I can’t find the full speech, so cannot be sure.Realist LeftRealist Left on Twitter @realistleftRealist Left on RedditRealist Left BlogRealist Left on YouTubeLord Keynes on FacebookSocial Democracy for the 21st Century: A Realist Alternative to the Modern LeftAlt Left on the Internet:Alternative Left on FacebookAlt-Left on Google+Samizdat Broadcasts YouTube ChannelSamizdat: For the Freedom Loving LeftistI’m on Twitter: Lord Keynes...

In this recent interview here:“2. The Crazy (and not so Crazy) Ideas of Donald Trump,” Debunking Economics – The Podcast, 25 October, 2016.The virtue signalling about Trump is tiresome, however: Hillary’s warmongering over Syria is far more dangerous than anything Trump has said.But – at last – there was at least an attempt at some fairness here, with the following admissions:(1) Trump’s protectionism is a position that the heterodox left can happily agree with, given that free trade...