Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson  As a new Cold War against China began, it was clear that the pandemic was altering the international balance of power fundamentally. For former US Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, it was likely a “hinge of history”: “[i]f the 21st century turns out to be an Asian century as the 20th was an American one, the pandemic may well be remembered as the turning point”. It would erase 9/11 and 2008 from memory and rank alongside “the 1914 assassination...

from Lars Syll One of the limitations with economics is the restricted possibility to perform experiments, forcing it to mainly rely on observational studies for knowledge of real-world economies. But still — the idea of performing laboratory experiments holds a firm grip of our wish to discover (causal) relationships between economic ‘variables.’If we only could isolate and manipulate variables in controlled environments, we would probably find ourselves in a situation where we with...

from Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan This note contextualizes the ongoing U.S. policy shift toward greater ‘regulation’ of large corporations. Cory Doctorow (2021) and Blair Fix (2021) are optimistic about this shift. We doubt it. The Limits of Power Large U.S.-based corporations are extremely powerful, but the growth of their power has decelerated considerably. Figure 1, updated from our ‘Corporate Power and the Future of U.S. Capitalism’ (Bichler and Nitzan 2021), shows the...

We[1] are often urged to “get out of our bubbles” and engage with a wider range of viewpoints. This mostly turns out to be a waste of time. As I experienced from my side, engagement with the political right consists mainly of responding to a string of talking points and whataboutery, with little if any content. On the rare occasions these discussions have been useful, it’s typically because the other party in the discussion is on the verge of breaking with the right[2] To restate...

from Peter Radford My summer of research is almost over.  The season here in Vermont is changing and the view from our window will soon be dominated by the brilliant autumnal colors our region is famous for.  All is both regular and well. Sort of. Perhaps there’s something in the water down there in New York.  There are rumblings of life in economics.  The long sclerosis inhibiting the emergence of theories that explain rather than re-invent reality might just be close to loosening its...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for September 27 – October 1 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Commodity prices and transportation costs continue to soar, and there are even signs of further acceleration. If you go by the regional Fed reports, it is beginning to affect manufacturing. If you go by the ISM, not even a little bit. As usual, clicking over and reading brings you up to the economic...

from Blair Fix I recently had a lively Twitter debate with Jonathan Nitzan, Shimshon Bichler and Cory Doctorow1 about the future of big corporations in the United States. The debate was prompted by Doctorow’s piece ‘End of the line for Reaganomics’, which I reposted on capitalaspower.com. Doctorow argues that we may be witnessing a sea change in the way governments treat big corporations. Since the Reagan era, the US government has taken most of the teeth out of antitrust enforcement. The...

from Dean Baker The Democrats have proposed paying for part of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan with $500 billion in savings on what the government will pay prescription drug companies through Medicare and other public programs over the next decade. The country currently pays the pharmaceutical industry over $500 billion annually for its products. If we look at spending over the next decade, and like the news media, ignore that it’s over ten years, we would say that we will give...