Tag Archives: Uncategorized

In a previous post, I analyzed what Canadian corporations are doing with their profits. I described how across almost every sector of the economy, corporations are distributing more of their profits to owners than they are investing. In this brief post, I’m going to describe what Canadian corporations are doing with funds acquired through issuance of debt and equity securities. I will be using StatCan data on corporate issuances of long-term debt and equity. Unfortunately, the data...

From The Guardian Among many other challenges in dealing with the failure of urban policy in Australia, the Minns (NSW state) government is faced with the task of renegotiating, or repudiating, the disastrous set of contracts for toll roads in New South Wales made by its predecessors (Labor and Liberal) with the Transurban group. As a review by Allan Fels and David Cousins has found, the government is at risk of being held hostage by toll operators. According to Fels and Cousins,...

from C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh In the past three years, global food prices have been on a roller coaster, rising rapidly especially in the first half of 2022 due to a speculative bubble and then falling from July 2022 onwards (Figure 1). The phase of rising food prices led to increasing food prices around the world, especially in lower income countries—and this was obviously associated with growing hunger. According to the FAO, 122 million more people faced hunger in 2022...

Here is the campaign speech Harris delivered in Wisconsin.  It’s good:  short, to the point, and upbeat.  She hits on the right issues:  Trump is a criminal, abortion, economic opportunity, Republicans cannot be trusted with Social Security and Medicare, etc. A patriotic framing that emphasizes that the United States is a great country could help present this bill of particulars in a compelling way.  The basic message would be “Yes, we have our...

from Dean Baker Leading media outlets like The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker have about as much concern for intellectual consistency as TikTok videos. In very serious and somber tones they will warn the rest of us about a major problem and then in the next issue, or the next article, present a story that is 180 degrees at odds without ever realizing the contradiction. My favorite example of this “Which way is up?” problem is the simultaneous concern expressed that AI...

Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the US presidential election has prompted me to write down a few thoughts about getting old and being old. First up, I’m going to rant a bit (in classic old-person mode) about how much I loathe the various prissy euphemisms for “old” that appear just about everywhere: “older”, “aging”, “senior” and, worst of all, “elderly”. I am, of course, aging, as is everyone alive. Similarly, like everyone, I’m older than I was yesterday and older than people who are...

from Lars Syll The fallacy of composition basically consists of the false belief that the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts.  In society and in the economy this is arguably not the case. An adequate analysis of society and economy a fortiori can’t proceed by just adding up the acts and decisions of individuals. The whole is more than a sum of parts. This fact shows up when orthodox/mainstream/neoclassical economics tries to argue for the existence of The Law of Demand – when the...

President Joe Biden ends his 2024 reelection bid after weeks of pressure from Democrats to drop out, PBS News No doubt the moneyed influence played an important part in his leaving the race. Much of this has to do with future plans of addressing tax breaks. More on this part later. Tags: Joe Biden ...

I’ve written another piece on the uneconomics of nuclear power in Australia The big unanswered question about nuclear power in Australia is how much it would cost. The handful of plants completed recently in the US and Europe have run way over time and over budget, but perhaps such failures can be avoided. On the other hand, the relatively successful Barakah project in the United Arab Emirates was undertaken in conditions that aren’t comparable to a democratic high-wage country like...

from Asad Zaman and WEA Pedagogy Blog In this sequence of posts, I will present the contents of the video podcast entitled “Michael Hudson: Why the US has a unique place in the history of imperialism? ” For me, Hudson’s book Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of the American Empire was an amazing eye-opener, essential reading for anyone who want to understand modern real world economics. The podcast provides a summary of his ideas, and these posts break it down further to make it...