Political Economy

The decision for Europe’s bosses is this: they must ultimately confront the consequences of their policy choices. They can destroy the eurozone by continuing with the same failed mix of policies or by salvaging it by adding what has been…

This is how it's going down in Greece right now. The sentiment is very Anti-German on the eve of the austerity/bailout decision. The debt haircut and writedowns coming of upwards of 50% is a default in everything but name. Technical default…

The answer is yes. video below

It could just be saber rattling during an election year, but Western powers have been provoking Iran for years now - two decades, really. I just saw another report proclaiming that Iran is likely to attack the US, which is about as absurd…

The chart below from the blog Pragmatic Capitalism shows the U.S. Federal government deficit for each quarter since 1952. As you can see, almost the entire period is marked by deficits.

Here's a good video performance by Marshall Auerback on BNN's Business Day program. Marshall thinks the Greek default deal is actually a relatively good one. But sees a Portuguese default after the Greek default as a real possibility and…

The Obama administration’s record of prosecuting elite financial frauds is worse than the Bush administration’s record, which is a very large statement. Neither administration has prosecuted any elite CEO for the epidemic of mortgage fraud…

Even if the private sector participation sufficiently high, will it be enough to put Greece's debt on a sustainable path? This seems unlikely and there is increasing risk that the ECB forgoes getting anything but its initial investment…

If you are a retiree, you're not happy these days. Five years ago, you were getting a decent return on your fixed income investments. But since then, the Fed has trashed the fixed income market by reducing interest rates to zero percent for…

Taken to its end, industrialization class distinctions are revealed by conspicuous consumption. This points to the objective of industrial production: goods in the realm of common consumption become removed from social distinction. This is…