List of GDP in the public sector.
Data from the World Bank.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Financial Transaction Tax
Targeting Wall Street, Robin Hood Tax Comes to Washington
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/30
Portside Date:
October 30, 2013
Date of Source:
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Common Dreams
With Congress about to begin the next cycle of budget battles – mostly focused on how much more pain to inflict on Main Street communities across America – a far different message is bubbling up across the land.
Activists from across the land gathered in Washington October 29 to step up what has become an increasingly vocal demand for a change of priorities and tone – with a call to expand the revenue pie with a tax on Wall Street speculation, the Robin Hood tax.
“The fire in this room will light up the sky for a lot of people,” said Larry Hanley, international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union surveying the room in the closing session of an action conference for the Robin Hood Tax campaign.
“We have a revenue crisis, and we know where the money is, it’s on Wall Street.” –George Goehl, National People’s Action
Activists from across the land gathered in Washington October 29 to step up what has become an increasingly vocal demand for a change of priorities and tone – with a call to expand the revenue pie with a tax on Wall Street speculation, the Robin Hood tax.
“The fire in this room will light up the sky for a lot of people,” said Larry Hanley, international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union surveying the room in the closing session of an action conference for the Robin Hood Tax campaign.
“We have a revenue crisis, and we know where the money is, it’s on Wall Street.” –George Goehl, National People’s Action
The myth about what caused the financial crisis.
The myth about what caused the financial crisis.
Krugman in his book calls it The Big Lie. Here is Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Krugman in his book calls it The Big Lie. Here is Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Corporations and the corporate state
Our Invisible Revolution
By Chris Hedges
“Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?” the anarchist Alexander Berkman wrote in his essay “The Idea Is the Thing.” “If you did, then your answer must have been that it is because the people support those institutions, and that they support them because they believe in them.”
Berkman was right. As long as most citizens believe in the ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognize that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.
It appears that political ferment is dormant in the United States. This is incorrect. The ideas that sustain the corporate state are swiftly losing their efficacy across the political spectrum. The ideas that are rising to take their place, however, are inchoate. The right has retreated into Christian fascism and a celebration of the gun culture. The left, knocked off balance by decades of fierce state repression in the name of anti-communism, is struggling to rebuild and define itself. Popular revulsion for the ruling elite, however, is nearly universal. It is a question of which ideas will capture the public’s imagination.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Beyond Debt and Growth | An Interview with Robert Pollin | Dollars & Sense
Beyond Debt and Growth | An Interview with Robert Pollin | Dollars & Sense
About the paper that most politicians used to justify austerity. The paper is debunked.
About the paper that most politicians used to justify austerity. The paper is debunked.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Friday, October 18, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Dialogue
Guidelines for dialogue in the seminar
Dialogue: Seminar on the Economic Crisis. 2013.
I
search for basic agreements.
I
search for strengths in your position.
I reflect on my position.
I consider the possibility of
finding a better solution than mine or yours.
I assume that many people
have a piece of the answer.
I want to find common ground.
I submit my best thinking
hoping your reflection will improve it.
I remain open to talk about
the subject later on.
Anti-dialogue:
I search for glaring
differences.
I search for weaknesses in
your position.
I attack your position.
I denigrate
you and your position.
I defend my solution and
exclude yours.
I am invested wholeheartedly
in my beliefs.
I assume there is one right
answer, and that I have it.
I want
to win.
I
submit my best thinking and defend it to show it is right.
I expect to settle this here
and now.
I
seek to silence those who disagree with my position.
Adapted from, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to
multicultural education. 4th.
edition. Duane Campbell.
2010. Allyn and Bacon.
Course Reading List
The Economic Crisis: Sources
Gar Alperovitz, America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our
Liberty, and Our Democracy. (2005)
John Wiley and Sons
Barofsky, Neil, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned
Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street. ( 2012)
Baker, Dean. Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and
Fall of the Bubble Economy, (2009)
Barlett, Donald L., and Steele, James B., The Betrayal of the American
Dream. (2012).
Black, William, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.
Bivens, Josh, Failure by
Design, The Story Behind America’s Broken Economy. 2011.
Campbell, Duane. Choosing
Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. (2010)
Center for Popular Economics, Economics for the 99%. July 2012.
Edelman, Peter, So Rich, So
Poor. Why it’s so hard to End Poverty in America. 2012.
Engler, Mark. How to Rule the World: The coming battle over the Global
Economy. (2008)
Ferguson, Charles H. , Predator Nation; Corporate Criminals, Political
Corruption, and the Hijacking of America. 2012. The background for Inside Job.
Frank, Thomas, Pity the
Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the
Right. Metropolitan Books. (2012.)
Friedman, Thomas & Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to be US : How
American Fell Behind in the World and How We Can Come Back. 2011.
Fox, Justin. The Myth of the Rational Market: a History
of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street. (2009)
Faux, Jeff. The Global Class
War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future- and What It Will Take to
Win It Back. ( 2006)
Johnson, Simon and James Kwak, 13 Bankers : The Wall Street Takeover and the next
Financial Meltdown. 2010.
Galbraith, John K. The
Predator State. 2008.
Harvey, David. The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism. (2010)
Hedges, Chris, & Sacco, Joe,
Days of Destruction: Days of Revolt. (2012)
Henry, James. The Price of Off Shore Revisited. Tax Justice Network. July 2012.
Krugman, Paul. The Return
of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. (2009)
Krugman, Paul, End this Depression Now. 2012.
Kuttner, Robert. A
Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power,
and the struggle to control our economic future. 2010.
Levison, Andrew, The White Working Class Today: Who They Are, How They
Think, and How Progressives Can Regain Their Support. 2013.
Lewis, Michael, The Big
Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. 2010.
McChesney, Robert W. , Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the
Internet Against Democracy. (2013)
Miner, Barbara, Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century
of Public Education in an Iconic American City. (2013.)
National Commission on the Causes of the Financial Crisis. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report.
2011.
Prins,Nomi. It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts,
Bonuses and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. (2009)
Smith, Yves, Econed: How
Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism. 2010.
Stiglitz. Joseph. Free
Fall, America, Free markets, and the Shrinking World Economy. (2010)
Taibbi, Matt. Griftopia:
Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, Spiegel
& Grau , 2010.
Some on line resources on the economy,
Baseline Scenario. http://baselinescenario.com
Chicago Political Economy Group. www.cpegonline.org
Economic Policy Institute. www.epi.org
United for a Fair Economy. www.faireconomy.org
Center for Economic and Policy Research. www.cepr.net
Naked Capitalism. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com
New Deal. www.newdeal20.org
To calculate the benefits that the rich in your state
received from the Obama/Republican compromise. Citizens for Tax Justice. http://www.ctj.org/
New Economic Perspectives. http://neweconomicperspectives.org
And, my blog. www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com
Revised seminar reading list
Course Outline.
There will be changes to this list as the course develops.
Updated 9/20/13
Sept 6
|
Introduction
to course
|
Video-
Inside Job,
|
Sept. 13
|
The
economic crisis
|
Krugman,
Chapter 1
|
Sept.20
|
How bad
are things?
The
bubble. Depression economics
|
Krugman 2
|
Sept 27
|
Bankers. Was it criminal?
Inequality
is. Reich.
|
Krugman
3.-4.
|
Oct 4.
|
What about
Glass-Steagall?
Inequality.-
lecture.
|
Krugman 5
Presentation;
Failure of Laisse Faire Capitalism
|
Oct 11
|
The Bail
Out.
Money,
Power and Wall Street. “The
Untouchables”, Inequality.
|
Krugman 6
Use
Stiglitz.
Presentation;
Civil v. criminal law
|
Oct. 18
|
Efficient
Markets hypothesis
Bob Curry :
International economics
|
Krugman 7
Presentation:
Stockman: the Great Deformation
|
Oct.25.
|
No class
|
|
Nov.1
|
Administration
policy
The
retirement crisis
Social
Security
Richard
Wolff.
|
Krugman
8-9
Guest
speaker
|
Nov.8
|
Alternative
policies.
Trade,
labor, The Koch brothers .
|
Krugman 8-9
|
Nov 15
|
Immigration,
Political stalemate.
Is Obama a
socialist ?
|
Krugman 10-11
Pete
Martineau
|
Nov 22
|
The
corporation. Richard Wolf.
|
Krugman 12
|
Nov 28
|
No seminar
|
|
Dec. 6
|
Final
seminar
|
Krugman 13
|
Please refer to our class blog. http://rsseminareconomiccrisis.blogspot.com
For more information.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Interactive: Who's Pulling the Strings? | BillMoyers.com
Interactive: Who's Pulling the Strings? | BillMoyers.com
See the forces directing the Tea Party Republicans.
See the forces directing the Tea Party Republicans.
Acting with Impunity: The Case of General Electric
Acting with Impunity: The Case of General Electric | Common Dreams
What do multinational corporations do ?
What do multinational corporations do ?
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Krugman. The Shut Down
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Boehner Bunglers
The federal government
is shut down, we’re about to hit the debt ceiling (with disastrous economic
consequences), and no resolution is in sight. How did this happen?
The main answer, which only the most pathologically “balanced” reporting
can deny, is the radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann and
Norman Ornstein put it last year in their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has
become “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the
inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise;
unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and
dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Monday, October 7, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Why The Health Care Law Scares the GOP
Eduardo Porter. New York Times.
Why the Health Care Law Scares the GOP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/business/economy/why-the-health-care-law-scares-the-gop.html?smid=fb-share
Why the Health Care Law Scares the GOP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/business/economy/why-the-health-care-law-scares-the-gop.html?smid=fb-share
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
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