Miscellaneous
links 2008
a bit of humor, some more serious, all interesting. . .
electoral results
> 31 december 2008
poof! [$14 trillion up in smoke]
> 30 december 2008
why i am a socialist [Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, following in the tradition of Albert Einsten]
> 27 december 2008
clearly, a friend's daughter has grabbed a good book from the shelf. . .
> 26 december 2008
> 15 december 2008
the view out my window. . .
> 14 december 2008
open economics [a blog by "by a group of students at the University of Notre Dame who meet weekly to examine and debate the world of economic phenomena we face, everywhere and everyday"]
add Madoff to the list
crime & (no) punishment--Blago, sure, but don't forget about Libby, Rove, Cheney, Tenet, Bremer, Franks, Bush, Lay, Prince III, Rubin, Gramm, Zell, and Rumsfeld. . .
"The surveillance tapes of Blagojevich are so fabulous it seems a tragedy we don’t have similar audio records of the bigger fish who have wrecked the country. But in these hard times we’ll take what we can get."
> 13 december 2008
labor's victory [at Republic]
labor's defeat [at the hands of "right-to-work" Republicans]
> 11 december 2008
bang for the buck--what a dollar of stimulus puts back into the economy when spent on...
> 10 december 2008
of food and the current crisis. . .
a bailout worth supporting [but what about mozzarella di bufala?]
from snout to tail [and everything inbetween]
> 8 december 2008
what went up, is coming down [of 17th-c tulips and contemporary art]. . .
the obsession of the new rich with contemporary art is likely to be remembered as the epitome of the vanity and folly of the age.
> 7 december 2008
Chicago factory occupation continues. . .
> 6 december 2008
breaking news: sit-in at Chicago factory here & here
And the bank that, apparently, won't extend the line of credit? Bank of America, the same one that received its $25 billion in bailout funds. And the same one that opposes a bailout of the Detroit 3.
> 5 december 2008
533,000 more jobs eliminated [BLS]. . .
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, . .the number of unemployed persons increased by
2.7 million, and the unemployment rate rose by 1.7 percentage points.
more on U.S. higher education. . .
> 3 december 2008
more Odetta [with Dr. John]. . .
Odetta (1930-2008)--"Bourgeois Blues" [youtube]
who can afford it?
rises & falls of the S&P. . .
the crisis of conservatism [by a conservative, Richard Posner]. . .
The financial crisis has hit economic libertarians in the solar plexus, because the crisis is largely a consequence of innate weaknesses in free markets and of excessive deregulation of banking and finance, rather than of government interference in the market. Believers in a strong foreign policy have been hurt by the protracted and seemingly purposeless war in Iraq (the main effects of which seem to have been discord between the United States and its allies, increased recruitment of Islamic terrorists, and the strengthening of Iran and of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of al Qaeda in Pakistan) and the Bush Administration’s lack of success in dealing with Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. And social conservatives have been hurt by the stridency of some of their most prominent advocates, who all too often give the appearance of being mean-spirited, out-of-touch, know-nothing deniers of science (e.g., evolution, climate change).
> 1 december 2008
duh! [NBER: U.S. in recession for the past year]
> 26 november 2008
upcoming at the U of C. . .
30 million [the number of Americans on food stamps]
> 25 november 2008
Icelanders protest against meltdown
"I don't trust the government, I don't trust the banks, I don't trust the political parties, and I don't trust the IMF. We had a good country here and they've ruined it."
> 24 november 2008
$700 billion are a drop in the bucket--compared to $7.7 TRILLION [from Bloomberg]
> 23 november 2008
AACM jazz [the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, from the CHE]
a lighter shade of red + a darker shade of blue + some red to blue [Indiana in 2008 vs. 2004]. . .
as Michigan sinks deeper and deeper . . .
a picture worth a thousand words--mine, Keynes's, or anyone else's. . .
> 22 november 2008
the end [not Jim Morrison but Michael Lewis in Condé Nast]
liberation theology and economics (pdf) [my old friend Valpy Fitzgerald, in the Oxford Companion to Liberation Theology]
$70 an hour? [uncovering the lie]
lay-offs that hurt [e.g., when they occur at the Weather Channel]
> 21 november 2008
postmodernism and the financial meltdown [from the New Yorker]. . .
"Are there any unreconstructed Marxists left, anywhere in the wild? (Universities don’t count.) If there are, now would be a good moment for one of them to publish a book saying that the man in the beard would regard himself as having been proved right."
now, for a little football [the best indirect free kick ever?]. . .
the right-wing attack on the New Deal [Shlaes's new book, The Forgotten Man]
the right-wing attack on the big 3 bailout:
• because free trade and K inflows are the important thing [ND alum Slaughter]
• because trade unions should be smashed [R. Samuelson]
or , perhaps, something worse. . .
> 21 november 2008
a little econ music. . .
[ht: ac]
[ht: sm]
[ht: tr]
[ht: sm]
> 18 november 2008
"It's an interesting neighborhood, a college town. It's close-knit. It's kind of like Wasilla, Alaska, except that it's different." [Ayers on my neighborhood]
pickin' cotton (in 1860) and pickin' BHO (in 2008) [Strange Maps]. . .
sometimes lay-offs are a good sign [e.g., when 202 jobs are eliminated at Focus on the Family]
> 17 november 2008
BHO's Chicago: ChicTrib • USAToday • LATimes [here's my Chicago]
Vermont again [Burlington healthiest city in US]
> 16 november 2008
Quantum of Anti-imperialism [Juan Cole on the latest Bond flick]
creative commons [Lewis Hyde on the civic republican model of intellectual property]
> 15 november 2008
Vermont again in the vanguard [Sanders and Leahy on Lieberman]
if only [NYT in a parallel world]
stimulus math [Krugman on the size of the package]
renewed interest in "radical" economics [Marx and Keynes back in fashion]
no, we haven't overcome [Timothy Noah on the white vote]
Planet Finance [Niall Ferguson on the history of the financial system]
> 10 november 2008
76%! [Bush disapproval rating--lowest ever]
closing Gitmo--finally!
> 8 november 2008
yep, helluva job!
source: Dean Baker, "The Productivity to Pay Gap: What the Data Show" (CEPR, April 2007)
politics of inequality [Jim Manzi]
"The basic economic consensus of this decade was that the working class would consume far more than they earned, while giving IOUs to the rich. Everybody would get what they wanted, so everybody would be happy. How’s that working out for us?"
a night to remember. . .
> 5 november 2008
nation finally shitty enough to make social progress [who else but the Onion?]
black man given nation's worst job [the Onion, of course]
"This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change." [BHO]
scenes from Grant Park. . .
Vermont first state called for Obama
> 4 november 2008
Joe the grave digger. . .
history of realigning elections [Paul Rosenberg]
preparations in Grant Park
> 3 november 2008
wassup. . .
top 400 [Forbes, prior to the crash]
haves & have-nots [Pew Research, 13/09/07]
> 1 november 2008
word magic [Steven Pinker on swear words]
bad math [George Johnson on Einstein's mistakes]
> 31 october 2008
Studs Terkel on Labor Day 2003 [obituaries: Chic Tribune • Sun Times • LAT • NYT]
> 29 october 2008
6 days
Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx (part 1)
[hat tip: sh--for future students]
> 28 october 2008
[hat tip: sm]
> 27 october 2008
[hat tip: sm]
more Banksy [the "Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill" in NYC]
> 24 october 2008
79th anniversary of Black Thursday
Greenspan: my bad! [transcript of Greenspan's testimony]
"You found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right, it was not working?" said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee chairman. "Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan said. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) invoked the ultimate insult, calling Greenspan a "Bill Buckner" (referring to the Boston Red Sox first baseman who missed an easy ground ball against the Mets in the 1986 World Series, costing the team the game).
working poor problem getting worse
"The number of U.S. jobs paying a poverty-level wage increased by 4.7 million between 2002 and 2006, according to a new analysis of census data released Tuesday."
> 23 october 2008
"In a survey of 120 major cities, New York was found to be the ninth most unequal in the world and Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami had similar inequality levels to those of Nairobi, Kenya and Abidjan, Ivory Coast."
> 22 october 2008
Adam Smith no socialist:
"The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. . .The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. . .It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776)
my view:
To paraphrase one of the most memorable lines from an earlier presidential campaign, "I have served with socialists; I know socialists; socialists are friends of mine. Barack Obama is no socialist."
Nor is the Bush administration's bailout of Wall Street. Socialism is not about saving capitalism but expanding the possibilities of a different, more just economy and society. It means creating the conditions--political, cultural, and economic--in which the workers who produce the surplus that makes society possible determine how much surplus there will be and what to do with it. That's the aim of socialism, to make the kinds of changes in the existing economy and society that move us in the direction of economic and social justice, that create more democratic ways of producing and distributing the goods and services we need to live on.
To call Barack Obama a socialist is the worst kind of red-baiting reminiscent of McCarthyism and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It's the sign of a desperate political campaign, which refuses to recognize that the United States now suffers from the worst levels of economic and social inequality since the Gilded Age. There is no socialism in the plans and campaign promises of the Obama-Biden ticket. Socialists welcome the changes proposed by the Obama campaign, because they are much better than the policies of both the Bush administration and the McCain campaign, but they're not enough. Socialists don't want just to fix the current economic and social system; they want to work with others to challenge the injustices of capitalism and create a fundamentally different economic and social system.
McCain's latest campaign incident [courtesy of the Onion]
"The United States has the highest inequality and poverty rates in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000."
radical perspectives on the current crisis
Eric Hobsbawm on the current crisis [BBC, audio file]
> 13 october 2008
a little history. . .
financial meltdown 101 [everything you ever wanted to know about the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression but were afraid to ask, by Arun Gupta]
and the 2008 Nobel Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel goes to. . . [Paul Krugman]
economists for McCain [new meaning to the dismal science?]
> 12 october 2008
the current crisis: a Marxian view
TED spread = [yield on Eurodollar deposits - yield on T bills], which is used as a measure of investor confidence. A suddening widening of the spread is indicative of a flight to quality and a perception of risk in corporate credit markets.
latest TED spread [Bloomberg]
> 11 october 2008
> 10 october 2008
children's books about economic hardship and financial ruin
Bird and Fortune on the Subprime Crisis
economic crisis glossary [courtesy of the BBC]
Marx and the Bank Failure of 1873
Robert Lucas on another mission accomplished [from his 2003 AEA presidential address]
Macroeconomics was born as a distinct field in the 1940s, as a part of the
intellectual response to the Great Depression. The term then referred to the body
of knowledge and expertise that we hoped would prevent the recurrence of that
economic disaster. My thesis in this lecture is that macroeconomics in this
original sense has succeeded: Its central problem of depression-prevention has
been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many
decades.
the real Great Depression? 1873 [The Chronicle Review (pdf)]
> 9 october 2008
September madness
> 6 october 2008
AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka on Racism and Obama
> 5 october 2008
South Side Story [the South Side of Chicago, by the WP's Wil Haygood (pdf)]
> 29 september 2008
Ye of little faith [Colbert's Word]
> 22 september 2008
> 19 september 2008
Billions for Bailouts! Who Pays? [Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont]
> 15 september 2008
Unnatural History of Wall Street [second episode of Concrete Jumble, by Gary Leib]
> 12 may 2008
Pax Corleone [U.S. foreign policy, according to The Godfather]
> 11 may 2008
Open Economics [petition by Notre Dame undergrads on the teaching of economics ]
> 9 may 2008
Sweatshops [an internet game, sent by a student]
> 25 april 2008
Israel's Occupation [web site for the new book by Neve Gordon]
> 19 april 2008
Denis Goulet and the Project of Development Ethics [paper by Des Gasper on the work of my former colleague Denis Goulet (1931-2006)]
> 14 march 2008
Iraq: The $3 Trillion War
part 1
part 2
> 10 january 2008
Is Capitalism Making Us Ill? [a review of Oliver James's latest book]
Against Competition [Benjamin Barber on how competition is an enemy of freedom]
> 14 december 2007
"Rethinking
Gramsci: Class, Globalization, and Historical Bloc" [my recent
visit to the University of Wollongong]
A Home for the Holidays
[a film by Robert Greenwald, starring Henry Kravis and his homes]
> 15 october 2007
In
Defense of Academic Freedom [audio files from the 12 October
conference at the U of Chicago]
Reagonomics
[it could only be the Onion]
> 5 september
2007
Only
in America:
subprime crisis and the poor [Michael Lews for Bloomberg]
"Bush is just
playing us" [Keith Olbermann on Bush's latest Iraq visit]
> 25 august 2007
"Italy's American
Baggage" [Andrea Camilleri, a great mystery writer, on Sacco & Vanzetti]
> 23 july 2007
heterodox
economics [Chris Hayes, "Hip Heterodoxy"]
> 31 march 2007
new data
on income inequality [from Emmanuel Saez]
> 26 march 2007
my
PowerPoint presentation on economic inequality [the latest version]
> 21 march 2007
the Communist
Manifesto
[in cartoons]
> 6 march 2007
a new economic
conversation [the web site for a new textbook by McCloskey, Klamer,
and Ziliak]
> 1 march 2007
high-tech
advice
[hint: how to read a book]
econ
101
[Mankiw's economics]
learning
economics [Chris Hayes, "What we learn when we learn economics"]