In 2011, Leo Panitch wrote a piece, The Left’s Crisis, examining the Left’s response to the present crisis. He noted the Left’s response could be broken into two types: “irresponsible” and “fundamentally misleading”. In the irresponsible group, he puts those who called on Washington to let the banks fail, which, [...]

Keynesian economic policies don’t work, but fighting for these policies will? Guglielmo Carchedi’s essay on the so-called Marxist multiplier has me bugging. He is handing out bad advice to activists in the social movements and telling them this bad advice is based on Marx’s labor theory of value. The bad [...]

Based on what I have described of Bernanke’s policy failure so far, is it possible to predict anything about the future results of an open ended purchase of financial assets under QE3? I think so, and I share why in this last part of this series. Author: Jehu Eaves Visit [...]

I stopped my examination of Bernanke’s approach to this crisis and the problem of deflation after looking at his 1991 paper and his speech in 2002. I now want to return to that series, examining two of his speeches this to discuss the problems confronting bourgeois monetary policy in the [...]

The world market had been shaken by a series of financial crises, and the economy of Japan had fallen into a persistent deflationary state, When Ben Bernanke gave his 2002 speech before the National Economists Club, “Deflation: Making Sure “It” Doesn’t Happen Here”. Bernanke was going to explain to his [...]

So I am spending a week or so trying to understand Ben Bernanke’s approach to this crisis based on three sources from his works. In this part, the source is an essay published in 1991: “The Gold Standard, Deflation, and Financial Crisis in the Great Depression: An International Comparison”. In [...]

We have to change the terms of the debate on jobs and debt. We need to insist a job is nothing more than wage slavery and we don’t need Washington’s effort to create more of it by adding to this wage slavery even with more debt slavery. It is not [...]

As a contribution to Occupy Wall Street’s efforts against debt, I am continuing my reading of William White’s “Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences” (PDF). I have covered sections A and B. In this last section I am looking at to section C of White’s paper [...]

To Mr. Tsipras of the Greece party, Syriza, I read your letter to Angela Merkel today the Guardian and was not impressed. Frankly, I expected a guy who just might be running Greece next year to have a better argument than the one you gave. You stated: As Angela Merkel [...]

We have to change the terms of the debate on jobs and debt. We need to insist a job is nothing more than wage slavery and we don’t need Washington’s effort to create more of it adding to this wage slavery even with more debt slavery. It is not like [...]

Here is an interesting chart from Zero Hedge: In data going back to 1980, employment for younger workers aged 20-24 has never increased in the month of September — that is, it has never increased until this year: I know what you are thinking: the data provided by Washington is [...]

Since Occupy Wall Street appears to be undertaking a concerted push toward addressing the growing debt servitude of the mass of working families to Wall Street banksters, I thought it might be interesting to understand how the Federal Reserve is now doubling down on a policy of manufacturing an even [...]

5. The recovery of capitalism is no longer possible Kurz’s overall analysis of the crisis that emerged full blown in 2008 consists of four fundamental bullet points: First, in the course of capitalist development Marx’s theory states there is a rising composition of constant capital to variable capital; this rising [...]

4. The Necessary Parasitism of Fascist State In a recent interview, Saint Paul Krugman gave us this gem of bourgeois economic theory: SPIEGEL: More stimulus also means more debt. Many European nations, as well as the US, are already drowning in debt. Krugman: I’m not saying that I don’t ever [...]

3. A society suffocating under the manufacture of overwork If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are familiar with one of my favorite quotes by that buffoon of fascist state economic policy, Larry Summers, who, in response to a question posed by a reporter on reducing hours [...]