Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'economics'
The Federal Reserve Board issued new projections for the economy last week, and they are not pretty. It projects the unemployment rate will still be 8.2 percent at the end of this year, 7.4 percent at the end of 2013, and 6.7 percent at the end of 2014. To put this in ...
ECB president Mario Draghi’s new lending facility–the Long-Term Refinancing Operation–has helped to pull the financial system back from the brink of another Lehman-type catastrophe, but it doesn’t address the fundamental problems that created the c...
Since the start of the presidential primary campaign, Republican candidates have missed few opportunities to laud the achievements of conservative hero and former president Ronald Reagan, or to portray themselves as his worthy successor. As Michele Bachmann declared after...
The traveling medicine show known as the race for the Republican presidential nomination has moved on from Iowa and New Hampshire, and all eyes are now on South Carolina.
Well, not exactly all. At the moment, our eyes are fixed on some big news from the great sta...
The American Economic Association’s annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating ...
Eight states and one city (San Francisco) raised their minimum wage this week, providing a pay raise to just over ...
It’s an exciting time for you guys. You know you can beat those hedge fund managers. You’re better educated, you’re ambitious and creative. Go for $10 billion. Or maybe, a few years from now, you’ll be the first trillion dollar man!
HereR...
In 2011, social and political rebellion has re-emerged in the streets and on squares all over the world. It has appeared in new forms and been given new names: the Arab Spring, the Indignados, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. The main regions affec...
The easiest way to understand Europe’s financial crisis is to look at the solutions being proposed to resolve it. They are a banker’s dream, a grab bag of giveaways that few voters would be likely to approve in a democratic referendum. Bank strategists learned not to ...
When the book is finally closed on this week’s EU summit, it’ll be interesting to see what people remember the most. Will it be the proposed changes to the Lisbon Treaty, the new steps towards fiscal integration or the disgraceful behavior of David Cameron?...
The crisis is developing exactly as expected. The inability of the authorities to cope with the rising wave of social problems has naturally spilled into the political sphere.
At the same time, the mechanism of ”managed democracy” has yet agai...
The house is on fire and the owners are arguing about what kind of safety regulations should be implemented in the future so as to prevent these types of fires. That is what appears to be going on in the eurozone right now, as European leaders try to reach agreement on ...
The Baltic states have discovered a new way to cut unemployment and cut budgets for social services: emigration. If enough people of working age are forced to leave to find work abroad, unemployment and social service budgets will both drop.
This simple mathematics...
Those reading Morris Berman’s Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline ...
Everyone in Boston of a certain age knows the story of Rosie Ruiz, the marathoner who crossed the Boston finish line in 1980 at 2:31.56, flabby thighs and all, having barely broken a sweat. Despite mounting skepticism, she basked in the glory of having run the third-fas...
Last month a Super Committee (12Members of Congress) failed to decide — fortunately — our economic destiny: where our tax money would go – or not. Yes, capitalism failed again. And with it went democratic procedures in the political arena.
Big Facts: ...
“In every crisis there’s a point of no return….I’m increasingly convinced we’ve already passed that point of no return in Europe. The banks won’t lend to each other, the Germans won’t do Eurobonds, and the ECB won’t act as a lender of l...
The comforting thing about those sham wrestling ‘championships’ on television is that everybody knows they are a farce. Steroid-stuffed Cro-Magnons stomp the living daylights out of painkiller-primed Neanderthals. Good, unclean fun. The results are safely pred...
Around this time last year, both the New York Times and the ...
This terrible idea will not die: that the only way to revive the US economy is to reduce mortgages on homes and property purchased at speculative values. The fact that so many homeowners (like me) did not buy more house than they could afford, did not buy into the specula...
In 1729, when Ireland had fallen into a state of utter destitution at the hands of its British landlords, Jonathan Swift published a ...
On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35 per cent of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private bank...
If you haven’t watched Annie Leonard’s “The Story of Stuff,” I suggest you do. These videos include detailed examinations of the waste economy, subsidized inefficiency and planned obsolescence.
A recent installment, “The Story of Broke,” itemizes wastef...
November 23, 2011: The day before the Thanksgiving holiday brought three extraordinary news items. One was the report on the Republican presidential campaign debate. One was the Russian President’s statement about his country’s response to Washington’s mi...
From New York City to Oakland, and several cities in between, the police, on orders from city officials, have smashed the Occupy encampments and evicted the protestors from public parks and spaces. More politicians from Congress to the state and local level want the Occu...