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 'Economy'
Despite the dire “fiscal cliff” predictions, stocks ended the year on a high-note led by the Dow Jones crossing the 13K mark with an impressive 166 po...
My colleague Josh Bivens outlined the contours of this weekend’s 11th hour budget deal, concluding that Congress mostly monkeyed around with upper-income taxes—a politically contentious “...
A generation ago the Chicago Boys and their financial supporters applauded General Pinochet’s anti-labor Chile as a success story, thanks mainly to its transformation of their Social Security into Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) that almost universally were...
We have just passed into the new year, and the distractions created by the debate over the fiscal cliff appear to be behind us. Maybe.
That debate has been part of a larger distraction — the concern over budget deficits at a time when by far the count...
Last night, Congress passed a watered down fiscal cliff package that will raise taxes on everyone, but the worst is yet to come, and this “deficit cutting” measure contains some surprises.
Economist Jack Rasmus highlights Obama’s comments after passage which ...
There’s a ...
In the mid 1990s Republican New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman ...
The reason the US economy is still sluggish 4 years after Lehman Brothers defaulted, is of lack of demand. Demand dropped off after the housing bubble burst and has never really recovered. Economist Dean Baker calculates that hit to demand is somewhere in the neighborhood...
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
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Most progressives have long embraced a clear alternative to the conservative story that prosperity flows best from a “free market” unfettered by government regulation and taxes. The standard progressive response: government incentives and spending are essenti...
Is the “fiscal cliff” real or just another hoax? The answer is that the fiscal cliff is real, but it is a result, not a cause. The hoax is the way the fiscal cliff is being used.
The fiscal cliff is the result of the inability to close the federal budget d...
“If possible, I’d like to see the Bank of Japan purchase all of the construction bonds that we need to issue to cover the cost.” Shinzo Abe, President of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
Japan’s next prime minister has a plan for en...
Austin, Texas is the latest U.S. city to pass a groundbreaking measure that, if upheld, would require companies looking for tax incentives in Travis County to pay its employees $11/hour. This is particularly big news for the area’s large construction sector that has...
Many of us have heard the current period referred to as a second gilded age. Or we’ve seen the current inequality in wealth in the United States compared to that of 1929. But we have not all given sufficient thought to what ended the first gilded age, what creat...
Into the fifth year of the Great Recession our nation’s scarcity of jobs continues to condemn tens of millions of us to suffer a hard life of involuntary unemployment, underemployment, and insufficient wages. One would hope that any future political agreements made to m...
[Note: Thomas Sankara, president of Burkina Faso from 1983-87, was assassinated on October 15, 1987. This letter was written on the 25th anniversary of his death and modified slightly after.]
Dear President Sankara,
It was 25 years ago this autumn t...
The talk in Washington these days might lead people to think that the main cause of the economic downturn is the Social Security and Medicare benefits being paid to retirees. After all, we have people from both parties giving us assurances that cuts to these programs are ...
U.S. President Barack Obama won an extraordinary victory last week. Republicans have largely dominated the presidency over the last six decades. The Republicans have won most of the elections since World War II and they have won them by larger margins. In fact, only two D...
The essay — America the Third World Nation in Just 4 Easy Steps, (Trutho...
“Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1, (1867:233)
“Fuzzy math?” Obama accused R...
Congress is still talking about a “Grand Bargain” that “balances” far more spending cuts than tax increases. That is another way of saying that you – the consumer of Medicare and Medicaid services, the recipient of Social Security, and the average taxpayer will ...
1. Don’t spend one dime on a gala inauguration. In fact, don’t do anything more than you are legally bound to do, which is placing your hand on a Bible and swearing to uphold the Constitution. Keep it austere. Show the public you’re aware of the challenges ahead and...
Dublin.
Despite the fact that the Irish people are currently enduring endless austerity and cutbacks, ...
Literally the day after the election a sudden “urgency” gripped the nation: the imminent danger of the so-called “fiscal cliff” — the national automatic tax increases and spending cuts due in January. The media screamed that the suddenly approach...
Housing prices are rising fast. According to CoreLogic, home prices increased 5 percent nationwide on a year-over-year basis from September 2011 to September 2012. The new data is the strongest sign yet that the housing bust is over and a recovery is underway.
The...