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'
[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...
The $166 million settlement reached in October by creditors against private equity companies Cerberus Capital, Sun Capital Partners, and Lubert-Adler/Klaff was among the largest against private equity firms accused of stripping assets from a company they owned and driving...
The idea of sharing is increasingly popular today as an answer to many of our social, environmental and economic problems. By learning how to share more in our everyday lives – in everything from cars, clothes, couches, meals, household tools, even our time and skil...
Our topic today is a livable economy, and right now that conversation is urgent. I don’t have to tell you that, you’re all here because you know something is wrong. We live in a society that promises us that if we work hard we will succeed. If we allow the fre...
There is no serious dispute that the United States has seen a massive increase in inequality over the last three decades. However there is a major dispute over the causes of this rise in inequality.
The explanation most popular in elite and policy circles is that t...
Well, what do you know; mortgage applications have fallen off a cliff.
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) loan applications decreased by 12 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier “registering the biggest percentage decl...
One of the more telling stories of Western economics takes me back to my days as a wee lad studying at university. Ben Bernanke (Chairman, Federal Reserve) and Andrew Abel had co-written the imaginatively titled ‘...
During the second half of the 20th century the United States was an opportunity society. The ladders of upward mobility were plentiful, and the middle class expanded. Incomes rose, and ordinary people were able to achieve old-age security.
In the 21st century the o...
Most coffee and chocolate aficionados are generally well-versed on the Fair Trade movement, which organized to offer producers in developing countries better trade deals than would normally be offered to them by large corporate purchasers.
Today’s ma...
Few creatures in American political discourse today are as simpleton and grotesque as the Obama liberal when trying to distinguish his candidate from the rest of the prostitutes seeking office. Behold, for example, the fellow author on the raft next to me, somewhere rec...
“We are not making stuff anymore in America,” is the word on the street. “Our industrial base is eroding,” say the academics. In short the decline of domestic U.S. manufacturing is conventional wisdom. The problem is that it is not true – not even close. And thi...
The budget plan of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney includes large unspecified consequences; these are tallied here, and the complete implications of the plan are briefly illustrated. The tally includes not only the unspecified tax increases his plan dictates t...
Though their conclusions are specious, the proponents of economic austerity programs are in one crucial respect entirely correct: the present economic system is dysfunctional and, as such, requires a radical transfiguration. Indeed, as it ceaselessly spews toxins into the...
My prediction: The eventual answer will turn out to be a distinction without a difference. Here’s why.
Both political parties and their candidates for President now accept neoliberal ideology as being the incontrovertible truth. This belief is more theologica...
If foxes are put in charge of rebuilding a chicken coop, it is a given that the chicken’s new quarters will be less than secure. In terms of rebuilding the economy, with the predatory interests of Wall Street dictating the “solutions” proposed by both the Re...
The New York Times believes that Barack Obama is responsible for today’s sputtering economy. In an article titled “Cautious Moves on Foreclosures Haunting Obama”, Times journalist Binyamin Applebaum says that Obama’s failure to seriously a...