Have you ever listened to the public words of a government official and wondered just what the hell it is that he or she is trying to say? Or rather, not to say? Have you ever suspected that government figures deliberately speak in opaque and confusing terms, the better to “say something” without really saying…
Category: Economy
Waking up from the nightmare of economics
If you, like me, are consistently struck these days by a kind of unpleasant, inverted sense of numinous awe at the spectacle of economists still occupying major positions of mainstream power and respect in our culture instead of walking around in hairshirts and beating their breasts with heads bowed in unbearable shame, then Columbia University…
Our religious transvaluation of money: From cosmic evil to “doing God’s work”
The cover feature for the current issue of Boston Review, titled “How Markets Crowd Out Morals,” takes the form of a hugely stimulating forum on the thesis put forth by Harvard government professor Michael Sandel in his new book What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (which I’ve referenced here previously). Sandel argues…
Decline, collapse, and doom: Snapshots from Europe, America, and planet earth
This morning when I went to scan the day’s delivery of essays, news, and information, one of the first things that came to my attention was this: Nothing Iâve heard from politicians or economists on the world crisis has shivered my spine like an hour spent with the gentleâmannered historian Antony Beevor, whose mighty new…
The end of Sears, the end of industry, and the end of the former American Dream
A recent article about the imminent collapse of Sears (see below) brings out the mythic resonances of America’s current economic and sociocultural crises with gripping clarity, and also with more than a dose of poignancy. Read it and, if not weep, then at least feel properly braced and saddened, and not only at the colossal…
Is America an economic hothouse for growing psychopaths?
The past year has witnessed the rise of a kind of cottage industry of speculative blogging and associated online chatter about the idea that America’s ruling economic and political institutions — which have now, let us note, collapsed together to become one and the same — are ideologically and bureaucratically structured to attract and promote…
Bank of America: Four-alarm emergency, possible failure imminent — and BOA is just the canary in the coal mine
You know how all of the chatter about “the recovery” during the past couple of years has sounded like pure propaganda when held up against real economic life on the ground for real people in the United States? You know how that kind of talk has all hinged on how the big corporations are doing,…
High food prices and global societal collapse: US researchers warn of a link
If anyone still wants to question or deny whether the era of peaking fossil fuels, along with the epic government-backed financial swindles of the past few decades, will have — is currently having — distinct real-world impacts of a severely disruptive nature, please note the emphasis on the role of biofuels and government deregulation of…
Dr. James Schlesinger announces “the peak oil debate is over”
This recent speech by Dr. James Schlesinger constitutes Necessary Viewing/Listening/Reading (depending on whether you prefer to read the text or watch the video). It’s also brief and easily digestible. Schlesinger, in case you’ve forgotten, was the first U.S. Secretary of Energy, from 1977-79. Before that he was Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, U.S….
Economic doom redux: REALMS OF FANTASY and DREAMS OF DECADENCE shutting down
It’s official: Realms of Fantasy magazine is now history, as announced by publisher Warren Lapine at the magazine’s website today (“A Farewell Note from the Publisher“) and repeated by Locus (“Realms of Fantasy Folds“). We’ll all recall that ROF previously announced they were folding early last year. Some of you will also recall that I…