World

by DEAN BAKER With the economy going into a shutdown mode for at least month, and possibly quite a bit longer, we’re again hearing the cries from elite economics columnists about a Second Great Depression. These are pernicious, not only because they are wrongheaded, but they can be used to justify bad things, like giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the bankers who wrecked the economy with their recklessness during the housing bubble. The basic and simple error made by the Second Great Depression gang is that they imagine we can be condemned to a prolonged period of high unemployment and slow growth by a single bad event. Their story is that letting the banks fail caused the first Great Depression and that we would have had round two if we let the market work its magic in ...

by MARSHALL AUERBACK The coronavirus has now gone global, and economies are in freefall. The pandemic is clearly the precipitating cause of today’s crisis, but there’s an underlying disease that has been with us for a long time: neoliberal economics. Globalized travel and trade, multinational supply lines, offshoring and overly financialized economies that have prioritized banking interests, cartels and oligarchy above all else have made a large portion of our population highly vulnerable to the effects unleashed by this pandemic. Policymakers have a tricky task ahead of them. The virus has created a supply shock, as businesses have shut down and workers have been told to stay at home. In response, demand is plunging as a result of the lost income and the corresponding collapse ...

by MARSHALL AUERBACK Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair The coronavirus will eventually pass, but the same cannot be said for the Panglossian phenomenon known as “globalization.” Stripped of the romantic notion of a global village, the ugly process we’ve experienced over the past 40 years has been a case of governmental institutions being eclipsed by multinational corporations, acting to maximize profit in support of shareholders. To billions of us, it has resembled a looting process, of our social wealth, and political meaning. Governments that wanted to stay on top would have to learn to master soft power to learn to be relevant in a globalized world, mostly acting to smooth transactions and otherwise stay out of the way. In a globalized world, nation-states were supposedly ...

by MARSHALL AUERBACK Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Seldom a day goes by lately without politicians and pundits from countries all over the world calling for re-establishing their manufacturing base to avoid the vulnerabilities exposed in the wake of COVID-19. Whether it be Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, or the United States, to cite a few examples, the neoliberal agenda of outsourcing manufacturing abroad in search of lower costs for “cheaper goods” now rings as hollow as the debt-ridden economies of their populations. An “every country for itself” attitude is starting to catch on. If an industrialized country can’t supply itself in an emergency, is it truly industrialized? National security dimensions of economic planning that have receded and we...

Convegno internazionale nel 75° Anniversario della Liberazione By Global Research News TRASMESSO DA BYOBLU e PANDORATV Sabato 25 Aprile 2020 DALLA ORE 15 In Diretta Streaming, 25 Aprile 2020 Click to VIEW at 15pm (Italia, CET), 9am (EST, USA, Canada) April 25, 2020 https://www.byoblu.com *** Il 25 aprile è una data importante nella storia dell’Italia. Commemora il 75 ° anniversario di Liberazione, che è anche l’anniversario della resistenza. L’anno scorso ci siamo incontrati a Firenze il 7 aprile, in coincidenza con il 70 ° anniversario della fondazione della NATO. Il tema della nostra conferenza dell’anno scorso era USCITA NATO. NATO EXIT L’evento è stato organizzato dal Comitato italiano No Guerra, No NATO, in collaborazione con il Centre f...