Remembering the fallen

Today is the day we remember U.S. soldiers who died in military service. Since that number now includes 4400 soldiers who are victims of the war for oil in Iraq, we should also remember the 100,000 or so civilians who have died since the 2003 invasion. We should also not forget the nonmilitary workers who [...]

Orthodox macroeconomic playbooks

While Narayana Kocherlakota [pdf] laments the absence in 2008 of a macroeconomic playbook explaining how to respond to the economic crises, Brad DeLong [ht: nk] counters that orthodox macroeconomics has had a playbook that was first drafted 185 years ago. Here’s Kocherlakota: I believe that during the last financial crisis, macroeconomists (and I include myself [...]

Class structure of U.S. football

The U.S. national men’s team may do well at the upcoming World Cup finals. But the fact that they’re still an underdog is a testament to the strange class structure of U.S. football (or, if you prefer, soccer) that makes it different from the way the sport is organized in most other nations. Consider the [...]

The big rip-off

I’ve just finished reading Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, aka “The Big Rip-off.” Lewis’s book is not the story of the financial crisis as it is commonly understood (the failure of Lehman Brothers, the global meltdown, TARP, etc.), but the story of the few investors (like Steve Eisman and Mike Burry) who saw through the [...]

Banksy’s poison valentine?

Anyone who has seen my various web sites in recent years knows I’m a big fan of Banksy’s work—and of public/street art more generally. Now, Banksy has a film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, which Ben Davis thinks is a poison valentine to the street art movement. I haven’t seen the film yet (given my [...]

The war for finance reform

It’s not just that the making of legislative sausage is enough to turn one’s stomach. It’s also that the sausage being made is inedible. Matt Taibbi, in his inimitable fashion, explains how the Senate leadership gutted most of the real attempts at finance reform. The only real reform that made it through the Senate (although [...]

Picnic in Israel

For those of us in New England, the unseasonably warm weather makes it perfect picnic weather. Neve Gordon explains that, in Israel, picnics, like much else, are political events. This past Saturday I also went on a picnic with my family, but in stark opposition to most Israeli picnics it tried to enact a remembering [...]

World Cup strikes

If FIFA and the ANC have their way, millions of World Cup viewers around the world will not even catch a glimpse of the deteriorating economic conditions in the cities, townships, and mines around South Africa. However, some unions have been able to use the impending start of the world’s largest sports tournament to press [...]

“Fossil Fools Day”

Carrie MacKinnon

Public art of the day

Welling Court Mural Project (Queens, NY) Ron English