Cartoon of the day

Special mention

“Boomers” and “stickers”

During the course of his 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, Wendell Berry explained how his family, a century ago, suffered economic hardship caused by John B. Duke and the American Tobacco Company. He then invokes a pair of terms he learned from Wallace Stegner to make sense of the differences between Duke and his [...]

Perfect!

Right-handed pitcher Philip Humber threw a perfect game, the twenty-first in major league baseball history, in a 4-0 White Sox victory over the Seattle Mariners. Yesterday will also be remembered as the Boston massacre. A perfect game and a perfect day. . .

The descent of Ferguson’s money

[the Birwood Wall in Detroit] Beware of “The Ascent of Money,” produced by PBS and narrated by Niall Ferguson. I’m currently using the two-hour version in my Commodities: The Making of Market Society course. (There’s also a four-hour version and, of course, Ferguson’s book of the same name.) The program is very useful, starting with [...]

Mexico, Gramsci, and passive revolution

Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution is often misunderstood and therefore deployed incorrectly. Adam David Morton challenges Mexican economic historian Enrique Semo’s recent attempt to make sense of Mexican history from the eighteenth century to the present through the idea of passive revolution, and he offers a clear explanation of both its usefulness and its [...]

The Occupy Handbook

I just received my copy of The Occupy Handbook, edited by Janet Byrne. Needless to say, I haven’t had the time to read it through (my plan is to post a review once I have had the time) but here are a few quick comments. . . Robin Wells is listed as a the guest [...]

From Port Huron to #OWS

Another anniversary is upon us. This one is half the age of the Titanic but remembered—perhaps because the wreckage is still in plain sight and the results far more consequential—by many fewer people. I’m referring, of course, to the Port Huron Statement. It’s clear that it was written in a different time—defined variously in terms [...]

Protest of the day

  The other day during my talk, one of the participants asked me if the Occupy Wall Street movement was still alive. I explained that the movement, as it was being forced out of the parks, had created new initiatives, such as Occupy Student Debt, Occupy the SEC, and Occupy Our Homes, but that it [...]

#OWS—in 1765

The concerns expressed in and by the Occupy Wall Street movement on behalf of the 99 percent didn’t begin in 2011. They can be traced back at least to 1765. Kara Masciangelo and Jame McAndrews, of the New York Fed, have unearthed a 1765 letter to the editor of the New-York Gazette. It reads in [...]

Austerity, democracy, and economics

Here’s Amartya Sen, from an interview with Olaf Storbeck and Dorit Heß. Question: Professor Sen, do you have the impression that economists and economic policy makers are learning the right lessons from the most severe economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression? Answer: I don’t think that at all. I’m quite disappointed by the [...]