The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media.
This was, in great part, a vote by those angered and demoralised by the sheer arrogance of the apologists for the "remain" campaign and the dismemberment of a socially just civil life in Britain.…
When you think of economic issues what are the first things that come to mind? Poverty, inequality, unemployment, inflation, and crisis are all common answers to the question. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a policy that could address all of those issues (and more) in a cost-effective manner? In this piece I will give a very brief introduction to Job Guarantee (JG) schemes, the proverbial economic silver bullet.…The Minskys — an economics blog created by graduate students from the Levy Economics Institute
The European Union has sowed the wind. It may reap the whirlwind. Unless it moves, and quickly, not merely to assert a hollow “unity” but to deliver a democratic, accountable, and realistic New Deal – or something very much like it – for all Europeans.Diem25
… the EU, at least as it has become over the last decade, is best understood as a cabal of three governments, primarily those of the US and Germany, with France treated by the Germans (though not by the US) as a sort of junior partner, which make the decisions in secret that are binding on all the rest.
I appreciate that this description of the EU will meet with strong objections in some quarters, especially as by far the most powerful of these governments is that of the US which is not a member of the EU. However what I say is well known by all the relevant insiders. Indeed the facts speak for themselves and are hardly even concealed. On key issues EU policy is nowadays decided in private bilateral discussions between the US and the Germans, often involving the US President and the German Chancellor, with the Germans then telling the other Europeans what they should do.…
The tactics of employing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for the preparation of so-called “color revolutions” in North Africa, the Middle East and a number of former Soviet states has been the modus operandi of the US and its satellites, which have been thoroughly discussed in various NEO articles.
It’s curious that these NGOs who are heavily sponsored by Washington choose to act precisely in those moments when a specific state begins resisting pressure applied on it by the so-called Western World. This resistance often is manifested as a reluctance to support certain projects that were put forward by Washington.
If we are to talk about post-Soviet regions, all Western NGOs, and American ones in particular, have been particularly active in Central Asian and Caucasus states over recent years in a bid to launch “color revolutions” across the majority of them.
Western NGOs have been particularly active in Armenia recently, which remains Russia’s most faithful ally in the Caucasus region. In an effort to repeat a Ukrainian-style scenario in Armenia and to force this country away from Russia, these Western-backed organizations have been trying to use any minor concern among the civilian population to provoke demonstrations and unrest, taking advantage of the huge funds they have been receiving.…It's called subversion and it is a hostile act. That's why it is called hybrid warfare.
We claimed that BREXIT - is not gonna happen and pointed to a propaganda campaign (see further examples in the comments there) launched to reverse the Brexit votes. Within that campaign two memes get pushed:…Moon of Alabama
Supporting the idea of a Brexit in the UK referendum became an information bomb for Petro Poroshenko, who came to power under the slogan of Ukraine joining the EU. London was seen as one the main lobbyists of Ukrainian interests in the EU. Another lobbyist, Poland, is not such a powerful foreign policy player as the UK. Another reason for the frustration is the blow struck to the attractiveness of the European Union. Until now, European countries have sought to enter the Union and not come back. Therefore, the decision of the British people expressed in the referendum is perhaps the strongest foreign policy defeat of the Poroshenko regime.In denial.
The aim of the information policy of the Ukrainian authorities is to turn defeat and failure into victory and success. In this case, representatives of the Ukrainian authorities tried to convince the citizens that nothing bad had happened. The first to speak on this subject was President Poroshenko on his Facebook page: "I believe that, despite the results of the referendum, the UK remains in the European Union and will defend common European values." Attempts to justify it were very awkward. Poroshenko, in fact, urged all to ignore the outcome of the referendum — such were the meaning of his statement. For democratic politics, especially the leader of a European country, the call to ignore the results of a referendum is just blasphemous. Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Paruby similarly, but more cautiously, expressed this. He said that the UK will remain a key partner of Ukraine, despite the results of the referendum on a withdrawal from the EU. Probably Paruby considered Poroshenko's actions to be a blunder and did not call to ignore the outcome of the referendum.…
You might think that the old King should be replaced by no King. After all, the metaphor of the invisible hand did not loom very large in Smith’s thought; why should it loom large in ours? It turns out, however, that a robust concept of the invisible hand does emerge from evolutionary and complexity theory, so there is a new King to coronate.Replacing the mechanical model in econ with an organic model.
Secret negotiations have been under way for some time between high German and Russian officials, to which Chancellor Angela Merkel has been excluded. Warned by US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and in a recent coded communication from outgoing President Barack Obama that she must act to save her authority, and enforce European Union sanctions against Russia, Merkel has also received an ultimatum from her cabinet and party. This was delivered in the form of a page torn out of an Old German bible in which a large black spot had been inked. Either she step aside in secret, Merkel understood the signal, or she will be forced to resign in public.Hilarious. This is based on leaks, but Helmer is well-positioned in this regard. If true, the house of cards is collapsing unless the US tightens down the screws. But the outcome of US screw tightening would be uncertain, it seems.
For more details of the meaning of the Black Spot, read this.
How can we redesign money— and our mind-set—for a mature economy or an ecological civilization?…
Perhaps the defining issue of our age is that the human economy has grown to a scale where it impacts the environment at every level: on land, in the oceans, and in the air. As Kenneth Boulding put it, we are transitioning from a cowboy economy, where the world is an open frontier, to a spaceman economy, where we are restrained by natural limits.
This transition, ecologist Eugene Odum argued, resembles that followed by ecosystems as they become established. At the early stages of an ecosystem’s development, available energy (whose ultimate source is the sun) is rapidly exploited by a few species in a sudden bloom of growth. As the ecosystem matures, the food chain switches from a linear chain—carnivores eating herbivores eating plants—to a more web-like, decentralized structure in which multiple species interact in increasingly complex ways. The waste of one organism is recycled as food for another, and resources such as nutrients and minerals are conserved. An example of a mature ecosystem is a tropical rain forest, where most of the nutrients are not in the ground but in the trees and the species that live in them. The land itself has little agricultural productivity, as farmers discover if they cut down the trees and try to grow soy or provide pasture for cattle.
Economies also develop in a similar manner. In a society of pioneers, wrote Odum, “high birth rates, rapid growth, high economic profits, and exploitation of accessible and unused resources are advantageous.” As the economy matures, the emphasis switches to “considerations of symbiosis (i.e., civil rights, law and order, education, and culture)” and the recycling of resources. However this transition is a work in progress: “Until recently mankind has more or less taken for granted the gas-exchange, water-purification, nutrient-cycling, and other protective functions of self-maintaining ecosystems, chiefly because neither his number nor his environmental manipulations have been great enough to affect regional and global balances. Now, of course, it is painfully evident that such balances are being affected, often detrimentally.” And matters have not improved in the ensuing half-century, as carbon dioxide emissions have climbed and the lifesupport abilities of the planet have continued to degrade. We have grown richer in monetary terms but the hidden charges are mounting up.…Very much worth the read.
As the Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel explains, “We have drifted from having market economies to becoming market societies. The difference is this: A market economy is a tool—a valuable and effective tool—for organizing productive activity. A market society, by contrast, is a place where almost everything is up for sale.” In this case: “What role should money and markets play in a good society?Lots of info that raises more questions than the authors are able to answer, which they recognize, but these are the kinds of questions that we need to answer in a complex adaptive system subject to emergence.
Yes true. But you just got rid of one unelected neo-liberal machine. You now can vote the others out & demand change https://t.co/ymwNHjZ449— Bill Mitchell (@billy_blog) June 24, 2016
@_HankRearden @HillaryClinton Cameron resigns. One third of the trio is out pic.twitter.com/x49D11N0Wq
— Christine Marat (@kyramarat1) June 24, 2016
A huge debate is unfolding among millions of Bernie’s backers, providing an enormous opportunity for the left to raise the need for a political alternative to the Democratic Party. That’s why Movement4Bernie and Socialist Alternative are organizing a series of forums in dozens of cities across the country titled “Beyond Bernie: We Need a Party for the 99%.” These forums will both mobilize for the largest possible protests at the Democratic National Convention and create space for a broad-based debate on the way forward for the political revolution. My message at the events will be clear: If Bernie refuses to break from the Democratic Party, our movement should back Jill Stein as the strongest left alternative in the presidential election and use 2016 to prepare the ground for building a new movement-based political alternative.…This lady is super-articulate and she is on fire. I sense a leader.
Best part about the Brexit is the deluge of photos featuring horrified Britons at pubs https://t.co/3hCkpZQJdX
— Jessica Coen (@jessicacoen) June 24, 2016
So what started as a gamble by David Cameron on an outlet for domestic British discontent, to be used as a lever to bargain with Brussels for a few more favors, has metastasized into an astonishing political earthquake about the dis-integration of the European Union.
The irrepressibly mediocre Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, posing as a “historian”, had warned that Brexit, “could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but Western political civilization in its entirety”.
That’s foolish. Brexit proved that it’s immigration, stupid. And once again, it’s the economy, stupid (although the British neoliberal establishment never paid attention). But serious bets can be made the EU system in Brussels won’t learn anything from the shock therapy – and won’t reform itself. There will be rationalizations that after all the UK was always classically whiny, obtrusive and demanding special privileges when dealing with the EU. As for “Western political civilization”, what will end – and this is a big thing — is the special transatlantic relationship between the US and the EU with Britain as an American Trojan Horse.…Counterpunch
Last week I attended a wonderful conference in the university town of Tübingen, Germany, on “Debt: The First 3500 Years,” to bring ancient historians together to discuss David Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5000 Years.
I was enlightened by two papers in particular. Doctoral fellow Moritz Hinsch from Berlin collected what Socrates (470-399 BC) and other Athenians wrote about debt, and the conference’s organizer, Prof. John Weisweiler, presented the new view of late imperial Rome as being still a long way from outright serfdom. The 99 Percent were squeezed, but “the economy” grew – in a way that concentrated growth in the hands of the One Percent. In due course this bred popular resentment that spread in the form of debtor revolts, not only in the Roman Empire but that of Iran as well, leading to religious reforms to limit the charging of interest and self-indulgent greed in general.
I had not been in Tübingen since 1959, and it was my first chance to meet with David Graeber since he moved to England to teach at the London School of Economics after being hounded out of his apartment in New York City in the wake of the police and FBI crackdown against Occupy Wall Street. Our mutual German publisher, Klett-Cotta, sent its senior editor from nearby Stuttgart to discuss their German translation of my Killing the Host, to appear in November, as Der Sektor: Warum die Globale Finanzwirtschaft uns Zerstört.…
Le Pen is not alone. Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilder also wants the Netherlands to decide its EU future.The Duran
In the early 1980s, when Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began to increase the competitiveness of their economies for the upcoming globalization on the basis of the theories of the Chicago School, their reforms were labeled as liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation. The claim was that this trinity would strengthen the individual in their societies and the competitiveness of their economies. The “victory” of capitalism over communism in 1989 reinforced the reform agenda. The interpretation of capitalism that dominated this agenda however shows a lack of congruence with an inclusive market mechanism.…Neoliberalism is getting its comuppance own to overreach.
You can see immigrants. You can't see NAIRU or flexible labor market policies. Most people wouldn't know a NAIRU from a Nehru jacket and have probably never heard of flexible labor market policies.
There is a simple logic behind the "growth through austerity" policies beloved by Cameron and Osborne: "wages are too damn high." But there is also a more technical-sounding obfuscation. This more convoluted explanation is that there is a long-run, "natural" rate of unemployment that is unaffected by aggregate demand, therefore fiscal stimulus will result in inflation. Thus the only non-inflationary way to reduce unemployment is to fine tune this hypothetical natural rate by removing labor market rigidities.
Sounds plausible. What it means in practice is "wages are too damn high." In the 19th century, this superstition was known as the wages-fund doctrine. Also known as this magazine of untruth.…Econospeak
From "The Dysfunctional Nature of the Economic and Monetary Union," Philip Arestis, Giuseppe Fontana and Malcolm Sawyer:..Identifies and describes the enemy and the enemy's policy, strategy and tactics.
