Banking

Make them Pay Up: Pandora Leaks show that the Super-Rich rob Public of $200 bn a year in lost Tax Revenues

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their names […]

Afghanistan

As Banks threaten to Collapse and Aid Dwindles, 93% of Afghans already don’t get Sufficient Food

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – UN World Food Program surveys in August and September, Al Jazeera reports, found that 93 percent of Afghans already are not getting sufficient food, for the most part because they lack the cash to purchase it. Things are about to get worse, as Afghanistan under the Taliban is cut off […]

Banking

This time, it is the Students and the Unions that the Gov’t Needs to Bail out for a Healthy Economy

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Digging our way back out of the pandemic recession will not be easy, but we have the advantage of knowing what worked and did not work in the 2008 crisis. Any policy choice today does not operate on a blank slate. No one knows this more than […]

Banking

Let Lebanon be Lebanon: Paris should Stop Threatening Beirut with EU Sanctions

John Hickman

John Hickman “Governing Lebanon is surely more daunting than governing France.”[1] That pearl of wisdom in an essay defending consociational democracy by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Brendan O’Leary has never been more accurate. A delicate balance of domestic interests with institutional vetoes at the best of times, Lebanese politics has been stalemated for months […]

Banking

An Open Letter to Senator Joe Manchin: Stop worrying about Inflation and Focus on Keeping Hurting Workers Afloat

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Dear Senator Manchin; Corporate media now portray you as on of the most powerful politicians in DC. Hard bargaining on the amount and length of unemployment insurance chopped 100 dollars a week off the compensation workers will receive. This compromise, which you defended on the grounds it […]

Banking

Letting the Markets go Wild while the People Go Down: A War of the Worlds

Tomdispatch

By Nomi Prins | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Sometimes things only make sense when seen through a magnifying lens. As it happens, I’m thinking about reality, the very American and global reality clearly repeating itself as 2021 begins. We all know, of course, that we’re living through a once-in-a-century-style pandemic; that millions of people […]

Banking

Top Ways British Trumpism, a.k.a “Brexit” Will make Britain Poorer and Weaker, but also more Muslim

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Boris Johnson’s government has achieved a relatively “hard Brexit” at the last minute, reaching a deal on its departure from the European Union. This is a triumph for British Trumpism, and it is no wonder that Trump himself was a cheerleader for it. It is economically a bad deal for […]

Banking

How the concentration of property rights within corporations has led to a rejection of democracy and a rise in inequality

British Policy and Politics

By Jean-Philippe Robé | – Jean-Philippe Robé discusses how multinational enterprises morphed into political organisations with global reach and power, but without the corresponding responsibilities. He argues that the concentration of property rights within corporations has led to the rejection of democracy as an ineffective system of government and to the rise in inequality. ( […]

Banking

Say no to Austerity for Workers: McConnell and the GOP are about to pull the “We have no money” scam

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Not surprisingly the national debt is a subject of concern. Liberal and Left economists, most of whom supported the CARES relief package, knew and predicted that once the Trump tax reduction for the rich had become law—despite the massive increases in government debt it entailed– debt would […]