krebscycle

Category: Uncategorized

  • Why do we need private depository banks? (updated)

    Banks make money via statistics that allow them to lend out most of the money they have on deposit and keep just a small “reserve” in cash. Suppose 1000 people all deposit $1000 getting say %1 interest and the bank lends $900,000 to other people getting %8 interest while keeping…

  • Vanguardism and the left

    Originally published as “Fight the People” in ThePeoplesView. In 1967, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a hugely successful political organization – with chapters in even some of the most conservative universities and a key role in a multi-racial diverse movement against the Vietnam war that united pacifists…

  • The unacceptable naivete of the liberals: Dean Baker edition

    First published in People’s View I had an argument with Dean Baker ( here and here) about a passage of his which illustrates why the “progressive"  economists have been so utterly useless for the last 30 years.  If President Obama had been doing his job, he would have immediately begun…

  • Reciprocity versus charity

    Is equality passé? We think not. The welfare state is in trouble not because selfishness is rampant (it is not), but because many egalitarian programs no longer evoke, and sometimes now offend, deeply held notions of fairness–notions that encompass both reciprocity and generosity but that stop far short of unconditional…

  • Marx and Lincoln’s Re-election

    The far right is obsessed with this – making it all the more interesting. Here is the First International’s letter congratulating Lincoln on his re-election. When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, “slavery” on the banner of Armed…

  • Tough questions from the “liberal” press – The Atlantic edition

    Conor Friedersdorf writes in The Atlantic to complain about the crappy journalism in the 60 minutes interview of the President. That’s an easy critique to make. The questions were stupid. But Friedersdorf then does something more difficult: he proposes alternative questions that are far worse. Here’s Friedersdorf setting the stage:…

  • Paul Volcker – Left Wing Icon: Christine Romer edition

    Hitting that target required pushing interest rates to unprecedented levels. Unemployment rose past 10 percent, and Mr. Volcker was pilloried. At one point, farmers on tractors blockaded Fed headquarters to protest the high rates. But the policy worked. Inflation fell from 11 percent in 1979 to 3 percent in 1983,…

  • Delong’s error – financial corporation edition

    My belief that large, leveraged financial institutions had sufficient caution and sufficient control over their derivatives books that their derivative positions did not pose major systemic risk. [ Brad Delong’s admitted errors] For both methodological convenience and ideological conformance, modern economics at the macro level treats a firm as if…

  • The living room

    Watching these adverts is a long lesson in what could have been. At each point, post WWII, where the GOP has won the Presidency or come close enough to steal it, the consequences for the world have been catastrophic. Television Adverts for US Presidential Elections.

  • Track changes and the left

    (7/22/11 TPV) Forty years after the Powell memo outlined a plan for right wing power in America, the permanent Republican majority is in sight. The packed Supreme Court seems ready to invalidate the voting rights act to protect successful gerrymandering that has boosted the GOP to control of the House…