Archive for the ‘ Capitalism ’ Category
By chance, last night I came across this passage from Braudel, which bears on yesterday’s post. At all events, every capitalist development of this order seems, by reaching the stage of financial expansion, to have in some sense announced its maturity: it was a sign of autumn. This followed a description of 17th and 18th century Amsterdam’s [ READ MORE ]
Don’t really have the energy to comment on these two pieces, but I wanted to establish the links anyway. Hobsbawm writes in the Guardian today that: Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated [ READ MORE ]
The NYTimes reports that stress and anxiety are on the rise as the economy declines. Psychologists and suicide hotlines are seeing more patients, and their issues are more and more focused on uncertainty in the face of the crisis. Clearly, this is one of the costs of capitalism, which relies on the possibility of starvation [ READ MORE ]
(via Mangoat) [ READ MORE ]
I’m going to ignore this battle between Koreans and Bangladeshis over cultural space in LA. Instead I want to briefly address David Harvey’s suggestion yesterday that NYC should be reindustrialized. I didn’t get a chance to ask why, but two possibilities seemed to emerge from his other comments and my suppositions. First, it could be [ READ MORE ]
The G20 statement has been released. It’s bold claims are no surprise, but they’re still worth noting. Our global leaders have pledged to do everything they can to resume the process of capital accumulation. They also pledge to create jobs and security by investing in capital accumulation. Yep, they’re going to do everything they can [ READ MORE ]
Daniel Cloud, who teaches philosophy at Princeton (via a Columbia degree) and runs two hedge funds, blames our hubris in predicting human behavior for the current crisis. What really produced the change in economics that led to disaster was the simple fact that you could now get away with saying certain kinds of things in public. [ READ MORE ]
The NYTimes reports that banks are increasingly walking away from foreclosed homes. Particularly at the lower end of the housing market, houses that fall into disrepair through lack of maintenance and vandalism are being abandoned by banks and burdening the original homeowners with clean up costs. This, of course, puts a double whammy on already [ READ MORE ]
The NYTimes has a number of letters to the editor responding to Jack De Santis’ letter of resignation to AIG. Interestingly, they seem to miss what is to me an obvious parallel. None of the letters draw the parallel between Mr. DeSantis’ argument that those in AIG who were not responsible for irresponsible trading should [ READ MORE ]
Now we’re going to start feeling it. [ READ MORE ]
Geoff Mulligan at Prospect offers this sober assessment of the directions in which capitalism may evolve as a result of the crisis. He identifies a number of existing trends, e.g., FOSS, cooperatives, personal carbon accounts, and socialized health care, and concludes with the claim that it is time to use our imagination. I wholeheartedly agree. And [ READ MORE ]
AM highlights this NYTimes piece on the rising Hoovervilles. While comparisons to the housing options of the Depression are surely apt, I think we would approach the situation better by making comparisons with the slums of the developing world. These tent cities are the expression of systemic marginalization that is slowly leveling the conditions of [ READ MORE ]
(via Metafilter) Jim Kunstler offers up a pessimistic reality check for Obama and the nation’s “full commanding denial”. [ READ MORE ]
China’s central bank governor Zhou has proposed that the countries of the world convert to a global currency based on the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights. Mr. Zhou isn’t the first to make that argument. “The dollar reserve system is part of the problem,” Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University economist, said in a speech in Shanghai last [ READ MORE ]
The Wooster Collective has posted a summary of the current bailout. [ READ MORE ]