The four business gangs that run the US. Illustration: Michael Mucci. IF YOU'VE ever suspected politics is increasingly being run in the interests of big business, I have news: Jeffrey Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University, agrees with you - at least in respect of the United States. In his book, The Price of Civilisation, he says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop. ''Corporate wealth translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between government and industry.
Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,'' he says. Sachs says four key sectors of US business exemplify this feedback loop and the takeover of political power in America by the ''corporatocracy''. First is the well-known military-industrial complex. Advertisement ''Since the days of John D. The big issues in macroeconomics: unemployment. Following up my previous post, I want to look at the main areas of disagreement in macroeconomics. As well as trying to cover the issues, I’ll be making the point that the (mainstream) economics profession is so radically divided on these issues that any idea of a consensus, or even of disagreement within a broadly accepted analytical framework, is nonsense. The fact that, despite these radical disagreements, many specialists in macroeconomics don’t see a problem is, itself, part of the problem.
I’ll start with the central issue of macroeconomics, unemployment. It’s the central issue because macroeconomics begins with Keynes’ claim that a market economy can stay for substantial periods, in a situation of high unemployment and excess supply in all markets. If this claim is false, as argued by both classical and New Classical economists, then there is no need for a separate field of macroeconomics – everything can and should be derived from (standard neoclassical) microeconomics. Paying with 'kisses' as Brazil’s social currencies spread. 2 January 2013Last updated at 04:05 ET By Manuel Toledo BBC, Vitoria, Brazil Heraldo Rodrigues da Silva has taken two loans from a community bank Shopkeeper Heraldo Rodrigues da Silva, 55, owns a small store in Sao Benedito, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Vitoria, the capital of the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo.
On the wall behind his counter, a sign announces that besides the real - Brazil's legal tender - he accepts the "bem", an alternative currency from a local community development bank, Banco Bem. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote The goal of...a social currency is to encourage people to use that money within their community and contribute to the development of the local economy” End QuoteLeonora MolManager, Banco Bem The bank was founded in 2005 by an association of seamstresses who decided to lend their profits to a group of furniture makers so that they too could start their own collective. "Trade has grown a lot recently.
Buying locally Community confidence. Economic Crisis Currency Strategies and Solutions. Saving Economics from the Economists. Economics as currently presented in textbooks and taught in the classroom does not have much to do with business management, and still less with entrepreneurship. The degree to which economics is isolated from the ordinary business of life is extraordinary and unfortunate. That was not the case in the past.
When modern economics was born, Adam Smith envisioned it as a study of the “nature and causes of the wealth of nations.” His seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, was widely read by businessmen, even though Smith disparaged them quite bluntly for their greed, shortsightedness, and other defects. In the 20th century, economics consolidated as a profession; economists could afford to write exclusively for one another. The degree to which economics is isolated from the ordinary business of life is extraordinary and unfortunate.
This separation of economics from the working economy has severely damaged both the business community and the academic discipline. Gar Alperovitz: The Rise of the New Economy Movement. As our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly sweeping away outmoded economic models. In ‘New Economic Visions’, a special five-part AlterNet series edited by Economics Editor Lynn Parramore in partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting ideas and projects that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of the movement that could take our economy back. Just beneath the surface of traditional media attention, something vital has been gathering force and is about to explode into public consciousness.
The “New Economy Movement” is a far-ranging coming together of organizations, projects, activists, theorists and ordinary citizens committed to rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up. Explosion of Energy The movement is also serious about building on earlier models. Active protest efforts are also underway. Gar Alperovitz: Systemic Crisis, Politics as Usual. Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R.
Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and is a former Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University; Harvard’s Institute of Politics; the Institute for Policy Studies; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Gar Alperovitz presents at a Seattle Town Hall on Oct 3, 2012 immediately after a public screening of the presidential debate between Romney and Obama. The video is a little over an hour long; so listen to it with your Columbus day morning coffee (and don’t even think of listening to “Morning Edition”!) For the bumper sticker: “A systemic crisis is one that doesn’t get solved by politics as usual.”
One quote: The top 400 people — individuals, 400 people, you could get them into this space if you squeezed them just a little bit — have more wealth now than the bottom 180 million Americans taken together. And another, much more, dare I say, hopeful: Democratizing wealth… That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?