The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have called two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre – and its entirety…visible only to God.1 And in 2013, particularly after the military return to power in Egypt, more and more authors referred to this second level as America’s “deep state.”2 Here for example is the Republican analyst Mike Lofgren: There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. DEEP STATE n. The Deep State, The Shadow Government and the Wall Street Overworld Thereafter
The Rise of Anti-Capitalism Photo WE are beginning to witness a paradox at the heart of capitalism, one that has propelled it to greatness but is now threatening its future: The inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring those costs to near zero. The first inkling of the paradox came in 1999 when Napster, the music service, developed a network enabling millions of people to share music without paying the producers and artists, wreaking havoc on the music industry. The huge reduction in marginal cost shook those industries and is now beginning to reshape energy, manufacturing and education. Now the phenomenon is about to affect the whole economy.
Stop Currency Manipulation and Create Millions of Jobs: With Gains across States and Congressional Districts Six years after the start of the Great Recession nearly 8 million jobs are still needed to return to prerecession labor market health (EPI 2013). Job creation should still be goal number one. Yet prospects for any fiscal policy action to boost jobs have disappeared under the weight of congressional dysfunction, and the Federal Reserve has begun to wind down monetary stimulus (Wall Street Journal 2013). Many of the new jobs would be in manufacturing, a sector devastated by rising trade deficits over the past 15 years. Currency manipulation, which distorts trade flows by artificially lowering the cost of U.S. imports and raising the cost of U.S. exports, is the primary cause of these growing trade deficits. This paper describes the positive effects of ending currency manipulation in three years by estimating the effects of reducing trade deficits on GDP, jobs, the federal budget deficit, and state and local budget deficits in 2015. Exchange rates Effects of exchange rates on trade
The Math That Predicted the Revolutions Sweeping the Globe Right Now It's happening in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, and beyond. Revolutions, unrest, and riots are sweeping the globe. The near-simultaneous eruption of violent protest can seem random and chaotic; inevitable symptoms of an unstable world. But there's at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices. Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Bar-Yam built a model with the data, which then predicted that something like the Arab Spring would ensue just weeks before it did. "I have a long list of the countries that have had major social unrest in the past 18 months consistent with our projections," Bar-Yam tells me. So. If not, in other words, the riots will burn on.
The Economics of Star Trek — Editor's Picks I promise this is about Star Trek. Sort of. Bear with me a moment. I’ve been reading a lot about robots lately. The thing that never sits quite right with post scarcity economics, though, at least the very little that I’ve read, is that it’s always sort of an all or nothing affair: you either don’t have enough of anything or you have enough of everything. What is needed is some sort of interim-, or proto-post scarcity economics. More and more I find myself thinking we are, as a race, constrained by the economic models we have. The key here, to me, is to start thinking about how economics would work when we decouple labor from reward. It seems to me that with the rise of machines and robotics, advances in mining technology, energy technology (both fracking and green energy technologies), the obesity epidemic in the US, etc., that there are plenty of reasons to believe that we may be at the beginnings of a post scarcity economy. So, then, take that journey. Yes yes, of course. What we know
James Surowiecki: The End of Brand Loyalty Twelve months ago, Lululemon Athletica was one of the hottest brands in the world. Sales of its high-priced yoga gear were exploding; the company was expanding into new markets; experts were in awe of its “cultlike following.” As one observer put it, “They’re more than apparel. They’re a life style.” But then customers started complaining about pilling fabrics, bleeding dyes, and, most memorably, yoga pants so thin that they effectively became transparent when you bent over. It’s a truism of business-book thinking that a company’s brand is its “most important asset,” more valuable than technology or patents or manufacturing prowess. Today, consumers can read reams of research about whatever they want to buy. It’s been argued that the welter of information will actually make brands more valuable. For established brands, this is a nightmare. For consumers this is ideal: they’re making better choices, and heightened competition has raised quality and held down prices.
Peak shopping and the decline of traditional retail By David M. Levinson Shopping trips now comprise fewer than 9% of all trips, down from 12.5% in 2000, according to our analysis of the Twin Cities Travel Behavior Inventories. This is consistent with other results from the American Time Use Survey. They are down by about one-third in a decade. Trends in Shopping Travel in the Minneapolis-St. When we want to eat at home but not prepare the food, urban dwellers have options. When we want to consume non-food items, we also have options. The block I live on of mostly single family homes with some duplexes and apartments, in a quiet Minneapolis neighborhood, once had two small grocery stores, founded before the days of cheap at home refrigeration and before larger grocery chains took off. If we did not have easy access to the store, or the store’s variety were limited, we could order from a catalog, like the Sears Wish Book. Catalogs were replaced by the Internet, and Sears by Amazon. What goods will you have delivered? David M.
The sub-prime crisis was predictable, and we're making the same mistakes again The US has wasted its “sub-prime” mortgage crisis. The story of how and why this has happened is of interest not only for its own sake, but for the broader themes it reveals. I am a theoretically trained economist who started investigating US housing finance markets more than 20 years ago. Naïvely as it turned out, we each believed that the housing finance crash might finally cause more fundamental questions to be asked. Our hope was short-lived. The breakdown of the reform process is as simple to understand as it is tragic. To understand how deep and broad the problems are, consider an apparently more effective reform effort in the aftermath of the Challenger crash. Click to enlarge Even in the case of Challenger, resistance to expert input reared its head. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources. Spin cycle Closed shop
Why the multimillion dollar retirement is not for the middle class | Money At their most self-indulgent, the theological scholars of the Renaissance were mocked for abandoning the debate over moral decisions to bicker about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. The scholars of personal finance seem on track for a similar level of disconnection from reality. Take this new study, in the Financial Analysts Journal, that says "retirement is not hopeless." Indeed, all you need to do is save 22 times the annual income you hope to have when you retire. The authors of the study assume you will live to be 100 years old, by the way, if not 105 years old. The Wall Street Journal breezily calls this arrangement "retiring on your own terms." You can call it retiring on your own terms, the same way you can call buying a private jet and a ranch in Telluride, Colorado living on your own terms – the terms, that is, of fantasy and not reality. It's simply a math problem. Now you have to save that money as well as living on it. This is a reasonable budget.