Class Analysis
Whose Recovery? What Double Dip?
The graph shows that what "recovered" were corporate profits that had fallen from the crisis's beginning in late 2007 until they hit bottom late in 2008. After that, corporate profits "recovered" and rose to mid-2010 lifting the stock market with them. After the EPI graph ends around April 2010, this recovery of corporate profits and stock prices stalled and now threatens to turn down again.
Report On Jobs
Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 131,000 in July, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.5 percent. Federal government employment fell, as 143,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work. Private-sector payroll employment edged up by 71,000. US Dept of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Press Release, August 6, 2010.
Economic Recovery for the Few
Where is this elusive recovery? The banks, some say, have "recovered." Yet they remain dependent on Washington, they do not make the loans needed for a general recovery, and many medium and small banks keep collapsing. The stock market shows no recovery. The Dow index was 14,000 in late 2007 when capitalism hit the fan, and it is around 10,000 now. The Nasdaq market index was 2800 then and is 2300 now. Everywhere else -- unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies, depressed housing market, and so on -- no recovery in sight.
Talk Radio on KBOO Community Radio Interview
Host Per Fagereng interviews Professor Wolff, author of the book "Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It." He recently wrote the piece "Austerity: Why and for Whom?"
Law and Disorder Radio Show
Professor Wolff joins Michael Smith on WBAI's Law and Disorder radio show along with National Lawyers Guild Attorney Eric Poulos. Both have recently returned from Greece. Rick Wolff’s recent articles outline an economic theater playing out in Greece and across the globe. There is no alternative and this is all the worker’s fault, is the mantra from rulers who are cutting wages and pensions in Greece. It’s deceptive and false says Rick Wolff, and the economic conditions in Greece is an old pattern that is replicating everywhere.
Economic Crisis, Greek Theater, Our Drama
Political theater now grips Greece. As with ancient Greek plays, today's drama also reaches and touches everyone else. We sense Greece's dilemmas becoming our own. Her rulers declare that a crisis now threatens Greece. They blame it on the masses. To overcome it, they must impose great suffering on the masses. The rulers' chorus intones the absolute necessity, the utter unavoidability of that suffering as the only solution. There is, it insists, no other option. The masses waver.Teaching Capitalism’s Crisis
After teaching both graduate and undergraduate economics since 1969 at Yale, at the City University of New York, and, since 1973, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, I retired at the end of 2008. The economic crisis that exploded across the second half of 2008 had suddenly created exciting new opportunities for Marxian critiques of capitalism to reach large audiences. As usual, the economics profession was far behind the flow of events; most economists continued to celebrate the private enterprises and markets that were so spectacularly imploding all around them.
Capitalism, Economy, and Religion: A Christian-Marxist Dialogue
Efforts to ally religion (and especially Christianity) with Marxism (and other sorts of socialism) built on their converging social criticisms as capitalism achieved global hegemony over the last two centuries. The specific objects of those criticisms included inequalities of wealth, inequalities of income, the fetishism of commodities, the idolatrous worship of material objects (and their accumulation) at the expense of spiritual values, and the calculating treatment of human beings as mere means to economic goals.Harvard's Finances: A Tale of Two Countries
Harvard just announced its charges for the 2010-2011 academic year: $51,000 per undergraduate. That covers tuition, fees, room and board. It does not cover such things as clothing, books and computers, school supplies, room furnishings, cleaning expenses, travel to and from Cambridge, MA, and entertainment. If we conservatively estimate these to cost another $9,000 on average, we reach a cost of $60,000 per academic year (September to April) for each Harvard undergraduate. In short, it now costs a quarter of a million dollars to get a Harvard BA degree.
Capitalism and the Useful Nation State
The nation state is once again proving its special usefulness as a vehicle for managing capitalist crisis. Partly, this follows from the renewal of Keynesian monetary and fiscal policies. Other key dimensions of state usefulness include its more direct provision of financial guarantees to private enterprises and its over-priced purchase of "toxic" assets (those that have suffered drastic losses) from their private owners.
