YouTube has the video Crash Course on Hyman Minsky, L. Randall Wray.
L. Randall Wray, professor at UMKC, talks about Hyman Minsky, an American economist who, even in the relative stability of the 1950s, predicted financial collapse because of “speculative euphoria.” Interviewed by Peter Leyden at King’s College, April 2010.
Since the crisis has been brewing since 1951, this 2010 video is still quite relevant.
Vimeo has the video Panquake Delivery FUNDED!! Public Delivery Meeting #20 feat. Suzie, Taylor, John, Sean, Sheree and Vivian Kubrick.
Yes – Panquake is now FUNDED!! This delivery meeting – Panquake’s 20th – is one for the history books. Join Founder Suzie Dawson, Journalist Taylor Hudak, Brand Ambassador John Kiriakou, Chief Security Advisor Sean O’Brien, Chief Marketing Advisor Sheree Ip and special guest, filmmaker Vivian Kubrick to talk about what this means for the project – and for the world!
Panquake Delivery FUNDED!! Public Delivery Meeting #20 feat. Suzie, Taylor, John, Sean, Sheree and Vivian Kubrick from Panquake – Talk Liberation on Vimeo.
I am truly, pleasantly surprised by this announcement.
I have been receiving frequent emails from gogetfunding about the progress Panquake was making in raising funds. I just looked at the October 5th email which showed a total of only about $185,300.00. I never figured Panquake would ever get to the $500,000 goal. Panquake must be raising money by some other means besides gogetfunding. I am so glad Panquake has reached the Beta goal.
GogetFunding never told me in emails about the $1.022.499.00 raised offline.
I had no idea what Vivian Kubrick was talking about at the end of the video. She was talking in the context of Kabbalah which is described by this Wikipedia article. Kabbalah. Here is an article from ReformJudaism.org Kabbalah, Tarot, and Delving into Mystical Judaism.
Michael Hudson has published the article The Euro Without German Industry.
But unless other countries work together to create an alternative to the IMF, World Bank, International Court, World Trade Organization and the numerous UN agencies now biased toward the U.S/NATO by U.S. diplomats and their proxies, the coming decades will see the U.S. economic strategy of financial and military dominance unfold along the lines that Washington has planned. The question is whether these countries can develop an alternative new economic order to protect themselves from a fate like that which Europe this year has imposed upon itself for the next decade.
This is what Michael Hudson has been predicting for years. At some point his predictions will come true, or we will see what he has been missing for the last 50 years. I am not ready to bet against him yet.
YouTube has a series of videos whose introduction I show below, Criminality of US empire and deep state with historian Aaron Good.
Multipolarista host Ben Norton speaks with historian Aaron Good about his book “American Exception: Empire and the Deep State,” detailing the breakdown of democracy, the criminality that lies at the heart of US government policy, and the corporate interests driving it.
This series drives home the part of this process that I had not fully come to grips with in my prior readings from Michael Hudson, Fadhel Kaboub, and the rest of the MMT crowd. Much of it was there in those sources, but I didn’t recognize the full weight of what they were saying.
Aaron Good has the website American Exception.
Starting on October 6, I will add links here to the episodes as I watch them. There are a couple that I watched before today.
Origins of the US empire and deep state (with historian Aaron Good). Jul 18, 2022
A discussion of the origins of the US empire and deep state, why US foreign policy remain unchanged across administrations, and why democracy has declined with the rise of the US global dominance.
This is PART 1 of the Empire and the Deep State series Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton is co-hosting with historian Aaron Good and producer Seamus McGuinness of the American Exception podcast.
History of the US empire and deep state pre-WWII (with historian Aaron Good). Aug 1, 2022
A discussion of deep politics and the history of the US empire up until World War Two.
This is PART 2 of the Empire and the Deep State series Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton is co-hosting with historian Aaron Good and producer Seamus McGuinness of the American Exception podcast.
Birth of the US national security state (with historian Aaron Good). August 11, 2022
A discussion of the creation of Washington’s national security state and the rise of US exceptionism.
This is PART 3 of the Empire and the Deep State series Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton is co-hosting with historian Aaron Good and producer Seamus McGuinness of the American Exception podcast.
October 7, 2022
What is imperialism? Exploring theories of hegemony (with historian Aaron Good). Aug 19, 2022
A discussion of different theoretical concepts of imperialism and hegemony and how they relate to the United States empire.
This is PART 4 of the Empire and the Deep State series Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton is co-hosting with historian Aaron Good and producer Seamus McGuinness of the American Exception podcast.
Jeffrey Sommers has the article on CunterPunch How Mikhail Gorbachev Became the Most Reviled Man in Russia.
Mikhail Gorbachev presented a figure of Greek tragedy proportions. Possessing good intentions and intellectual curiosity, Gorbachev nonetheless became the most reviled man in Russia, following the USSR’s demise. Yet, with Gorbachev, his worst qualities were connected to his best. Gorbachev was the wrong man at the wrong time to resolve the contradictions created by the Stalinist and then Brezhnev bureaucratic model of really-existing socialism in the Soviet Union. Increasingly hated at home, Gorbachev was beloved by world leaders in the “West” as the man who peacefully (at least by the comparative metrics of collapsing empires) unwound the USSR, even if trying to save its all-union character. Meanwhile, for China, Gorbachev delivered lessons in what not to do when reforming a sclerotic post-Stalinist system requiring economic reforms, if not transformation.
I haven’t had the chance to read the article yet, so I will take you through the interviews I have seen that finally led me to the article he discussed in the interviews.
Paul Jay has conducted a very interesting interview, and has published the first part “Why the Soviet Union Imploded – Jeffrey Sommers (pt 1)”.
“Terror and tyranny in the USSR arose more from war and the demands of state security services required to survive, and the paranoid politics it enabled, rather than any “inevitable” path from the socialist path taken,” writes Jeffery Sommers. He joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news to discuss the end of the Soviet Union.
I then found a CounterPunch podcast Jeffrey Sommers.
This week Eric welcomes back political economist and author Jeffrey Sommers to discuss the political and historical legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev in the wake of his recent death. Jeffrey examines how Gorbachev rose to power, the forces with which he had to contend while in power, and his ultimate failure to change the course of the Soviet Union. The conversation explores everything from the dismantling of the USSR and rise of the oligarchs to the ways in which the Gorbachev period paved the way for the Putin era. So much ground covered in this conversation with one of our favorite CounterPunchers.
And finally I found the article that they all were all talking about. The link to that article is at the beginning of this post.
Stephanie Kelton has written a Substack article UNCTAD Warns of Too Much Tightening.
To steer the global economy away from this looming catastrophe, the report calls on governments in advanced economies to “avoid austerity,” both for their individual sake and for the sake of the global economy as a whole. It also urges “central banks in developed economies to revert course and avoid the temptation to try to bring down prices by relying on ever higher interest rates.”
The UNCTAD report is Trade and Development Report 2022 – Development prospects in a fractured world.
UNCTAD projects that world economic growth will slow to 2.5% in 2022 and drop to 2.2% in 2023. The global slowdown would leave real GDP still below its pre-pandemic trend, costing the world more than $17 trillion – close to 20% of the world’s income.
This means that something like $17 trillion of economic growth will not happen. This growth in the productive economy is necessary to forestall inflation. In some ways, the only tools that central banks have available to them are not suitable for fighting the current inflation. The central banks should stop applying the wrong solution, but the central governments need to apply the right solution instead. Getting the central governments to do the right thing may be harder than stopping the central baks from doing the wrong thing.
What the central banks have to tell their respective central governments is that the central banks will not bail out the central governments that refuse to do their duty to rescue the economy. The blame will have to be shifted onto the shoulders of the ones who are failing to do their duty. The central banks are not going to take the rap for the central governments’ failures.
The Analysis News has the interview For Humanity’s Sake, Ukraine War Must End – Wilkerson.
An important Chinese commentator warns that a cornered Russia may lead to “unimaginable consequences”. Larry Wilkerson says there must be immediate negotiations to end the war to avoid the danger of nuclear conflict and to refocus the world on the climate crisis. Wilkerson and Jay also discuss rising fascism in the U.S.
I don’t agree with everything these two have to say. I think some of what they say is driven by a compelling need to show their credentials as skeptics of all sides.
The movie clip that Paul Jay has chosen to end this video is very chilling to say the least. I feel personally threatened by what is happening in the world these days.
Just in case you missed the USA corporate media reporting this side of the story you can view it on Telegram.
In the military registration and enlistment office in the south of Moscow, the reservists went to the training units, where they will undergo combat training.
Truthout has the article More US Employers Are Trapping Workers in a New Form of Indentured Servitude.
Bosses in industries such as retail, health care and logistics are reverting to an old tactic and trapping people in miserable jobs by threatening to saddle them with debt if they quit. Workers across the United States in fields ranging from nursing to trucking have been discouraged from leaving jobs they hate or can’t afford to keep because employers vow to charge them for training costs if they quit before an arbitrary deadline.
When I started my career, most corporations paid employee’s tuition in part-time graduate school. People were free to change jobs, but I figured that corporations saw this as a contribution to the education of the work force that all corporations made. If the corporation that sponsored a particular employee didn’t get to keep that employee, then they could replace the employee with one whose education had been sponsored by another corporation. Eventually some vulture capitalists realized that they didn’t have to pay for this education if some other sucker corporation was around to pay for it.
That old system could not survive as more corporations decided to let someone else pay for that education. As a society, we have to decide how we are going to pay for what the society needs.
As long as capitalists determine they can get a free ride on the services the society provides, then the situation will just deteriorate further.
Democracy At Work has published David Harvey’s podcast Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: Beyond Reorganization of Production.
In this episode of Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, Prof. Harvey considers a looming question: is capitalism too big to fail? He speculates on what approaches may lead to a successful socialist alternative. Is it a reorganization of the productive forces? Or redistribution of wealth? Or both?
Lots of good questions without any answers yet. Makes Democracy at Work seem like a rather ill thought out “solution”.