Bridget Phillipson is the U.K. Labour MP for Houghton and Sunderland South. “You’re not fit to be prime minister and you’ve got to resign,” she told Jeremy Corbyn at an extraordinary meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party after the Brexit vote last June. Today, “The Staggers, The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog” published an essay by Phillipson […]

Congratulations on your quick success on Wednesday, Mr. Trump!* Now how ’bout gettin’ to work on that Carrier plant in Indianapolis that is in the process of shutting down, its production being moved to a new plant in Mexico.  And other manufacturing plants that, like Carrier, actually ARE slated to move outside the country. And then, […]

Folks … this is crazy. Even apart from the profound national security danger and, at least seemingly, breach of federal criminal law–hey, James Comey, wanna investigate this?–there is that little issue about, y’know, LOBBYISTS CONTROLLING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. And to think we thought the only conflicts of interest would be finance industry and fossil fuel […]

It seems we have a cabinet nomination. Word is the Jefferson Beuregard Sessions will be nominated Attorney General. Sen Sessions is an extreme reactionary. He is also, pretty clearly, an old fashioned racist (to complement the new wave alt-right racists). In 1986, Reagan nominated him as a judge and the nomination was rejected by the […]

I left this in draft since Nov 3 and am publishing this now…. by Joseph Joyce The Retreat of Financial Globalization?   Eight years after the global crisis of 2008-09, its reverberations are still being felt. These include a slowdown in world trade and a reassessment of the advantages of globalization. Several recent papers deal […]

The Big Question Is, Who is the MOST Powerful Person: Paul Ryan or Donald Trump? “I think my title [of head of outreach] is to be head of outreach and that’s something that I take very seriously,” he said, without explaining any more about the new role. But Sanders did pound home his remedies for […]

– by New Deal democrat The long leading indicators: on the cusp of turning negative? A “long leading indicator” is an economic metric that reliably turns a year or more before the onset of a recession. Geoffrey Moore, who for decades published the Index of Leading Indicators, and in 1993 wrote  Leading Economic Indicators: New […]

I had an interesting web experience. My tweet noting that the US Treasury made a profit on TARP got a relatively large number of replies. Many people were outraged in many contradictory ways. Twitter is damaging the discussion. Trump on twitter lowered the level of debate. I am now a carrier of Twitteritis into the […]