Bruce Wilder had an excellent comment recently in the Crooked Timber thread on markets, economic rents, and the constraints on economic actors, excerpted by Dan here, and more with comments by Jazzbumpah here. (If you like the thinking there, run don’t walk to read this windyanabasis post and comments.) The emphasis on constraints prompts me […]

by Linda Beale The 1% are the only beneficiaries of Greek austerity, not ordinary Greeks An interesting post over on Naked Capitalism on the Greek austerity measures being demanded by the EU leaders (Germany, mostly) and the IMF: Marshal Auerback: Greece and the Rape by the Rentiers (Feb. 10, 2012). The austerity demands, in order […]

by Mike Kimel Rent Control, Redux There’s been a small dustup on rent control lately on the blogosphere. Peter Dorman has been pointing out that the theory everyone knows may not fit the facts. I myself covered the topic before here. Its worth a read, I think, but here’s the takeaway Now, I haven’t been […]

A good friend and I got into an email debate. He sent me the latest message regarding how wonderful it is that Florida is going to be drug testing welfare recipients. I responded that I’ll consider the policy when we start testing all the CEO’s who get welfare for their sector of the economy, the […]

Actual markets in the American economy are extremely rare and unusual beasts. An economics of markets ought to be regarded as generally useful as a biology of cephalopods, amid the living world of bones and shells. But, somehow the idealized, metaphoric market is substituted as an analytic mask, laid across a vast variety of economic […]

I found this link in Sitemeter and am in a quixotic mood. I couldn’t resist chasing it down as I wondered what Free Republic was and how Mike’s material could be used in a debate there. Lifted from comments at Free Republic website regarding Newt’s speech at CPAC earlier this week (and a spirited debate […]

OMB Watch notes some figures on Super Pac spending: Outside groups are spending nearly 1,300 percent more on broadcast advertising for the 2012 election than they did in 2008, according to an analysis released on Jan. 30. This is the clearest demonstration yet that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has fundamentally rewritten the rules […]

Well, sort of on markets.There is an interesting conversation going on at Crooked Timber our public debate in the econosphere and political rhetoric . Henry posts on the use of arguments over the term neo-liberalism and finishes with: For what it’s worth, I think that the open information agenda, and the political inequality agenda have a […]

Matt Taibbi is succinct on the reported but not final agreement among state AG’s on the mortgage settlement: I think the best summation of the settlement is probably Yves Smith’s, which can be found here. The piece lists the 12 things that suck the most about the settlement. The most painful is probably #12: 12. […]

Last week, Dan posted what had been an email message I sent him in response to a link he’d sent me to an article by Thom Hartmann on Truthout about the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United opinion.  The key (consecutive) paragraphs of Hartmann’s piece, which I quoted in my email/post, were: Most Americans don’t realize […]