homemade
The Great Mystification
Bernanke said it first. Trichet followed suit. The OECD is already preparing banquets and workshops in June to look beyond the crisis. As if it were over. All this is ludicrous framing and wishful thinking, which goes like: “if we shift the attention from the unfolding effects of the crisis (such as skyrocketing unemployment) to [...]
From Crises to Commons
The Midnight Notes collective have put out a pamphlet on the crises and the opportunity of the crisis. Available for both download and sale. It’s a rock solid perspective from some of the few Autonomist Marxists writing from and about the US. Great language and check out this passage:
Let’s guarantee housing to [...]
The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of MAY DAY
Peter Linebaugh, author of the invaluable The London Hanged the story of how capital punishment was used in England instill capitalist property norms in the English working class, wrote this history of Mayday in 1986 stressing the green and the red. Last year, he gave a talk on Mayday for the Bristol Radical History Group’s [...]
It Ain’t Over Until It’s Over
The Recession. The free-market economists of yesteryear have been trying to convince everybody the worst of the crisis is over. They basically have only rising prices for oil futures to back their desperate optimism. Well, now oil futures have gone back below the current brent crude price of $50. So what now?
It’s clear that the [...]
State Socialism for the Rich, Market Liberalism for the Poor
This is what’s happening in the EU and the US. Where’s the left? Socialists sold out to Blair and the Third Way a decade ago. With the exception of Zapatero (actually fairly orthodox on the economic front, although now he has fired Almunia), there hasn’t been anything new on the rosé side. As for reds, [...]
Obama pulls a Roosevelt before Congress
Saw BHO’s first address to congress. Man, the guy can really spin good speeches… Most of it was about the Great Recession. He sampled truelife stories to explain the basics of his economic philosophy: the banker who shared his million-dollar bonus with employees (unlike Wall Street croesuses), the Kansan community that rebuilt an ecotown after [...]
Interviewing the Crisis (plus Niall Ferguson’s irrelevance)
A great artsy initiative is tracking repercussions of the crisis in creative industries
http://www.artsblog.it/post/2749/trilogy-of-crisis-intervistando-la-crisi-unintroduzione
We, great recessionists encourage you to follow and participate in the project.
On a fairly unrelated issue, we wanna lambast that jerk of Niall Ferguson, the official historian of global finance, who, after having rescued the memory of the British Empire (while ripping off [...]
Greece! And Where Next? France?
With the occupation of the Athens Polytechnic taking a breath over the winter holiday, we can take a minute and ask, as the rulers of Europe have publicly fretted over the possibly of 1000euro/600euro/internship/precarious/sacrificed generation coming armed to a street corner near you. Or as Sarkozy put it so succinctly, “The French love it when [...]
A blog on the macroeconomic meltdown and radical fights for redistribution
THE GREAT RECESSION
(!new! check out this:
http://zoescope.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/comparing-usa-outlay)
Capitalism is in crisis. Neoliberalism is dead. Neoconservatism is deader.
We are in the Great Recession, the biggest slump since the Great Depression. And 2009 will see many more us unemployed and our wages slashed.
America, Europe, China, Russia, all the regions of the world are reeling from the consequences of the [...]
NEXT LEFT: european politics and movements in the Great Recession
Do a bit of historical rewind and think you are back in 2000 again. Boy, was Europe optimistic back then. The new economy hadn’t crashed yet, and Dubya did not seem to stand a chance against Gore. Sure, noglobal protesters had emerged as spoilers of the party of monetarism and neoliberalism, and the cinders of [...]