Tag Archives: debt

Atlas Shrugged for Real: Republicans Seek an Economic Shutdown to Achieve Their Agenda

The Atlas Shrugged Party looks like it’s barreling full-tilt to an economic shutdown–an Atlas Shrugged scenario for real–in a couple of weeks, and here’s Jon Favreau’s advice to President Obama: [A] failure to raise the debt limit would inflict far more … Continue reading

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Entered Emory, Fell Out of Emory, $60,000 in Debt

A cautionary tale of students from lumpen proletariat American families (families that sell their labor but have no assets to speak of) in the New York Times recently: Angelica Gonzales marched through high school in Goth armor — black boots, chains … Continue reading

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Mint the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin?

Ezra Klein at The Washington Post is against it: There are already cracks in the GOP’s coalition over whether holding the debt ceiling hostage is such a good idea, with Newt Gingrich, the Wall Street Journal and assorted columnists beginning to head to the exits. … Continue reading

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The Next Financial Cliff

Troubling. Disconcerting.

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The Birds: Europe’s Debt Crisis Foreshadows President Obama’s Electoral Doom

I foresee, in the following New York Times reporting on the Eurozone economic crisis, the end of Barack Obama’s presidency: Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, the German central bank, argued Monday that the core problem in the euro zone … Continue reading

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Inflate the Debt Away: Why Are Italian Interest Rates Climbing?

Italian interest rates are climbing because it’s feared that, should Greece leave the euro, Italy might follow suit, making the value of Italian bonds held by investors zero. That’s right, zero. Wolfgang Munchau at Spiegel Online explains: If Greece leaves … Continue reading

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Global Debt Slavery Watch: Economic Anthropologist David Graeber Thinks Slavery and Debt Slavery May Be a Distinction Without Much of a Difference

At Naked Capitalism, Dublin-based journalist Philip Pilkington asks economic anthropologist David Graeber an intriguing question: We know that in many Western countries over the past few years households have been running up enormous debts, from credit card debts to mortgages … Continue reading

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The Debt Crisis: Niall Ferguson Said It Would Come To This

Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, back in November of 2009, wrote the following for Newsweek: History strongly supports the proposition that major financial crises are followed by major fiscal crises. . . . This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt … Continue reading

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Can You Balance California’s Budget? Here’s a Link to a Calculator Where You Can Try.

Here’s a link to the Los Angeles Times’ balanced budget calculator. It’s there that you can imagine yourself wielding the budget ax, raising taxes, or doing some combination of the two to bring California’s $28 billion deficit over the next 18 months … Continue reading

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The Looming Debt Ceiling Crisis

Personally, I welcome the looming debt ceiling crisis. It seems to me an opportunity for the two parties to hammer out some sort of real government reforms. I genuinely think we’re heading for a crisis akin to Greece’s a decade … Continue reading

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California is Spain: A Debt Crisis Looms for the Golden State

This is front page news in the New York Times today, and, as a California resident, it’s alarming: [M]any state and local governments have so much debt — several trillion dollars’ worth, with much of it off the books and largely … Continue reading

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For Whom the Bell Tolls: Is Spain Too Big to Fail? Are We?

The following was in the New York Times on the day before Thanksgiving, 2010. It describes with stark clarity the vicious debt whirlpool that Spain is in the grips of. I wonder what Paul Krugman would say about this. I suppose that, someday, the United States could find … Continue reading

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The United States now has a defacto fourth branch of government: the Chinese Communist Party

Since Barack Obama’s election, right-wingers have been worried about a socialist tide within the United States’ three existing branches of government (the legislative, executive, and judicial branches). But Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson, of the Council on Foreign Relations, in recent … Continue reading

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While you were sleeping, Europe’s Greece crisis was deepening

This at the UK’s Guardian: “The crisis in Greece could pose as big a risk to the global economy and financial markets as the collapse of Lehman Brothers did in September 2008”, said Julian Jessop, of Capital Economics. He added: … Continue reading

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Obama Boxed In?

William Greider, of the Nation, paints today the bleakest economic picture that I’ve seen, suggesting that Obama’s stimulus package of 800 billion dollars is too small by at least HALF. He also suggests that Obama will need to nationalize the … Continue reading

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“I.O.U.S.A”: This is the Title of a Film Documentary on the National Debt that Premiered at Sundance in 2008—and My Guess is that It’s Going to Get a Lot More Attention in Light of the Global Markets Crisis

Here’s the film trailer for I.O.U.S.A: And here’s Greenspan on the crisis:

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