Tuesday, April 24, 2012

From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics

 Broadly speaking, there exist three different perspectives on the crisis. Perspective 1 is the hard-core neoliberal position, which can be labelled the “government failure hypothesis”. In the U.S. it is identified with the Republican Party and the Chicago school of economics. Perspective 2 is the soft-core neoliberal position, which can be labelled the “market failure hypothesis”. It is identified with the Obama administration, half of the Democratic Party, and the MIT economics departments. In Europe it is identified with Third Way politics. Perspective 3 is the progressive position which can be labelled the “destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis”. It is identified with the other half of the Democratic Party and the labor movement, but it has no standing within major economics departments owing to their suppression of alternatives to orthodox theory.
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Based on an article by Thomas Palley, Senior Economic Adviser, AFL-CIO

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Wisconsin's Walker faces recall vote.


Wisconsin's controversial Republican Governor Scott Walker will face a recall election on June 5 over a new law he championed that strips public sector unions of most power, becoming the first U.S. governor to face a no-confidence vote in nearly a decade.
The five-member Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, which manages elections, voted unanimously on Friday to formally certify more than 900,000 signatures calling for Walker's ouster, setting the recall election in motion.
Just hours after the recall vote was set, a federal judge in the Wisconsin capital of Madison struck down two key parts of Walker's signature law curbing union power that labor unions had challenged in court.
A Democratic primary will be held on May 8 to choose Walker's opponent in the recall vote. The Democrat most likely to face him is Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in a rematch of the 2010 election that Walker narrowly won...