DT Cochrane Harvard Medical School researchers Michelle Holmes and Wendy Chen wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about research they published in 2010 that found aspirin may be an effective treatment for breast cancer patients. The op-ed was not just calling attention to these results. Rather, it was a complaint that the research […]
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Jeremy Green With the Bank of England signalling an impending interest rate rise, monetary policy has returned to centre stage. Since 2008 we have lived through a period of extremely unorthodox monetary policy characterised by unprecedentedly low interest rates. This era of ‘cheap money’ may now be about to end and a return to ‘normality’ […]
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DT Cochrane The replacement of labour by machines has brought many improvements in social well-being. New machines have made a wide variety jobs safer and less physically debilitating. Yet, the process is far from decisively good, with many attendant ills. Consider the mechanization of fishing boats. Fishing is a dangerous activity and having fewer workers […]
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Joseph Baines The corn-ethanol boom represents one of the most dramatic changes in the world food system in recent decades. The ethanol sector now absorbs around 40% of the corn produced in the US. Surging biofuels production (of which US corn-ethanol production accounts for about half) is widely considered to have played a key role […]
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James McMahon John Oliver, a former correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, now has his own HBO show. Like what he did on The Daily Show, Oliver’s Last Week Tonight brings irreverence and wit to politics, business and other news of the day. Recently, he did a funny and sarcastic piece on FIFA, […]
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DT Cochrane What is a tree worth? Is this a question you’ve ever pondered? Does it seem like an odd question? Perhaps it seems like an inappropriate question? How could someone possibly attach a financial quantity to a tree? Don’t trees transcend monetary values? Trees are more the things of poetry than finance, aren’t they? […]
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Tim Di Muzio The Privatization of Money: The Greatest Sabotage in Human History? Part II Last time we found out that modern money is created when commercial banks make loans to people and businesses. They are not loaning out other people’s money at all, but effectively creating it by entering numbers into a computer. Between […]
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DT Cochrane Television personality Kevin O’Leary is best known as the ‘asshole’ on the investment reality shows Dragon’s Den, in Canada, and Shark Tank, in the United States. The shows have self-styled entrepreneurs bring forth their inventions or business ideas in hopes of attracting investment from a panel of capitalists, which includes O’Leary. He has […]
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Tim Di Muzio The Capitalization of Money Creation: The Greatest Sabotage in Human History? Every year in my course on Political Economy in the New Millennium I ask my students to do an exercise. The task is for them to ask three members of their friends or family how money is created. As you can […]
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Ilirjan Shehu Speaking to students in Jakarta, Indonesia, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, declared a few days ago that climate change is the world’s “most fearsome” weapon of mass destruction. Likening climate change to terrorism, Kerry stated that “It doesn’t keep us safe if the United States secures its nuclear arsenal while other countries […]
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James McMahon Over at Heterodox Microeconomics Research Network they have a thorough list of academic publications that are relevant to heterodox theories of capitalism. The list covers the following subjects: History and Methodology of Heterodox Microeconomics Critiques of Mainstream Microeconomics Principles of Heterodox Microeconomic Theory Theory of the Business Enterprise Structure of Production and Costs […]
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Eric George Since 2012, the U.S Department of Justice has launched a series of private negotiations with Wall Street banks relating to their involvement in the 2008 financial crisis. The DoJ made headlines this November when it struck a record $13b settlement with JP Morgan for allegations of fraud in the sale of mortgage-backed securities. […]
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Sandy Hager In an interesting piece for the Financial Times, Christopher Caldwell assesses Obama’s declaration to ‘go it alone’ in light of the ‘obstructionist Republican agenda’ in the US Congress. In a recent State of the Union address, Obama pledged a year of action, one that would see the president push for major policy reforms […]
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Tim Di Muzio The Constitution of the United States of America It is by now fairly clear that the Congress of the United States is a ‘do-nothing’ Congress populated by 268 millionaires (out of 534 lawmakers). The job approval rating, depending on which poll we consider, hovers around 9-14%. This is perhaps hardly surprising given […]
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DT Cochrane Toronto’s Pearson Airport was recently thrown into chaos when bad weather forced it to suspend ground operations. For eight hours, hundreds of flights scheduled to land and take-off were unable to do so. Condemnation of the airport authority was swift and harsh. The event revealed two facts about the airport as a productive […]
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DT Cochrane The title of this piece might make readers think of capitalist power over the masses. However, in this case, I’m thinking of how capital serves to discipline the decision-makers of capitalism. A recent Globe & Mail article discussed the desire of Canadian banks to keep the corporate bond market going. The banks serve […]
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Ilirjan Shehu Brussels Business is a documentary about the important role dominant capital has played in the shaping of the European Union from its early days. It explores the secretive activity of big business and lobbying organizations and the role they play in the origination and circulation of ideas and plans for the advancement of […]
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Tim Di Muzio Royal Authority and Private Property Last week we considered the concept of ownership though the work of Veblen and Marx. We noted that the establishment and protection of private property involved the dispossession of the many by the few and that this tendency begins with the appropriation of humans (slavery) and land […]
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DT Cochrane A recent episode of Planet Money describes a long running feud between two makers of hand bells. The story itself was interesting. However, two parts jumped out at me as relevant to CasP. The first was a comment by the host about how most people, when they hear of two companies fighting in […]
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Jeremy Green The contested nature of the economic ‘recovery’ has become the central theme of British political debate. The next election, in 2015, will be fought on these terms, with the Coalition government trumpeting its claims of an economic recovery born through austerity, while Labour outlines the limits of the Coalition strategy. It is crucial […]
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