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Why Does the Government Borrow When It Can Print?
In the first seven months of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, net interest (payments minus income) on the federal debt reached $514 billion, exceeding spending on both national defense ($498 billion) and Medicare ($465 billion). The interest tab also exceeded all the money spent on veterans, education, and transportation combined. Spending on interest is now the second […]
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Britain’s Century Long Opium Trafficking and China’s Century of Humiliation (1839-1949)
For the Chinese, the trauma of the Century of Humiliation continues as a blunt reminder of their past defeat and neo-colonial servitude, as well as a reminder of the West’s self-righteous hypocrisy and arrogance. In 1500, India and China were the world’s most advanced civilizations. Then came the Europeans. They eventually looted and wreaked havoc […]
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Is There an Answer to Inflation?
Inflation is a scourge on those cursed with living under the capitalist order. It especially punishes those least able to weather the pain of constantly falling behind rising prices and expanding debt. Inflation harms nearly all working people whose income growth trails the rise in prices, including those with union contracts that bridge periods of […]
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The End of the Great White Bogeyman Theory of History?
For most of American history the dominant racist line was that of the Great White Benefactor bringing the gifts of civilization and abundance to the backward, immiserate peoples of the world; to liberate them from idolatry, want and depravity. All nonsense, of course, but it served its perception management purpose and helped to garner the […]
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Government Debt is Not the Problem
Polarization of the American public reflects the polarization of its political Parties, both of whom strive for ascendancy by demeaning, contradicting, and formulating proposals to wrong the other; each Party wrongs itself and the American public. The recent and periodic arguments concerning the proposed federal budget, an entrance for initiating threats to “close the government,” […]
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War By Other Means: Short Selling JPMorgan
When the FDIC put Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank into receivership in March, a study reported on the Social Science Research Network found that nearly 200 mid-sized U.S. banks were similarly vulnerable to bank runs. First Republic Bank went into receivership in May, but the feared contagion of runs did not otherwise occur. […]
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The World Needs a New Socialist Development Theory
Over the course of the past century, substantial changes have taken place in debates about social development. Dossier no. 66, The World Needs a New Socialist Development Theory, examines the historical evolution of development theory over four distinct eras, analyses the obstacles that stand in the way of development today, identifies processes that have the potential […]
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The Fall of the West
In his bestselling book of 1987, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy chronicles the rise of western power and its world dominance from 1500 to the present. He reports that the rise was not due to any particular event, nor even an unusual series of events. It was, in fact, neither […]
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Another Look at the Financial Transactions Tax
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash A small financial transactions tax could correct a number of maladies in our economic system, from the federal debt crisis to the widening wealth divide to the rampant financialization of the economy, while eliminating taxes on income and sales. The debt ceiling crisis has again brought into focus the […]
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