A struggle to save Europe’s soul from privatization

When news of the Greek debt crisis first broke in 2010, a number of German tabloids called on the country to pawn its cultural and natural heritage to pay off its debts. “Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks!” ran a headline of the ever tasteless Bild. “And sell the Acropolis too!” With the bailout of May 2010 in the making, the populist editors of the right-wing magazine, apparently oblivious to the historical sensitivities around the ... Read more

Naomi Klein: Big Green is in denial

As I was writing The Shock Doctrine, I was covering the Iraq War and profiteering from the war, and I started to see these patterns repeat in the aftermath of natural disasters, like the Asian tsunami and then Hurricane Katrina. There are chapters in that book on both of those events. Then I came to the idea that climate change could be a kind of a “people’s shock,” an answer to the shock doctrine – not just another opportunity by the ... Read more

The Lure of Taxable Debt

Some universities have started forgoing their ability to issue tax-exempt bonds, long considered a benefit of their nonprofit status. Issuing taxable bonds instead makes sense under market conditions that defy conventional wisdom and allows institutions to avoid additional regulations on tax-exempt bonds, according to officials at an annual conference of college business officers. Read more

On the Causes of Investment Decline in the US Economy

Is the chronically stagnant US economic recovery since 2009 (predicted in my 2010 book, ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression’), the result of insufficient income growth for most households—that is then necessary to stimulate consumption demand that, in turn would result in real investment that would create jobs? Or has the escalation of financial asset prices since 2009—itself the consequence of $10-$15 trillion of Fed and central ... Read more

It Takes an Ecosystem: The Rise of Worker Cooperatives in the US

As the traditional job market deteriorates, the number of worker cooperatives in the United States is growing as people seek more stable and rewarding work. An ecosystem of worker cooperative development organizations is emerging to accelerate this trend. What's a worker cooperative? A worker cooperative is a for-profit business that is owned and managed democratically by employees. Other types of cooperatives exist; for example, consumer ... Read more

“No Excuses” in New Orleans

This fall, less than a decade after its post-Katrina, “grand experiment in urban education” began, New Orleans will become the first city in the country with an all-charter school district. The traditional school district has been effectively supplanted by the state-level Recovery School District, originally presented as a temporary solution to resuscitate lagging public schools before returning them to local control. The state of education ... Read more

Democracy is Bad for Business

A story that has gotten weirdly little play in the US (I can’t speak for the UK press or the press in other countries) is the pushback by the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms against the democracy movement in Hong Kong. On July 1, over 100,000 people marched in protest against Chinese plans to curtail democracy in Hong Kong. But the Big Four had not only made it clear that they didn’t like the protests – they had threatened that business would ... Read more

The Yes Men Secure the Homeland

The Yes Men chose the Homeland Security Congress as our audience for this plan precisely because they were not our people. Many of them would be bonafide, gun-loving, flag-toting, rightwing patriots. Our goal was to see if we could promote this revolutionary (but entirely feasible) plan to people on the exact opposite end of the political spectrum. If we could get even those on the “Dark Side” to embrace a plan to end fossil fuels and ... Read more

How to Pay for a Free, Non-Racist Higher Education

Corinthian Colleges is going out of business, and other for-profit rip-offs will follow. However, “The very existence of Corinthian, Phoenix, Ashford and the other gangster institutions proves beyond doubt that the vast bulk of the existing U.S. educational establishment is not serving” Black and poor people. Yes, America needs free higher education, but the excluded classes also need a new system that is not hostile to their very presence. Read more

You Know a Politician or Talking Head is Clueless When…..

People will work for decades to make the money they need to pay the bills and other necessities. Yet, fewer than 1 in 1000 people understand how this money actually gets into circulation and who benefits from our current system. Politicians and talking heads also do not understand this. Read more