Donald Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan is not an infrastructure plan and it won’t put $1 trillion of fiscal stimulus into the economy. It’s basically a scheme for handing over public assets to private corporations that will extract maximum profits via user fees and tolls. Because the plan is essentially a boondoggle, it will not... Read More

We typically honor the convention to refrain from speaking ill of the recently departed. But Margaret Thatcher probably would not object to an epitaph focusing on how her political legacy was to achieve her professed aim of “irreversibly� dismantling Britain’s public sector. Attacking central planning by government, she shifted it into much more centralized financial... Read More

A landmark fight is occurring this Saturday, April 9. Icelanders will vote on whether to subject their economy to decades of poverty, bankruptcy and emigration of their work force. At least, that is the program supported by the existing Social Democratic-Green coalition government in urging a “Yes� vote on the Icesave bailout. Their financial surrender... Read More

an Interview with Michael Hudson for Counterpunch. By STANDARD SCHAEFER Since the 1980s computer technology has been promoted as democratizing leisure by lowering the production costs of knowledge and culture. Consumers were promised more free time, yet a quarter or even a third of family income for the low- and middle-income brackets now goes to... Read More

an Interview with Michael Hudson for Counterpunch By STANDARD SCHAEFER In acknowledging the recent thirtieth anniversary of the US-sponsored coup that brought to General Augosto Pinochet to power in Chile, a number of articles and opinion pieces have appeared. The Nation recently cast the incident in somewhat sentimental terms. Such efforts to turn Salvador Allende’s... Read More

Contents Introduction Why it was regressive to fund Social Security as an autonomous system Financial engineering vs. industrial profits and employment Social Security, forced saving and Labor Capitalism What if the stock market does boom? Will that save Social Security? Introduction This would not seem to be an auspicious time to mount a campaign to... Read More