And now, a word about the brown marmorated stink bug. If you haven’t heard of it, count yourself lucky. This autumn the stink bug,
Tag: Economy
It’s 2016: What happened to all those dire, Obama-geddon predictions?
Now that it’s 2016, it’s time to fact-check some of the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it predictions that President Obama’s critics made before his 2012 re-election. In an
The case for closing our overseas military bases
The most popular post, over the years, on Occasional Planet is: “Military Mystery: how many bases does the US have, anyway?” American University anthropology
Joe Stiglitz wants to rewrite the rules of the American economy
The time is ripe for genuine progressive ideas to take hold because, for once, they have a chance to resonate with people across the political spectrum. Bernie Sanders and Joe Stiglitz, together, offer real solutions to an economy, and a country, gone off the rails.
Glass-Steagall: Warren and Sanders bring it back into focus
Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are putting a new focus on the Glass-Steagall Act, which was, unfortunately, repealed in 1999 and led directly
TPP: What Obama’s secret trade deal means for you
Since 2009, the Obama administration has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Parnership (TPP) trade agreement in secret. Only lawyers and advisors representing banks and corporations,
A closer look at the 5.9% unemployment rate
If you dig around the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website, you will learn that 20 percent of American families do not have a single person employed and 41 percent of all civilian, working-age Americans are without a job.
Why is the stock market soaring when the real economy is on its knees?
The short answer is the Fed has been propping up the stock market. And, high stock prices are not always tethered to traditional methods of stock
Which country is the greatest threat to world peace?
At the close of 2013, WIN/Gallup published the results of a massive world opinion poll in which they asked over 66,000 people from 65
Can democracy cure American capitalism?
Notes from a lecture by political economist Richard Wolff, author of Capitalism Hits the Fan: Capitalism is sick and American capitalism is the disease.