This space has been quasi-dormant for a bit, but for anyone checking in, I have a new post up at The Smoke-Filled Room about the recent rally in Barcelona and what it means for Europe’s crises of wealth and identity. … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Economics
C’est Quoi le Libéralisme? C’est Quoi l’État?
There’s been a fascinating debate in recent days over the relationship between liberal principles and Paul-ite libertarian thinking (that’s Ron Paul, not St. Paul), and whether Paul’s largely odious and/or asinine overall platform* should disqualify liberals from appreciating and applauding … Continue reading
Defense Spending and Innovation
With something vaguely resembling resource cuts looming for the Department of Defense, there have been discontented rumblings about the effect such cuts could have on U.S. innovation. Defense spending has, historically speaking, been a driver of technological progress in some … Continue reading
November 29, 2011
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The Politics of American Wind
Note: This is a guest post from Martin D. Quiñones. Martin holds a B.A. from Brown University and is pursuing his J.D. at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. It’s been a tough few months for American offshore wind power. Cape … Continue reading
Historical vs. Material vs. Ideal Baselines: Evaluating Obama
An essay in New York Magazine by Jonathan Chait this weekend has rebooted the standard debate about the “professional left” and why liberals can’t bring themselves to love Obama despite his accomplishments (see Sullivan for a supporting salvo). Chait tries … Continue reading
Transnational Elites and the Cession of Popular Sovereignty
A couple of weeks ago, for a class I’m currently taking, I thumbed through a battered copy of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. Published in 1944, the book sought to make sense of the creation and subsequent unraveling of 19th … Continue reading
What Would a Euro Collapse Look Like?
Reading Roger Cohen yesterday and Phil Levy and Andrew Sullivan today got me puzzling again over a predictive question that’s had me thinking for months: what precisely would happen to the E.U. politically should the Euro collapse? In other words, … Continue reading
Quick Hit: Slovakia says nay to Eurozone bailout expansion
Via the BBC, Slovakia’s parliament has voted against expanding the European Financial Stability Fund, throwing yet another wrench in the works of those trying to save the Eurozone from its current near-terminal condition. Evidently the measure was tied to a … Continue reading
Plutocracy and Mechanisms of Government Capture
James Kurth has a great piece in The American Interest on the foreign policy of plutocratic states and the manner in which a plutocracy’s dominant economic-institutional form (industry vs. finance) affects the kinds of international regimes those states seek to implement. … Continue reading
Yes Virginia, They Really Are More Extreme
Greenwald has a post up bemoaning the depressing inanity of much of the American presidential campaigntacularextravaganzathon experience. He makes a number of points with which I basically agree, and his calling attention to the rather strange erasure of Ron Paul … Continue reading