Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House does not signify a new beginning or a new era. Quite the opposite. Trump and his band of reactionaries symbolize the last gasps of a greed-inspired economic system that is crumbling into obsolescence. The ungraceful staggering of a falling empire. But as with so many instances of imperial decline in history, this can also signal a time of regeneration. Like the yin and the yang, disintegration and renewal are both aspects of the same process of change. Climate change, financial system instability, and global resource depletion remain unchanged as the most profound crises of the 21st century, and they cut across all national boundaries and cultural identities. As […]

Thanks to the fabulous people at Policy Press, my new book has arrived! The timing of this release is both troubling and fortuitous, but I sincerely hope that this new book will be helpful as we all try to make our way through the challenging times ahead. Read up, friends, and tune in because there is much more to come!

Since the DNC Convention, there has been a trend among certain Clintonists to accuse third party voters of indulging in “selfishness,” “egoism,” or as expressed by Angela Davis, “narcissism.” If you are also saying these things, regardless of how you came to these conclusions, please let me ask you to consider it more carefully and to see the irony. After all, it does seem a bit selfish to bash away at others’ voting intentions because those intentions do not reflect what you want. In any case, we get it. A vote for say, Jill Stein, is a wasted vote, a de facto vote for Trump, etc., so pinch your nose and vote for Hillary. This is […]

For decades the Democratic Party’s mainstream has used the spoiler argument to keep itself in power. We’ve all heard it by now: any vote that is not cast for the DNC’s select candidate is in effect a vote for a much worse Republican, and we can therefore kiss any last hope for progressive politics goodbye. A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Trump, a vote for Kucinich was for McCain, Nader was for Bush, and so the rant goes all the way back to the early 1970s when enormously popular Eugene McCarthy was shouted down by his fellow Democrats for having the nerve to campaign for president on a platform opposing the Vietnam War. Their […]

The US Treasury is down to its last few dollars to spend and then it will go broke. The US Postal Service is already broke and is defaulting on its obligation to set aside $5.6 billion for retiree health care fund. And speaking of health care, the so-called marketplace for health insurance opened all over the country yesterday with great fanfare only to crash immediately because people were accessing the new websites in large numbers. Shocker, eh? For those who are able to get into the sites, they’re finding that there’s nothing in the marketplace but the usual handful of giant insurance companies offering lousy coverage for expensive premiums. These premiums will be partially subsidized […]

The Federal Reserve has now racked up a portfolio of nearly $3 trillion in asset purchases, aka “Quantitative Easing.” The Fed has claimed that they will keep up with this buying program with the immediate goal of keeping borrowing costs down, but keeping an eye on their ultimate goal of getting the national unemployment rate down to 6.5%. That’s what they have said anyway, although Bernanke periodically claims that the 6.5% percent rate isn’t a target exactly. This is typical of the Fed’s “maybe, maybe not” jargon. The unemployment rate has gone down since its worst months a few years back. This is due to a very small extent of job growth and to a […]

August 15, 2013 According to Portland, OR-based independent economist and international strategic advisor Magnuson (visiting fellow, Ashcroft International Business Sch. at Anglia Ruskin Univ., Cambridge, England; Mindful Economics: How the US Economy Works, Why It Matters, and How It Could Be Different), the world is ready for a great transformation. As the Oil Age comes to an end, living in the post-carbon economy will require a shift in thinking and consumption, and Magnuson proposes both theoretical and practical ideas for how that might happen. He places his analysis at the intersection of economic and ecological concerns to create a picture of how the world will change in the coming years, focusing on the institutional changes […]