Economics, Right and Left

Loretta Napoleoni on “Rogue Economics: Capitalism’s New Reality”

Italian economist, journalist and author Loretta Napoleoni argues that recent events on Wall Street indicate a much larger upheaval and could “signal the end of the ‘Roaring Nineties,’ nearly two decades of easy money, cheap credit, and soaring global debt.” It’s an argument Napoleoni develops in her latest book called Rogue Economics: Capitalism’s New Reality. [includes rush transcript]

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Indeed, while Wall Street and their bought and paid for 'think tanks' went on and on about 'globalism' and 'free markets' what was really going on was specfic tweaking to help specific people.

On a local level, innocently named 'Business Improvement Districts" were designed to help big companies muscle out smaller ones under the guise of providing services that the city should already be providing.

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Meanwhile Pat Buchanan points out:

When Europe imposes a 15 percent value-added tax on U.S. imports and rebates the VAT on exports to the United States, that is not free trade. When China devalues its currency 45 percent, as it did in 1994, and bolts it down to suck jobs and factories out of the United States, that is not free trade. When Japan manipulates its currency, preaches economic nationalism to its people, and shelters its market for TVs, autos and steel, while dumping into and capturing ours, that is not free trade.

"Free Traders" in Washington sit around and do NOTHING when millions of American workers lose their jobs...but lo and behold, when Wall Street screws up - the fed comes and bails them out at our expense. SOme free traders, I guess, are more equal than others.