Desde el comienzo de la actual crisis económica global, el centro del análisis crítico y del odio público ha sido el capital especulativo. En la narrativa populista, fueron las impresionantes trampas de los bancos en una atmósfera de desregulación las que condujeron al colapso económico. La “economía financiera”, caracterizada como parasítica y mala, fue contrapuesta a la “economía real”, de la... Read more

Ever since the beginning of the current global economic crisis, the focus of both critical analysis and public odium has been speculative capital. In the populist narrative, it was the breathtaking shenanigans of the banks in an atmosphere of deregulation that led to the economic collapse. The “financial economy,” characterized as parasitic and bad, was contrasted to the “real economy,” which... Read more

As crucial climate talks begin in Durban, attention is focused on the likely role of the major country groupings. The outcome of the UN climate conference will be largely decided by the interplay of forces between the Basic (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) group formed two years ago, the EU, and the umbrella group of developed countries, led by the US and comprising Russia, Japan, Canada... Read more

This is an extraordinary time. The astonishing Occupy Wall Street movement emerged as the heart of our 99%, claimed the little scrap of earth in Zuccotti Park on behalf of all of us, and created a live-in soapbox from which to challenge inequality — how the 1% controls our economy, buys off our government, imposes their wars, and avoids paying their taxes. It both reflects and marks an end to... Read more

As Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen recounted in his (1999) Development as Freedom, thousands of years ago Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, noted: “wealth is evidently not the good we seek, for it is merely useful…for the sake of something else.” This line resonated strongly with a similar discussion between a husband and wife recounted in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads around... Read more

The death of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will likely — though it’s too early to know anything for sure — mean the end of the current stage of Libya’s civil war. Whether it will set the stage for peace, national reconciliation, democracy, normalization with the region or other goals is far less clear. And what post-Gadhafi Libya’s relationship with the United States and other NATO countries... Read more