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Author Topic: Economics for Everyone: Jim Stanford
N.Beltov
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posted 25 July 2008 05:18 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Economics is too important to be left to the economists. Economics for Everyone is a brilliantly concise and readable book that provides non-specialist readers with all the information they need to understand how capitalism works (and how it doesn't).

The CCPA has a few free downloads to give prospective readers of this new book by Jim Stanford a taste of what to expect.

quote:
Jim Stanford's book is an antidote to the abstract and ideological way that economics is normally taught and reported. Key concepts such as finance, competition and wage labour are explored, and their importance to everyday life is revealed.

The book will be backed up by web-based instructional materials as well. Check out the link over here. There is already a review by Mel Watkins.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 25 July 2008 06:25 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Or if you want to understand capitalist economics from the point of view of someone who does not fundamentally support capitalism, you have hundreds of choices. I would suggest this one, for example.
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 25 July 2008 06:37 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
For those of you who read French, there is a new edition of Mandel's little book with a critical introduction bringing it up to date: http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article6961

English translation of introduction:
http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article7231

I'm looking forward to reading Jim Stanford's book as well. Wonder if a French-language version will be brought out for trade unionists here?


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
George Victor
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posted 25 July 2008 06:58 AM      Profile for George Victor        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Does Mandel explain in some detail how his early 1970s prediction of finance capitalism's collapse due to the over-extension of credit has been staved off?

Would it look something like that in Bad Money? Or more like Janszen's piece in February Harper's?

It's not that I'm lazy or unable to pick up a copy of his work, but I'm really interested in someone else's take on it. I was really impressed with Mandel's prediction 35 years (or so) back.


From: Cambridge, ON | Registered: Oct 2007  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 25 July 2008 07:49 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think the problem with our economy in Canada is that our two old line parties have tried to treat it as a "capitalist economy" when in fact it has two distinct and separate features, public sector economy and private sector. Canada's two fiscal Frankenstein parties have starved public sector financing in order to "balance the books" which they screwed up so badly themselves in the 1980's-90's. Canada's two oldest political parties are unique among "G8" countries in that they have dinged-up huge and unprecedented in the world national debts since privatizing money creation, but really very unique in the way our Liberals then sabotaged the economy in the 1990's in order to obssess with paying down debt. In a comparison of aggregate perfermance of 35 developed economies in that decade, Industry Canada and economist Pierre Fortin said Canada's economy performed "about the worst."
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 25 July 2008 10:59 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by lagatta:
For those of you who read French, there is a new edition of Mandel's little book with a critical introduction bringing it up to date:
Actually, that's not the same book. The one you refer to was called From Class Society to Communism in English.

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 25 July 2008 11:14 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
Does Mandel explain in some detail how his early 1970s prediction of finance capitalism's collapse due to the over-extension of credit has been staved off?
Mandel died 13 years ago, so he's not in much of a position to explain anything right now.

If he were, he might begin by pointing out that very few people's predictions from 35 years ago about the world in 2008 were accurate.

He might also point to a series of recurring crises in finance capital since the 1970s - e.g. the east Asian financial crisis of 1997, and most recently the US housing bubble.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 25 July 2008 11:30 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
"The current market turmoil in the world's main financial centers is without precedent in the postwar period.... [F]ears are building that the global economy might be at some kind of tipping point. These fears are not groundless." the BIS

Quote from the 2008 annual report of the Bank for International Settlements. They present somewhat of a bleak outlook for the state of the financial system and warning that the crisis is far from over. Statement issued June 30.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
unionist
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posted 25 July 2008 12:45 PM      Profile for unionist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I've generally been more interested in reading about why civilizations have collapsed than in why civilizations will collapse.

For one thing, the latter don't tend to be very accurate. I'm not an expert in the subject, but did anyone predict the collapse of the Soviet Union more than (say) ten years before the fact? Or five?

I liked Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress:

quote:
In five lucid, meticulously documented essays, Wright traces the rise and plummet of four regional civilizations -- those of Sumer, Rome, Easter Island, and the Maya -- and judges that most, perhaps all, of humanity is making and will continue to make mistakes equally disastrous as theirs.

It's probably not very "Marxian" in flavour, but what a great read - and it's substantially less than 200 pages.

Haven't read Stanford's book. How many pages is it?


From: Vote QS! | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 25 July 2008 12:57 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Didn't Ronald Wright conclude that all those collapsed empires were based on consumption economies where the vast majority were peons who worked all their miserable lives to channel great wealth into the hands of a few elites?

Let's see, WWI there was collapse of Austro-Hungarian, Chinese and a few more empires. WW II era saw collapse British and German empires. After a vicious and expensive cold war, Soviet Union collapses "all by itself." Now they're saying it's the USSA's turn.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 25 July 2008 01:49 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Now they're saying it's the USSA's turn.

But they've been saying that since 1917.

It's an article of faith.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 25 July 2008 02:17 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm still going to pick up a souvenir flag and pound of fudge for posterity sake, yust in case eh.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
jester
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posted 25 July 2008 02:31 PM      Profile for jester        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
Mandel died 13 years ago, so he's not in much of a position to explain anything right now.

If he were, he might begin by pointing out that very few people's predictions from 35 years ago about the world in 2008 were accurate.

He might also point to a series of recurring crises in finance capital since the 1970s - e.g. the east Asian financial crisis of 1997, and most recently the US housing bubble.


But these recurring crises did not have the unprecidented usage of structured investment vehicles. These SIVs - derivatives, credit default swaps and other toxic financial alchemy have the ability to collapse the global financial order if any principal or counterparty fails to perform (default) on any specific performance arrangements.

The sub-prime housing crisis is only a symptom of the problem. The solution will be a massive transfer of wealth from the average American to foreign holders of American debt as the US Treasury prints money to bail out their friends on Wall St.

The resulting debt will devalue the USD and wipe out American assets,savings and expected government services like SS pensions, Medicare and medicaid.

The hollowing out of the United States will continue as foreign investors use their USD to purchase undervalued US corporations for less than their book value.


From: Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 25 July 2008 02:52 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:

But they've been saying that since 1917.

It's an article of faith.


Almost forgot the last big crisis of American capitalism in 1929. It was down for the count until FDR-style Keynesian socialism saved capitalism from itself. Same thing happened in Chile after the invisible hand went missing a second time.

But there is no FDR on the horizon today, and they're trying to save the financial house of cards from collapsing again with huge taxpayer-funded firewalls of money. The window's been left wide open this time, and all it might take is a little breeze.

[ 25 July 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
George Victor
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posted 25 July 2008 05:04 PM      Profile for George Victor        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes MS. It's that "U.S. housing bubble" that is discussed in Bad Money and the Harper's piece.

What is NOT discussed, anywhere, is the degree of greed and naive acceptance of Bay Street gospel about their investments that the great unwashed have descended to - since well before Mandel's death in '95.

But these events are always discussed without mentioning the declining understanding of the electorate/worker/voter in the whole process.

It's almost as though everyone is writing on the eve of an election and they do not want to offend their potential support.

I'd really like to see your reaction to those previously-discussed sources,MS, (capitalists criticizing the market? Also see Caldwell and Associates ad in the Globe and Mail on the hollowing out of Canadian ownership in Canadian industry, 2007) - outside of some sort of pre-election setting? I mean, just between us and the babble group?


From: Cambridge, ON | Registered: Oct 2007  |  IP: Logged
jester
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posted 25 July 2008 07:32 PM      Profile for jester        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:

What is NOT discussed, anywhere, is the degree of greed and naive acceptance of Bay Street gospel about their investments that the great unwashed have descended to - since well before Mandel's death in '95.

But these events are always discussed without mentioning the declining understanding of the electorate/worker/voter in the whole process.


The degree of greed and naive acceptance is massaged by media manipulation of true rumours and false denials to keep a sceptical public off base and overloaded with conflicting messages.

The declining understanding of whatever constituency is a goal, not a result. One of the Street's greatest weapons is their ability to meld accounting mumbo-jumbo and off balance sheet transactions with innappropriate accounting regulation to falsly value mark to market securities at full face value rather than their true depriciated value.

quote:

National Australia Bank's decision to write off 90 per cent of its US conduit loans will have dramatic repercussions around the world. Wall Street will be deeply shocked when they understand the repercussions of what NAB has done. It is clear global banks have nowhere near provided for their exposures to US housing loans which in the words of John Stewart are experiencing a “meltdown”.

We are now way beyond sub-prime. NAB says that it is suffering a 55 per cent loss on American housing loans – an event that has never happened in the history of a developed country in recent memory. This is an unprecedented event and means that the cost of bailing out the US financial system is now far beyond the highest estimates. A US recession is now locked in, but more alarmingly, 55 per cent loan losses point to the possibility of a depression.


55% losses is a mark to market valuation of 45% as opposed to the 90-95% the US banks are stubbornly attempting to carry to avoid unavoidable consequences.

There is a plan,abetted by the feds who are allowing financial houses to circumvent disclosure rules to avoid a panic run on banks, that is announcing one bad news disclosure per day or so to try to manipulate public confidence in the US.

As the linked article shows,the bad news is piling up too fast to contain and soon,the US Treasury will be forced to choose who they bail out and who they don't. If Secretary Paulson proceeds with the Fannie/Freddie bailout,there won't be much room to bail out others without totally ruining the USD.

Canadian banks, except for CIBC may be OK but the average Canadian individual and private corporation will be squeezed by curtailed credit availability and affordability as the banks circle the wagons to shore up their balance sheets.


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DonnyBGood
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posted 09 August 2008 06:30 PM      Profile for DonnyBGood     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think that if the US does things to devalue the dollar in order t reduce the exposure of the US banks foreign holders of US currency will buy more of it to protect their assets.

Thus it would seem the only purpose of the current financial crisis is to enrich the brokers and bankers.


From: Toronto | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
jester
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posted 09 August 2008 07:01 PM      Profile for jester        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by DonnyBGood:
I think that if the US does things to devalue the dollar in order t reduce the exposure of the US banks foreign holders of US currency will buy more of it to protect their assets.

Thus it would seem the only purpose of the current financial crisis is to enrich the brokers and bankers.


The US is not unhappy with a lower dollar to export its problems offshore but the concern is that if the dollar falls below .71 on the Index, confidence in the USD (which is illusionary and supported by faith only) will evaporate. Without a reserve currency to take its place,the possiblity exists that a global depression may ensue.

The current financial crisis is merely another wealth transfer mechanism that brokers and bankers profit from on both the upside and downside.


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Fidel
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posted 09 August 2008 07:52 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Jerry West recommended this book review (Monthly Review) of a book entitled: Economics: A New Introduction written by Hugh Stretton also published by Pluto Press

quote:
Reaganomics was initially seen as laughable and its policies as some combination of stupid and cruel. Now the policies are taken as common sense, and the economics as the new gospel.

It is that virtually unchallenged economics that Hugh Stretton effectively demolishes in his superb book. He is a great teacher; he writes clearly and without the priestly air so common to economists. . .

"The resort to deregulation, privatization and smaller government since the 1970s proves to have been a mistaken response to the new troubles of “stagflation,” and an active cause of some of them. Economists share responsibility for that “right turn” in economic policy. Without their expert authority it is hard to believe that the various political and business groups who drove the new strategy could have persuaded majorities to support it, or tolerate it, for so long.(ix)"


Economics for everyone website - Click on the jobless Canadian about to become a nul unemployment statistic:

[ 09 August 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Policywonk
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posted 09 August 2008 09:02 PM      Profile for Policywonk     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
public sector economy and private sector.

Plus the cooperative sector and the not-for-profit sector, if you are going to divide that way. There is overlap between them, but the not-for-profit sector accounts for about 20% of employment in Canada. Obviously not 20% of employment income, although some not-for-profits are multi-million dollar operations.


From: Edmonton | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
siamdave
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posted 21 August 2008 07:23 PM      Profile for siamdave   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I haven't got a copy of the book yet, so maybe am being unfair to Mr Stanford, but I have been over the website and articles about it, and it seems he does not take exception to one of the central features of capitalism that is, to me, the central problem with everything - the control of the country's money supply. Mr Stanford seems to feel that allowing our money to be controlled by private banks for private gain is an acceptable way to provide our money supply. I disagree very strongly - if a people do not control their own money, they can never be sovereign, and they also leave themselves completely vulnerable to all sorts of economic problems that simply need not be. We can have a not too bad society if we have a strong 'we the people' government which acts as a control on the banks, as we did from following the Great Depression through the mid-70s, but it is still a 'sword of Damocles' hanging over our heads to allow the situation at all, as we have seen since the late 70s and the neocon takeover of our society and the economic problems we have had, including a couple of major bank bailouts and several 'bubbles' resulting from their creating too much speculative money. It's all explained in more detail than one would want to encumber a discussion list with at Banketeering - how the banks have been stealing trillions from you, and the tap is still running http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box01-money.html .
From: Thailand | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 21 August 2008 09:11 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Excellent post about money creation and credit.

And I think Canada's problems are even deeper than Mulroney's bailout of banks and continued banketeering under Chretien-Martin-Harper. Canada could be doing a lot better even though our money supply is somewhere around 95% privatized. Canada has been an extraordinary right-wing economic lab experiment at the same time we prop up banks and energy companies siphoning off our resources and paying rock-bottom royalties and taxes all the while.

[ 21 August 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
FringeMan
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posted 25 August 2008 04:46 AM      Profile for FringeMan   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hi Folks, Jim Stanford here, thanks to everyone for the interest in our Economics for Everyone project (a joint effort of the CCPA, Fernwood Publishing, and Pluto Press).

In case you haven't seen it, check out Jenn Watt's very generous review of the book for rabble here:

Rabble Review of Economics for Everyone

Our general goal is to present a comprehensive overview of economics that is critical but accessible to engaged, non-specialists. The book is supported by a simple curriculum that we are designing and posting for free use at www.economicsforeveryone.ca. That material can help unions and other activist groups to sponsor their own popular economics courses.

Re the previous comments from siamdave and Fidel: There is what I think is a very matter-of-fact discussion in Chapter 16 of the book about exactly how the process of money-creation (credit-creation) by for-profit private banks works in modern capitalism, and the drawbacks of that system (it creates new credit when, where, and for what the private banks think is most profitable, rather than when, where, and for what society actually needs). The current credit squeeze is a classic example of the Minskian "bankers' cycle" in motion: bankers create too much money when times are good and their confidence is high, and not enough when times are bad and their confidence is low.

Democratizing the monetary system so that credit creation is used more consciously to promote broader goals, is most definitely a key part of a progressive economic vision -- although it's by no means a "magic bullet" solution to all that ails the economy. There are many other issues relating to production, distribution, and the environment that we must also be challenging, at the same time as we fight for monetary reforms.


From: Toronto | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
jester
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posted 25 August 2008 05:01 AM      Profile for jester        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
China has $346 billion USD invested in US agency debt, mostly in Fannie and Freddie. If the US Treasury bails Fannie and Freddie out via senior preferred shares that cut the shareholders out and keep the transaction off the US balance sheet, what are the implications of this move on confidence in the global financial system and the USD?


How much pain is the general public willing to endure in allowing the banksters to avoid moral hazard before they rise up?


From: Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
George Victor
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posted 25 August 2008 06:25 AM      Profile for George Victor        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
How much does the "general public" have invested in the assets of those banks, j?

Or, what percentage of the general public would have "significant" holdings?

And doesn't control of the country's money supply. as proposed from Thailand, mean exchange controls and the beginning of the end (yeah! ) to globalization, a rather necessary step in controlling growth, etc?

[ 25 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]


From: Cambridge, ON | Registered: Oct 2007  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 25 August 2008 10:37 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by FringeMan:

Democratizing the monetary system so that credit creation is used more consciously to promote broader goals, is most definitely a key part of a progressive economic vision -- although it's by no means a "magic bullet" solution to all that ails the economy. There are many other issues relating to production, distribution, and the environment that we must also be challenging, at the same time as we fight for monetary reforms.


Excellent comments. You know, I'm just going to have to buy the book now. Give 'er Jim!


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged

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