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By Mark Bahnisch on August 2, 2011
The US debt ceiling bill is a triumph for the Tea Party. It represents the victory of the wealthiest 1% over the rest of the citizenry.
Posted in Featured, Politics, USA | Tagged debt ceiling crisis, george monbiot, John Quiggin, Tea Party, US politics, wealth |
By Mark Bahnisch on July 31, 2011
Titanic battles between good and evil are fantasies, and the debt ceiling crisis illustrates what can happen when the fantastic power of ideology prevails.
Posted in Disasters, Economics, Featured, Politics, Sociology, USA | Tagged barack obama, debt ceiling crisis, GOP, ideology, libertarianism, neo-liberalism, Paul Krugman, Rand Paul, Republicans, roundtable, Tea Party, US politics |
By Mark Bahnisch on January 26, 2010
Responding to the loss of Ted Kennedy’s Massachussetts Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown, Barack Obama is set to announce a three year discretionary spending freeze. (Note that military spending is apparently compulsory not discretionary.) Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.Com thinks [...]
Posted in Economics, International, Markets, USA | Tagged andrew leonard, Australian politics, barack obama, blue dog democrats, Brad DeLong, Coalition, deficits, Economics, Evan Bayh, firedoglake, G20, GFC, global financial crisis, growth, herbert hoover, ideology, Liberal Party, nate silver, Paul Krugman, Politics, recession, Robert Reich, Salon, spending freeze, stimulus, US politics |
By Mark Bahnisch on January 26, 2010
A number of US financial blogs are reporting that Ben Bernanke faces a chance of failure to be confirmed by the American Senate for a second term in office. James Bianco at The Big Picture has all the details, and [...]
Posted in International, Markets, Politics, USA | Tagged alan greenspan, barack obama, Ben bernanke, central banks, Fed, federal reserve, global finance, global financial crisis, gordon brown, health care, ideology, James Bianco, Markets, Massachussetts, Naked Capitalism, neo-liberalism, Politics, Scott Brown, Senate, The Big Picture, us economy, US politics, Wall Street |
By Mark Bahnisch on January 20, 2010
News is just coming in that Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts has been lost by the Democrat, Martha Coakley, to the Republicans’ Scott Brown. FiveThirtyEight.Com has the margin at 52-47 and that blog will be well worth watching for [...]
Posted in Culture, Foreign Elections, Politics, USA | Tagged anti-politics, barack obama, David Hirst, Democrats, filibuster, GFC, living standards, Main Street, Martha Coakley, Massachussetts, nate silver, Republicans, Scott Brown, Senate, special election, super majority, Ted Kennedy, unemployment, US politics, Wall Street |
By Mark Bahnisch on January 8, 2010
In a recent post, I observed that the momentum for systemic reform and coordinated international regulation of the financial sector, pursued through the G20 in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, appeared to have stalled. In that context, it [...]
Posted in Economics, Elections, International, Markets, Politics, USA | Tagged banks, Capitalism, dominique strauss-kahn, G20, GFC, global finance, global financial crisis, IMF, inside story, John Langmore, Senate, tobin tax, transactions, US midterm elections 2010, US politics |
By Mark Bahnisch on December 22, 2009
A predictable response to the Copenhagen fail has been calls from Australian business for *even more* ‘compensation’ as a condition for continued support of the Rudd government’s ETS. I’ll save the domestic politics of the Copenhagen washup for a later [...]
Posted in Climate change, International, Policy, Politics, USA | Tagged Andrew Norton, behavioural economics, business, Climate change, conservatism, Copenhagen, corporatism, cprs, ets, Glenn Greenwald, health reform, ideology, Kevin Rudd, nudge, Obama, progressives, property rights, rent seeking, social democracy, US politics, vested interests |
By Mark Bahnisch on October 28, 2009
Writing in the always fabulous London Review of Books, David Bromwich has a very interesting argument on why Barack Obama has been something of a disappointment. Though Bromwich’s political commitments are fairly well known – at least to readers of [...]
Posted in Culture, Politics, USA | Tagged American politics, barack obama, David Bromwich, Fox news, Huffington Post, HuffPo, ideology, London Review of Books, LRB, political culture, political theory, right, US politics |
By Mark Bahnisch on October 22, 2009
It’s quite possible, and indeed, I think quite progressive, to criticise the American political system for resolving too many divisive issues through the courts. That’s another story, I guess, but it certainly is the case that many political shifts have [...]
Posted in Climate change, Law, USA | Tagged class action lawsuit, Climate change, Hurricane Katrina, litigation, Ralph Nader, US politics |
By Kim on March 26, 2009
With Kevin Rudd in Washington meeting Barack Obama, and the new Geithner Plan seemingly hostage to the insta-reaction of the markets, punditocracy and economists alike, it’s worth pausing to cast an eye over an argument by Ian Leslie in The [...]
Posted in Culture, Economics, Media, Sociology, USA | Tagged barack obama, Capitalism, cultural studies, Economics, Fredric Jameson, global financial crisis, Ian Leslie, Kevin Rudd, Keynesianism, Markets, Media, US election 2008, US politics, value |
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