Tag: great recession

Let’s Get Real: What is Sustainable in Markets, the Biosphere, and Society?

February 3, 2020

In a number of posts, I have discussed various social illusions such as the idea that the extractive industrial consumer economy could just keep growing permanently, as so many economists implicitly insist. That deeply flawed illusion rests on some equally defective assumptions. Many people also believe that as industrial materials reach a state of depletion … More Let’s Get Real: What is Sustainable in Markets, the Biosphere, and Society?

Kleptocracy Rising: The Short Eventful Life of the Corporate State of Trumplandia

February 2, 2017

Just about every Trumpeted nominee for high office has obvious conflicts of interest with upholding the public trust, no less the United States Constitution. At the core of the problem is their basic attitude toward government itself. They furtively frame their intentions in the most patriotic sounding rhetoric they can muster. However, they are corporatists; they … More Kleptocracy Rising: The Short Eventful Life of the Corporate State of Trumplandia

Moving Toward an Ecological Infrastructure. Part I: From Growth to Development

July 9, 2014

Economists are often confused by their own wallowing in esoteric but useless mathematical formulations of unquantifiable human complexities. But we just can’t afford their foolishness anymore. Investment in infrastructure is desperately needed, but not by merely restoring the infrastructure of the old growth economy. That needs to be replaced by a new viable infrastructure for … More Moving Toward an Ecological Infrastructure. Part I: From Growth to Development

Making Money: The Ultimate Illusion of a Debt-Driven Economy

June 29, 2014

How is money made? Well, in conventional terms we work for it. But where does it come from? We know that the economy needs a sufficient “money supply” so we can exchange “goods and services” every day. Of course, it’s not that simple. After the “Great Recession” of 2008, the Federal Reserve injected hundreds of … More Making Money: The Ultimate Illusion of a Debt-Driven Economy