How the Wall Street Boom Went Kablooey

Reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book Bright-Sided recently, I became aware of Michael Lewis’s November 2008 article for Portfolio, “The End of Wall Street’s Boom,” which offers a fascinating inside look at how bubbles develop, sustain themselves, and then collapse. Lewis makes an interesting connection with the delusional “positive thinking” mode that seems to be an [...]

Simon Johnson: ‘What kind of catastrophe would you like?’

On CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on 7 January, MIT economist Simon Johnson delivered a perky, upbeat prediction of economic catastrophe in the next year due to the megalomania of banks that have drunk the too-big-to-fail Koolaid — see “Crisis Just Beginning: Economist“. You’ll get a kick out of Johnson’s collegial banter with CNBC’s Erin Burnett [...]

Ditching the GDP: Report from Sarkozy/Stiglitz commission

The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, a group initiated by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, has released a set of recommendations for a more sophisticated set of indicators to replace the concept of GDP (gross domestic product). Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz is chair of the commission. The draft of the report [...]

Energy Economist Says Oil Will Peak Sooner Than Expected

In an interview with The Independent, Dr. Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that most of the world’s major oil fields are already past their peak production — see today’s article, “Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast,” by Steve O’Connor. When O’Connor asked Birol to explain the concept of “peak oil,” [...]

‘Life Inc.’ author Douglas Rushkoff on Colbert Report

Douglas Rushkoff, who writes about media and popular culture, appeared July 15, 2009, on The Colbert Report. Rushkoff is currently promoting his new book, Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back. Rushkoff does a great job explaining the premise of his book, which is that corporations are only [...]

The Grandest Ponzi Scheme and The Great Disruption

In his recent column “The Inflection Is Near?,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman raises the question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically [...]

Is higher GDP a good thing?

Today’s news that the U.S. GDP shrank by 6.2 percent in fourth quarter 2008 got me thinking about the question whether a growing GDP is actually a good thing. Some people would say I must be crazy (or even evil) to even ask that question. Growth is an important assumption behind the prevailing economic model [...]