The Establishment media put it this way: After shilly-shallying in a weak and indecisive manner, the Carter administration has at last decided to “get tough” in Africa against the Cuban (and behind them the Soviet) menace. President Carter himself has kept up a drumfire of hysteria about the specter of Cuban troops in the recent invasions of the Shaba province of Zaire from bases in Angola. This bogey was used as the pretext for America’s decision to go military in its continuing intervention in Africa.
[Excerpted from Defending the Undefendable. An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]
The Bank of Canada raised its key interest rate on Tuesday, the first G7 industrialized economy to do so after the global recession
Homeowners have started to get wise to the fact that, even if they don’t bother making payments, lenders won’t be evicting the residents any time soon. For a while now, more and more articles have been appearing the press noting big increases in the number of people who simply stop paying their mortgages. In the past, however, the attention has tended to focus on people who walked away from their homes. But why walk away when you can live in the house for free?
In 1896, Brooks Adams wrote a book called The Law of Civilization and Decay. Like most late-19th-century commentators, he believed that his country was nearing a watershed in its history. But unless America rallied around a strong leader, the center of world power, which he thought might be about to shift from England to the United States, would shift instead to Russia.
Many commentators (the majority of whom are not economists) blame the imminent crisis in the eurozone on malevolent speculators. I find it necessary to take up the cudgels on the traders’ behalf and explain why they are not culpable for the current mess.
