America's Cold War relationships have created conditions for very hot wars to take place. The current war in Ukraine is part of that sorry Cold War legacy.
Michael Rectenwald takes on the progressive canard of "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor," in which the government protects the wealthy but throws everyone else to the tender mercies of rapacious capitalism.
Politicians have become accustomed to conjuring whatever they want through the “miracle” of printing money. But in the real world, it’s still necessary to produce oil and gas through actual physical production.
The US has sworn off regime change in Russia. The lesson here is obvious for regimes that don’t wish to be in the US’s sphere of influence: get nuclear weapons as soon as you can.
Despite assurances from politicians and the media, the Federal Reserve System is not a collection of geniuses who stand guard against inflation and recession. Instead, think of the Fed policy makers as the Keystone Cops of central banking.
Russian oligarchs, American pols, and state-connected billionaires are all cut from the same cloth: they didn't earn, or fully earn, their wealth and position in society. We must withdraw our sanction of these people.
From globalization to sanctions, to international institutions like the UN, the US is leading a small global fragment that's little more than NATO and a handful of friends. Meanwhile, two-thirds of the global economy isn't signing on.
Lenin called World War I a war among the capitalists of Europe. He was wrong. It was a war among oligarchs, statists who extract wealth from legitimate economic activity at the barrel of a gun.
