Robert Pollin, economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), comments in a story about the slow progress being made in encouraging the green economy in the U.S. Pollin says few companies have applied for federal tax credits available to firms that are involved in green manufacturing and that currently only about 75,000 jobs have been generated. Overall, however, Pollin says green energy is an opportunity to help revive the nation’s manufacturing sector. (New York Times, 4/22/10)
Gerald Friedman, UMass Amherst economics professor, has been selected as a recipient of the Residential First Year Experience Student Choice Award. This student-nominated award is given to a member of the UMass community for making a significant impact on the lives of first-year students.
Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor, writes a column about how regulating toxic financial assets is similar to regulating toxic chemicals, and notes that in the case of the latter, current laws aren’t doing a very good job of protecting the public. She cites work done at the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass Amherst that publishes a list of top polluters each year as a way to make the critical information available and understandable. Overall, she concludes that transparency is a good thing, but isn’t always the best way to control toxic substances or assets. (New York Times, 5/3/10)
According to Richard Wolff, UMass Amherst economics professor emeritus, what is happening in Greece will parellel financial crises to come in other capitalist economies like Ireland, Spain and Portugal.
With too few taxes flowing to the state from employers and workers to finance its programs for both of them, the state must borrow the difference between tax revenues and programs’ costs. By borrowing, the state escapes, at least temporarily, the dilemmas of its position within capitalism’s class struggles. It postpones the day of reckoning until it can no longer borrow its way out of those dilemmas. Now, the global crisis of capitalism has brought Greece that day of reckoning, just a little sooner than everywhere else.
Gerald Epstein, professor and chair, economics, comments in a story about what is and isn’t in the financial regulations bill that is expected to pass the U.S. Senate soon. One thing missing from the new federal law is a way to control the credit ratings agencies that are supposed to accurately gauge the risk associated with investments. He calls for an indirect method of paying these agencies to remove the conflict created when banks create investment vehicles and then pay for the ratings agency. (Marketplace [NPR], 4/23/10)
The Independent People’s Tribunal (IPT) on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab, and Operation Green Hunt was held recently in New Delhi. The tribunal brought grassroots voices from different parts of the country protesting against neoliberal economic policies and corporate resource grab. In his article, “The Independent People’s Tribunal Reveals the Underbelly of Indian ‘Development'” Deepankar Basu, UMass Amherst economics professor, gives context to the three-day event by detailing the current political and economic climate in India. For example, the combined net worth of the richest 100 Indians in 2009 was US$ 276 billion, yet, as of 2004-2005, roughly 80 percent of Indian households did not have access to safe drinking water. Additionally, the resource grab that is underway has already displaced upwards of 300,000 indigenous people. (MR Zine, 4/17/10 and ZNet, 4/20/10)
Running for three days, from April 9 to April 11, the IPT heard accounts of diverse grassroots activists from the states of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal, and Jharkhand, the theater of an insidious war — nicknamed Operation Green Hunt (OGH) — that the Indian State has launched against its own people. Supplementing activist accounts and testimonies of witnesses with critical insights and advice of social scientists, journalists, legal experts, former government functionaries, and human rights activists, the people’s jury of the IPT made its opinion known through its interim observations and recommendations, the most urgent of which was to stop OGH and initiate a process of dialogue with the local population in the affected areas.1 Other recommendations included: immediately stopping all compulsory acquisition of agricultural or forest land and the forced displacement of the tribal people; making the details of all the memorandum of understanding (MOUs) signed for mining, mineral, and power projects known to the public; stop victimizing and harassing dissenters of the government’s policies; withdraw all paramilitary and police forces from schools and hospitals; constitute an Empowered Citizen’s Commission to investigate and recommend action against persons responsible for human rights violations of the tribal communities.2
James Crotty, UMass Amherst economics professor emeritus, says financial sector profits have been high in recent years because managers are taking more risks, but they aren’t always revealing that to the public. In a 2007 paper, Crotty questioned whether financial investment strategies that were once considered too risky to adopt, but made safe (and profitable) by modern risk-management techniques would increase the likelihood of a future systemic financial crisis. (Rortybomb, 4/19/10 and Financial Post, 4/21/10)
An analysis of auto shredding capacity in the scrap metal market cites a 2002 article by James Crotty, UMass Amherst economics professor emeritus, which says global excess capacity is difficult to measure or even define. (Recycling Today, 4/20/10)
In an article for MR Zine, Rick Wolff, UMass Amherst economics professor emeritus, argues that the current economic recovery plan, using public money to refinance failed banks, has not worked. Wolff offers an alternative plan; the federal government could finance rehiring of the unemployed with two qualifications: at least half of goods and services produced would have to be green and, second, the enterprises created to re-employ people would differ from traditional capitalist corporations by establishing genuine economic democracy at the workplace. (MR Zine, 4/18/10)
Nancy Folbre’s book, Saving State U: Fixing Public Higher Education, was reviewed by the Inside Beat. The book, which makes a case for strengthening public support for higher education, received a favorable review. “Folbre’s writing, in both style and context, doesn’t pull any punches, which is really refreshing, especially in a debate such as this. Using hard data about tuitions and other incurred costs, she stresses the need for government funding in state universities. Her accessible style and clear-cut ideas help to take a complex issue that affects thousands across the nation and break it down into logical, effective arguments.”
