.The latest from Ron Baiman of the Chicago Political Economy Group. The piece from James Galbraith and Yanis Varoufakis he mentions, Only the Left can Save Greece, was anticipated by our piece by Marjolein van der Veen, Greece and the Crisis of Europe: Which Way Out?
I expect most have seen these two columns in today's [Monday's] NYTimes. One depressing: An utterly justifiable chastisement of Ben Bernanke by Paul Krugman.
Krugman rightly chastizing Bernanke and the Fed for giving into right wing pressure to "rein in" monetary stimulus even as we are still in the midst of what Krugman calls "a low grade depression" (and what CPEG has been calling a "Lesser Depression") as a cursory glance at the
the two figures in this report readily reveals:
And though these figures are from March data very little has changes since then. Unfortunately I cannot update the figures here, but as April 2013 (CPS household survey) job loss since the start of the recession in Dec 2007 was -1.90% and May 2013 -1.77% (updating the first Figure and Table); and April 2013 (CES establishment survey) employment to population ratio loss since Dec 2007 was -6.95% in April 2013 and May 2013 -6,81% (updating the second Figure), it is clear that very little has changed as Joe Persky has pointed out in the latest May CPEG jobs report.
Of course it would be nice if the Fed would bail out the real economy instead of just the financial sector, but hey! We'll take whatever we can get!
And a second more hopeful note by Jamie Gailbraith and Yanis Varoufakis on why only the left can save Greece and Europe: with (my Chicago) print version title: "Only the Left can Save Greece."
What we need is an editorial on why: "Only the Left can Save the U.S. and the World."
--Ron Baiman