Cat-Food Commission, Deficits, etc.

(1) The Cat-Food Commission--Oops!--I Mean the Deficit Commission: Two new articles posted to the D&S website just now:  Deficits: Real Issue, Phony Debates, by Rick Wolff (from the Nov/Dec issue), and The Deficit Commission and Redistribution, by Darwin BondGraham (web-only).  Check them out!  Joshua Holland also has a great article on deficits over at Alternet:  Why the Deficit Is Simply Not an Economic Problem Now, or in Future Decades.

(2) The Crisis in Ireland: I heard recently on a local Boston radio program that one of the bankers who apparently had a big role in crashing the Irish economy now lives in the suburbs of Boston.  Here's a piece on the two main culprits, from the Daily Beast:  Ireland's Financial Crisis: The Bankers Who Caused It. Hat-tip: TM.

(3) More on Conflicts of Interest among Academic Economists:  I finally saw Inside Job;  it could have had a bit more on underlying structural causes of the crisis, but on the whole it was great!  Among the best parts were (as I've mentioned in earlier posts) Charles Ferguson's skewering of academic economists for taking money from the finance sector while promoting deregulation.

This Sunday's Boston Globe had a great article, entitled Silent Partners, about D&S pal and UMass-Amherst economics chair Gerald Epstein, on a new study he has co-authored on the topic of conflicts of interest among economists.  One hopes that between Inside Job and studies like this one, the academics who helped pave the way for financial meltdown will start to get the negative attention they deserve; maybe they will even be held accountable.

Happy Thanksgiving!

--Chris Sturr