A longer version of the article will appear in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on December 5th, 2011

Book V of Aristotle’s Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies – which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to “take the multitude into their camp” and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history.

A historian and provocateur says the modern problem with debt is really a problem with how we see it. THE WORD ITSELF is one we find chilling: debt. On a personal level, the burden of debt can hang over our lives and choke off our options; at the national level, worry about the ballooning US debt has threatened to paralyze both Washington and the economy as a whole.

Friends, this is an excellent historical analysis of corporatism in Norway. There are extensive references to original resources, though I have little capacity to analyze the quality of the references, though it matches up fairly well with what is known about the phenomenon and rise of fascism elsewhere. This is written in a very global and more immediate integration that is one the level of social movements for forward and backward social movements and political economics. This article seems to deserve a much wider exposure than what it is likely to have generally.

Readers, this is well written review of an important book to the history of monetary economics. There are further implications for the history of political economics. Though Wray mentions the importance of this book to monetary theorists, it also presses a major shift in how the economics and history of the region does not coincide with the interpretations generally applied.

The overthrow of the Eastern Establishment by capitalists from the Southern rim was called by my friend Danny Foss, "The Revolt of the Needy Rich." As I noted in my previous blog, this particular sector of capital became wealthy through the largess of the federal government. Take, for example, Southern California; on the surface, we think of Hollywood, real estate, and all those wonderful prepared environments that tourists like to visit, such as the San Diego Zoo and Safari Preserve, Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knotts Berry Farm, and so forth.

Readers, If you combine this with the history of the Persian Empire as organized to be a protectorate of the western portion of the Silk Road with the sea borne and over land, and with the contours of international trade by the Phoenicians and Phoceans there seems to be a continuity in several ways. Add to this that the realms of the east from about 300 CE became a refuge for scholars and intellectuals from Egypt and the general mediterranean area post Emperors Constantine and then Julian.

Readers, I am sharing this article to draw a parallel between the pre-Weimar collapse and the current political escapades relative to the management of the global and national economies. The Weimar government has certain similarities to the current Obama administration in the US. The situation in the US seems to be poised a continuing failure by "social," (read as "corporate") democrats. The triangulation by the "Tea Party" corporatists completes a corporate deadlock, and no substantive reform being possible.

Readers, This is an article based upon a wonder project of historical work. It is effectively about the economic origins of the colonies in north America which later became the United States under the Confederation of States.While the southern states were operated upon an agricultural economy, the northern economy was more mixed. By the time that the fiction of the Continental Congress came about, it is easier to see why the northern gentry chose to ally themselves with the southern plantation owners.

Readers, I've saying for years that this whole process began over thirty years ago. It is actually not news in that there have been commentators who have observed the same process, though it was not connected to the finance sector itself. It started as a mobilization of resources clearly with a corporatist agenda. So for my friend that is fond attributing this mess to the baby boomers, actually they were only willing dupes. The important question becomes how do we resist and subvert this process.

From the late summer of 1985 into the early spring of 1986, the small town of Austin, Minnesota, figured prominently in the national news. The dramatic themes and issues, twists and turns, of a labor conflict there captured the national imagination. This interest was not merely passive, as more than thirty support committees formed across the U.S. and aid for the strikers came from nineteen countries. This strike touched a raw, deep nerve.