After three years of belt-tightening, Tom Van De Water, 41, a customer information systems manager in Stratham, N.H., has finally loosened the family budget. This year he and his wife, Alyson, 41, celebrated their 10th anniversary in St. Lucia, and she bought him a pricey watch for his birthday.
Are these signs of a return to the free-spending good old days, when the couple wouldn’t have hesitated to buy the best stuff and top off one of their frequent dinners out with an expensive bottle of wine? Not by a long shot.
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‘Analytics’ Category
America’s new financial values
October - 27 - 2011
The American Financial Crisis
October - 19 - 2011
In my view, the crisis stems from the 1970′s, as a result of a new international division of labor (neoliberal policies also called globalization). Since that time, these policies generated a series structural and socio-political processes at the global and U.S. domestic level which I believe are the forces that would allow us to understand the current crisis and, therefore, to properly address them. Unfortunately, what U.S. policy makers are doing right now are just “putting out fires” that is, all policies of monetary expansion, release of debt, bank bailouts, are issues that will not achieve the necessary results the American economy needs right now. What we need is to do a root cause analysis of the current and past crisis and adopt a system view of how the productive and financial institutions have been operating since financial markets were deregulated starting in the 1970s which are the cause of the problem.
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American Values and Corporatocracy
October - 3 - 2011
My new book, The Price of Civilization, describes why America needs a “mixed economy,” one where a more effective federal government regulates business and invests alongside the business sector. In his review of my book, Congressman Paul Ryan, an avowed libertarian, describes my book as anti-American in its values. Ryan is wrong: my book describes how we can restore politics to the true mainstream of American values, rescuing democracy from the clutches of corporate power that Ryan champions in deeds if not in words.
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A new stock market crash, a pattern?
September - 23 - 2011
Every production phase or civilization or other human invention goes through a so called transformation process. Transitions are social transformation processes that cover at least one generation. In this article I will use one such transition to demonstrate the position of our present civilization and its possible effect on stock exchange rates.
When we consider the characteristics of the phases of a social transformation we may find ourselves at the end of what might be called the third industrial revolution. Transitions are social transformation processes that cover at least one generation (= 25 years). A transition has the following characteristics:
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