Gulf Oil Spill: America's Chernobyl

Alejandro Nadal

The Deepwater Horizon disaster has the familiar ingredients of deregulation, deception, and destruction that characterize the relations between governments and multinational corporations. It was a man-made disaster, like Chernobyl. And like the global financial crisis, it all started with the explosion of a bubble, this time of methane gas.

The Wages of Deregulation

In 2008 the Bush-Cheney duo lifted the executive order banning offshore drilling, and the House of Representatives agreed to let a 26-year-old moratorium on offshore drilling expire. Deregulation was moving full speed ahead.

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Gulf Oil Spill: America’s Chernobyl

Alejandro Nadal

The Deepwater Horizon disaster has the familiar ingredients of deregulation, deception, and destruction that characterize the relations between governments and multinational corporations. It was a man-made disaster, like Chernobyl. And like the global financial crisis, it all started with the explosion of a bubble, this time of methane gas.

The Wages of Deregulation

In 2008 the Bush-Cheney duo lifted the executive order banning offshore drilling, and the House of Representatives agreed to let a 26-year-old moratorium on offshore drilling expire. Deregulation was moving full speed ahead.

Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. Financial Reform: The roots of the problem go deeper

Robert Wade, guest blogger

What should we make of the financial reform laid out in the Congress’ bill? The approach is based on the assumption that the financial system is basically sound but needs “more government” in the form of more regulation — as distinct from structural change (for example, to downsize very large banks or to separate deposit-taking banks from investment banks). The Democrat who shepherded the legislation through the Senate, Christopher Dodd, said that improving regulation made more sense than restraining an industry that was critical to the American economy and that faced fierce competition from foreign banks which would not be placed under similar restrictions.

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The Greek Tragedy and the Political Roots of Fiscal Crisis

Sanjay G. Reddy

The economic crisis in Greece, which has roiled all of Europe, has been presented by the mainstream media as arising from the mismanagement of economic resources.  In fact, the real roots of the crisis and others like it are in the malfunctioning of political institutions.

Politics, according to the famous formulation of Harold Lasswell, is about who gets what, when and how.  Although all political institutions produce an answer to these questions, well-functioning ones must produce answers that are, at a minimum, not manifestly irrational (for instance, in the sense that they are worse for nearly everyone than those which some alternative would have brought about) nor manifestly unjust  (for instance, in the sense that they systematically favor the already advantaged over the already disadvantaged).  However, many political institutions fail to satisfy one or both of these criteria.

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