Economics of Capitalism
Is the culprit just ‘crony capitalism’?

Is the culprit just ‘crony capitalism’?

Reader Kathy recently sent the following comment to Liberation News on our article "Obama signs 'Monsanto Protection Act' into law": "It is unfortunate that you do not recognize that capitalism is not the culprit but crony capitalism. Please understand the difference...

Black women, with only $5 to our name

Black women, with only $5 to our name

Explaining the country's shocking disparities A shocking study released in March 2010 revealed that the average median wealth for women of color between the ages of 36-49 is only $5. By comparison, the average median wealth of white women in the same age group is...

Understanding the partial nationalization of the banks

Understanding the partial nationalization of the banks

As the economic crisis deepened over the past year, it became clear that some of the biggest banks were, very likely, bankrupt. As a result of the bursting of the speculative bubbles in housing and in industrial commodities such as oil, copper and aluminum, the assets...

Capitalist overproduction and the banking crisis

Capitalist overproduction and the banking crisis

Just weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the economic and financial crisis that started with a weakening of the U.S. housing market in mid-2006 has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Panicky runs on major banks has caused new failures and forced mergers....

A glut of homes in a sea of homelessness

A glut of homes in a sea of homelessness

The absurdity of capitalist overproduction Every year in the United States, 3.5 million people experience a period of homelessness, nearly half of them children, according to a 2007 report by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.1 During the same...

Milton Friedman: Ideologue of capitalist ‘freedom’

Milton Friedman: Ideologue of capitalist ‘freedom’

Working-class and oppressed people are not likely to mourn the death on Nov. 16 of Milton Friedman (1912-2006). He is acclaimed by the bourgeois media as a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning economist who explained how free markets and free trade, privatization of public...