Post Tagged with: "unions"
Harrisburg Fails to Get the Word
Municipal bondholders have something else to worry about. If Occupy Wall Street has legs, and, if labor unions handcuff the protestors’ agenda (“Major Unions Join Occupy Wall Street Protest” – New York Times, October 5, 2011), will that effectively downgrade general obligation (G.O.) bonds another notch? That is unlikely. In fact, trends over the past few months have shown states and municipalities are more inclined to meet general obligation bond payments as long as they possibly can. Union workers who press municipalities into bankruptcy (the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania bankruptcy might be interpreted as such) should take heed
What can we learn from the policies that spurred the Industrial Revolution?
Some of the dominant policy issues of today – immigration, energy, the emergence of China – have their analogues in the great Industrial Revolution. The key government policies that laid the foundation for the Industrial Revolution in England include supporting the immigration of skilled workers, allowing for private ownership of farm land, weakening the unions of the day (the guilds), and addressing the energy crisis (in charcoal). And contrary policies in Italy and Spain – countries that were far wealthier and advanced than was per-Industrial Revolution England – derailed a similar revolution from occurring in continental Europe.
England would not have been anyone’s first bet as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution
Greece now, America in due course
In this interview with Real News Network, Michael Hudson argues that opportunists are using this debt crisis as a grab bag to strip the state of its assets and collect those rents for their own private wealth accumulation. He says what’s happening in Greece is a dress rehearsal for what’s going on in the United States
What is the secret to Germany’s economic success?
Overall, we should credit Germany for building a recovery based not just on exports, but on capital investment and saving. One reason that Germany is a manufacturing and export powerhouse is because it has invested in those businesses. Certainly, wage restraint over the past decade by German labour unions has kept German companies in the mix. But, at heart, the German export story is about investment in human and physical capital. And that is definitely worthy of emulation