Author: Tony Wikrent Page 28 of 48

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Orwell Was Right (excerpt)

Matt Taibbi [TK News, via Naked Capitalism 3-14-2022]

The ideal citizen of Orwell’s Oceania bubbled with rage a mile wide and a millimeter deep and could forget in an instant passions that may have consumed him or her for years. We just did this, with a pandemic that had the country steaming with indignation until it was quietly declared over the moment Putin rolled over Ukraine’s borders. We switched from “the pandemic of the unvaccinated” to “Putin’s price hikes” in a snap. National outrage moved a few lobes over with zero fuss, and now we hate new people; instead of “anti-vax Barbie,” we’re barring Russian and Belarussian kids from the Paralympics.

“At least NINE House Democrats test positive for COVID after party held maskless retreat in Philadelphia”

[Daily Mail, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 3-18-2022]

I include this under “Strategic Political Economy” because it illustrates the extreme arrogance and stupidity of USA ruling elites — including Democratic Party elites. The have failed completely to confront an epidemic by refusing to even consider major expenditures such as reworking the ventilation systems and air filters of all buildings. As Lambert Strether noted: “Closed, close-contact, crowded, lots of talking, probably shouting and singing, no masks. What did they think was going to happen? The outcome they all worked so hard to create; that’s what happened.” 

Say hello to Russian gold and Chinese petroyuan 

Pepe Escaobar [Vineyard of the Saker, via Mike Norman Economics 3-15-2022]

It was a long time coming, but finally some key lineaments of the multipolar world’s new foundations are being revealed.

On Friday, after a videoconference meeting, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China agreed to design the mechanism for an independent international monetary and financial system. The EAEU consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia, is establishing free trade deals with other Eurasian nations, and is progressively interconnecting with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

For all practical purposes, the idea comes from Sergei Glazyev, Russia’s foremost independent economist, a former adviser to President Vladimir Putin and the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Commission, the regulatory body of the EAEU.

“Saudi Arabia Considers Accepting Yuan Instead of Dollars for Chinese Oil Sales”

[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 3-15-2022]

“Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia…. China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports. If priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency. The Saudis are also considering including yuan-denominated futures contracts, known as the petroyuan, in the pricing model of Saudi Arabian Oil Co. , known as Aramco.” • Since the dollar is now evidently a pure form of power projection by the United States, it’s not surprising that other sovereign states would want to get out from under it, if they can.

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Eric Helleiner ─ The Neomercantilists: A Global Intellectual History

Eric Helleiner interviewed by Mark Blythe [Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University]

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How the World Works

James Fallows [The Atlantic, December 1993]

Americans persist in thinking that Adam Smith’s rules for free trade are the only legitimate ones. But today’s fastest-growing economies are using a very different set of rules. Once, we knew them–knew them so well that we played by them, and won. Now we seem to have forgotten….

The more I had heard about List in the preceding five years, from economists in Seoul and Osaka and Tokyo, the more I had wondered why I had virtually never heard of him while studying economics in England and the United States. By the time I saw his books in the shop beneath the cherry trees, I had come to think of him as the dog that didn’t bark. He illustrated the strange self-selectivity of Anglo-American thinking about economics.

TW: There is a simple answer to why Henry Carey and Friedrich List are unknown in USA today: the economics profession was corrupted. Michael Hudson explains what happened at Wharton to suppress and eventually bury the economic thought of Simon Patten. 

From the Archives: ‘How the World Works’

James Fallows, December 26, 2021

The United States knows how to help foster advanced, high-wage, high-employment, globally successful businesses. But it has forgotten how to talk about that process honestly, and instead sinks into familiar political and media slogans.

TW: For Carey and his followers, political economy included a moral dimension, including strong opposition to slavery and to Britain’s opium trade. The aim of political economy was not the allocation of scarce resources, but the building of civilization and the continual improvement of the human condition. As John Quincy Adams explained in “Society and Civilization” [American Whig Review, July 1845]:

Unceasing labor is not suitable to the nature or condition of man. Hours of relaxation and repose are necessary to relieve the labors of every day…. all the powers of the body and all the faculties of the mind of every individual, from the cradle to the grave, should be exercised to the utmost extent of which they are capable, in improving the condition of his kind. The duties of man consist in alternate action and meditation, mutually aiding and relieving each other; and both, directed with undeviating aim, to the progressive improvement of himself and his fellow creatures. Heaven has given him in charge, to promote the happiness and well-being of himself, his wife, his children, his kindred, his neighbors, his fellow citizens, his country, and his kind; and the great problem of legislation is, so to organize the civil government of a community, that this gradation of duties, may be made to harmonize in all its parts—that in the operation of human institutions upon social action, self-love and social may be made the same.

“Vertically Challenged”

Cory Doctorow [Locus Magazine, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 3-9-2022]

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 3-1-2022]

never seen weaponization of money on this scale before…you only get to play the card once. china will make it a priority to need no USD before going for Taiwan. it’s a turning point in monetary history: the end of USD hegemony & the acceleration towards a bipolar monetary order

— Dylan Grice (@dylangrice) February 27, 2022

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[Twitter, via Avedon’s Sideshow 4-6-2022]

Forget the macho hawkish bleating, here's how the West directly helped Russia invading Ukraine. First, we refused to invest in renewable energy FOR DECADES. Second, we turned the USSR into an oligarchy. Third, we made a world safe for those oligarchs. Fourth, we expanded NATO.

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 2, 2022

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Putin the Apostate. We thought he would be our bastard. Then, he became his own bastard.

Matt Taibbi, February 28, 2022

I would like to point out that we already tried regime change in Russia. I remember, because I was there. And, thanks to a lot of lurid history that’s being scrubbed now with furious intensity, it ended with Vladimir Putin in power. Not as an accident, or as the face of a populist revolt against Western influence — that came later — but precisely because we made a long series of intentional decisions to help put him there…. I’ve been bitter in commentary about Putin in recent years because I never forgot the way the West smoothed his rise, and pretends now that it didn’t. It’s infuriating also that many of us who were critical of him from the start are denounced now as Putin apologists, I think in part because we have inconvenient memories about who said what at the start of his story. The effort to wipe that history clean is reaching a fever pitch this week. Before they finish the job, it seemed worth getting it all down….

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by Tony Wikrent

Ukraine — Russia

“Shipping braces for impact as Russia-Ukraine crisis intensifies”

[Freight Waves, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 2-24-2022]

“Military action could curtail ship movements in the Black Sea, a key transit point for dry bulk exports. In fact, Russian military exercises have already done so. VesselsValue analyzed ship-movement data and found that Russian naval maneuvers ‘visibly impacted traffic.; Russian and Ukrainian waters of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov were designated ‘listed areas’ by the insurance industry’s War Risk Council on Feb. 15, meaning higher war risk insurance premiums. According to BRS [brokerage], the Black Sea area was the world’s second-largest grain-exporting region in 2021, with 111.2 million tons of cargo; Russia and Ukraine accounted for 30% of global wheat exports, and Ukraine accounted for 16% of global corn exports. Ukrainian corn could be first in the line of fire. BRS noted that by the end of January, Ukraine had already exported 71% of wheat predicted for the current marketing period but just 32% of its predicted corn exports. Agribulk exports face risks on land as well, not just at sea. ‘An attack or land grab by Russia could sharply reduce grain production as farmers flee the conflict, agricultural infrastructure and equipment are damaged, and the region’s economy is paralyzed,’ said BRS. “A substantial part of Ukraine’s most productive agricultural land is in the east and therefore vulnerable to any potential Russian attack.’ According to Braemar ACM Shipbroking, this landside risk could affect the coming wheat marketing season. ‘The main grain-producing regions are notably located along the Russian border,’ said Braemar, which pointed out that the military threat coincides with the beginning of the spring wheat planting period.”

Putin Looks to Win Both the War & the Peace

Ian Welsh, February 25, 2022

The sanctions which are about to hit Russia are serious, but if they don’t include wheat, aluminum, energy, or maritime shipping or hit oligarchs by kicking them out of London and other European capitals, they aren’t really going to matter.

Putin has made fools of the Western elite class again. Yes, the intelligence was right, but it didn’t matter. He’s figured exactly out what the West will and won’t do. He calculated right, they calculated wrong….

Let’s be clear, China will never let the West choke out Russia because China knows that the US (and increasingly the EU) considers China the real enemy — once Russia is taken out, China’s next. If Russia goes down, China no longer has a secure back, or a secure source of oil, minerals, or food. With Russia, China has a good chance of winning the oncoming Cold War. Without it, China loses that war.

War in Ukraine: How we got here — and what may come next 

[Grid, via The Big Picture 2-25]

Grid is Matthew Yglesias’​​​​​​​ new platform.

The History of Economic Sanctions as a Tool of War

[Yale University Press Blog , via Naked Capitalism 2-25-2022]

Biden’s Ukraine Plans Face Wall Street Roadblock

David Sirota and Julia Rock [The Daily Poster, February 24, 2022]

…Biden faces a significant obstacle: corporate lobbyists’ success in shrouding the American finance industry in secrecy, which makes it far easier for Russian oligarchs and their business empires to evade economic sanctions.

The situation spotlights how America’s money-drenched political process can create national security challenges. In effect, Wall Street’s overwhelming power to shape U.S. regulatory policy — fueled by massive campaign contributions and an army of lobbyists — may defang some of the White House’s most potent economic weapons against an international adversary.

More than two decades ago, federal investigators warned Congress of potentially illicit streams of cash flowing from Russia into the opaque American financial system — and leaks of the so-called Panama Papers and Pandora Papers over the past few years suggest those flows have only increased, as have oligarchs’ attempts to evade sanctions.

Strategic Political Economy

The Mystery of the Declining U.S. Birth Rate

[EconoFact, via The Big Picture 2-21-2022]

The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007. This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes.

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

“‘We conclude’ or ‘I believe?’ Study finds rationality declined decades ago”

[Phys.org, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 2-17-2022]

“Analyzing language from millions of books, the researchers found that words associated with reasoning, such as ‘determine’ and ‘conclusion,’ rose systematically beginning in 1850, while words related to human experience such as ‘feel’ and ‘believe’ declined. This pattern has reversed over the past 40 years, paralleled by a shift from a collectivistic to an individualistic focus as reflected by the ratio of singular to plural pronouns such as ‘I’/’we.’ ‘Interpreting this synchronous sea-change in book language remains challenging,’ says co-author Johan Bollen of Indiana University. ‘However, as we show, the nature of this reversal occurs in fiction as well as non-fiction. Moreover, we observe the same pattern of change between sentiment and rationality flag words in New York Times articles, suggesting that it is not an artifact of the book corpora we analyzed.’ ‘Inferring the drivers of long-term patterns seen from 1850 until 1980 necessarily remains speculative,’ says lead author Marten Scheffer of WUR. ‘One possibility when it comes to the trends from 1850 to 1980 is that the rapid developments in science and technology and their socio-economic benefits drove a rise in status of the scientific approach, which gradually permeated culture, society, and its institutions ranging from the education to politics. As argued early on by Max Weber, this may have led to a process of ‘disenchantment’ as the role of spiritualism dwindled in modernized, bureaucratic, and secularized societies.” What precisely caused the observed reversal of the long-term trend around 1980 remains perhaps even more difficult to pinpoint. However, according to the authors there could be a connection to tensions arising from changes in economic policies since the early 1980s, which may have been defended on rational arguments but the benefits of which were not equally distributed.”

See chart here. TW: 1980 was the Reagan “revolution.”

Rhodes Center Podcast: ‘How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Policy”  Mark Blythe interview of Elizabeth Popp Berman

[Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, via YouTube 2-13-2022]

On this episode Mark talks with Elizabeth Popp Berman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, and author of Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy. In it, she explains how in the middle of the 20th century a new kind of economic thinking took hold among policymakers at all levels of government. It replaced bold visions of justice and equality with a more technocratic style, one whose goals could be summed up in one word: efficiency. Over the last half century this quest for efficiency has guided policies in everything from public education to defense to environmental management. It’s dominance is also reflected in the wild proliferation of MPA programs that exist in American universities today that have cost-benefit analysis at their heart. Elizabeth and Mark discuss where this thinking came from, and why it appealed (and continues to appeal) to so many policymakers. They also talk about what’s lost in this focus on efficiency, and why it isn’t the panacea its advocates claim.

The cost / benefit analysis of Robert McNamara’s Vietnam War Defense Department is an overlooked but important root of today’s neoliberal / conservative political economy. Being forced to find numerical measures of performance and efficiency especially had brutal effects on education and welfar and medical care. 

The Constitution Was Meant to Guard Against Oligarchy

Chris Lehmann, February 10, 2022 [The New Republic]

A new book aims to recover the Constitution’s pivotal role in shaping claims of justice and equality….

But it’s the broader asymmetry here—which has an energetic, dogmatic conservative legal establishment continually seizing ground from an enervated liberal opposition—that’s the real sign of moral and imaginative decay in the America’s politics, in the courts and beyond them. Instead of ritually stigmatizing its extremist flank, the American right perennially finds new ways to empower its ardent apostles and advance its policy-cum-legal agenda; for all its plaints about the administrative state’s undemocratic excesses, it’s aggressively backloaded the judicial talent pool with hard-right nominees groomed by the Federalist Society. And meanwhile, instead of responding in kind with bold proposals to reimagine our core commitments to freedom, equality, and opportunity in an age of spiraling inequality, rampaging privatization, and depleted social goods, the proceduralist center conducts rearguard actions to preserve the appearance of comity, compromise, and bipartisan decorum….

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Thoughts on the Canadian Trucker “Freedom Convoys”

Lambert Strether, February 10, 2022 [Naked Capitalism]

Let me confess at the outset that, sadly, I have come to regard “freedom” as a tell for the expression of today’s brand of sociopathic and therefore highly adaptive libertarianism[1]. So, when I see “the Canadian truckers” (as I will call them) branded as a (highly replicable) “Freedom Convoy,” my back teeth start to itch….

If we ask ourselves what sort of trucker is able to drive their rig to Ottawa, stay there for days, and even render their truck dysfunctional[4], the answer is clear: Owner operators (that is, (100% – 64%) * 50% = 18% of all truckers).[5] Without real data, it’s impossible to be certain, but I’m not the only one who’s come to this conclusion. From Passage:

“It’s safe to assume that the people who made the trek to Ottawa aren’t the same people filing labour violation claims with the federal Labour Program. Rather than exploited workers in a deregulated industry, my guess is that the ‘truckers’ actually present in Ottawa were by and large self-employed owner-operators: the small contingent of wealthier small proprietors who have made out quite well in the new wild-west of for-hire trucking. It was a ‘revolt’ of the petit-bourgeoisie, financially backed[6] by wealthy right-wing grifters.

“This weekend’s idiotic pageantry was thus a political consequence of the decades-long class project to remake the trucking sector, a project which has dismantled a highly unionized industry, formerly made up of relatively well-paying and stable jobs, and replaced it with a poorly regulated labour market of hyper-competition among small owner-operators and other precariously-positioned workers.”

 ….Given that democidal elites are a parsimonious explanation for Covid policy in Canada as well as the United States, we can surmise that the Canadian truckers gave Trudeau and the Liberal Party the excuse and the cover to do what they have wanted to do all along….

One of those organizers was Pat King, a former organizer with the Western Canada separatist party Wexit. King gained notoriety after he helped organize a rally in Red Deer, Alberta, that turned violent, and thanks to his repeated attempts to weaponize his misunderstanding of the law to repeal Alberta’s COVID-19 measures. King is a prolific streamer, using his social media pages to warn of “Anglo-Saxon replacement” and to make disparaging remarks about immigrants and the LGBTQ community, per videos cataloged by Anti-Hate Canada….

TW: Best to read the entire essay, before getting to the excellent, precision targeted end. 

Facilitating Civic and Political Energies for the Common Good

Ralph Nader [Counterpunch, via Naked Capitalism 2-6-2022]

Corporate power stems not from votes (corporations don’t vote, yet) nor so much from the campaign money. It comes as a byproduct of the almost wholly unorganized populace not utilizing its powerful exclusive sovereignty (“We the People”) under our Constitution. In our country’s history, it is remarkable what a small percentage of people (often under one percent) when organized and representing broad public concerns, have achieved against all odds. (See my book, Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think, 2016).

Resource Limits to American Capitalism & The Predator State Today (interview)

James Galbraith [GPE Newdocs, via Naked Capitalism 2-10-2022]

GALBRAITH:  ….the development of the system [described by Galbraith’s father] does start really in the early 1930s. It starts with Roosevelt’s New Deal. I mean, you had an earlier system which was very unstable; which went through an explosive period of growth in the 1920s and then collapsed. And the collapse didn’t go away. It lasted for four very long and painful years in which the factories were idle and the people on the farms couldn’t sell their products and then there was mass migration and all kinds of ecological disaster.

Then Roosevelt in the New Deal created an entirely different structure within which the American economy could function. And that was a federal project and it culminated in the vast industrial mobilization at the time of the Second World War.

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Mark Blyth – Asset Manager Capitalism

Mark Blythe [Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, February 2, 2022, via YouTube]

TW: After an excellent overview of the economic work focused on inequality, and the emergence of the concept of Asset Manager Capitalism, Blythe explains how this new form of capitalism is focused entirely on preservation of wealth, at the expense of entrepreneurship and increasing productivity. Asset Manager Capitalism also locks society into Piketty’s model equation of returns to capital increasing at the expense of returns to labor. Blythe then explains the very important consequences for the fight to stop climate change: the financiers will finance a green New Deal Deal, but only if governments eliminate entirely any risk of loss to investors. This is where the Federal Reserve comes in. In Blythe’s words: “You can get a transition, but forget the ‘just” part.” 

Notice Blythe’s discussion of the slide “Who actually owns capital?” This annihilates the presently reigning model of shareholder capitalism. In 1945, USA households directly owned 94 percent of USA corporate shares. Today, just three asset management firms — Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard — own 20 percent of every company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, and control 80 percent of all exchange traded funds (ETFs). 

Alexander Hamilton’s proposal that no one should ever have more than 30 votes in a company, no matter how many shares they own, is an obvious solution to this problem. No wonder hardly anyone knows about this aspect of Hamilton’s work. Under Asset Manager Capitalism, shares in a company are no longer the means of providing investment capital, but rather have become assets to generate fees.

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Credit Traders Lack Edge in Fed’s New Regime: The corporate bond market used to be the economy’s early warning signal. That’s no longer the case.

[Bloomberg, via The Big Picture 1-31-2022]

Citadel Securities: how the Wall Street outsider became ‘the Amazon of financial markets’ 

[Financial Times, via The Big Picture 1-31-2022]

Involved in more than 25 per cent of all US stock trades, and tipped to float, the company is the focus of SEC scrutiny

“America Is Facing a Great Talent Recession”

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 2-4-2022]

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Yuan overtakes yen in global transaction volume 

[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 1-26-2022]

China in the Middle East

Chas W. Freeman, Jr. [Naked Capitalism 1-27-2022]

How Supply-Side Reaganomics is linked to the slave holding Confederacy

Heather Cox Richardson, January 27, 2022 [Letters from an American]

On January 21, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained to the World Economic Forum that the Biden administration rejected Republican supply-side economics, ushered in during the Reagan administration. That system relied on tax cuts and aggressive deregulation to spark private capital—the supply side—to drive the economy. Supply-side economics has not increased growth, Yellen said, while it has failed to address climate change and has shifted money upward as it moved the burden of taxes from capital and put it on workers.

Biden’s economic policy, Yellen explained, rejected this philosophy in favor of what she calls “modern supply-side economics.” This term appears to be intended to suggest a middle ground between the supply-side economics of the 1980s, which focused on putting money in the hands of the wealthy, and the post–World War II idea that the government should manage the economy by investing in infrastructure and a social safety net.

Biden’s plan, Yellen explained, has focused on “labor supply, human capital, public infrastructure, R&D, and investments in a sustainable environment.” Rather than focusing on putting money into the hands of the “demand side” of the economy—consumers—it focuses on developing a strong labor force in a strong democracy to create growth through hard work and innovation.

In its emphasis on education and access to resources, the Biden administration’s economic policy echoes the ideology Abraham Lincoln articulated in 1859. Wealthy southern enslavers insisted the government should simply defend the property rights of the wealthy, who would amass wealth that they would then put to its best use to develop the country. But Lincoln argued that the government should nurture the country’s laborers, who were the nation’s true innovators and hardest workers and who, if properly supported, would move the country forward much faster than a few wealthy men would.

The pandemic

The American sickness

[Indignity, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 1-27-2022]

“Across this large and otherwise fractious country, in its famous “blue states” and “red states” alike, the United States is converging on an ever-more-clearly articulated answer to the coronavirus pandemic: the pursuit, in defiance of most of the rest of the world, of a nationwide Unlimited Covid policy….. But the movement for Unlimited Covid has a uniquely American character. It represents an informal yet powerful collaboration between the country’s two mutually hostile political parties, across two different presidential administrations. The country’s pandemic response was initially defined by Trump, who chose to deny the risks of the virus, to suppress testing to keep official case counts low, and to delay any mobilization to produce tests or protective equipment. Facing a reelection campaign, and encouraged by a party line that the disease would be no worse than seasonal influenza, Trump and the Republican Party counted on allowing the virus to spread freely, generating natural herd immunity, after which they hoped it would subside on its own. Joe Biden and the Democratic Party took power at the beginning of 2021, claiming a mandate to change the way the country handled the pandemic. In line with the party’s technocratic spirit, and with the benefit of the newly available vaccines, Biden quickly launched a mass immunization program. That same technocratic outlook, however, led the administration to pursue what it hoped could be the most narrowly efficient strategy against the coronavirus—a domestic vaccination program only, rather than promoting international immunization, and without trying to catch up with the sort of testing, tracing, and targeted suppression that other countries had deployed. When the virus kept mutating and proved itself able to spread even among vaccinated people, the Biden administration had not stockpiled tests or masks with which to respond to new waves. Caught up in its promise of a return to normalcy, and unable to narrowly tailor closures to meet specific problems, the administration failed to bring the country to a pandemic-fighting footing and allowed economic relief measures to expire. In the end, the country settled on a contest between the original Republican program of counting on the unchecked virus to produce national herd immunity and a Democratic program of counting on a combination of vaccines and infections to produce national herd immunity. Although the details of it played out as partisan conflict—right-wing commenters went so far as to obfuscate their own vaccinations, to undermine Biden’s efforts—the result either way was Unlimited Covid. By redefining its failure to control the coronavirus as a success, the United States has rewritten its social contract and reshaped the expectations of its people.”

Lambert Strether adds: “The ruling class will have slaughtered a million Americans and gotten away clean. It’s a remarkable achievement. These impressive numbers are, well, let’s be polite and say “world historical.”

Health Care Crisis

Shkreli’s infamous 4,000% price hike gets him a lifetime pharma ban 

[Ars Technica, via Naked Capitalism 1-23-2022]

A federal court on Friday banned convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli from ever working in the pharmaceutical industry again in any capacity and ordered him to pay back $64.6 million in profits from his infamous scheme that raised the price of the life-saving drug Daraprim more than 4,000 percent.

US District Judge Denise Cote issued the lifetime ban after finding that Shkreli engaged in anticompetitive practices to protect the monopoly profits of Daraprim.

According to a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission and seven states—New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—Shkreli, his former pharmaceutical company Vyera (formerly Turing), and former Vyera CEO Kevin Mulleady created a “web of anticompetitive restrictions to box out the competition” in 2015 after they bought the rights to Daraprim.

The Nursing Home Slumlord Manifesto

Maureen Tkacik, January 26, 2022 [The American Prospect]

In a surreal new lawsuit, New York nursing home owners say they make nearly a billion dollars a year understaffing homes and shortchanging patients.

Could California Actually Pass Single-Payer Health Care?

[Economy for All, via LA Progressive 1-29-2022]

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