Hey Michigan!

Solidarity!

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there's nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy get runnin'
It's the best years of your life they want to steal!

The War on Saturnalia!

Just a reminder that Christmas is a relative late-comer to the holiday season…

Saturnalia is the Roman agricultural festival that strongly influenced early Christian celebrations we now call Christmas. Traditionally celebrated between December 17th and the 23rd, Saturnalia was an overturning of traditional Roman norms and customs.

The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves.[1] The poet Catullus called it “the best of days.”[2]

In this we can see many traditions which continue to today: gift giving, parties, masters serving slaves (Boxing Day in the UK and Canada).

Combined with Germanic pagan traditions of solstice festivals, the Christians co-opted Saturnalia for their own purposes and called it Christmas.

Frankly, I’m offended by this usurpation of this important Roman festival.

I say, let’s put the Saturn back into Saturnalia.

Originally published on BloggingBlue when my presence was tolerated if not particularly appreciated...

James K. Galbraith on Why the Fiscal Cliff is a Scam

The Primary Culprit: Global Economic Failure Edition

Economist John Quiggin:

There’s plenty of blame to go around for the Global Financial Crisis and the subsequent depression, and the Bush Administration deserves only a small share. Bush’s main contribution was to introduce unfunded tax cuts at a time when the budget should have been in surplus, thereby reducing the fiscal space available for stimulus when the crisis came. But, given the weakness of the stimulus and the ferocity of the political response, it’s not clear that was a binding constraint in any case. 

The primary culprit is market liberal economics, which may be considered both as a set of ideas with its own internal logic and as an expression of the class interests of those who benefit from the finance-dominated form of capitalism that produced the crisis and has prevented any recovery. My book Zombie Economics is a critique of market liberalism considered as an economic theory, showing how market liberalism produced the crisis.