Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

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Joseph E. Stiglitz: After Austerity

New York – This year’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund made clear that Europe and the international community remain rudderless when it comes to economic policy. Financial leaders, from finance ministers to leaders of private financial institutions, reiterated the current mantra: the crisis countries have to get their houses in order, reduce their deficits, bring down their national debts, undertake structural reforms, and promote growth. Confidence, it was repeatedly said, needs to be restored.

It is a little precious to hear such pontifications from those who, at the helm of central banks, finance ministries, and private banks, steered the global financial system to the brink of ruin – and created the ongoing mess. Worse, seldom is it explained how to square the circle. How can confidence be restored as the crisis economies plunge into recession? How can growth be revived when austerity will almost surely mean a further decrease in aggregate demand, sending output and employment even lower?

Paul Krugman: Britain’s Leaders Force Nation Down Wrong Economic Path

When David Cameron became prime minister of Britain and announced his austerity plans – buying completely into both the confidence fairy and the invisible bond vigilantes – many were the hosannas, from both sides of the Atlantic.

Pundits in the United States urged President Obama to “do a Cameron”; Mr. Cameron and George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, were the toast of Very Serious People everywhere.

Now Britain is officially in double-dip recession, and has achieved the remarkable feat of doing worse this time around than it did in the 1930s.

Rev. Al Sharpton: War on Students

When most people hear the word ‘war,’ they instinctively think of conflict, the battlefield, mayhem and other adjectives used to describe the concept of fighting over land, resources etc. But there’s another kind of warfare that exists, one that is ideological rather than physical. And perhaps nobody knows the concept of waging these sorts of wars better than Republicans. As a collective, they have waged virtual wars against women, immigrants and progressive groups. Now, in their latest move to reward the rich while punishing hard-working Americans, they have blocked a bill that would have prevented student loan interest rates from doubling. The latest victims in Republican warfare are the most defenseless among us — our children.

Mike Lux: The Only Way to Fix the World Economy

Europe is a mess, and not because voters there are rejecting the austerity policies that are driving the European Union straight into recession. The USA’s economy is picking up in some ways, but is still stalled out in others. And looming over everything are all these toxic assets the world’s biggest banks created for themselves, and the mountains of debt piling up everywhere — not only or even most importantly government debt, but trade deficits, underwater mortgage debt, student debt, consumer debt as well.

As Paul Krugman and so many other economists, and history itself point out, the austerity solution when facing a recessionary economy is a vicious cycle: you make cuts to lower the government’s deficit spending, which puts more people out of work, which erases the savings you make from cut and then some. It’s also not politically sustainable, as elections all over Europe are making clear.

Jim Hightower: Monsanto, Dow and Genetically Modified Trouble

Thanks to the blessings of nature and good farmers, you and I can enjoy such scrumptious delights as fresh corn-on-the-cob, popcorn and many other variations of this truly great grain. And now, thanks to Dow Chemical and federal regulators, we can look forward to “Agent Orange Corn.” The chemical giant is in line to gain approval for putting a genetically altered corn seed on the market that will produce corn plants that won’t die when doused with high levels of 2,4-D.

This potent pesticide was an ingredient in Dow’s notorious Agent Orange defoliant, which did such extensive and horrific damage to soldiers and civilians in the Vietnam War. However, the corporation and the feds claim that 2,4-D was not the deadliest ingredient of the killer defoliant and has not yet been proven to cause cancer in humans, so they’re pressing ahead to let this corporate-constructed seed be planted across America.

Hugh Gustertson: The Drone Summit, the Lunchbox and the Invisibility of Charred Children

I kept finding myself thinking about the lunchbox.

I was at the all-day Drone Summit in Washington DC organized by Codepink, the antiwar group whose mostly female members are famous for putting on theatrical protests while wearing bold pink. I spent the day listening to human rights activists talking about civilians killed by US drone strikes, lawyers who complained that the strikes violated international law, and scientists worried that the United States is on the brink of automating the use of lethal force by drones and killer robots.

And I kept thinking about the lunchbox.

The lunchbox belonged to a schoolgirl in Hiroshima. Her body was never found, but the rice and peas in her lunchbox were carbonized by the atomic bomb. The lunchbox, turned into an exhibition piece, became, in the words of historian Peter Stearns, “an intensely human atomic bomb icon.” The Smithsonian museum’s plans to exhibit the lunchbox as part of its 1995 exhibit for the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II enraged military veterans and conservative pundits, who eventually forced the exhibit’s cancellation.