Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has died. No single policymaker had a greater hand in the socio-economic disaster that befell the developing world in the 1980s, when he deflected the US crisis of stagflation to the Global South through a draconian interest rate hike. When his "Volcker shock" pushed countless developing countries—starting with Mexico—into debt crisis in 1982, he then convinced the Reagan administration to deploy the IMF as a lender of last resort and fiscal policeman, to ensure that Wall Street bankers would be repaid in full.

The thing about climate change is that its immediate effects over the next decades will be felt differently from one region to another—and the impacts on local populations will in turn be shaped in important ways by existing political-economic arrangements & social inequalities. This spatial and sociological differentiation of climate change impacts means that local capacities for adaptation will vary between and within regions. As a result, the developmental pathways of different social classes and geographical areas will begin (or continue) to diverge.

One message I tried to bring across to my students in this week's class on climate is that we cannot avoid catastrophe with a narrow focus on consumption and behavioral change. We need a commitment to systemic transformation in production, energy and transportation systems. It's quite worrying to see, though, how neoliberal elites and fossil fuel companies have—with the aid of mainstream elements in the environmental movement—succeeded in equating action on climate change with *individual* behavioral change: flying less, consuming differently, etc.

Bolsonaro on Morales' ouster:

“The word coup is used a lot when the left loses. When they win, it’s legitimate. When they lose it’s a coup.”

If there's any truth in this, it's because the Latin American right has historically had great difficulty winning democratic elections. As a result, the continent's wealthy elite has often had to resort to anti-democratic measures to force the left out of office and restore its control over the political system and protect its economic interests. Historically these have often included violent military coups.

Mate, all advertising is political.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952

One obvious issue that arises is at what point an ad will be considered “political”. When an implicitly political (e.g. mainstream liberal) newspaper pushes an ad, I assume that it won't be flagged. But what if an explicitly political (e.g. socialist) magazine does the same?

Yesterday, Argentina resoundingly rejected Macri's neoliberal austerity program at the polls, in yet another blow to the IMF and Latin America's billionaire class. Alberto Fernández is no radical, but recent declarations about the “receding” Pink Tide were clearly very premature. My sense is that, with the exception of the financial press, the int'l media are underestimating the depth of the Argentine crisis. The IMF disbursed its biggest-ever bailout loan to the country just 1.5 years ago. Now the entire program is coming undone. ft.com/content/5cfe7c…

OK, I didn't want to get drawn into this, but since I've been spending some time reading, thinking and writing about this book lately, here's a long thread with my two cents on this week's Hobson/Corbyn anti-Semitism kerfuffle: (For those who haven't followed: John A. Hobson was a prominent liberal thinker who wrote Imperialism: A Study [1902]. The book contained a number of anti-Semitic passages. A Times columnist recently "discovered" that Corbyn wrote a foreword for the 2011 reprint. Cue outrage.)

This, by @njtmulder, is a razor sharp critique of left-nationalist narratives that locate the roots of European neoliberalism in either EU technocracy or Germany hegemony. In reality, it was the product of a broad-based intergovernmental elite consensus: nplusonemag.com/online-only/on… @njtmulder The only thing I would take issue with is the claim that "It was not supranational bureaucracy but intergovernmental agreement on austerity and against more generous debt restructuring that forced Syriza into conformity."