Transnational finance, the corporate media, and rightwing political parties are using high government deficits as pretexts for cuts to public employment and social programs.
Al Engler
Allan Engler is a longtime trade unionist and the author of Apostles of Greed. His Economic Democracy, the working-class alternative to capitalism has just been published by Fernwood.Book review: Thieves of Bay Street
Thieves of Bay Street: How Banks, Brokerages and the Wealthy Steal Billions from Canadians
(Random House Canada,
2012;
$32.00)
The Harper government claims that Canada's finance industry is stable and well regulated. In Thieves of Bay Street journalist Bruce Livesey makes the case that the Canadian government and the courts turn a blind eye to scams, rip-offs and blatant frauds by brokers, investment houses, banks and corporate executives.
Livesey -- who has worked for CBC, PBS, and the New York Times -- reminds readers of the billions lost by investors in Bre-X, Principal Trust and Sino-Forest Products. He makes the case that brokers, investment dealers and banks who defraud their clients rarely face criminal charges. He points to the failure of securities commissions in Canada to bring charges against Conrad Black and David Radler.
Confronting Canada's colonialist past
Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific
(UBC Press,
2011;
$34.95)
In Orienting Canada, John Price, professor of history at the University of Victoria focuses on 20th century racism and on Canada's role as junior partner in British and U.S. imperialism. This is a work of scholarship and an engrossing narrative that should be widely read.
Anti-Asian racism in Canada in the first half of the 20th century has been well documented. Immigrants from China, Japan, and India faced head taxes and outright prohibitions. Laws excluded Canadians of Asian origins from neighbourhoods, post-secondary education and professions. Japanese Canadians were forcibly removed from coastal areas during World War II.
Occupations, capitalism, and a 99 per cent solution
Occupy Wall Street and occupations around the U.S. and Canada are a radically new response to an old problem. The old problem is capitalism, a system that entitles wealthy minorities to direct economies for their private profit. What is radically new is seeing the alternative as the right of all to participate as equals in the decisions that affect their lives.
Bernard Harcourt: Free markets lead to less, not more freedom
The Illusion of Free Markets, Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order
(Harvard University Press,
2011;
$29.61)
Stephen Harper campaigned for a majority so that his government could end judges' discretion in sentencing and make criminals serve full jail terms. Even though crime rates in Canada have been steadily declining, and California and other U.S. states are concluding that filling prisons to overcrowding does little to reduce crime and is an unacceptable drain on public finances, Harper continues to insist that this is a priority of the Conservative majority.
Has capitalism reached its limits?
The Enigma of Capital
(Oxford University Press,
2010;
$27.95)
David Harvey is an internationally renowned social geographer, author of numerous books and a Marxist. He began his academic career in the U.K., spent decades in the U.S., and has taught in France, Korea and China.
The Venezuelan alternative
The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development
(Monthly Review Press,
2010;
$16.41)
Michael Lebowitz is a professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University now living in Venezuela working with Centro International Miranda, a government-supported think tank. In The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development, he contrasts Venezuelan policies with the top-down socialism of the 20th century. The latter had focused on rapid industrial development through state ownership and top-down command. In Venezuela the government of Hugo Chavez focuses on human development, on the cooperative meeting of human needs, on social ownership and on participation in community and workplace decisions.
Where to next? A primer on Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
(Princeton University Press,
2009;
$38.50)
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff is a book of statistics intended to quantify the circumstances that lead to debt crises. Tables, charts and graphs on economic growth, trade and debt are gathered from national statistics as well as the League of Nations, United Nations, World Bank, IMF and OECD. These cover nearly all regions for the last 50 years, with some going back 200 years.
James Hansen's climate reckoning
Storms Of My Grandchildren
(Bloomsbury US,
2009;
$31.00)
In 2009, just before the Copenhagen conference, some scientists working on climate change models at the University of East Anglia were exposed for proposing that some data should be concealed. The chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was then widely criticized for predicting the precise year that Himalayan glaciers will disappear without any peer-reviewed evidence.