Political Economy Today

Recently I was asked to participate in a speaker series event at Thammasat University (Bangkok, Thailand) on the Ukraine War and the Future of NATO. I was joined by fellow Thammasat faculty member, Brian Robinson of the Economics department, and while I had anticipated some disagreement, my sense is that on many of the more substantive matters we were generally in broad agreement. Brian opens his...

Recently I had the unique opportunity to sit down with Vijay Prashad, distinguished historian, author, journalist, political commentator, and social theorist. In addition to his many awards and accomplishments, Vijay is the executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research , editor of LeftWord Books , and a senior non-resident fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studi...

The main piece discussed in this episode comes from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, titled ‘ Is the Reign of the Dollar Coming to an End? ’ and authored by the brilliant and prolific Vijay Prashad. Supplementary sources include the ‘Milestone Pact’ published by the US General Accounting Office (1979) , as well as some background on the emergent mBridge multi-central bank digital cur...

The first piece covered in this episode ‘ IKEA’s Genius Plan: Pay Workers More to Keep Them ’ comes to us from David Moscorp, writing at Jacobin . The piece discusses the novel idea of paying workers decent wages and providing decent working conditions to reduce quit rates; but while such gains are welcome, the article emphasizes that broader structural change can only come from worker organizing....

The main article discussed in this episode “ Ukraine-Russia Peace Is as Elusive as Ever. But in 2022 They Were Talking ” was published by the New York Times on June 15, 2024. Supplementary articles mentioned in this episode include a recent (March, 2024) piece by Emma Ashford for The Guardian , which downplays Boris Johnson’s visit to Ukraine in the spring of 2022, as well as an article by Iryna B...

The first piece covered in this episode “McKinsey Pulls the Strings Behind Justin Trudeau’s Curtain” comes from journalist Jeremy Appel over at Jacobin magazine . The second article “Biden’s hopes for G7 foreign policy success undermined by Gaza war” comes from James Politi of the Financial Times . We also supplement this latter piece with some commentary from the great Ralph Nader, providing a sh...