Scott Fullwiler, New Economic Perspectives, Corbynomics 101. A good piece responding to three critiques of Corbyn’s idea of a “People’s Quantitative Easing”: ” the government would create a public bank for financing infrastructure (National Investment Bank, or NIB), which the Bank of England (BoE) would then lend to directly in order to fund. The NIB would then carry out infrastructure projects to jumpstart the economy, create public capital, and create jobs.” It also addresses one worrisome part of Corbyn’s economic plan, which is the emphasis on deficits–I wonder if he is just deciding that if you want to oppose austerity, you have to just pretend that you think deficits matter, because the public has been so thoroughly convinced that they do.
John McDonnell, The Guardian, Jeremy Corbyn would clear the deficit – but not by hitting the poor, by the shadow Chancellor of the Exchecquer in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. Again, they seem to be just accepting deficit-phobia, and making their big point that the burden of closing it should fall on the rich, not the poor.
Arthur MacEwan, Dollars & Sense, A Case for Public Ownership. Corbyn has called for re-nationalization of the trains and the energy sector in Britain. Our “Ask Dr. Dollar” columnist coincidentally responds in the current issue to a reader’s question about what industries, besides banks, there might be a case for nationalizing.
Michael Robert’s Blog, Corbynomics: Extreme or moderate? Nice piece about the overheated claims that Corbyn is “hard left”: “In my view, the problem with Corbynomics is that opposing austerity is not enough.”
Pablo Iglesias, The Guardian, Jeremy Corbyn, welcome to Europe’s fight against austerity. There was a related piece in El Pais by Iglesias, the head of Spain’s left party Podemos, who has endorsed Corbyn.
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight blog, Stop Comparing Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. One of the pieces Silver criticizes is this stupid column by David Brooks comparing Trump, Sanders, Carson, and Corbyn. Silver has nice things to say about Sanders, but his main point is that Trump is more of a threat to the Republican Party than Sanders is to the Democrats. “Sanders’s policy positions … are about 95 percent the same as those of a typical liberal Democrat in Congress. And where they diverge, they push Democrats further to the left in a fairly predictable way.” But he has a footnote contrasting Sanders with Corbyn: “In contrast, consider the odd mix of radical and reactionary positions that Jeremy Corbyn has in the U.K.” Say what? The Atlantic piece he links to says nothing about reactionary positions Corbyn might have, as far as I can tell.
Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus, These Four Elections Could Determine the Future of Europe, about upcoming elections in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland.