Bias in OMB's economic forecasts and budget proposals

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) annually submits the President's budget for the U.S. government to the Congress. The economic forecasts and revenue and outlay proposals contained in the budget have been criticized as biased, especially during the 1980s. Tests for bias in one year ahead proposals for the 1963–89 period show no bias in economic forecasts and revenue estimates, but substantial bias in outlay proposals. Most outlay proposals are consistently less than actual outcomes, accounting for underprediction of the Federal deficit. OMB outlay proposals appear to be influenced by politics. Republican administrations show more significant proposal biases, with defense proposals higher and domestic outlay proposals lower than outcomes. The Office of Management and Budget consistently understates the deficits by resorting to the most optimistic economic assumptions it can credibly — and now sometimes even incredibly — employ. — Senator James SasserWall Street Journal, 25 January 1990     

Why We Love to Hate the Wolf (of Wall Street): Using Georges Bataille and Friedrich Nietzsche to Critique the Function of Moral Ideology Under Late Capitalism

The release of Martin Scorsese’s film The Wolf of Wall Street in late 2013 helped to reignite a public conversation about corporate greed and the moral excesses and violations of Wall Street firms and executives. A barrage of articles, reviews, and criticisms of the film emerged throughout popular media that sought, for the most part, to single out and condemn the immoral actions and behaviors of individuals (for example, Jordan Belfort, whose actions constitute the primary subject matter of the film) within a pre-given and non-negotiable context of capitalist economic and social relations. This article uses the writings of Georges Bataille and Friedrich Nietzsche to critique this popular discourse. It reads the discourse as structured by a false identity of opposites, whereby the normal, moral, legal, and “peaceful” state of things is depicted as constitutive of a separate world from that of Belfort and the “criminal” excesses and expenditures of Wall Street. As a result of this conceptual maneuver, a mode of moralizing is enabled. In a fit of ressentiment, critics unleash their moralizing sentiments, single out and constitute guilty subjects, and hold these subjects responsible in order to repair the “secondary malfunctions” of capitalism. They do this so that capitalism can continue to survive and so they can have a good conscience while it does.     

On Public Protest,Violence, and Street Gangs

This article elaborates upon the authors’ 2017 op-ed, “To deal with Antifa, designate it a street gang,” published in The Wall Street Journal. Following recent calls to declare Antifa, a loosely-organized collective of anti-fascists, a domestic terrorist organization, we argue for the categorization of the group as a street gang instead. We advocate for better understanding of groups and group processes and review existing gang definitions, specifically the California penal code and the consensus Eurogang definition. We find that groups within antifa meet gang criteria because they have a collective identity and engage in illegal violent activity. Classification of antifa as a street gang is preferable to domestic terrorism, we argue, because it permits the deployment of evidence-based violence prevention and intervention strategies beyond the current emphasis on crowd control. This article thus contributes to a burgeoning literature that examines the overlap between gangs and other social groups, with implications for broader criminological research and practice.     

It’s not me,it’s you: the functioning of Wall Street during the 2008 economic downturn

Public officials have blamed Wall Street and its complex financial products for causing the 2008 economic downturn. This article addresses three popular claims saying that complex financial markets are at fault and need more regulation. It argues that even in the midst of a major economic downturn, the much-maligned mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and unregistered hedge funds functioned almost exactly as designed. When macroeconomic conditions worsened, firms and investors that were paid to assume certain risks had to assume them. Those that opted for safer investment vehicles with more levels of private protection faced fewer problems. Although many investment vehicles lost money, one must differentiate between problems that manifested themselves in markets and problems with the market itself. Even though government policies caused many of the problems, public officials always have an incentive to point the finger at Wall Street and to argue for more regulations when their policies negatively affect markets.     

(Im)possible citizens: Canada's ‘citizenship bonanza’ and its boundaries

This article discusses a recent amendment to the Canadian Citizenship Act, which retroactively restores or gives Canadian citizenship to ‘hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting foreigners, most of them Americans’ (P. Dvorak, 2009. Canada issues a wake-up call: you may be a citizen. The Wall Street Journal, 17 April. Available from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993183347727843.html) while also restricting the inheritance of Canadian citizenship to the first-generation born abroad. Aiming to redress past discriminations based on gender, marital status and dual citizenship while simultaneously curtailing modern citizenship's dubious ius sanguinis provision, the new law might be interpreted as perpetuating Canada's reputation as a world leader in interethnic relations and human rights. A contextual analysis of the new law, by contrast, shows that the opposite is the case: the boundaries that are being drawn by Canada's new citizenship regime follow the now common trend of re-ethnicization and securitization. Specifically, they conflate kinship and Whiteness, thereby leading, on the one hand, to the construction of possible citizens whose authenticity and loyalty to the nation are unquestioned. On the other hand, within the logic of the new laws and their surrounding discourses, non-White, non-Christian ‘impossible citizens’ emerge, whose lack of loyalty and instrumental use of their Canadian passport are said to be eroding the value of citizenship from within.     

The failure of federal job training

James Bovard is a journalist who writes frequently for publications, including the Wall Street Journaland the New York Times,on job training, foreign aid, farm policy, and other issues. He is affiliated with the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C.     

Taxing capital gains

From 1969 to 1971 he was a member and from 1972 to 1974 the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. His major publications include The Fiscal Revolution in America, Presidential Economics,and Governing the $5 Trillion Economy.He is a member of the board of contributors of the Wall Street Journal, where his writings appear frequently.     

The Securities and Exchange Commission: A Small Regulatory Agency with a Gargantuan Challenge

Multibillion–dollar accounting scandals have brought down Enron and WorldCom, while other corporations continue to revise and restate earnings. The gradual stock market tumble has played havoc with investment portfolios of retirees, parents saving for education, small business owners, and corporate America. All eyes are on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a small, independent regulator of the securities markets with a gargantuan challenge. On the one hand, it faces great public expectations for rigorous reform of Wall Street. Politicians have mandated rules and sanctions for cleaning up the practice of outside audits and for improving the veracity of financial disclosures. Yet the public's expectations for a vigorous market recovery are even greater. If sanctions and rules are too severe, though, reform efforts could slow capital accumulation. This special report examines the SEC's regulatory past in order to understand the task it faces today. Management challenges posed by recent legislation are discussed, and recommendations for strengthening the SEC are presented.     

全球金融动荡背景下中国证券行业发展趋势

美国"次贷危机"以惊人的速度愈演愈烈,震惊了全球金融行业。在短短几个月的时间内,华尔街排名前五名的投行依次倒下,或倒闭,或被收购,甚至收归国有。此次发生在大洋彼岸的金融危机对我国证券行业具有重要的参考意义。本文从本次危机成因分析出发,结合国内证券行业的历史及现状,展望今后我国证券行业的发展趋势。     

The Ludwig Martens–Maxim Litvinov Connection, 1919–1921

Research began when the author realized that Antony Sutton had misidentified the author of a key document published in his Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974). This article reports on the interception by federal agents of the document (a letter) brought from the Copenhagen office of Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinov and intended for Kenneth Durant who was employed by Ludwig Martens, Lenin's unrecognized representative in New York City. Analysis of the letter revealed the true author and opened a research channel for learning more about the backgrounds of three Soviet agents: Bornett Bobroff, Nora Hellgren, and Wilfred Humphries.     

Reform or Radicalism: Left Social Movements from the Battle of Seattle to Occupy Wall Street

We examine two recent cases of relative Left success—the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street—and argue that in each case an effective dynamism between radical and reform wings drove gains. This analysis is not meant to deny political difference and hawk false unity. Instead we want to challenge the luxury of mutual dismissal with the actually existing benefits of movement dynamism. By dynamism we mean contributions arising from different activist wings and productively interacting to increase overall movement power. Our ultimate claim is that the North American Left will yield greater success by becoming more self-conscious about the concrete benefits of movement dynamism.     

A Latin last hurrah

He has written on the region for the Miami Herald, Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, Strategic Review, Freedom At Issue,and is the author of The Democratic Mask: The Consolidation of the Sandinista Revolutionand A Question for El Salvador: What Does the FMLN Really Want?This article is based on a Freedom House Fact Finding Mission, May 1989.     

The Political Potential of Mindful Embodiment

This article argues that the emerging literature on mindfulness tends to de-emphasize embodiment, both in how it theoretically defines mindfulness, as well as in terms of the practices it tends to study. Alternatively, the article argues that a focus on embodiment is key to articulating the political potential of mindfulness. An emphasis on mindful embodiment, both in theory and in practice, can issue a challenge to the latent mind–body dualism of much of the theoretical discourse on mindfulness and highlights the capacities of relationality, empathy, and attunement, capacities which are the foundation of the political significance of mindfulness. Practices of mindful embodiment provide a counterpoint to the focus upon contemplation in the mindfulness literature and help to refute the concern that mindfulness practice is solipsistic and apolitical. The article concludes by exploring the Occupy Wall Street movement as illustrative of the significance of mindful embodiment to contemporary social movements.     

公共政策的缺失与当前世界性经济危机

以次贷危机为导火索、进而席卷全球的金融海啸,正方兴未艾,引发了世界性的经济危机,各国政府努力救市.媒体和学术界开始从各个角度分析危机的原因所在.列举出来的原因有:市场和公众投资信心降低、克林顿政府的房贷政策、在政府政策压力下从格林斯潘开始的长期的低利率低通胀政策、华尔街的贪婪等等.虽然这些都可以算是原因,但在它们的后面其实有着人们不愿探究的更深层次的原因,包括:多年来美国政府改革路线的失衡、现代资本主义金融体系包括市场经济本身的内生性制度缺陷、深藏于现代西方政治文化与社会治理结构中的脆弱因素、资本主义特质在现代技术条件下对社会提出的新挑战、缺失的公共利益文化等等.重点对后面的几个原因进行阐述和讨论,提请学术界对全球化条件下处于不同发展阶段的国家在自己的公共政策和政府治理改革问题上做更深层次的思考和探索.     

Flooding Wall Street: Echoes from the Future of Resistance around Climate Change

The global capitalist system is ravaging ecosystems at a staggering and accelerating scale as it transgresses multiple ecological planetary boundaries, from massive species extinction to climate change, radically threatening life on this planet. Through analyzing power as a network of intersecting sets of relations, we can start to appreciate capitalism and the state not as entities, but as comprised by social relationships and local operations of power. This perspective reveals how effective resistance can be conceived in the form of destituent power – not as a direct clash with constituted power but instead as the withdrawal of our energies from and obedience to the political order. This destituent approach proceeds by deactivating the subjugating relationships constituting the system, thereby opening spaces to undertake constantly evolving experiments of developing new harmonious social and ecological relationships. Actions to disrupt and delegitimize the operations of capital, like Flood Wall Street, serve as tentative glimpses of ascendant destituent forces assembling against ecological collapse. The further challenge becomes how to connect the multiplicity of resistances, thought not in terms of a unity as a homogenous movement, but through actively cultivating their transversal relations across the rhizomatic network of experiments in practices of destituent power striving to realize new worlds.     

Rebuttal versus Unmasking: Legal Strategy in R. v. Zundel

Conventional scholarly wisdom has it that most Italian Americans in the United States were loyal supporters of the policies of Fascism in the inter-war years but eventually rejected the antisemitic measures that Benito Mussolini's regime adopted in their ancestral country in 1938. Contrary to such an interpretation, Luconi argues that many Italian Americans themselves held antisemitic attitudes and, therefore, did not distance themselves from Fascism after Mussolini launched his campaign against Italian Jews. He also contends that these attitudes resulted less from an ideological commitment to Fascism than from both the strained relations between Italian Americans and Jewish Americans, and the antisemitic climate of opinion that characterized American society in the 1930s. Italian Americans and Jews were partners in the labour movement and the Democratic Party. Yet the former resented the latter's distrust in Italian Americans' labour militancy, as well as the earlier rise of Jews in the hierarchies of the unions and the Democratic Party. Furthermore, Italian Americans and Jews competed for jobs, political patronage, cheap housing and relief benefits, especially during the Depression years. Such ethnic rivalries and the appeal of right-wing organizations to Italian Americans contributed to make the latter prone to antisemitism. As a result, few Americans of Italian descent came out against the racial policy of the Fascist regime.     

The failure of federal enforcement of civil rights regulations in public housing, 1963–1971: The co-optation of a federal agency by its local constituency

This paper reports on research regarding the federal role with respect to racially discriminatory practices in public housing. It is a case study of federal efforts to deal with inadequate housing for low-income Americans, based on Public Housing in Chicago from 1963 through June 1971.Prepared for delivery at the 1972 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 8, 1972. Copyright, 1972, The American Political Science Association.     

Introduction

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has emerged as an outspoken challenger to US geopolitical preeminence in the Americas. This study explores the framing practices employed by mainstream newspaper outlets in the United States in their coverage of President Chávez over a ten-year time period—between 1998, the year he was first elected president, and December 2007. This content analysis examines media output from a number of influential newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Using an inductive approach, I identify and critically assess the dominant media frames that emerged over this time period: the Dictator Frame, the Castro Disciple Frame, the Declining Economy Frame, and the Meddler-in-the-Region Frame. I also explore how journalistic norms—like personalization, dramatization, novelty, and authority-order—inform media coverage of this key Latin American leader.     

Trade Winds: NAFTA and the Rational Public

The sharp increase in suppport for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) poses a challenge to many of our conceptions of public opinion. Most large shifts in public opinion follow major events. Based on models estimated from the September to November NBC News/ Wall Street Journal surveys, I show this was not the case with respect to public opinion on NAFTA. Instead, the increase in support for the pact reflected a slower response to a public debate over the merits of free trade versus protectionism. As the debate proceeded, large segments of the public— including the least interested—developed more highly constrained belief systems. By the end of the public discourse, the most and least interested citizens both linked attitudes on the merits of trade to their positions on NAFTA and to their evaluations of the elites on each side of the issue. People made up their minds on NAFTA on the basis of arguments about trade, not about their own self-interest. The NAFTA case suggests that there may be a rational public at the individual level after all, even among people who may not usually be interested in public affairs.     

The Financial Crisis: A Retrospective

Government efforts to manage the financial crisis and to promote economic recovery have been extensive over the past three years. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been distributed—and much of it now repaid—from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Federal Reserve holds more than $2 trillion in mortgage‐backed securities, collateralized loans to financial institutions, and other assets and liabilities to maintain liquidity in the financial markets. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act injected more than $600 billion into the economy through tax breaks, loans, contracts, grants, and entitlements. Congress also passed the Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. Yet economic recovery remains flat. The author examines the reform effort to date, key points of its primary focus, and the politics of implementing the reform as a factor in eventual economic recovery. One component of the reform, the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, holds the greatest potential for changing the way consumers participate in the financial markets, but also has drawn the greatest debate and opposition. While regulatory reform alone will not revive the economy, a newly conceived and broadly participatory Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could simplify and streamline the complex linkages that contribute to the supply of credit.