The Source of the Economic Crisis: A Chicago State of Mind

By Maidhc Ó Cathail. Published in Media Monitors Network, June 26, 2009.

Worried about the global economic crisis? It’s all in your head, says a leading financial expert.

And that’s the problem, according to Jeff Gates, author of the
highly-regarded Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street, a sequel to The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century, which was described by one reviewer as “the best book on economics for a generation,” and praised by Ralph Nader as “a Capitalist Manifesto, a blueprint for spreading the benefits of capitalism more equitably.”

In an interview with Japan’s Kansai Time Out magazine, Gates, a former counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance (1980-87), identifies the source of the current economic crisis as a “shared mindset” into which we have been induced to put our faith, to the grave detriment of the majority — but to the immense benefit of a very few.

Japan’s Embrace of a Phoney War

By Maidhc Ó Cathail. Published in Kansai Time Out, June 2009.

In Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, Gavan McCormack demonstrates how Japan’s apparent nationalist turn owes much to the need to conceal the country’s increasing subordination to American imperial designs. However, a closer examination of the driving forces behind the US Empire in the 21st century suggests that both countries may be serving a quite different agenda.