capitalism

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Free Markets Saved the Miners
 Free Markets Saved the Miners 
OPINION

Free Markets Saved the Miners

Innovative, for-profit companies came through

(Newser) - The Chilean mine rescue was “a smashing victory for free-market capitalism,” writes Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal . “It may seem churlish to make such a claim. It is churlish. These are churlish times, and the stakes are high.” The fact is, this miracle rescue...

Cuba's 500K Layoffs a Sharp Capitalist Turn

Raul Castro's slow reforms hastened by crap economy

(Newser) - Cuba's announcement that it's looking to whack a half-million workers off the state payroll by March is a significant move toward capitalism, reports the Wall Street Journal. Bearing some 85% of the nation's 5.5 million workers on the government payroll, as well as a ravaged economy, the island nation...

N. Korea Allows Private Food Markets
N. Korea Allows Private Food Markets

N. Korea Allows Private Food Markets

Pro-capitalist policy shift comes amid growing famine

(Newser) - North Korea has effectively admitted that it can't feed its citizens by allowing people to buy food and other necessities at private markets, the Washington Post reports. Such markets have existed under the radar for years, but the government order sanctioning what amounts to capitalism "abandons all pretense of...

Moore's Latest Slams Love Affair With Capitalism

Filmmaker's 'magnum opus' sticks up for the little guy

(Newser) - Michael Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, which had its debut last night at the Venice Film Festival, isn't likely to match the “political impact” of Fahrenheit 9/11, but you might still call it his “magnum opus: the grandest statement of his career-long belief that big...

Moore Rips Tinseltown Moneybags at Film Fest

'I can pay for my own movies now,' boasts filmmaker

(Newser) - Lefty gadfly Michael Moore couldn't resist deriding the same well-heeled execs who bankrolled his latest movie at the Venice Film Festival yesterday. "One of the beautiful flaws of capitalism is they will use the rope you give them to hang themselves if you can make a buck," Moore...

Moore Says He Might Be Done With Documentaries

He's working on two screenplays

(Newser) - Michael Moore’s upcoming Capitalism: A Love Story might be his final documentary, he tells the Detroit News. "While I've been making this film, I've been thinking that maybe this will be my last documentary," Moore says. "Or maybe for a while." Instead, the most successful...

US Frontier Mythology Is Alive and Dangerous

(Newser) - Sarah Palin took to the national stage in August 2008, and two weeks later Lehman Brothers collapsed. That's a helpful metaphor, writes Naomi Klein in the Guardian, who sees the former Alaska governor as "the last clear expression of capitalism-as-usual before everything went south." The financial crisis should...

Pope Has Best Take on Financial Crisis
Pope Has
Best Take on Financial Crisis
OPINION

Pope Has Best Take on Financial Crisis

Goldman exec touts Benedict's 6-point plan for global economy

(Newser) - All of Pope Benedict XVI's gaffes and controversies have obscured his principal appeal, writes Brian Griffiths in the Times of London: he's a scholar, with an uncommon command of theology and philosophy. For Griffiths, a vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs, the pope's recent encyclical on the economy is "without...

Pope Urges New World Order for Global Economy

(Newser) - Pope Benedict delivers a broad criticism of contemporary capitalism in his latest encyclical, the Washington Post reports. The biggest problem with businesses today is that “they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors,” Benedict writes in the 144-page document. He proposes a radically different economic model in which...

Poll: Half of East Germans Positive on Communism

Nostalgic Germans believe life was better before the Berlin Wall came down

(Newser) - They may not be pining for the Stasi or the Trabant, but half of people recently polled in the former East Germany are thinking, in hindsight, that Communism wasn't so bad after all, Der Speigel reports. Nearly 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down, the poll finds  that 49% ...

Against Economic Tide, Norway Thrives

Often standing in contrast to Europe, strict state control puts Norway in good stead

(Newser) - While the rest of the world struggles with recession, Norway’s socialist-leaning government looks pretty smart, the New York Times reports. Norway enjoys a budget surplus of 11% and is free of debt (the US owes $11 trillion), and its economy grew 3% last year. Oil revenues are pouring in—...

Thank Right-Wing Nuts for Socialism's Fading Stigma

(Newser) - In a much-touted recent Rasmussen poll, only 53% of Americans said they preferred capitalism to socialism. Among those under 30, that figure fell to 37%. “If you comb the annals of Americans’ ideological preferences, you won’t find figures like these,” writes Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post....

As Capitalism Crumbles, Chinese Embrace Mao, Marx

(Newser) - The woes of international capitalism are fueling renewed interest in the ur-texts of Chinese Communism, MSNBC reports. Sales of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Mao’s “little red book” are skyrocketing in China, where the publisher of Kapital has seen a fivefold increase in sales since late last...

Sarkozy: World Growth Must Come First

French prez urges G20 to work for better kind of capitalism

(Newser) - Today's G20 talks must focus on restarting global growth through a better-regulated form of capitalism, Nicolas Sarkozy writes in the Washington Post. The international financial system needs urgent restructuring, writes the French president, and confidence cannot be effectively restored unless reforms are carried out with a greater sense of morality...

Desperate Hunger Plagues N. Korea, Forces Change

Rampant malnutrition fuels capitalist markets

(Newser) - North Korea has, in its words, an “eating problem”: unable to feed its residents, it has become the world’s first nuclear-armed “beggar,” the Washington Post reports. Malnutrition has led to a spate of mental and physical disabilities—a quarter of potential troops will be disqualified because...

To Consume or Not to Consume, That Is the Question

(Newser) - As Americans cut back on spending, a certain dread creeps in—not of having less, but of what curtailed consumption could mean for the future, Douglas Coupland notes in the New York Times. Sure, “a big drop in consumption sounds like the advent of a new utopia where people...

Thieves Return Madoff Statue, Lesson Attached

Note suggests 'swindler' return his plunder, too

(Newser) - The thieves who nabbed a $10,000 copper statue from fraudster Bernard Madoff's swank Florida home have returned it, along with this note: "Bernie the Swindler, Lesson: Return stolen property to rightful owners." The advice was penned by "The Educators," whose inspiration may be a German...

Why We Can't Take Cruise Seriously
 Why We Can't 
 Take Cruise Seriously 
OPINION

Why We Can't Take Cruise Seriously

Nazi role won't be a career-changer a la Nicholson, Newman

(Newser) - The prospect of Tom Cruise as a renegade Nazi has moviegoers snickering already, and with good reason, Stephen Metcalf writes for Slate. No one expects Cruise to pull off a mid-career tour de force as the giants who came before him did. “Place Cruise next to Nicholson, Newman, and...

Bailouts a Fling for Nation Married to Free Market

Bailouts not a betrayal of free market ethos, really

(Newser) - Washington's bailout of the auto industry would normally "be a turning point in the history of American Capitalism,” writes Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post. Now it’s business as usual in “Bailout Nation.” That doesn’t mean the US has abandoned its free market ethos,...

Madoff Scheme Not Much Worse Than Legal Ones
Madoff Scheme Not Much Worse Than Legal Ones
OPINION

Madoff Scheme Not Much Worse Than Legal Ones

End of communism let Wall Street become unhinged: Friedman

(Newser) - Wall Street used to be the epicenter of capitalism that the whole world wanted to emulate, but, on a trip to Hong Kong, Thomas Friedman discovers that the American financial establishment has lost its credibility. "We don’t just need a financial bailout," he writes in the New ...

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