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Article Artículo

The Age of Oversupply: Good Argument, Tough Sell

In "The Age of Oversupply" (Penguin Group, 2013), Daniel Alpert makes a compelling case that the United States and the world are stuck in a serious crisis of insufficient demand for the foreseeable future. According to Alpert, the result is likely to be a prolonged period of slow growth and high unemployment barring coordinated international efforts to counter the problem.

Before giving the outline of Alpert's argument, let me get out my baseball bat to beat home a simple point. Standard economic theory does not believe in a world in which demand is a problem except possibly for short periods of time during recessions. This means that we don't have to worry about having enough demand because the market will automatically adjust to keep the economy at the full employment level of output. If there is unemployment, then interest rates will fall enough to induce the additional investment, consumption, or net exports (slightly longer story) needed to bring the economy back to full employment.

Dean Baker / October 04, 2013

Article Artículo

Colombia

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Petraeus' Statement on Plan Colombia at Odds With Reality

Last week, former CIA director David Petraeus coauthored a column with the Brookings Institute’s Michael O’Hanlon hailing U.S. policy in Colombia as “one of the best stories on the national security front of the 21st century to date.” That same day, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos stood before the United Nations in New York and recalled the more than 220,000 people who have been killed in the conflict over the past 50 years, emphasizing the “harsh and ugly reality of a conflict that [is] unfortunately, still in force.”

The juxtaposition of the two leaders’ statements points toward the U.S.’s ongoing focus on a militarized approach to the war on drugs, despite overwhelming evidence that suggests that Plan Colombia has been, according to Amnesty International, “a failure in every respect.”

Petraeus, a key driver of U.S. efforts to increase drone operations in the Middle East, touts Plan Colombia as a “success story” because of the massive increase in the size of Colombia’s armed forces and influx of new intelligence and targeting technology. Such measures for Colombia’s success remain predictably superficial, and are, moreover, divorced from the program’s stated aims to reduce cultivation and drug-related violence. While there has indeed been an increase in military presence since Plan Colombia’s inception in 2000, it has by no means been a victory for U.S. “security assistance.”

CEPR and Eileen O'Grady / October 03, 2013