Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy.

He writes a column on economic and policy issues that is distributed to over 550 newspapers by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. His opinion pieces have appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and most major U.S. newspapers. He appears regularly on national and local television and radio programs. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

Blog Entries by Mark Weisbrot

Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side the United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras

1 Comments | Posted December 16, 2009 | 01:12 PM (EST)


At dawn on June 28, the Honduran military abducted President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint and flew him out of the country. Conflicting and ambiguous statements from the Obama administration left many confused about whether it opposed this coup or was really trying to help it succeed. Here are the top...

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Honduran Dictatorship Is A Threat to Democracy In the Hemisphere

2 Comments | Posted November 23, 2009 | 10:41 AM (EST)


A small group of rich people who own most of Honduras and its politicians enlist the military to kidnap the elected president at gunpoint and take him into exile. They then arrest thousands of people opposed to the coup, shut down and intimidate independent media, shoot and kill some demonstrators,...

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Senator Lugar's Call to Recognize Honduran Election

3 Comments | Posted November 20, 2009 | 12:31 PM (EST)


This is not surprising, Lugar has been with his party leadership on this all along, including his letter in July that got the State Department to write their response that appeared to blame Zelaya for the coup. Honduras has become a real cause for the Republican party leadership, which sees...

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U.S. Must Solve Its Own Economic Problems

2 Comments | Posted November 16, 2009 | 12:18 PM (EST)


President Obama will go to Asia next week and has promised to say something about the exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the U.S. dollar. It would be good if some enterprising journalist asked him why the United States is worried about the Chinese dumping their dollars, and why...

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President Obama's Credibility on the Line in Honduras

10 Comments | Posted November 4, 2009 | 06:35 PM (EST)


Last Friday an agreement was reached between the de facto regime in Honduras-- which took power in a military coup on June 28th -- and the elected president Mel Zelaya, for the restoration of democracy there.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in announcing what she called an "historic agreement,...

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Ecuador, Bolivia Show that Even Small Developing Countries Can Pursue Independent Economic Policies, Stand Up for Their Rights, and Win

2 Comments | Posted October 30, 2009 | 11:15 AM (EST)


Among the conventional wisdom that we hear everyday in the business press is that developing countries should bend over backwards to create a friendly climate for foreign corporations, follow orthodox (neoliberal) macroeconomic policy advice, and strive to achieve an investment-grade sovereign credit rating so as to attract more foreign capital.

...
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When the Media Is a Big Part of the Problem

7 Comments | Posted October 30, 2009 | 11:09 AM (EST)


What kind of a public debate can we have on the most vital issues of the day in the United States? A lot depends on the media, which determines how these issues are framed for most people.

Take the war in Afghanistan, which has been subject to major debate here...

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Occupying Afghanistan Is Making Things Worse

13 Comments | Posted October 13, 2009 | 01:07 PM (EST)


President Obama is coming under attack from the Right for his reluctance to grant the request of General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, for more U.S. troops. On the other side of the equation sits the majority of the American people, who are against sending more...

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A New Role For the IMF?

2 Comments | Posted October 13, 2009 | 01:01 PM (EST)


Update:

Bill Murray, Deputy Chief of Media at the IMF, posts a comment below. My response to these comments:

The first paragraph is just rhetoric, with words like "misleading," "inaccurate," etc., but nothing to back it up. He then writes:

Murray: "A few more facts: "IMF forecasts...

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G-20 Doesn't Offer Much Reform

Posted September 29, 2009 | 11:15 AM (EST)


"The old system of international economic cooperation is over," announced UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. "The new system, as of today, has begun."

The first part of that statement is partly true (see below). The second is a fantasy.

The G-20 is not a...

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How Much Repression Will Hillary Clinton Support in Honduras?

31 Comments | Posted September 25, 2009 | 03:32 PM (EST)


Now that President Zelaya has returned to Honduras, the coup government -- after first denying that he was there -- has unleashed a wave of repression to prevent people from gathering support for their elected president. This is how U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the first phase of...

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What Reforms Will The United States Have as a Result of This Recession?

5 Comments | Posted September 18, 2009 | 12:03 PM (EST)


Corruption takes many forms in different countries and locations. Here in the United States it may not be as common to pay off a judge or a customs official as it is in most low and middle income countries, but we do have quite a bit of legalized bribery, especially...

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Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story Will Find a Ready Audience

76 Comments | Posted September 16, 2009 | 01:32 PM (EST)


When I first met Michael Moore more than 20 years ago he was showing a half-finished documentary to a few dozen people in a classroom in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was funny and poignant and had a powerful message. He had taken a second mortgage on his house - equipment...

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IMF Gives $164 Million to Coup Government in Honduras, Following Familiar Pattern

8 Comments | Posted September 16, 2009 | 01:27 PM (EST)


Update: Following the release of this column, CEPR received news from the IMF that it may not allow the de facto regime in Honduras access to the funds. See this press release for more information

The IMF is undergoing an unprecedented expansion of its access to resources, possibly reaching...

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Morgenthau's Axis Debunked

4 Comments | Posted September 11, 2009 | 03:44 PM (EST)


From my colleague Jake Johnston: below is the text of Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau's September 9 Wall Street Journal op-ed, "The Emerging Axis of Iran and Venezuela," with rebuttals for 21 statements in the text.

Points number 9, 11, 15, 20, and 8, and 4 are worth noting because...

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American Public Still Ahead Of Its Leaders on Foreign Policy

2 Comments | Posted August 27, 2009 | 03:27 PM (EST)


Americans are famous for not paying much attention to the rest of the world, and it is often said that foreign wars are the way that we learn geography. But most often it is not the people who have little direct experience outside their own country that are the problem,...

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Obama Should Change Course and Support Democracy In Honduras

39 Comments | Posted August 13, 2009 | 05:05 PM (EST)


President Obama is making a big mistake in coddling the dictatorship in Honduras, and putting his administration at odds with the rest of the hemisphere. It also looks terrible to the world that his government so easily abandons its professed commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

President Mel...

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Obama's Continuance of Bush Policies in Latin America is a Serious Mistake

8 Comments | Posted August 13, 2009 | 03:27 PM (EST)


There were great hopes in Latin America when President Obama was elected. U.S. standing in the region had reached a low point under George W. Bush, and all of the hemisphere's left-leaning governments expressed optimism that Obama would go in a different direction.

These hopes have been dashed. President Obama...

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Anti-Venezuela Spokespeople Misrepresent Reality of Press Freedom in Venezuela

11 Comments | Posted August 5, 2009 | 01:51 PM (EST)


Denis MacShane attacks the British left for defending Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez against an onslaught from the media, "New Cold Warriors," and right-wing demagogues throughout the world. His rhetorical trick is to tar the left with a new media law currently being debated in the Venezuelan Congress, which he...

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Trade Adjustments and Stimulus Packages in the Global Recession and Recovery

4 Comments | Posted July 24, 2009 | 03:11 PM (EST)


Global trade flows and the economic stimulus policies of individual national economies will play an important role in the recovery from the current global recession. This is especially true of the world's two largest economies, the United States and China.

The U.S. economy was running an annualized trade deficit of...

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