DOCSLIB.ORG

A World Where Everything Can Be Called Anything Else

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A World Where Everything Can Be Called Anything Else A World Where Everything Can Be Called Anything Else Mark Olson Honor’s Thesis Professor McGuffey 2014/15 2 Introduction All words like Peace and Love, All sane affirmative speech, Had been soiled, profaned, debased To a horrid mechanical screech. -W.H. Auden1 It seems to go without saying that our ability to use language to communicate with people is a human faculty of the utmost importance. Speech is, after all, what distinguishes us from other species, and was a key reason for human development. However, if one impartially observes everyday mainstream political discourse, or the speeches of politicians, it becomes apparent that something is amiss. The marketplace of ideas seems to be functioning as the theory suggests; ideas are being freely exchanged at a dizzying speed on the relatively unrestricted Internet and elsewhere. But a cursory glance at the various political ideas being exchanged reveals that certain political words have various meanings, depending on who is using them, and these various meanings often “cannot be reconciled with one another.”2 How does this happen? And would it be appropriate to say that some people are abusing, or misusing, political words? Or is using political words however one pleases just the “natural” result of a democratic society that cherishes freedom of speech? 1 W.H. Auden, “We Too Had Known Golden Hours.” Quoted from Hannah Arendt’s speech that was delivered upon receiving Denmark’s Sonning Prize in 1975, and published in Responsibility and Judgment. Page 10. 2 Orwell, George. George Orwell Essays. “Politics and the English Language.” page 959 3 The issue of words having irreconcilable meanings does not seem to be a problem, for example, in the physical sciences. It would be strange for a physicist to adopt a new meaning for the word gravity without any kind of coherent reasoning; this would go against the standards that are put in place in the physical sciences. Thus controversy surrounding the meanings of the words in the physical sciences rarely happens, and attention is mainly focused on the competing theories within the given field of science. However, this issue is not always the case in the political world. For example, the socialist literature of the 19th and 20th century expressed socialism to mean a system in which the workers own and control the means of production, consumption, and distribution. Yet it is common to hear people in right- wing circles say that President Obama and the Democrats are implementing socialism in America. Has the meaning of socialism changed? It would be difficult to justify a claim that President Obama is creating policies that hand over ownership and control of America’s businesses to the workers. What makes it even stranger is that those who consider themselves socialist are saying that President Obama and the Democrats are implementing policies that are anything but socialism.3 How can there be such a stark difference between the two points of view on the meaning of one word? The partial answer is that many political ideas are still contested within the political world and have not reached a consensus that is shared by all, unlike how the concept of gravity, or other aspects in the physical sciences, eventually reached a 3 The “World Socialist Website” is a place where today’s socialists publish their perspectives. A quick glance at the various articles quickly reveals a starkly different picture of President Obama and the Democrats. www.wsws.org 4 consensus and became scientific law. And because of the contested nature of these political ideas they remain in competition in the marketplace of ideas; that is, a person or an institution can argue that socialism is X, Y and Z, while another set of people can argue that socialism is actually A, B and C. The theory of the marketplace of ideas suggests that the truth will emerge from a free and fair competition. But what kinds of standards exist within this marketplace of ideas? And would it be fair if a group of people with greater resources and access to mass communications could attempt to undermine the meaning of a political idea so that their idea will gain an advantage in the marketplace of ideas? What begins to become apparent is that the standards in the political world are much looser than the standards used in the physical sciences. In other words, there is no permanent committee that regulates and approves of the meanings of important words used in mainstream political discourse.4 But neither is there in the physical sciences. This seems to suggest that the contested nature of political ideas might be more of an issue because politics mainly deals with the unsettled, and often turbulent, question of Who rules Whom? The important question of who rules whom thus may reveal why political, economic, and religious ideas seem to be in a continuous competition. The proponents of various political, economic, and religious ideas seek to offer their adherents the best explanation of a complex, diverse, and continuously changing world, and also believe their ideas offer the best strategy for the future. But why do the meanings of certain political words also have to fall prey to the continuously 4 Point of clarification: when I speak of the standards in mainstream political discourse I am excluding the standards that exist in academia. 5 changing world? Why can’t we just create new political words to represent the new ideas, or evolving ideas? It would be one thing if the contested meaning of a political word were a new concept, but many political words have been around for over a century, some much longer. Thus one of the consequences of the contested nature of political ideas is that the meaning of the words used to describe them, like socialism, are abused and become victims, so to speak, in the struggle over how the world should be ruled. This problem then creates a situation in which words become ambiguous and indeterminate. How do political words become indeterminate? Was this a problem in pre- modern times, or is it just a problem that arose during modernity? In this essay I will explore these questions and argue that the abuse and misuse of political words by various political actors are creating indeterminate political words, which leads to the degradation of political discourse. An example of the abuse of political words would be people’s using them more as pejoratives to attack political opponents. The use of pejoratives in speech is often used to conceal facts and divert attention away from much needed arguments, rather than to explain and understand the various issues. And an example of the misuse of political words would be ordinary people’s inappropriately using words through lack of understanding and/or mimicking the talking points of their trusted sources for understanding politics. This is a problem because it causes confusion throughout society and hinders our ability to find common ground. I am not going to suggest that I have the solutions to the problem; rather this essay will explore the various causes of the misuse and abuse of political language by highlighting the insights of four prominent political thinkers on 6 language: Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, George Orwell, and Hannah Arendt. My hope is that this exploration will help contribute to, and deepen, the discussion regarding the degradation of political discourse. In the first part of this paper I will be using the insights found in Hannah Arendt’s work to discuss the importance of speech for political life, and how words are something that we use to appropriate nature and the various things we produce in this world. Arendt argued that not only was language common to us all, but that nature and the innumerable amount of things in this world were common to us all as well – even though our relations towards these things varies from person to person. Arendt also believed that speech and action are the single most important conditions of human life, so much so that life without them would not be life at all.5 The second part of the essay will then explore how the degradation of language happens in the political world. To do this I will again use the insights of Arendt on what she saw as people failing to make important distinctions when engaging in political discourse, and a phenomenon that she called “the functionalization of all concepts and ideas.” The functionalization of concepts is when a person starts labeling a distinct concept by using another distinct concept’s name because they believe the two different concepts serves the same function in society. For example, people sometimes call communism a religion because the adherents of communism supposedly worship the idea of communism like religious adherents worship their respective religious dogmas. Arendt believed that this 5 Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Page 176. 7 leads to confusing the issues because people no longer make the important distinctions between the concepts and ideas. The second part of looking at the degradation of language will then use the insights of George Orwell and his observations on the abuse and misuse of language in society. Orwell observed that society appeared to be moving away from the use of concrete language and toward the use of abstract language. He also saw how the use of indeterminate political words and vague language had a special ramification for the political world by highlighting how partisans used these words. And the third part of the essay will then explore possible reasons for the degradation of language by looking at the insights of Plato, and also of Alexis de Tocqueville.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Contemporary Left Antisemitism
    “David Hirsh is one of our bravest and most thoughtful scholar-activ- ists. In this excellent book of contemporary history and political argu- ment, he makes an unanswerable case for anti-anti-Semitism.” —Anthony Julius, Professor of Law and the Arts, UCL, and author of Trials of the Diaspora (OUP, 2010) “For more than a decade, David Hirsh has campaigned courageously against the all-too-prevalent demonisation of Israel as the one national- ism in the world that must not only be criticised but ruled altogether illegitimate. This intellectual disgrace arouses not only his indignation but his commitment to gather evidence and to reason about it with care. What he asks of his readers is an equal commitment to plumb how it has happened that, in a world full of criminality and massacre, it is obsessed with the fundamental wrongheadedness of one and only national movement: Zionism.” —Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism and Sociology, Columbia University, USA “David Hirsh writes as a sociologist, but much of the material in his fascinating book will be of great interest to people in other disciplines as well, including political philosophers. Having participated in quite a few of the events and debates which he recounts, Hirsh has done a commendable service by deftly highlighting an ugly vein of bigotry that disfigures some substantial portions of the political left in the UK and beyond.” —Matthew H. Kramer FBA, Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy, Cambridge University, UK “A fierce and brilliant rebuttal of one of the Left’s most pertinacious obsessions. What makes David Hirsh the perfect analyst of this disorder is his first-hand knowledge of the ideologies and dogmata that sustain it.” —Howard Jacobson, Novelist and Visiting Professor at New College of Humanities, London, UK “David Hirsh’s new book Contemporary Left Anti-Semitism is an impor- tant contribution to the literature on the longest hatred.
    [Show full text]
  • Marxism, History and Socialist Consciousness: a Reply by David North to Alex Steiner and Frank Brenner
    Marxism, History and Socialist Consciousness: A Reply by David North to Alex Steiner and Frank Brenner Dear Comrades Steiner and Brenner: The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has asked that I reply to your document, “Objectivism or Marxism,” on its behalf. This is a task that I undertake with a certain degree of regret. Notwithstanding the different paths our lives have taken over the past three decades, I retain warm recollections of the time when we worked closely together within the movement. However, that was very long ago, and your latest document serves only to underscore what your various writings over the past several years have made increasingly apparent: that you have traveled very far politically from Marxism, the political heritage of the Trotskyist movement, and the ICFI. This inescapable political reality must determine the content and the tone of this reply. Your letter begins by protesting that the ICFI has failed to answer your previous documents, from which you draw the most disturbing conclusions: The ICFI suffers from “an aversion to criticism” that is “symptomatic of deeper problems within the movement that every member and supporter of the IC should be concerned about.” The leadership of the movement “stonewalls political debate,” and seeks “to quell discussion in order to insulate itself from criticism.” Our alleged failure to respond to your documents “only underscores how alien a practice genuinely critical debate has become within the movement.” To the uninformed observer, the situation you describe can only evoke images of a besieged opposition tendency in a dictatorial political party, battling against a bureaucratic regime’s suppression of its democratic right to be heard by the rank-and-file membership.
    [Show full text]
  • Tory Councillor Calls for Jeremy Corbyn to Be Hanged As Bogus Anti-Semitism Campaign Intensifies
    World Socialist Web Site wsws.org Tory councillor calls for Jeremy Corbyn to be hanged as bogus anti-Semitism campaign intensifies By Robert Stevens 27 July 2019 On Wednesday, as Boris Johnson became prime minister, part of the problem. We have to stand for a serious, a Lincolnshire Conservative councillor, Roger Patterson, anti-racist, inclusive socialism.” tweeted that Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was a Such was the Corbynites’ capitulation that after giving her “traitor” and supporter of terrorism who should be report outlining the new disciplinary measures to the “swinging from the gallows like Saddam Hussein.” Parliamentary Labour Party that evening, Formby received a Patterson has been suspended. But the campaign led by standing ovation. The following day Labour’s NEC backed Labour’s right wing and various Zionist groups accusing the plans for “legally robust rules” to be presented for Corbyn and the “left” of anti-Semitism has played a central adoption at Labour’s annual conference in September. role in creating the political climate for incitement to Corbyn and his backers have agreed to the disciplinary violence. Just two weeks earlier, Patterson tweeted, “The measures, even though everyone knows the claims of the only minorities to be cleansed are Corbyn’s terrorist Blairites and Zionists are a pack of lies. The text of the NEC sympathising anti semitic cult. They are a dirty stain on this ruling stated, “Anti-Semitism complaints relate to a small country.” minority of members,” and even this massively distorts the Corbyn has faced warnings of an armed forces mutiny if real picture.
    [Show full text]
  • David Ray Griffin Foreword by Richard Folk
    THE NEW PEARL HARBOR Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin foreword by Richard Folk CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Forword by Richard Falk vii Introduction xi PART ONE THE EVENTS OF 9 / 11 1. Flights 11 and 175: How Could the Hijackers' Missions Have Succeeded? 3 2. Flight 77: Was It Really the Aircraft that Struck the Pentagon? 25 3. Flight 93: Was It the One Flight that was Shot Down? 49 4. The Presidents Behavior. Why Did He Act as He Did? 57 PART TWO THE LARGER CONTEXT 5. Did US Officials Have Advance Information about 9/11? 67 6. Did US Officials Obstruct Investigations Prior to 9/11? 75 7. Did US Officials Have Reasons for Allowing 9/11? 89 8. Did US Officials Block Captures and Investigations after 9/11? 105 PART THREE CONCLUSION 9. Is Complicity by US Officials the Best Explanation? 127 10. The Need for a Full Investigation 147 Notes 169 Index of Names 210 Back Cover Text OLIVE BRANCH PRESS An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc. Northampton, Massachusetts First published in 2004 by OLIVE BRANCH PRESS An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc. 46 Crosby Street, Northampton, Massachusetts 01060 www.interlinkbooks.com Text copyright © David Ray Griffin 2004 Foreword copyright © Richard Falk 2004 All rights reserved. No pan of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher unless National Security in endangered and education is essential for survival people and their nation .
    [Show full text]
  • Jean Shaoul Is Professor of Public Accountability at the University of Manchester, Uk
    “Neo-liberalism” Professor Jean Shaoul Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, UK Abstract While there have been many reviews of neo-liberalism, there have been few attempts to explain its source and development within the workings of the economic systems itself and understand it as an expression of the crisis of the profit system as a whole and the correlation of class forces. This paper by way of contrast explains neo-liberalism not simply as a policy choice but as the response of big business and their political representatives to economic and technological changes taking place in world economy. Their ability to implement such policies was directly bound up with the absence of a politically conscious movement in the working class as the socialist conceptions that animated large sections of workers in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution came under attack from Stalinism, labour reformism and trade unionism, which together attacked genuine socialism and above all internationalism After analyzing the assumptions and policy prescriptions of the widespread opposition movements, the paper argues for revolutionary scientific socialism as opposed to the dominant, politically liberal, programme of national reformism – which is why the traditional organizations of the working class and intellectuals have been unable to mount any effective opposition or critique of the neo-liberal agenda. Jean Shaoul is professor of public accountability at the University of Manchester, Uk. She has written on privatisation and the use of private finance in transport and healthcare. She is a regular contributor to the World Socialist web Site (www.wsws.org) .
    [Show full text]
  • The Carnival King of Capital
    Fast Capitalism ISSN 1930-014X Volume 17 • Issue 1 • 2020 doi:10.32855/fcapital.202001.006 The Carnival King of Capital Charles Thorpe Introduction: The Carnival King Brookings Institute writers Susan Hennessy and Benjamin Wittes complain that, while in the past, Presidents were expected to show certain standards of virtue and decency, Donald Trump’s life and candidacy were an ongoing rejection of civic virtue…. From the earliest days of his campaign, he declared war on the traditional presidency’s expectations of behavior. He was flagrant in his immorality, boasting of marital infidelity and belittling political opponents with lewd insults. He had constructed his entire professional identity around gold-plated excess and luxury and the branding of self. As a candidate, he remained unabashed in his greed and personal ambition; even his namesake charitable foundation was revealed to be merely a shell for self-dealing. He bragged that finding ways to avoid paying taxes made him “smart.”…He never spoke of the presidential office other than as an extension of himself (Hennessey and Wittes, 2020: 6-7). This description suggests that Trump represents a demoralization and deinstitutionalization of the role of President. Trump brings a condition of anomie to the Presidency, and this anomie is closely related to the trait of narcissism that Trump exhibits in spades (Merton, 1938; Frank, 2018). Hennessey and Wittes encapsulate what Trump signifies when they write that “The overriding message of Trump’s life and of his campaign was that kindness is weakness, manners are for wimps, and the public interest is for suckers” (Hennessey and Wittes 2020: 6-7).
    [Show full text]
  • The Inclusive Democracy Project: a Rejoinder - TAKIS FOTOPOULOS
    The Inclusive Democracy project: A rejoinder - TAKIS FOTOPOULOS The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 1, No. 3 (May 2005) The Inclusive Democracy project: A rejoinder TAKIS FOTOPOULOS I would like first to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the contributors taking part in this special issue. It is indeed through the development of a comprehensive dialogue on the crucial issues that the Inclusive Democracy (ID) project raises that we could meaningfully assess its merits and possible weaknesses. In the lines that will follow the intention is not to engage in any kind of polemic against any of the distinguished contributors but simply to give alternative explanations, from the ID perspective, to the reservations, or even criticisms, raised against it. I hope that the bona fide spirit within which this debate takes place will be recognized by everybody and the fruitful dialogue developed here will function as a catalyst for its further expansion in the future. I hope that most in the radical Left would agree today on the need for the expansion of such a dialogue on the contours of a future society at a moment when many —particularly within the anti-globalization movement— assert that ‘another world is possible’ without even taking the trouble to define this world . But, if this movement is not capable of giving at least the contours of such an alternative world (and this is the objective of the ID project) then it is bound to register in popular memory as simply a protest movement and not as a liberatory movement —the kind of movement we need today to move forward towards a new society.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction 1. the City Had Very Few Black Inhabitants in the Early 1950S
    Notes Introduction 1. The city had very few black inhabitants in the early 1950s. The estimated 5,000 slaves who had been kept as servants in the eighteenth century had long since merged into the general population (Dresser, 1989, p. 310). 2. In the UK context, ‘Asian’ has a similar meaning to ‘South Asian’ in the U.S. context. 3. During an impromptu feedback to the head at the end of the day on how things went, I happened to mention that, after we had done some Math and some English, we then played some reggae. The response of the head teacher of this predominantly African-Caribbean multicultural school was, ‘oh, what’s that?’ 4. Perhaps such a challenge began with the sociologist Max Weber. Although Albert Salomon’s famous observation that Weber was involved in a debate ‘with the ghost of Marx’ (Salomon, 1935) may be somewhat overstated, ever since Weber (c. 1915) made a number of criticisms of Marx and Marxism the intellectual struggle against Marxist ideas has been at the forefront of academic writing. Weber suggested that social class might not be solely related to the mode of production; that political power does not neces- sarily derive from economic power; and that status as well as class might form the basis of the formation of social groups. Subsequent attempts to challenge Marxist ideas have ranged from the post-structuralist writings of Michel Foucault who believed that power is diffuse rather than related to the means of production, and of Jacques Derrida who stressed the need for the deconstruction of all dominant discourses; through the postmodernism of Jean-François Lyotard who was incredulous of all grand narratives, of Jean Baudrillard who argued that binary oppositions (such as the ruling and working classes) had collapsed; to the transmodernism of Enrique Dussel who has reworked the limited postmodern notion of multivocality (where all voices have equal validity) in favor of the prioritizing of the voices of ‘suffering Others’.
    [Show full text]
  • Alternative Media As Critical Pedagogical Intervention Against Neoliberalism and Racism
    D E M O C R A T I C C O M M U N I Q U É Alternative Media as Critical Pedagogical Intervention Against Neoliberalism and Racism Emil Marmol The corporate news media serves as the primary instrument by which the ideologies of neoliberalism and racism are transmitted and solidified in the public mind. In contrast, alternative news media provides counter-hegemonic content that disrupts corporate media messages. This paper calls for a transformative and revolutionary pedagogical intervention encouraging educators to fuse alternative media content with a critical media literacy framework in their classrooms. It provides examples of how to facilitate the introduction of alternative news into the curriculum to challenge and break classist and racist frames that are reproduced by the corporate media. Keywords: Alternative media; Critical Pedagogy; Race; Class; Neoliberalism Marmol, Emil (2018). Alternative Media as Critical Pedagogical Intervention Against Neoliberalism and Racism, Democratic Communiqué, Vol. 27. 2018 pp. 24–35. Marmol | Alternative Media 25 his paper calls for a critical pedagogical intervention, encouraging educators to fuse alternative media content with a critical media literacy framework in their classrooms. This intervention wil will facilitate an introduction of alternative news into the curriculum as a transformative and revolutionary pedagogy (Funk, Kellner, and Share 2015; Leban and McLaren 2010). Under the neoliberal paradigm, youth are facing a bleak world in which the state has abdicated its responsibilities to them (Giroux 2008, 2017), and where political decision-making power is exercised almost exclusively by corporations and economic elites (Gilens and Page 2014). Young people have limited economic and social opportunities.
    [Show full text]
  • North Korea and the Theory of the Deformed Workers' State
    North Korea and the Theory of the Deformed Workers’ State: Definitions and First Principles of a Fourth International Theory Alzo David-West James P. Cannon, Peng Shuzi, Pierre Frank, Michel Pablo, Ernest Mandel, and Tim Wohlforth Abstract This essay examines the academically neglected theory of the deformed workers’ state in relation to the political character of the North Korean state. Developed by leaders of the Fourth International, the world party of socialism founded by exiled Russian Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, the theory classifies the national states that arose under post- Second World War Soviet Army occupation as bureaucratic, hybrid, transitional formations that imitated the Soviet Stalinist system. The author reviews the origin of the theory, explores its political propositions and apparent correspondences in the North Korean case, and concludes with some hypotheses and suggestions for further research. Copyright © 2012 by Alzo David-West and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Alzo David-West 2 Introduction On the centenary of the birth of Kim Il Sung in 2012, North Korea entered a period officially designated as “opening the gate to a great prosperous and powerful socialist nation.” Coming after the post-Soviet rise of markets within a planned economy, the initiation of capitalist Special Economic Zones in the early 1990s and 2000s, market- oriented economic and currency reforms in 2002, and the dropping of “communism” from the 2009 revised constitution, the reference to present-day North Korea as a “socialist nation” is evidently more symbolic than substantial. Still, over sixty years after the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on 9 September 1948, the political character of the North Korean state remains a more or less unresolved issue in North Korean studies.
    [Show full text]
  • Internationalist Asian Tsunami Disaster - Capitalist Tidal Wave of Death
    January-February 2005 No. 20 _$2 !2 "" " Internationalist Asian Tsunami Disaster - Capitalist Tidal Wave of Death Tsunam! refugees in Calang, Aceh, in northern Sumatra Island. Indonesian government is using disaster to tighte~ military control of rebellious province. 2 The Internationalist January-February 2005 In this issue... The Rape of Falluja: With the intensification of U.S. War Crime .................. ~ ...................... 3 repressive legislation and Marxism increasing police-state Vs. Boycott Colonial Occupation measures, an Bonapartisrn "Election" in Iraq ...................................... 4 examination of the Marxist analysis of and Imperial Coronation in D.C ........................... 8 policy toward bonapartism is vital. Asian Tsunami Disaster Readings include articles by Marx and Capitalist Tidal Wave of Death ................... 1 O Trotsky, as well as selections from the Lisbon Earthquake, 1755: From the present-day Enlightenmenttothe French Revolution .. 12 Trotskyist press. A "Natural Disaster" Foretold .................... 14 Indonesian Military Butchers US$1.50 Out of Aceh! ............................................ 16 Order from/make checks payable to: Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Don't Beg for Charity, Church Street Station, New York, New York 10008, U.S.A. Fight for Workers Revolution ................. 21 Marxism vs. Islamic Fundamentalism ....... 24 Visit the League for the Fourth International/ Beware of Not-so-Non-Governmental Organizations ......................................... 24 Internationalist
    [Show full text]
  • The World Economic Crisis: a Marxist Analysis
    The World Economic Crisis: A Marxist Analysis By Nick Beams, 19-25 December 2008, World Socialist Website The following is a lecture delivered by Nick Beams, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) and a member of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, to audiences in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney in November and December, 2008. It is now clear that the greatest financial According to official statistics, all the crisis since the Great Depression is on the major areas of the world economy are now in verge of becoming the deepest global slump recession: the United States, the eurozone, since the economic catastrophe of the 1930s. Britain and Japan. We could spend the entire time available for The growth estimates for China and the this lecture simply enumerating the myriad so-called emerging markets, which, once expressions of this crisis and examining their upon a time—and I use the fairy-tale form far-reaching implications. I propose here to advisedly—were supposed to provide a boost deal only with some of the most significant. to the world economy, are now being revised On November 24, Bloomberg News downwards virtually on a daily basis. reported that after the $306 billion bailout of Like the financial crisis that caused it, the the US bank Citigroup, organised at midnight economic slump is centred in the United the previous day, the US government had States. The number of private sector jobs has now committed itself to providing more than fallen for the past 11 months straight. Some $7.76 trillion to the financial institutions and 533,000 jobs were lost in November—the banks.
    [Show full text]