I just started listening to your program and i like most of it but you all need to research libertarian-ism with a small l. You guys were spewing out misinformation between Anarchism and libertarians. C'mon guys and gals

I had no idea, even after listening to his program for years, that Doug Henwood has such a poorly developed understanding of the meaning and importance of both localization, and the necessary undermining of corporate power, to economics and the environment.

People organizing for a much stronger localizing of manufacturing, jobs, food production, currencies, energy production, etc, are not by any stretch of the imagination arguing that there aren't some larger more regional, national, and global institutions which will still be needed. We are simply working to strongly reinstate localization, because the current system is so DE-localized that it is creating disastrous instabilities in local food and economic security, and environmental integrity both locally and planet wide. Local currencies for example, are meant to rebalance through localization, these incredibly debilitating centralized regional and global corporate oriented dynamics.

And as the producers of Against the Grain well understand, localized systems of production and economics can be federated with eachother regionally and globally to help diminish and replace the devastatingly oppressive centralized hierarchical multinational corporate power structure.

Which gets us to corporate power and personhood. What in the hell is up with Henwood on this one? People fighting to end corporate personhood are not by any stretch of the imagination saying that corporations aren't necessary at all, or that no large scale production of any kind is needed. We are simply saying that corporations should not have the legal and constitutional rights of PEOPLE which gives them far too much power over our lives, infrastructure and politics.

Henwood's narrative that people fighting for increased localization and diminished corporate power/rights are somehow nothing but a bunch of Luddites seeking to return society to some mythical pre-industrial agrarian shangri la is incredibly naive and disrespectful to what these efforts are all about, and he should spend a lot more time studying and understanding them before introducing juvenile critiques which have no basis in reality.

http://mediaroots.org/bac-dumps-$75-trillion-in-derivatives-on-u.s.-taxpayers.php

"Economic journalist Doug Henwood speaks with Sasha Lilley about the power of the owning class," but doesn't really offer alternatives and doesn't critique the role of the two-party dictatorship, which perpetuates the obscene inequality. (I guess we should commend him for mentioning a post-capitalist society in passing.)

DH and SL discuss "American populism on the right and left," but apparently only to bash OWS. Yet, OWS doesn't claim to offer solutions, but very real and crucial critique.

DH and SL discuss "the problems with moving one's money to small banks," but the critique seems flimsy and it certainly doesn't convince me to keep sending my money to the big banks.

DH and SL discuss "why the Federal Reserve isn't the source of all economic evil." Yet, nobody said it was, except for Ron Paul followers, which are not the sum total representation of the OWS Movement. Moreover, DH doesn't delve into the fact that the Fed is private.

I don't know. DH seems to engage in some clever sophistries here, but the listeners seem to see through it.

http://rdwolff.com/content/federal-reserve-real-source-powercontrol-soci...

Sasha, I would compare cooperative credit unions to cooperative workplaces. Just as cooperative workplaces still must interact with large, predatory corporations, even though they can socialize their workplace they are not totally independent institutions in the economy (yet!). Neither are credit unions isolated, but one advantage is that the members can influence the direction of a credit union by voting in a board that reflects their values. This is a process we are involved in, not any ultimate silver bullet.

If, as Mr. Henwood suggested, big banks are instituting more fees in order to drive away small customers who cost them more than they're worth, then why did they back down over the debit card fee when they saw how many customers they were driving away? Oakland is full of billboards advertising Chase and B of A. Why are they spending the money to advertise in Oakland if they don't want small customers?
He said it wasn't good for credit unions to get more money, saying they were investing a lot of it in treasury bonds, which he says is bad. That's better than investing in derivatives of fraudulent mortgages. I don't think CUs do derivatives trading, and they make loans to people in the community, something he didn't mention. He seemed to be saying that getting an influx of new customers was also a burden to CUs, but both banks and CUs are always seeking more customers.

Mr Henwood is criticising the "abolish the Fed" slogan raised @ some of the current protests when the sound goes (22'52" - 22'55").

Why?

And please reinstate his words.

Thank you.