Martin Hart-Landsberg points out that free trade agreements, such as the one the US is poised to conclude with South Korea, are about much more than trade -- they expand the power of big corporations, strip governments of their ability to regulate them, and fuel capitalism's destructive tendencies. According to Hart-Landsberg, the Korea-US trade deal would also fuel the already-disastrous financialization of the US economy.

Moving your money out of the big banks that have helped create the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression may seem like an excellent idea. But leftwing journalist Doug Henwood believes such actions -- along with community currencies and attempts to abolish corporate personhood -- are misguided. Henwod discusses the long, and problematic, history of American populism, and what a radical approach to finance might look like.

It epitomizes corporate production in our neoliberal age: an industry tied into circuits of global finance, producing for markets far away; involving political cronyism, the superexploitation of immigrant labor, and the dramatic depletion of the environment. It might surprise you, but it's the wine industry.  Investigative journalist Will Parrish lays bare wine production on the North Coast, in the third installment of our series on California.

In David McNally's analysis of the nature and causes of the ongoing economic crisis, he highlights, among other things, the volatility of money, the uses and abuses of working-class debt, a post-1982 expansion in global capitalism, and the fateful financialization of the economy. Debt has played a significant role, McNally argues in a recent article, in disciplining workers and poor people both here and abroad. (Holiday encore presentation.)

In a moment of nearly unprecedented economic crisis, what is the Left proposing as a means of reaching a better world? On a series about the global economic meltdown, radical scholars Andrej Grubacic and Dick Walker talk about recent debates at the World Social Forum and the connections between finance capital and the economic crisis.

In David McNally's analysis of the nature and causes of the ongoing economic crisis, he highlights, among other things, the volatility of money, the uses and abuses of working-class debt, a post-1982 expansion in global capitalism, and the fateful financialization of the economy. Debt has played a significant role, McNally argues in a recent article, in disciplining workers and poor people both here and abroad.