green collar

What comes around goes around?

This is a cross-post from Grist.org. I thought that the Economic Populist readers might be interested in the intersection between manufacturing and the environment -- please tell me what you think

How to save Detroit

Irony of ironies, the one set of products that could save G.M. is the one that G.M. destroyed -- the electric trolley systems of America. According to the well-known research of Bradford Snell, G.M. killed the electric trolley, because in 1922 they decided that the only way to increase car sales was to eliminate the competition, decent public transit. So they bought systems, pressured railroads and banks, bought public officials, did whatever they could to replace electric -- I'll repeat that, electric -- transportation with oil-based transportation.

Manufacturing Monday: Week of 11.17.08

Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new installment of Manufacturing Monday. Now I would like to do something a tad different this week. You see today we get two important economic indicators released. So, instead of waiting a whole week for me to reprise them here, I would go ahead and write about then today! I will still go over last week's indicators, but figured you deserve to get something more up to date as well. The numbers get released around 9:30 Eastern, so they will be covered first, then last week's stuff.