Laura Flanders of GRITtv talks with political economist Professsor Richard Wolff about economic collapse, austerity programs, and the recent and growing anger and popular uprisings and street actions in Europe that we may soon be seeing spreading to North America:

“It’s a bizarre idea to fix a global capitalist crisis by breaking a long-term promise,” notes Richard Wolff, economist and author of Capitalism Hits the Fan of the “austerity” measures rocking Europe’s social democracies at the moment. Governments across Europe are implementing drastic cuts to social safety nets, raising retirement ages, all in the name of fiscal responsibility, and people have taken to the streets–in France, between 1.3 and 2.9 million people have come out in protest, a percentage that Wolff notes would be equivalent to between 6.5 and 14.4 million [in the U.S.].

So what’s going on in Europe, and what are the lessons we can learn from the European left? Wolff joins us along with Inez McCormack, Chair of the Participation and the Practice of Rights Project in Ireland, to talk us through the crisis, the lessons, and the ongoing struggle.

Austerity Fatigue and Action in Europe – GRITtv – October 29, 2010

It now appears that in all likelihood republicans will win a congressional majority this coming Tuesday. Nate Silver’s projections of Friday October 29…

…found Republicans gaining an average of 53 seats, which would bring them to 232 total. Democrats are given a 16 percent chance of holding the House, down slightly from 17 percent on Wednesday.

Increasingly, there seems to be something of a consensus among various forecasting methods around a projected Republican figure somewhere in the 50-60 seat range.

Several of the expert forecasters that FiveThirtyEight’s model uses, like the Cook Political Report, the Rothenberg Political Report, and Larry Sabato, have stated that they expect the Republicans’ overall total to fall roughly in this range. A straw poll of political insiders for Hotline on Call found an average expectation of a 50-seat gain. And some political science models have been forecasting gains somewhere in this range for some time.

The forecast also seems consistent with the average of generic ballot polling. Our model projects that Republicans will win the average Congressional district by between 3 and 4 points.

The modeling also suggests that there is a 90% chance that after Tuesday Democrats will control at least 50 seats in the Senate, but that there is a 0% chance that Democrats will control at least 60 seats.

It’s not looking good by any stretch of the imagination.  

This past Wednesday “Barack Obama was a guest on The Daily Show, thereby becoming the first sitting president to appear as Jon Stewart’s guest. (In July, Obama became the first sitting president ever to appear on The View.) In the half-hour-long interview, Stewart quizzed his grizzled guest about health-care reform, the financial crisis, and the midterm elections.”

“Stewart’s most combative query concerned National Economic Council director Larry Summers-in particular, Obama’s hiring thereof. ‘We can’t expect different results with the same people,’ Stewart said, referring to Summers’s previous stint as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. He continued, ‘Larry Summers … that seems like the exact same person.’ Obama, inadvertently quoting his imminently quotable predecessor, replied, ‘Larry Summers did a heckuva job.’ Stewart, somewhat shocked, advised him, ‘You don’t wanna use that phrase…'”

This morning at GRITtv Laura Flanders talked with journalist and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, who reminds that “Summers was the chief architect of Clinton-era policies that created the economic crisis in the first place, and that Obama’s appointment of him to get us out of it was never going to result in anything but more money being thrown at Wall Street.”

It’s no wonder that there is now so much irrepressible enthusiasm among the liberals and independents and progressives who tipped the balance in the democrats favor in 2006 and in 2008 to get out and vote for democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

He has authored more than 100 books, and is apparently the eighth most cited human being in history, after Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the bible, Plato, and Ford.

The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur interviews MIT Professor Noam Chomsky on US foreign policy and politics…