Richard Wolff speaks to Paul Jay about the troubled auto industry in the United States. He says the important question right now is whether the bondholders will be willing to give up their share for foreign shareholders and make the sacrifices necessary to make American auto companies survive. If they refuse, as many of them claim they will, then the only option will be bankruptcy. He also says that both GM and Chrysler are going to give their largely worthless shares to the fund for health-care programs insuring their workers.

Class analysis predates economics. Long before modern economics emerged, ancient Greek thinkers, for example, analyzed their society by classifying people into groups by wealth. They viewed understanding the relationships between classes as crucial to improving their society and debated whether wealth should be distributed equally. While class analysis has a long history, no single definition of class has prevailed.

There is no precedent in US -- or any other -- history for the level of personal debt now carried by the American people. Consider the raw numbers. In 1974, Federal Reserve data show that US mortgage plus other consumer debt totaled $627 billion. By 1994, the total debt had risen to $4,206 billion, and by 2004, it reached $9,709 billion. For the second quarter of 2005, the Fed announced that the nation's debt service ratio (debt payments as a percentage of after-tax income) was 13.6%, the highest since the Fed began recording this statistic in 1980.

Now more than ever, the watchword in economics is “policy.” “Decision-makers” demand – and sometimes pay well for – “the appropriate policy” to solve those economic problems that strike them as important. Economists interested in “practical relevance” respond by “applying” their theories to supply such a policy. What goes unquestioned is the plausibility of “policy” itself. Yet, the very notion of policy is questionable.