Economist Michael Hudson analyzes the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate, and Signature Bank, explaining the similarities to the 2008 financial crash. [inc. transcript.]
A run on American Union Bank in 1932The California-based, cryptocurrency-focused Silvergate Bank collapsed on March 8. Two days later, Silicon Valley Bank went down as well, in the largest ever bank run. The latter was the second-biggest bank to fail in US history, and the most influential financial institution to crash since the 2008 crisis.
Economist Michael Hudson, co-host of the program Geopolitical Economy Hour, analyzes the disaster:
Eliot Jacobson is a retired professor of mathematics and computer science who regularly appears on our Twitter feed discussing the climate crisis. He sends tweets under the grim title, ‘Your “moment of doom” for the day’. These channel the latest news on rapidly rising carbon emissions and temperatures, catastrophic examples of extreme weather, and so on. It’s depressing fare, and Jacobson is candid about the level of anguish he feels:
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Economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson explain the relations between money and debt, their role in imperialism, and the rise of the US dollar system.
Transcript from https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/02/10/money-dollar-system-radhika-desai-michael-hudson/:
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In many nations of the non-West there has been/is a dangerously Western liberally enamoured part of the elite, and even of the general population, that would be more than happy to act as the compradors or Quislings of the Western elites. Living a very comfortable life while selling out their nations and general populations. Many are connected to the NGO-complex that acts as a Western-paid opposition, and may be more a member of a nation’s diaspora than have grown up within their home country’s political, economic and social milieu, or are simply the rich that would love to monetize their assets in US dollars and hob nob with the global Western elite across the world. In the parts of Eurasia outside the US-captured Europe, these West-loving liberals are slowly being squeezed out.
An appeal to leaders, institutions, and our brothers and sisters, from the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South.
On February 10, a collective of movements, civil society organizations, activist groups and their partners launched this Manifesto. A collective effort of dozens of groups and individuals in the Global South, the manifesto outlines the shortcomings of the status quo, “clean energy” approach of the richer countries of the Global North to the transition away from fossil fuels. It also offers new visions of ecosocial transition and transformation that are gender-just, regenerative, and popular, that are at once local and international.
How much of Shell’s record US $40 billion profit was due to the Ukraine war and freezing Russia out of the market?
If you apply the “excess deaths” methodology we became familiar with during covid, comparing profit against a running average of the previous five years, we get a figure of about $25 billion “excess profit”.
Reading matter that really matters. Seven new books on how the world works, from cells to imperialism
Ecosocialist Bookshelf is a monthly column, hosted by Ian Angus. Books described here may be reviewed at length in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that C&C agrees with everything (or even anything!) these books say.
“The theories of John Maynard Keynes provide the sound intellectual framework for the views which trade unionists had always instinctively held and known to be right” (TUC, 1968, p. 85)
The ideas and theories of John Maynard Keynes still dominate the economic views and policy proposals of the leaders of the labour movement in the major capitalist economies. Keynes is seen as offering a ‘third way’ between the pro-capitalist ‘free market’ economics that dominates the universities (and among the strategic advisers of government) and the opposite of dangerously revolutionary Marxian economics. Keynes argued that, with a judicious range of policy measures, capitalism can be made to work better and can be managed so that it meets the needs of the many, without disrupting the social structure of society.
[Source: boucherie-abolition.com][This article inaugurates Ms. Gjovik’s new column for CovertAction Magazine spotlighting the abuses of U.S. multinational corporations worldwide.—Editors]
People in power get nervous when the population’s trust in national institutions plummets. It has often been a precursor of significant social unrest, even revolutions.
More than 90% of the world’s population is projected to face increased risks from the compound impacts of extreme heat and drought, potentially widening social inequalities as well as undermining the natural world’s ability to reduce CO2 emissions in the atmosphere — according to a study from Oxford University’s School of Geography.
The advent of the information age – the fusion of the internet plus computing power plus advanced algorithms, takes off at the end of the 1980s. Its development within the USA and its strategic economic importance allows the USA to once more dominate the global value chain. As a result, US Tech corporations become monopolies harvesting super profits. But this 30-year reign could be ending
We are excited to announce the creation of the independent media outlet Geopolitical Economy Report – an evolution and expansion of Multipolarista. Our team will be growing, and we have exciting new projects planned, including a regular show with economists Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai.
Editor-in-chief Ben Norton explains the changes (and the continuity).
The alleged purpose of the United Nation’s (UN’s) Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) is to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” The real impacts of its implementation couldn’t be more different. Renewable energy is neither renewable nor sustainable and the SDG7 energy transition is only making the problem of energy poverty worse.
Review by Owen Schalk
Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World
Jonathan Crary
Verso, 2022
At this point, it is a commonplace that the techno-optimist promises of the Internet’s early proponents were either naïve or lies.
Claims of the system’s power to connect far-flung individuals and enrich one’s social life are risible. In the West, at least, the Internet’s primary effect has been to dissipate social energies into simulated flickers of friendship, comradery, or antagonism that more often than not ripple into nothingness before any deeper human experience can take root, rendering a large chunk of one’s time and attention pointless beyond the fact that it can be monetized to the benefit of seemingly omnipresent tech companies.
Ecosocialist Bookshelf is a monthly column, hosted by Ian Angus. Books described here may be reviewed at length in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that C&C agrees with everything (or even anything!) these books say.
Before laying into the drug regulators, and their inexorable move towards the dark side, I thought I should try to explain a bit more about who decides what drugs should be used, and for what conditions.
At the end of every year, I attempt to make a forecast on what will happen in the world economy in the next year. Of course, forecasts are wrapped in error, given the many variables involved that drive economies. Weather forecasts are still difficult to make and here meteorologists are dealing with physical events and not (at least directly) with human actions. Nevertheless, weather forecasts up to three days ahead are now pretty accurate. And longer term climate change forecasts have been broadly borne out over the last few decades. So if we consider that economics is a science (albeit a social science), and I do, then making predictions is part of testing theories and evidence in economics too.
The number of strikes has intensified. However, there is no attempt yet to bring the strikes together in one general public sector strike. Nothing less will suffice to break the bosses resolve. This article explains why. The capitalists in England have their back to the wall or is it the cliff?!
The New Dark Age 