Capitalism
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“Let us glory in our inequality.” By Michael Hudson
As in Chile, privatization in Britain was a victory for Chicago monetarism. This time it was implemented democratically. In fact, voters endorsed Margaret Thatcher’s selloff of public industries so strongly that by 1991, when she was replaced as prime minister by her own party’s John Major, only 35 percent of Britain’s voters supported the Labour… Continue reading
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Video: Under Thatcher, the Poor Became Poorer
John Weeks: Thatcher and Reagan set out to crush the union movement and assert the power of capital Continue reading
bourgeoisie, capital, class, coal, London, progressive, Reagan, Real News, Thatcher, TRNN, unions, United States, Video -
Video: Michael Hudson – Thatcher Gave More Power to Finance
Michael Hudson: Thatcher deregulated banking and made London the center of speculation and financialization – April 9, 2013 Continue reading
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Mrs. Thatcher’s Mean Legacy By Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers
We typically honor the convention to refrain from to speak ill of the recently departed. But Margaret Thatcher probably would not object to an epitaph focusing on how her political legacy was to achieve her professed aim of “irreversibly” dismantling Britain’s public sector. Continue reading
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Secret Documents Expose Offshore’s Global Impact
ICIJ has just launched the largest investigative reporting project in its 15-year history. Drawing on a leaked cache of 2.5 million records, ICIJ (a project of the Center for Public Integrity) has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts and about 130,000 individuals and agents, exposing hidden dealings of politicians,… Continue reading
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For the Finance Minister of Germany, Crisis Is a “Necessity” By Victor Grossman
Angela Merkel’s face usually displays a rather plain, friendly, almost benign expression, matching her simple, benign words. But in rare unguarded moments, some claim, they glimpse a very hard visage, which is matched, equally rarely, by hardly benign words, like her annoyed statement that Cyprus was “exhausting the patience of its euro partners.” Continue reading
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Reducing production: How should socialists relate to struggles against capitalist growth By Don Fitz
The question is not should we advocate reducing production within capitalist society but rather: How do we best relate to those struggles that are already occurring? Activists across the globe are challenging the uncontrollable dynamic of economic expansion which threatens the survival of humanity. It has never been more urgent to provide a vision of… Continue reading
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Genetic Engineering, Eugenics and the Ideology of the Rich By Colin Todhunter
Whatever the publicly stated aims of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) sector, and however terrible its impact is on health, the environment and cotton farmers in India, there is a much more sinister side to this industry. Continue reading
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It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors By Ellen Brown
Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the… Continue reading
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The Cypriot Pawn By Thierry Meyssan
Washington was quick to use the financial crisis in Cyprus to implement a strategy for capturing capital described three weeks ago in these columns [1]. With the help of the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, US comprador Christine Lagarde, the American leadership challenged the inviolability of private property in the European Union and… Continue reading
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The Cyprus Eurocrisis: The Beginning of the End of the Eurozone? By Nicos Trimikliniotis
The Cyprus crisis is essentially a Eurozone crisis which threatens the very foundations of the European Union (EU). This small island economy, only 0.2 per cent of the Eurozone, is proving to be ‘systemic’ at the political, social and economic level. The Cyprus crisis is a manifestation of a deep crisis of democracy and equality… Continue reading
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The Crisis of the European Welfare State An interview with Asbjørn Wahl
This is the start of a new era of social struggle. Social models, however, cannot be copied, neither from previous phases in history, nor from country to country. Social models are the concrete results of struggles and power relations in society. Continue reading
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The Obama Kerry Hagel Regime: Selling Death and Buying Assassins in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia By Prof. James Petras
As President Obama enters his second term with a new Cabinet, the foreign policy legacy of the past four years weighs heavily on their strategic decisions and their empire-building efforts. Central to the analysis of the next period is an evaluation of the past policies especially in regions where Washington expended its greatest financial and… Continue reading
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Audio: Economic Policy Deception By Michael Hudson
Another in the series of interviews on the Renegade Economists radio show (Australia), a wide ranging analysis of the advantages to wealth that money printing and poor tax policy produce. Topics include land and housing policy, German gold repatriation, Occupy, Bradley Manning, Iran, Obama and Kruegar. Continue reading
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Video: Class Struggles in Crisis: From Walmart to the State
A panel discussion introduced and moderated by Socialist Register co-editor Greg Albo Continue reading
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Media: Tom Friedman's Apple Hunch By Peter Hart
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is, for reasons that remain entirely unclear, considered a wise man in elite media circles. His columns and books are read by others in the business, who then turn around and pretend they know something because they read it in a Tom Friedman column. Continue reading
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The Wrong Economic Prescriptions: Deeper Austerity as a “Solution” to Austerity By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
As the economy shows signs of recession, the leeches return. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles have issued a new report calling for even deeper austerity. It is not what the economy needs as it stagnates and sputters toward a possible new collapse. Their report combined with President Obama’s State of the Union, the sequestration and… Continue reading