Every year at this time, I look back at any books that I have reviewed. I’ll start with Bradford DeLong’s book, Slouching towards Utopia, because this was considered the best economic history book of the year.
Every year, I analyse the US rate of profit on capital. This is because the US data is the best and most comprehensive to use and because the US is the most important capitalist economy, often setting the scene for trends in global capitalism. We now have the data for 2021 (that’s as far as the official national data go).
Book review: A powerful polemic against capitalism’s planetary destruction, and an engaging look at the degrowth movement
Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter and Aaron Vansintjan
THE FUTURE IS DEGROWTH
A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism
Verso, 2022
reviewed by Martin Empson
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.
Hezri A. Adnan and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 06, 2022 (IPS). Natural flows do not respect national boundaries. The atmosphere and oceans cross international borders with little difficulty, as greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other fluids, including pollutants, easily traverse frontiers.
‘There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature citation too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print.’ – Drummond Rennie.
Somewhat damning?
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism, who called everything crypto ‘prosecution futures‘, provides the latest FTX bankruptcy filing:
John J. Ray III, the newly appointed CEO of bankrupt crypto player FTX’s sprawling empire who played the same role in the then-biggest-evah Enron bankruptcy and other big corporate implosions, filed his formal initial assessment with the Delaware bankruptcy court in the form of declaration, embedded below.
As expected the FTX and the companies related to it are a huge criminal mess.
By Leslee Lazar
The discovery of antibiotics was one of humanity’s greatest achievements. But we didn’t invent them. Long before humans, microorganisms in soil evolved these molecules. It was not until the mid-twentieth century, however, that these molecules were isolated by humans and mass-produced for medicine.
Billionaire Arrogance
Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SAWe, 50 organizations focused on food sovereignty and justice worldwide, want you to know there is no shortage of practical solutions and innovations by African farmers and organizations. We invite you to step back and learn from those on the ground. —Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa
MST Calls for Action
Emiliano Di Cavalcanti (Brazil), Projeto de Mural (‘Mural Project’), 1950.
João Pedro Stedile
Speech by João Pedro Stedile, a leader of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and the global peasants’ organization La Via Campesina, at the Vatican in late October. English translation first published by Vijay Prashad in the newsletter of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Since 2009 the world economy has been kept alive on the drip of cheap money. It was always going to be the case that once that drip was removed the world economy was going to deteriorate. September was the month stagnation gave way to slump.
Six new books and six recent essays: important reading for reds and greens
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 triumph of the City of London, the one square kilometre next to Liverpool Street station that houses the citadel of British finance, is complete. Not only did it get rid of one British prime minister, whom it distrusted, in the space of just 44 days, but even got a new one of its choice installed forthwith. Rishi Sunak is being called many things: the first British Asian prime minister, the first Hindu prime minister, and so on. These facts about him however are inconsequential; notwithstanding the hullabaloo in India over his appointment, these facts are mere trivia. What is central is that he is the City’s choice. A former employee of Goldman Sachs, a former Hedge Fund manager, he is from the world of finance; for the City he is indubitably “one of us”.
Roos Saalbrink talks about the different ways that IMF programmes undermine women’s right to health and the rights of women health workers
ActionAid and Public Services International recently published a new report – The Care Contradiction – looking into how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs are impacting women workers. The report shows that although the IMF has recently come up with a Gender Mainstreaming Strategy, its actions in the field of building gender justice essentially add up to throwing sand in the observers’ eyes.
Author: Veniamin Popov
Western civilization is facing more and more problems. Over the past few decades, there have been many symptoms of a de facto decline of Western powers.
Perhaps most clearly, these crises were reflected in the latest report of the so-called Club of Rome. Its authors believe that today’s “crisis is not cyclical, but intensifying. It is not limited to the nature around us but includes a social, political, cultural, moral crisis, a crisis of democracy, ideologies, and capitalism.”
Liz Truss Official Portrait (Photo: Number 10 / Flickr)The most intriguing question with regard to Liz Truss’ resignation as the prime minister of Britain after a mere 44 days in office is this: what is it about her economic programme that the “market” (read “finance capital”) found unpalatable? At its core after all was tax-cuts for the rich, which the “market” should have lapped up. True, the tax-cuts were to be financed through a fiscal deficit which the “market” generally does not like; but since the fiscal deficit was meant to finance transfers to the rich, and not any direct stimulation of aggregate demand by the State, there should have been little objection from the “market”. Some have suggested that since the tax-cuts were “unfunded”, that is, financed by a fiscal deficit entailing a sale of government bonds, the proposal introduced uncertainty about the future course of the bond rate which made “investors” dump government securities, sharply raising the bond rate and creating panic in the “market”. But that is precisely the question which needs to be answered: even before any actual sale of government securities for financing a fiscal deficit had occurred, why did the “market” panic? And if it expected higher rates then that should have led to a strengthening of the pound-sterling with financial inflows occurring into Britain, rather than a collapse of the pound-sterling as we actually saw.
Bradford DeLong is one of the world’s most prominent Keynesian economists and economic historian who is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. DeLong served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration under Lawrence Summers. He is a architype liberal Democrat in US politics and a classical Keynesian in economics.
We are currently seeing rising food prices due to a combination of an engineered food crisis for geopolitical reasons, financial speculation by hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks and profiteering by global grain trade conglomerates like Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, ADM and Bunge.
Prabir Purkayastha
THE US has gambled big in its latest, across-the-board sanctions on Chinese companies in the semiconductor industry, believing it can kneecap China and retain its global dominance. From the slogan of globalisation and “free trade” of the neoliberal 90s, it has reverted to good old technology denial regimes followed by the US and its allies during the Cold War. While it might work in the short run in slowing down the Chinese advances, the cost to the US semiconductor industry of losing China – its biggest market – will also have significant consequences. In the process, the semiconductor industries of Taiwan and South Korea and equipment manufacturers in Japan and the European Union are likely to become collateral damage. It reminds us again of what Kissinger once said: “To be an enemy of the US is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”!
The New Dark Age 