Thursday, 6 October 2022 — The Cradle
The geoeconomic pathway away from the neoliberal order is fraught with peril, but the rewards in establishing an alternative system are as promising as they are urgent
By Pepe Escobar
Tag: debt
‘The Canary in the Coal Mine’: Sri Lanka’s Crisis is a Chronicle Foretold
Tuesday, 16 August, 2022 — Socialist Project
Éric Toussaint and B. Skanthakumar
Sri Lanka’s acute economic crisis and sovereign debt default, along with its people’s uprising in 2022, has drawn attention across the world. It is described as the ‘canary in the coal mine’, that is, a harbinger of the likely future for other global south countries. Eric Toussaint, spokesperson for the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) interviewed via email Colombo-based Balasingham Skanthakumar of the Social Scientists’ Association of Sri Lanka and the CADTM’s South Asia network. The responses in draft were improved by Amali Wedagedera’s review and finalized on 5th August.
Michael Hudson: The End of Western Civilization – Why It Lacks Resilience, and What Will Take Its Place
Monday, 11 July 2022 — Michael Hudson
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
The greatest challenge facing societies has always been how to conduct trade and credit without letting merchants and creditors make money by exploiting their customers and debtors. All antiquity recognized that the drive to acquire money is addictive and indeed tends to be exploitative and hence socially injurious. The moral values of most societies opposed selfishness, above all in the form of avarice and wealth addiction, which the Greeks called philarguria– love of money, silver-mania. Individuals and families indulging in conspicuous consumption tended to be ostracized, because it was recognized that wealth often was obtained at the expense of others, especially the weak.
Capitalism’s fallen angels
Sunday, 6 March 2022 — Michael Roberts Blog
In several previous posts, I have highlighted what are called ‘zombie’ companies (companies whose regular profits do not even cover the cost of servicing their outstanding debts) and so must, to paraphrase former BoE governor Mark Carney, depend on the kindness of their creditors”. An OECD study found that such zombies take up a frighteningly large part of the economy. Across the nine European countries they studied, the share of the total private capital stock ‘sunk’ in zombie companies ranges from 5 to 20 per cent. The suggestion is that such businesses hog capital and crowd the market for newcomers, make it harder for more promising companies to expand and hold back the reallocation of labour and capital to more productive and faster-growing companies.
Indian Farmers on the Frontline Against Global Capitalism
1 February 2021 — Global Research
In a short video on the empirediaries.com YouTube channel, a protesting farmer camped near Delhi says that during lockdown and times of crisis farmers are treated like “gods”, but when they ask for their rights, they are smeared and labelled as “terrorists”.
He, along with thousands of other farmers, are mobilising against three important pieces of farm legislation that were recently forced through parliament. To all intents and purposes, these laws sound a neoliberal death knell for most of India’s cultivators and its small farms, the backbone of the nation’s food production.
ASSA 2021 – part one: the mainstream dilemma
7 January 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog
The annual conference of the American Economic Association (ASSA 2021) was unusual this year, for obvious reasons. Instead of 13,000 academic and professional economists descending on an American city to present and discuss hundreds of submitted papers over a few days, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ASSA 2021 was virtual. Despite that, there were a host of papers presented, along with plenaries of the great and good in mainstream economics and economic policy.
The IMF smokescreen
24 October 2020 — The Next Recession
By Michael Roberts
In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the IMF again tackled the issue of climate change, global warming and what to do about it. As it did last year, the IMF recognised that climate change was a burning issue for humanity and the planet. But this time it claimed that there were policy options that could stop any further heating to a tipping point beyond which there was no turning back. Continue reading
Lockdown Catastrophe: The Need for Resilient Food Systems Agroecology
8 June 2020 — Off Guardian
Encouraging small, local producers is the way forward, but will Big Ag let that happen?
Colin Todhunter
There is no doubt that, contingent on World Bank aid to be given to poorer countries in the wake of coronavirus lockdowns, agrifood conglomerates will aim to further expand their influence.
Coronavirus: Drop the debt
2 April 2020 — Global Justice Now
As coronavirus gets a foothold in every country, governments in the global south are facing an appalling choice: pay for emergency healthcare, or pay off international debts.
Across Africa, Asia and Latin America, lower-income countries urgently need to scale up their health spending. But they’re due to spend over $25 billion on debt payments in 2020. This is money that could be used now to save lives as this terrible virus continues to spread.
97% Owned (Money Documentary) | History Documentary | Reel Truth History
7 May 2019 — Youtube – Reel Truth History Documentaries
When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it’s essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked – questions like: Where does money come from? Who creates it? Who decides how it gets used? And what does that mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when money and finance breaks down?
Dossier 16: Resource sovereignty—the Agenda for Africa’s exit from the state of plunder
10 May 2019 — Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – MROnline
In May 2011, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a Working Paper by Burcu Aydin called ‘Ghana: Will It Be Gifted Or Will It Be Cursed?’ (WP/11/104). Oil had just been discovered off the shore of Ghana. This anticipated a bounty of revenue for the country. Aydin asks whether Ghana will face the ‘resource curse’. The resource curse – also known as the Dutch Disease – occurs where revenue from sale of this resource rushes into a country, appreciates the currency and causes a major crisis in other parts of the economy. Looking at 150 middle- and low-income countries, Aydin came up with a strong finding: ‘Results show that there is a poverty trap for poor resource-rich countries due to their low institutional quality’. Bad governance and poor macroeconomic management, Aydin suggests, diminish the possibility for the onrush of revenues from natural resources to enhance a country’s development. There is no mention, in the IMF’s Working Paper, of the other actors in the process – namely, the multinational companies that dominate the natural resource extraction business. The pro-corporate literature explains problems in the resource economy in two ways: 1) poor macroeconomic management that allows revenues to flood the economy and appreciate the currency, 2) bad governance because of corruption and theft by government officials.
Michael Hudson: “Moral Hazard” vs Mutual Aid – How the Bronze Age Saved itself from debt serfdom
20 November 2018 — Naked Capitalism – Michael Hudson
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “and forgive them their debts”: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year Jointly posted with Hudson’s website
Everything You Thought You Knew About Western Civilization Is Wrong: A Review of Michael Hudson’s new book And Forgive Them Their Debts
Maria's 'Other' Victims: Puerto Rican Bondholders By Eoin Higgins
11 October 2017 — FAIR
CNBC (10/4/17) assumes that “you” are among the “more than 500,000 individual bondholders” or the “hundreds of thousands more investors with small exposure through mutual funds”—despite the fact that it gets 43 million visitors a month.
With crushing debt threatening to annihilate its economy (CounterSpin, 7/31/15, 5/12/17), the island of Puerto Rico was already desperate. Then came Hurricane Maria, the September storm that tore through the US colony, leaving most of the island’s residents without power and many without water. The official death toll on the island from the Category 4 storm that packed winds of up to 155 miles per hour is at 43—and hospitals and funeral homes have said that the toll is significantly underreported.
Before Maria, forcing Puerto Rico to pay its debt was odious. Now, it’s pure cruelty
4 October 2017 — Climate & Capitalism – Green Social Thought
Cancel the debt now!
To expect Puerto Rico to rebuild from this unnatural disaster while at the same time bailing out Wall Street financiers is to condemn its residents to a permanent state of crushing hardship and impoverishment.
by Stan Cox and Paul Cox
Reasons To Be Uncheerful By S. Artesian
19 June 2015 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor
Three months ago, the Hellenic Parliament in Greece decided to establish the Truth Committee on the Public Debt to examine the origin of the accumulation of that negative value, of capital’s anti-matter called debt, that has, pretty much, sucked Greece into a black hole.
The Shorty Long of It By S. Artesian
5 March 2015 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor
1. The Short
—Submit the “reform package” agreed to by Syriza government to the parliament for a vote
—No to the “reform package” agreed to by the Syriza ministers
–No confidence in the Syriza government
–Repudiate the debt, the MFFA, and the reforms in their entirety.
The Cat in the Box: Quantum Social Democracy and the Uncertainty Principle By S. Artesian
28 February 2015 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor
Richard Seymour, VIB, wrote on SIP Louis Proyect’s chat-list:
No formal count was taken at this meeting, but according to Stathis Kouvelakis, 30 MPs were out of the room when the vote was taken and 40 abstained or voted against. If this is right, then a third of those present voted against. He recounts that most speakers – some 80 MPs – criticised the deal, in an emotional and turbulent meeting that went on for 12 hours.
Yani and the Hand Jive By S. Artesian
27 February 2015 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor
I know a cat named Doctor Yani…
He’s got a real cool job, jivin’ for money
He knows just what makes the eurozone tick
He does that hand jive just for kicks
He knows just what makes the eurozone tick
He does that hand jive just for kicks
On Tuesday, February 24, 2015, the Syriza government of Greece presented its “first comprehensive list of reform measures” to the president of the Eurogroup. The Eurogroup is what the committee made up of the finance ministers of countries using the euro as currency is called when it actually meets.
24 hours late, and € 240 billion short
24 February 2015 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor
1. A day late and more than a dollar short, Yanis Varoufakis submitted a “program” of reforms to the Eurozone finance ministers (Eurogroup) regarding the Greek government’s development and implementation of tax policies, public finance management, revenue administration, public spending, social security reform, public administration and corruption, instalment schemes, labor market reforms, product market reforms, better business environment, judicial system reforms, banking and non-performing loans, privatisation and public asset management, statistics, and last and certainly least, the humanitarian crisis where Yanis sums it up perfectly, puts a cherry on it, wraps it with a bow, seals it with a kiss—
The New Dark Age 