10 February 2021 — Brave New Europe
People appear to understand the abstract concept of “limitless”, but it is more difficult to understand that the concept cannot and should not be applied to growth. Even socialists must shake off the idea that quantity can improve, when only quality counts.
16 June 2013 — Washingtonsblog
The government is attacking whistleblower Edward Snowden by claiming that he was lying about the scope of the NSA’s spying on Americans.
However, CNET reports today: Continue reading
12 June 2013 — New Left Project
Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s long-awaited The Making of Global Capitalism, said to be ten years or more in the making, is ‘about globalisation and the state’.[1] More precisely, Panitch and Gindin use its 450 pages to provide an important, informative, and well-written account of the predisposing factors, emergence, expansion and transformations, of global capitalism, as seen through the lens of the strategic actions of the US federal government.
4 June 2013 — New Left Project
On the opening page of their superb work on the political economy of the American Empire, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin outline the fundamental premise of their study: that the American state has played ‘an exceptional role in the creation of a fully global capitalism and in coordinating its management, as well as restructuring other states’.[1] This is undoubtedly true, and today British capitalism bears the indelible imprint of American power. Mirroring the diplomatic ‘Special Relationship’, so often referred to, has been a deep integration and co-development of these two states and of the form of capitalism that they sponsor.
4 June 2013 — Dan Hind
It is now well known that many countries which depend on earnings from natural resources like oil have failed to harness them for national development. In many cases it seems even worse than that: for all the hundreds of billions of dollars sloshing into countries like oil-rich Nigeria, for instance, such places seem to suffer more conflict, lower economic growth, greater corruption, higher inequality, less political freedom and often more absolute poverty than their resource-poor peers. This paradox of poverty from plenty has been extensively studied and is known as the Resource Curse.
6 May 2013 — GRTV
As more and more studies demonstrating the corrosive effect of psychopathy on government, finance, and business emerge, researchers have begun to explore how our society itself has been molded in the psychopaths’ image.
Now, one of those researchers, Stefan Verstappen, shares his insights on psychopathy in modern culture.
This is the GRTV Feature interview on Global Research TV. Continue reading
24 April 2013 — The Real News Network
Nick Buxton: A massive European fire sale is one way finance is using the crisis to entrench neo-liberalism (inc. transcript)
9 April 2013 — The Real News Network
Michael Hudson: Thatcher deregulated banking and made London the center of speculation and financialization – April 9, 2013
8 April, 2013 — Michael Hudson
The Queen Mother of Global Austerity and Financialization
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. Attacking central planning by government, she shifted it into much more centralized financial hands – the City of London, unopposed by any economic back bench of financial regulation and “free” of meaningful anti-monopoly price regulation.
27 March 2013 — Asia Times
Reports on the premature death of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been greatly exaggerated. Western corporate media is flooded with such nonsense, perpetrated in this particular case by the head of Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
3 March 2013 — VTJP
News
International Middle East Media Center
Israeli officer shakes hand with settler who attacked Palestinians
IMEMC – On Saturday, masked Israeli settlers were caught on camera shaking hands with Israeli border guards stationed in the village of Umm al-Amad, south of Hebron, then proceeded to harass a group of Palestinian cattle herders while the border guards stood by and watched without intervening. …
4 March 2013 — Media Channel
Durban, South Africa: Back in 2002, South Africa hosted a UN environmental Summit on sustainability. It drew a rag tag army of green activists from all over the world, many excited to visit the now free South Africa that they fought for through the apartheid years, and hoping to meet members of the liberation movement led by Nelson Mandela.
19 February, 2013 — Global Research
Capitalism is based on managing its inherent crises. It is also based on the need to maximise profit, beat down competitors, cut overheads and depress wages. In the 1960s and 70s, in the face of increasing competition from abroad, the US began to outsource manufacturing production to bring down costs by using cheap foreign labour. Other countries followed suit. Even more jobs were lost through the impulse to automate. To provide a further edge, trade unions and welfare were attacked in order to suppress wages at home. Problem solved. Or was it?
15 February 2013 — The Real News Network
Costas Lapavitsas: From multimillion dollar losses by cities like Baltimore to pension fund losses and much more, the LIBOR interest rate scandal shows that such mechanisms must be taken out of the hands of banks and be run in public interest (inc. transcript)
30 January 2013 — Global Research
A new report written for the European Commission recommends regulation of internet news, modifying search engines to control access to “conspiracy sites”, the creation of European government news agencies and the training of new “cadres of professional journalists… for… science, technology, finance or medicine”.
19 January 2013 — RT
As French soldiers pour into Mali in the fight to push back the advancing Islamist militants, questions have been raised as to the motives behind the intervention. Author William Engdahl told RT the US was using France as a scapegoat to save face. Continue reading
7 January, 2013 — The Real News Network
Patrick Bond: In 2013 bankers will increase their efforts to make money out of the climate crisis and put a dollar value on everything
Bio
Patrick Bond is the Director of the Center for Civil Society and Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Bond is the author and editor of the recently released books, Politics of Climate Justice and Durban’s Climate Gamble. (inc. transcript) Continue reading
19 December, <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>2012 — Michael Hudson
<div class=”meta” style=”font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: #444444; padding-left: 30px;”>A review of Norbert Häring and Niall Douglas, Economists and the Powerful (<strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>London: Anthem Press, <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>2012).
<div class=”entry” style=”font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;”>
5 December 2012 — The Bullet • Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 739
The appointment of Mark Carney as next Governor of the Bank of England has been greeted with universal acclaim. In the House of Commons Ed Balls was quick to congratulate Chancellor George Osborne on his choice, and on the evening TV news both former Chancellor Alistair Darling and self-styled monetary maverick David Blanchflower were of the same opinion. Here was a giant of financial regulation, with a PhD in economics, ten years at Goldman Sachs, singlehandedly responsible for guiding Canada to the quickest post-2008 recovery among the G7 countries, and appointed in 2008 to chair the Financial Stability Board set up by the G20. So what’s not to like?
2 December 2012 — The New Economics
Used by wealthy individuals and companies to shift huge sums of money around the world in secret, tax havens cost governments and ordinary taxpayers billions of pounds. International efforts to tackle tax havens to date have been feeble, but there’s no reason why action can’t be taken. How can we put a end to such widespread tax evasion?
This is the first in a series of four videos investigating different areas of the international finance system. Each is a short introduction to a major challenge we face if we want to reform global finance and make it work for people and the planet. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 