14 January 2020 — Michael Roberts Blog
Recently, the Levy Institute, the think-tank centre for post-Keynesian economics (and in particular the theories of Hyman Minsky, the radical Keynesian economist of the 1980s), published a short video that that shows Minsky explaining his theory of crises under capitalism in his own words at an event in Colombia, November 1987. It is a very clear account of his theory of crises based on ‘financial fragility’’.
25 March 2013 — Voltaire Network
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 attempted to confiscate a tenth of bank deposits, supposedly to bail out the Cypriot national bank affected by the Greek crisis.
012 — http://www.statewatch.org/ • e-mail: office@statewatch.org
1. EU: European Parliament study: Evaluating current and forthcoming proposals on JHA databases and a smart borders system at EU external borders
2. EU: Council of the European Union: Exchange of EU classified information (EUCI) with third States and international organisations
3. Council of Europe: Human Rights Commissioner: Restrictions on defenders of migrants’ rights should stop
Continue reading
16 November 2012 — Red Pepper
It is no longer a question of being out of work. The question is: on whose terms will we be unemployed? The financial crisis has thrown millions out of work and destroyed the future possibility of decent work for millions more. Many, if not most, of the unemployed and unemployable are women. With the TUC calling for ‘A future that works’ at its recent march, the publication of two books that pay attention to the legacies of feminist and anti-work traditions such as Wages for Housework is welcome. Continue reading
15 July 2012 — The Real News Network
Bill Black: The LIBOR fraud stole millions upon millions from American cities and people around the world (inc. transcript) Continue reading
There have been numerous big banking scandals recently. But the Libor scandal is the biggest financial scam in world history. See this and this. The former CEO of Barclays said today that banks across the world were fixing interest rates in the run-up to the financial crisis . Continue reading
There have been numerous big banking scandals recently. But the Libor scandal is the biggest financial scam in world history. See this and this. The former CEO of Barclays said today that banks across the world were fixing interest rates in the run-up to the financial crisis . Continue reading
22 March 2012 — Red Pepper
Trevor Evans outlines the basis for a progressive pan-European response to the euro crisis
The growth of private international financial institutions since the 1970s has seriously curtailed the ability of national governments to exercise democratic control over economic policy. This was vividly demonstrated early in the 1980s, when capital flight forced the French government to abandon its programme of progressive economic reforms. Since then, finance has become much stronger, and the constraints are especially severe for smaller countries.
31 January 2012 — World Beat
Lenin graces the cover of a recent issue of The Economist. The Financial Times is running an entire series on the “crisis in capitalism.” Francis Fukuyama, a recovering neoconservative, makes a plea in Foreign Affairs for the left to get its intellectual act together. And that noted class warrior Newt Gingrich has been assailing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for being a ruthless moneybags.
Excuse me? Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing? What parallel universe did we all just stumble into?
14 September 2011 — Daily Kos
An Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.
19 September 2011 — The Bullet • Socialist Project E-Bulletin No. 545
A major European Conference Against Austerity is slated for London on 1 October, as part of building and coordinating a set of mobilizations across the fall in Europe. A key zone for the anti-austerity struggle is Portugal. The administration of José Sócrates, of the ‘Third Wayist’ Partido Socialista, was already moving toward sharp public sector austerity. It was replaced by a right-wing coalition of Partido Social Democrata, under the leadership of Prime Minister Pedro Coelho, and the Partido Popular. The Portuguse party, Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc), has been the fulcrum of opposition to austerity.
15 August 2011 — News Dissector
And so it came to pass, as predicted, projected, and warned about, that the economy is about to tank again. No less an authority than Nouriel Roubini, once dismissed as “Dr. Doom” for his accurate predictions of the financial crisis in 2007 and 20088, is shaking his head and pointing his finger again.
29 June 2011 — RT
On the streets of Athens the voices of discontent are growing louder. From the next bailout installment the Greek politicians are eager to receive, the people will not get a penny, experts believe.
‘Not a cent of this bailout money actually comes into the Greek economy,’ author and economic analyst Nick Skrekas told RT. ‘It all goes out into interest payments and repayments.’
Whilst the battle is on to save the banks and prevent a large-scale financial crisis, for the Greek people the price is simply too high.
10 June 2011 — RT
The Bilderberg Group, an invitation-only meeting of the world’s most powerful people, is taking place in Switzerland. Just what the political insiders, media moguls and industry magnates will actually discuss, remains top secret.
This year the Bilderberg Group has occupied the grand Suvretta House Hotel among the magnificent hills and lakes of St. Moritz resort, Switzerland. The world’s most powerful group of some 150 will be meeting there behind closed doors to discuss whatever they need to in the next few days and, perhaps, carry out decisions that will determine the future of the whole world.
24 May 2011 — Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com
HBO’s “too big to fail” should have been about banksters “too big to jail”
This week the financial crisis finally went prime time in the form of a big budget HBO docudrama called “Too Big To Fail.”
It was a well-acted docudrama focused on the BIG Men and some women in the banks and in government who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again up on that wall to prevent a total economic collapse when panic dried up credit and financial institutions faced failure.
29 June, 2010 — The New York Observer – RSA
If you watch just one funny and handsome Marxist critique of the financial crisis, make it the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce’s animated version of David Harvey’s RSA speech “Crises of Capitalism.” It’s been making the rounds this afternoon, and for good reason: Mr. Harvey, a Marxist scholar who heads CUNY’s Center for Place, Culture & Politics, describes not just the failures that caused the ongoing fiasco, but the failure of how we’ve explained it.
“It’s crap,” he says. “You should know it’s crap, and say it is. And we have a duty, it seems to me, those of us who are academics, and seriously involved in the world, to actually change our mode of thinking.”
Listening to Mr. Harvey would be one thing, but the one-hand work from RSA Animate — who has given the same treatment to Barbara Ehrenreich, Dan Pink, Jeremy Rifkin, Philip Zumbardo — does wonders.
28 April, 2010 — Media Channel – Democracy Now
“Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time” – Danny Schechter Takes on Wall St. in New Film
We speak with investigative journalist, filmmaker, and author Danny Schechter, ‘the News Dissector.’ His latest film features interviews with industry insiders to reveal how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity. It’s called “Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time.”
http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/ExternalVideo.937824
1 September 2008
“The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee will still be fretting that surging inflation does not trigger higher wage settlements. Continue reading
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
February 5, 2008
Watching the corporate media report the ‘financial crisis’ is instructive. From the perspective of power, it is important that a steadying hand is applied to the tiller of news and commentary on the crisis, and the global economy itself.
And so columnist Martin Wolf took a ‘measured’ view in the Financial Times. There have been 100 “significant” banking crises in the past thirty years, he noted, making them almost routine. Authorities have had to intervene to “rescue” the US financial system from four crises over that period: the developing country debt and also the “savings and loan” crises of the 1980s; the commercial property crisis of the early 1990s; and now the subprime and credit crisis of 2007-08. As Wolf observed correctly of the banking sector: “No industry has a comparable talent for privatising gains and socialising losses.”
The New Dark Age 
