Tag: neoliberalism

Crisis and Virus: COVID-19 in Context

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30 July, 2020 — The Bullet

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“Toward the end of the twentieth century a sickness struck the world. Not everyone died, but all suffered from it” — Samir Amin (2003, 7).

It has been over forty years since Thatcher and monetarism, thirty years since the Canada-US Free trade agreement came into effect, and twenty years since the launch of the Euro. More recently, 2020 marks twelve years since the Great Recession and bank bailouts began, ten years since the turn to stimulus and sharp return to austerity, and three years since the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. These historical milestones already offered an opportunity for a retrospective with future implications; however, 2020 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year of the virus with all the attendant hardship and hope that might bring.

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Post-Pandemic Economic Scenarios-Interview #3

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14 June 2020 — Jack Rasmus

Following is the 3rd excerpt from my late April interview with Konrad Stachnio of Poland for his forthcoming volume on the current pandemic crisis from a European perspective. In this concluding segment, Konrad asks my views on subjects like the next global depression, the future of digital money, financialization, my response to corporate ideologists’ interpretations of the crisis, and on left intellectuals’ views like Slavoj Zizek.

Britain’s government – entangled in its own corruption

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10 June 2020 — True Publica

By Rob Woodward – TruePublica: Thatcherism, as it is known, was made of up of principles comprising economic, social and political ideals that described the Conservative Party that undoubtedly shaped Britain for nearly fifty years. The economic policies that came with Thatcherism really amounted to little more than deregulation. It was and still is a total rejection of the ‘post-war consensus’ that drives privatisation, nationalisation and unleashes ‘corporatism’ – the so-called efficiency of the free-market and the fiction sold to everyone as a ‘trickle-down’ effect.

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USA: Returning to normal?

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6 June 2020 — Michael Roberts Blog

The recent release of the US jobs data for May, which apparently showed a reduction in the unemployment rate from April, sparked a sharp rally in the US stock market. And if you were to follow the stock markets of the major economies, you would think that the world economy was racing back to normal as the lockdowns imposed by most governments to combat the spread of COVID-19 pandemic are relaxed and even ended.

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Neo-liberalism and how it has disrupted the bourgeois state

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2 May 2020 — theplanningmotivedotcom

The incompetent and disorganised response by the US and UK government to the pandemic poses a deeper question than simply the personnel involved. Is this response accidental or predictable in so far as it has occurred in the two countries where neo-liberalism is most advanced, financialization most extreme and the state most disrupted. This article addresses this question.

the-neo-liberal-state.pdf

Mike Davis on pandemics, super-capitalism and the struggles of tomorrow

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30 March 2020 — Mada Masra

The coronavirus pandemic is overwhelming to comprehend. There are now hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases. Tens of thousands have died. Nations are on lockdown as the disease continues to spread. The planet is in crisis.

How did this happen?

What are the underlying political, economic and environmental structures that paved the way for this global outbreak? Where do pandemics emerge from? Is our capitalist way of life biologically sustainable?

To shed light on some of these questions, we turned to American writer, historian and political activist Mike Davis, author of over 20 books, including City of Quartz, Planet of Slums, Ecology of Fear, and The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. Davis is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of California, Riverside and is a recipient of a McArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

He responded in writing to a series of questions from Mada Masr about the coronavirus pandemic.

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Amid coronavirus crisis, China demonstrates that an alternative to the US-led, neoliberal order is possible

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31 March 2020 — MROnline

From the series Paintings for Wuhan, China (2020) by Li Zhong

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For nearly four decades the United States and its Western allies have proclaimed to the world that “there is no alternative” to neoliberalism, maligning the state and public sector as inefficient and unproductive. If the 2008 financial crisis loosened this myth’s stranglehold on notions of what is possible, the current coronavirus pandemic has shattered it.

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Brexit, Covid-19 and the Debt Deluge – The perfect storm about to engulf us all

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21 March 2020 — True Publica

By TruePublica Editor: Remembering this impending event and recalling it from memory to your friends is as easy as A, B, C, D. Broadly speaking it is about four interlinked events that have already happened but their combined effects will engulf the country within a year. Austerity, Brexit, CoVid and Debt will lead to a ruinous recession or a country and society so debt-laden it will be at the mercy of the ‘moneymen’ for decades to come.
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The Capitalist Pandemic, Coronavirus and the Economic Crisis

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19 March 2020 — CADTM

by Eric Toussaint

Sommaire

 A public health crisis

The coronavirus pandemic is a serious public health problem and the human suffering caused by the spread of this virus will be enormous. If it massively affects countries of the Global South with very fragile public health systems that have been undermined by 40 years of neo-liberal policies, the death toll will be very high. We must not forget the critical situation of the Iranian population, victim of the blockade imposed by Washington, a blockade that includes medicines and medical equipment.

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