World Bank
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From the Rockies to Stockholm: ignoring the global crisis
As I write, the government leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US – are meeting in the remote town of Kananaskis, Alberta, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, for intense discussions. This will be the 51st summit meeting of the top… Continue reading
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Inclusive economics and the IMF
The great and the good have just finished attending a special World Economic Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The theme of the conference for the over 1000 delegates from corporations, governments and international agencies was global cooperation and inclusive growth. In other words, how to reverse the growing international trade wars and rising inequality of… Continue reading
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‘The Canary in the Coal Mine’: Sri Lanka’s Crisis is a Chronicle Foretold
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… Continue reading
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Why Comparing Chinese Africa Investment to Western Colonialism Is No Joke
“Why China Is in Africa” (12/16/21) is a question Trevor Noah took up last month for Comedy Central‘s Daily Show. As with many of the topics taken up by the Daily Show, the issue is no joke: China has a large and growing economic presence in many African countries. The China/Africa deals cry out for analysis: Are they… Continue reading
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IMF and debt: a new consensus?
There is much talk among ‘progressive’ economists that the IMF and the World Bank have turned over a new leaf. Gone are the days of supporting fiscal austerity, demanding that national governments get public debt levels down and insisting on conditions for countries borrowing IMF-WB funds that their governments privatise their state assets, deregulate markets… Continue reading
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Indian Farmers on the Frontline Against Global Capitalism
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”. Continue reading
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Lockdown Catastrophe: The Need for Resilient Food Systems Agroecology
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. Continue reading
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The Show Must Go On. Event 201: The 2019 Fictional Pandemic Exercise [World Economic Forum, Gates Foundation et al.]
Questioning the ruling class narrative should never be seen, nor framed, as reckless. It should never be subjected to shaming. Rather, it should be a prerequisite and respected as such. The imperative to always question the ruling class narrative is not the responsibility of a small handful of individuals, but the responsibility of a thinking… Continue reading
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Let’s get fiscal!
How to grease the aching wheels of a sickening world capitalist economy? Let’s get fiscal is the universal cry of economists and policy makers. The COVID meltdown and impending global recession is forcing authorities to consider fiscal stimulus. Continue reading
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Death of South Africa’s Lonmin Mining House. “Murder by Money” By Prof. Patrick Bond
The death of the 110-year old mining house Lonmin at a London shareholders meeting on May 28 occurred not through bankruptcy or nationalisation, as would have been logical at various points in time. It was the result of a takeover – generally understood as a rip-off of investors and workers – by an extremely jejune… Continue reading
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Dossier 16: Resource sovereignty—the Agenda for Africa’s exit from the state of plunder
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’.… Continue reading
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Leaked Wikileaks Doc Reveals US Military Use of IMF, World Bank as “Unconventional” Weapons By Whitney Webb
This “U.S. coup manual,” recently highlighted by WikiLeaks, serves as a reminder that the so-called “independence” of such financial institutions as The World Bank and IMF is an illusion and that they are among the many “financial weapons” regularly used by the U.S. government to bend countries to its will. Continue reading
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Report to Davos meeting points to deepening contradictions of global capitalism By Nick Beams
The report prepared by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for its annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, next week presents a picture of the ongoing disintegration of all the mechanisms—economic, political and ideological—that have served to sustain the global capitalist order in the post-war period. Continue reading
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South Africa Searches for a “Financial Parachute”, A $170 Billion Foreign Debt Cliff Looms. IMF “Economic Medicine” By Prof. Patrick Bond
Johannesburg – This week’s hush-hush visit by International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde to Pretoria (between stops in Ghana and Angola) is mysterious. In contrast to last week’s IMF press briefing claim – “Madame Lagarde will hold meetings with the authorities, as well as fairly extensive meetings with the private sector, civil society, academia,… Continue reading
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Africa: New evidence of ongoing corporate looting By Patrick Bond
Africa’s smash-and-grab ‘development policies’ aiming to attract Foreign Direct Investment have, even the Bank suggests, now become counter-productive: “Especially for resource-rich countries, the depletion of natural resources is often not compensated for by other investments. The warnings provided by negative ANS in many countries and in the region as a whole should not be ignored.”… Continue reading
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Bloomberg’s Hit Job on Venezuela – and Me By Michael Hudson
I just had a disastrous and embarrassing interaction with Bloomberg, and feel that I was ambushed and sandbagged by having my comments taken out of context in a hit piece Bloomberg’s journalists wrote on Venezuela – evidently trying to distort my own views in a two-for-one job. Continue reading
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We Interrupt This Referendum, Part 2 By S. Artesian
Tearing away, just for the moment, from Thunderdome on the Aegean–“Break a deal; face the wheel”– there’s the island commonwealth, Puerto Rico, part of the United States when that’s convenient and lucrative for the Federal government; and not part of the United States when it’s not convenient. Like now. When it has $72 billion in… Continue reading
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From the horse's mouth: U.S. Dollar Strategic Backfire On U.S. Government Policy
It is very difficult to find a foreign policy deployed by the United States Govt that has been successful in recent years. In fact, almost all aggressive foreign policy initiatives have resulted in profound losses either in financial strategic position or in alliances with previous staid allied nations. They have almost uniformly backfired, while bravado… Continue reading
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Dollar Imperialism, 2015 Edition By MICHÈLE BRAND and RÉMY HERRERA
The Fed effectively acts as the world’s central bank, but sets monetary policy only in its own interest. Under the pressure and the orders of financial oligopolies, it fixes interest rates and prints money to suit itself, sending economies across the globe into tailspins. When the Fed wanted to halt the decade-long decline in the… Continue reading
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The Anti-Empire Report #137 By William Blum: A Greek Tragedy
In 1964, the liberal George Papandreou came to power, but in April 1967 a military coup took place, just before elections which appeared certain to bring Papandreou back as prime minister. The coup had been a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, the KYP, the CIA, and the American military stationed in… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 