A Progressive Pope or Greenwashing the Vatican?
Chris Hedges discusses whether the rhetoric coming from Pope Francis helps progressive forces in the world.
Read more...Category Archives: Free markets and their discontents
Tony Benn’s Ten Minute History of Neoliberalism
A must-watch speech by the great British socialist Tony Benn.
Read more...Contemporary Capitalism: Neoliberal Capitalism, Financialized Capitalism, or Globalized Capitalism?
Why “neoliberal” is the framework that best describes our new, post 1980 form of capitalism.
Read more...More Proof That Economic Policies Have Failed Workers: Median Real Incomes Stagnant for Last Two Decades
Sometimes one chart really does tell you what you need to know.
Read more...Chris Hedges and Leo Panitch: We are All Greeks Now
Leo Panitch and Chris Hedges discuss how nature of imperialism today is financial power.
Read more...Corbynomics 101: A Guide to People’s QE (PQE)
Why the three big charges commonly made against Corbyn’s “People’s Quantitative Easing” or PQE, are all wet.
Read more...Credit Rating Agencies and Brazil: S&P as Neoliberal Enforcer
Mind you, the rating agencies are far from the only neoliberal enforcers as far as emerging economies are concerned. But it is nevertheless instructive to compare an official rationale with data.
Read more...Soft Power Raises Exports
A nation’s hard power is based on its ability to coerce, while its soft power depends on the attractiveness of its culture, political ideals, and policies. This column shows that a country’s soft power has measureable effects on its exports. Countries that are admired for their positive global influence export more, holding other things constant.
Read more...Why Tax Havens Will Be at the Heart of the Next Financial Crisis
Examining an excellent in-depth investigation by Reuters into global financial stability issues, and the role of tax havens in this giant game of pain and plunder.
Read more...Leveraged Bubbles
The risk that asset price bubbles pose for financial stability is still not clear. Drawing on 140 years of data, this column argues that leverage is the critical determinant of crisis damage. When fuelled by credit booms, asset price bubbles are associated with high financial crisis risk; upon collapse, they coincide with weaker growth and slower recoveries. Highly leveraged housing bubbles are the worst case of all.
Read more...Questus Global Capital Market, Scam Stock: an Update
Updating the bizarre story of Questus Global Capital Market, a New Brunswick-incorporated, GXG-listed, New-Zealand-FSP-brokered company of monstrously fraudulent aspect that had apparently ensnared a Malaysian billionaire, various US-based small businesses and retail investors, and a couple of princes from the royal families of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi.
Read more...China Sneezes, Europe Catches a Cold
European stock prices, financial contagion and the trade exposure to China. How the turmoil in China’s stock market is affecting European stock markets through Europe’s trade exposure to China
Read more...CEOs Call for Wage Increases for Workers to Address Inequality! What’s the Catch?
It is beginning to dawn on the top echelon that too much inequality is not good for them.
Read more...Governance Matters
This post illustrates how dominant the neoliberal paradigm has become all over the world, and how it fails to acknowledge, much the less address, the well-known failings of markets, such as externalities.
Read more...Michael Hudson: Smoke and Mirrors of Corporate Buybacks Behind the Market Crash
Hudson clearly differentiates what is happening in the Chinese versus the US markets, with emphasis on the role of corporate buybacks here.
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