EU politics
David Shirreff – Brexit damage limitation
There is so much white noise in the media concerning Brexit, almost all of it by people who have no idea of what is really going on behind the scenes. David Shirreff tries to make […]
Financial Institutions
Finance
David Laws and Charles S. Adams – Is world-leading NHS healthcare an affordable proposition?
Two non-economists explain the creation of money and what becomes of it. It is a strightforward piece for those who get bogged down by technical economic terms. They also explain why a government debt is not […]
Finance
Richard Murphy – Thoughts on the IMF and World Bank
Murphy believes there could well have been a sea change at the IMF and World Bank. It is however one thing to produce analyses and papers making the right noises, and the IMF arguing that […]
Austerity
The Corruption of Capitalism – Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay by Guy Standing
Book review by Mathew D. Rose In 2011 Guy Standing wrote a book titled “The Precariat – The New Dangerous Class”, which showed great prescience. By the second paragraph he had already predicted what would […]
Deregulation
Simon Wren-Lewis: How Neoliberals weaponise the concept of an ideal market
Using Colin Crouch’s new book “Can Neoliberalism Be Saved From Itself” as a starting point, Wren-Lewis re-examines his own definition of neo-liberalism. He comes to the conclusion that neo-liberalism is the misuse of the ideal […]
Corruption
João Paulo Batalha – Corruption in Portugal: The mighty have fallen – the elite’s day of reckoning
A prime minister, a banker, the heads of the top telecom company, construction moguls, assorted friends and family. Portugal’s biggest corruption case ever is a veritable who’s who of the nation’s political and business elite. […]
Climate Crisis
Jason Hickel – Why less is more
GDP has become a fetish. This obsession with major GDP growth makes reducing CO² impossible. The other downside is that GDP growth mainly ends up enriching the 1 %. The solution lies in re-distribution. There […]
Finance
Jason Hickel: Want to avert the apocalypse? Take lessons from Costa Rica
Today, Costa Rica is a thorn in the side of orthodox economics. The conventional wisdom holds that high GDP is essential for longevity: “wealthier is healthier”, as former World Bank chief economist Larry Summers put […]
EU politics
Heikki Patomäki – On the conditions of successful social democratic alternatives
Globalisation has ravaged the economies and societies in the industrialised world. Uneven growth and deindustrialisation are causing political turmoil. The left, trapped in a limited territorial state, is likely to fail even if it wins […]
Finance
Michael Roberts: Beware the ECB bearing gifts for Greeks
In 2012 the ECB purchased massive amounts of Greek bonds from German and French banks to save them from going under, they having recklessly purchased these bonds. Greece has continued to pay interest on these, […]