Banks

Against the bankocracy: how a socialized banking system could function?

30 June 2020 - by Eric Toussaint, Philippe Poutou

Conversation between Philippe Poutou (NPA) and Eric Toussaint (CADTM) Éric Toussaint : Karl Marx wrote a famous text in which he stated: “If you want to know what the dictatorship of the proletariat looks like? It is the Paris Commune”, showing that his perception of the dictatorship of the (...)
Coronavirus, fictitious capital and financial crisis

25 April 2020 - by Sankha Subhra Biswas

The world has seen a spectre of corona virus! This deadly virus has already affected 2.84 million people with a death toll of almost two hundred thousand around the world. The number of people affected in India are 24,942 out which 779 persons have expired, as on April 25, 2020. Nevertheless, (...)
To confront capitalism’s multifaceted crisis the bankers must be expropriated and the banks socialised

26 March 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

Bank shares have been plunging since mid-February 2020. If the big and institutional holders are selling these urgently, it must be because they are at risk. Governments and banking authorities systematically lie about the results of banks’ stress tests. Mainstream media relay the false (...)
Another look at the Federal Reserve’s panic in September 2019 and solutions to the crisis

28 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

You may recall that from 17 September 2019, the United States Federal Reserve injected massive amounts of liquidity into banks due to a quite abnormal situation on the repo market [1]. The repo market designates a mechanism used by banks to obtain short-term financing. They sell securities they (...)
New bubbles, mounting debt: preparing for the coming crisis

24 October 2019 - by Ben Reynolds

A new global recession looms on the horizon, pointing to a new era of financial crisis, government bailouts and popular outrage. Financial markets roil and the banking system groans. The US Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, even as Chairman Jerome Powell claims that he expects the economy (...)
Corporate debt, fiscal stimulus and the next recession

23 October 2019 - by Michael Roberts

The debt owed by corporations in the major economies has risen since the end of the Great Recession in 2009. With global growth slowing and the prospect rising of an outright global recession recurring ten years after the last one, the debt held by corporations may soon become so burdensome to (...)
Swiss Franc Mortgages: Illegitimate and Illegal

8 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

In Poland and France, along with Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, Greece and other Balkan countries, the scandal of household mortgages made out in Swiss francs has hit over a million victims of big grasping private banks. The Court of Justice of the European Union has just given a judgement that (...)
The Credit Crunch is Back and the Federal Reserve Panics on an Ocean of Debt

25 September 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

In a state of panic and under pressure from big capital and President Trump, on Tuesday 17 September 2019, the Fed (the US Federal Reserve) pumped $53.2 billion into the banks because they were short of day-to-day funding available from the Interbank Lending Market or the Money Market Funds (...)
ECB: You can take a horse to water but….

18 September 2019 - by Michael Roberts

Last Thursday, Mario Draghi, the current head of the European Central bank, soon to be replaced by Christine Lagarde from the IMF, announced a parting gift to banks and financial markets. The ECB decided to reintroduce its bond purchasing programme in order to inject yet more billions into (...)
Finance: fiddling, fetish and fiction

14 August 2019 - by Michael Roberts

Nothing changes in the finance sector globally, despite the catastrophic impact of the banks on the world capitalist economy in the global financial crash and the ensuing Great Recession. In previous posts, I have highlighted the greed, recklessness and instability of the finance sector and (...)
How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean

12 July 2019 - by Peter James Hudson

The expansion of banks such as Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and racial lines. This essay is featured in Boston Review’s Spring 2019 issue Racist Logic. Buy a copy and receive a free digital edition of Race, Capitalism, Justice. (...)
Challenges Posed by Recent Shifts in the Composition of Chinese debt

21 May 2019 - by Alice Jetin Duceux

As we have seen in the previous part of this study, despite the government’s spectacular stimulus plan, growth has been continually slowing over the past decade. Massive investment and growing corporate debt can no longer maintain a high rate of growth. Some party leaders have euphemistically (...)
The Economic Crisis and the Central Banks

25 March 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Everything is in place for a new international financial crisis to occur. We don’t know exactly when it will break out. But it will, and its impact will be felt all over the planet. The major factors contributing to the crisis situation are: first, the very large increase in corporate private (...)
Battling bankers: grassroots insights on financial power

14 February 2019 - by Transnational Institute

Three inspiring activists — from Spain, UK and Kenya — share their experiences of taking on bankers and the lessons and insights from their ongoing struggles. This essay is part of the Transnational Institute’s “State of Power 2019” report. Worldwide, countless activists are engaged in (...)
The Challenges for the European Left regarding Debt and the Banks

23 January 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Second part of the interview given to LVSL. Here, the first part “Break the Taboo on Odious Debts and their Repudiation”. LVSL – If we look at the case of Greece in 2015, we see that there was a change of regime when Syriza and Alexis Tsipras came to power, with strong popular support. And yet (...)
What we have learned from the US indictment on odious loans to Mozambique

23 January 2019 - by Tim Jones

Yesterday (3 jan 2019) three former employees of Credit Suisse were arrested in London over $2 billion of odious loans to three state owned companies in Mozambique, given in 2013. The loans were given to companies with no revenue, and were not agreed by the Mozambique parliament, making them (...)
‘Outrageous’ Mozambique debt deal could make 270% profit for speculators

8 November 2018 - by Tim Jones

People of Mozambique to pay $1.7 billion to $2.2 billion on original loan of $760 million, which was not agreed by Mozambique parliament, and which has been of no benefit The government of Mozambique has announced it has reached an agreement on a new debt payment plan to holders of some of (...)
Ten years on, the crisis of global capitalism never really ended

3 October 2018 - by Jerome Roos

With inequality on the rise, global debt higher than ever and international tensions intensifying, the political backlash to the crash of 2008 has only just begun. This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the once-mighty US investment bank whose dramatic (...)
Corporate capture in Europe - When big business dominates policy-making and threatens our right

25 September 2018 - by Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)

This report examines the extreme and undue influence of big business on European Union (EU) and member state decision-making processes. It has been produced by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) as a response to the distortions we witness in policy and law (...)
Crisis after crisis: Why financial sector reform is not enough – A Post-Capitalist Alternative

18 September 2018 - by Walden Bello

It is now clear that financial crises are not discrete events but are linked phenomena that have been unleashed on the globe ever since the financial markets were liberalized during the Reagan-Thatcher era in the early 1980’s. To take just the three most prominent crashes, surplus capital that (...)
The Next Crash

17 September 2018 - by Robert Reich

Trump and his Republican enablers are now reversing regulations put in place to stop Wall Street’s excessively risky lending September 15 will mark the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and near meltdown of Wall Street, followed by the Great Recession. Since hitting bottom (...)
Financial Crisis 10 years on – How the response to the last crisis laid the foundations for the next

13 September 2018 - by Bodo Ellmers

Ten years ago, on 15 September 2008, the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed. This collapse is largely seen as a key event of the North Atlantic financial crisis, which also had spillover effects on the rest of the world. Around the globe, this decade-long crisis has caused massive (...)
Royal Bank of Scotland in the lion’s den of the financial crisis

28 June 2018 - by Chiara Filoni, Christine Berry

10 years following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers’ and the European financial crisis, we publish an interview with Christine Berry, formerly a researcher at the New Economics Foundation and campaigner against the bailout and the privatization of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). The bank (...)
How to Socialize the Banking Sector

14 June 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Saurin

Because capitalists have demonstrated just how far they are willing to go, taking risks (risks whose consequences they refuse to be held accountable for) and committing crimes for the sole purpose of increasing their profits, because their activities regularly result in heavy costs borne by (...)
What measures should a popular government take towards banks?

11 June 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Saurin, Jeanne Chevalier

Economic heterodoxy and the programmes of deliquescent social democratic parties lack a structured project for the constitution of an alternative banking system. To remedy this, this contribution attempts to move towards a shared, coherent and operational proposal for an organizational plan for (...)