Capitalism

« We are at the beginning of the end of neoliberalism in Chile »

19 November 2019 - by Franck Gaudichaud

Franck Gaudichaud is a specialist of contemporary Chile, president of the association France Amerique Latine and member of the editorial board of Contretemps. He is a political scientist and teaches Latin American history at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France (1). Here he develops (...)
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 (...)
The China Factor

22 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

The most crucial factor in whether South African SEZs succeed may well be the complicated role of China. There are three aspects worth discussing: overall demand; Chinese incoming FDI to South African SEZs (such as is driving Coega and Musina-Makhado); and Chinese-financed and built (...)
A global manufacturing recession

2 October 2019 - by Michael Roberts

As we enter October, the global recession is with us – in manufacturing. The PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index) manufacturing activity indexes for most of the major economies are below 50, the threshold for expansion or contraction. These are only surveys of corporate managers asking them about (...)
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 (...)
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. (...)
Care debt: patriarchy and capital on the offensive, feminist economics as a proposal

10 April 2019 - by Blanca Bayas

In recent years, the concept of “care debt”, associated with the time and work women have devoted to domestic and care tasks, has been widespread, thus sustaining the impact of the current crisis and making the functioning of the capitalist and patriarchal system viable. What does the idea of (...)
South Africa Suffers Capitalist Crisis Déjà Vu

3 April 2019 - by Patrick Bond

A year ago, the majority of South Africans stared into the abyss. They faced either a continuation of corrupt misrule by a stereotypical kleptocrat—Jacob Zuma—whose anti-imperialist rhetoric failed to disguise worsening austerity, or a potentially dramatic change of political direction toward (...)
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 (...)
#MeToo: A movement for women workers too!

8 March 2019 - by Sonia Mitralias

It has been more than two years since the emergence of the Me Too movement that unveiled the enormous extent of sexual harassment in the workplace and gender-based sexual violence around the world! Not at all ephemeral, this movement does not stop surprising us. Not only does it persist and now (...)
Tourism: the false fix – concentration of profits and social debt

5 March 2019 - by Marta Ill Raga

This ODG research starts to look at the relationship of debt and financialisation with tourism, and how they act though this industry, that is deeply affecting life in cities (and other places) around the world. This report aims to review the impacts of the tourism industry on the city of (...)
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 (...)
Thomas Piketty and public debt

14 January 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Thomas Piketty recently published an opinion in the newspaper Le Monde, “1789-2019, the return of debt”, (in french) which deserves to be read. We republish an article by Éric Toussaint on the positions of Thomas Piketty and that of CADTM on public debt. This text remains largely relevant (...)
Globalization from Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama until today

6 January 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

The beginning of Globalization goes back to the outcomes of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus that brought him, on October 1492, to the shore of an island in the Caribbean Sea. It was the starting point of a brutal and bloody intervention of European sea powers in the history of American (...)
Adam Smith and the Yellow Vest Movement

23 December 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

It is sad to see how completely misrepresented Adam Smith (1723-1790) is when pundits call upon him to vindicate neoliberalism and the status quo. It seems many have not really bothered to read his works. Some passages in Adam Smith’s major work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the (...)
Nicaragua: From 2007 to 2018, Daniel Ortega Had the Support of the IMF and Conducted Policies Favourable to Big National and International Capital

5 November 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

The principal detonator of the protests that began in April 2018 in Nicaragua was the imposition by Daniel Ortega’s government of neoliberal measures that impacted social protection, and in particular retirements. These measures were the result of pressure from the IMF, with which Daniel Ortega (...)
Liberia: The “dictatorship of the multinational corporations”

4 October 2018 - by Moses Uneh Yahmia

Liberia has been taken over by multinational corporations that are exploiting its resources at the expense of Liberians, especially the country’s working class that serves as cheap labour to these foreign companies. Unlike other countries in the sub-Saharan region, Liberia was never formally (...)
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 (...)
How do patriarchy and capitalism jointly reinforce the oppression of women?

13 September 2018 - by Camille Bruneau

In the summary of the first chapter, we have laid out a number arguments for the necessity of feminism today. They include violence, the lack or suppression of fundamental rights, under-representation in politics, poverty, economic marginalization and the threat posed by anti-feminist (...)
Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African programmes are not charity

24 August 2018 - by Philip Bereano

The activities of the Gates Foundation are a major example of what has come to be called ’philanthrocapitalism’. Philip L Bereano argues that philanthrocapitalism is an attempt to use market processes to do good, and therefore problematic as markets are ill-suited to producing socially (...)
Debts and feminisms: an overview of the book project – first chapter

13 August 2018 - by Camille Bruneau

Feminism and the situation of women is an ever-growing concern for the CADTM network, which becomes almost unavoidable in the broad fight against domination(s). Women are indeed impacted by debt in several ways; as the main contractors of micro-credits, as the caretakers that have a higher (...)
Imperialism and Dependency: Similarities and Differences with the Marini era

8 May 2018 - by Claudio Katz, Richard Fidler

The main theorist of dependency anticipated trends of neoliberal globalization. He analyzed productive globalization, the centrality of exploitation and the relative weight of surplus value transfers. But the employment crisis exceeds what was envisaged by Marini, in a scenario disrupted by the (...)
Understanding the crisis is too important to be left to specialists alone. This is why “Bankocracy” is so important

16 April 2018 - by Avishek Konar

The Great Recession, from the middle of 2007 onwards, has rocked the global economy. This has led to at least a couple of things. The legitimacy of neoliberalism in the west—qua ‘there is no other alternative’—has been shattered, and vast majority of people are now looking for other political (...)
Senegalese economist Ndongo Samba Sylla: “the Continental Free Trade Area is a mistake” (Interview)

4 April 2018 - by Ndongo Samba Sylla, Maghreb Emergent

The economist Ndongo Samba Sylla is the author of the following books, among others: The Fair Trade Scandal: Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich and La démocratie contre la République: l’autre histoire du gouvernement du peuple. He tells Maghreb Emergent why the CFTA is “suicide for African (...)
No TAV: feeding the fire of resistance in northern Italy

18 January 2018 - by Frank Barat

The decades-old struggle of the No TAV movement in northern Italy is an inspiration to environmentalist and anti-capitalist movements worldwide. When I get to Turin airport, on a warm autumn day, the smell of smoke is overwhelming. The weather forecast on my phone shows me a big bright sun, (...)