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Crisis

Rates up, economy down

5 May 2023 - by Michael Roberts

The two main central banks in the advanced capitalist economies, the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB), raised their ‘policy’ interest rates again this week. The policy rate sets the floor for all borrowing rates in these (...)
A multipolar world and the dollar

24 April 2023 - by Michael Roberts

Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central bank (ECB), made an important ‘keynote’ speech last week to the US Council of Foreign Relations in New York. It was important because she analysed recent developments in global trade and (...)
Banks on the Brink? The Origins, Nature, and Trajectory of the Crisis

19 April 2023 - by Ashley Smith, Michael Roberts

The banking industry has been beset by a series of failures, government bailouts, and takeovers. The crisis in these banks has sent stock markets around the world into gyrations. What caused all of this? Is this a passing crisis? What impact (...)
Well founded pessimism

17 April 2023 - by Michael Roberts

Only last February, I posted that there would be a ‘mild recession’ in US economic activity this year. And according to economists at the Bank of America, there are plenty of signals that suggest a recession in the US has not been avoided and (...)
Economist Joseph Stiglitz on How War, Covid & Climate Crisis Cause Economic Crises Around the World

10 March 2023 - by Joseph Stiglitz, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, Juan González

As the U.N. secretary-general blasts wealthy nations for rigging the global economy for their benefit, we speak with economist Joseph Stiglitz about how war, the pandemic and the climate emergency are causing economic crises across the globe. He (...)
Russia-Ukraine: one year of war – the economics

26 February 2023 - by Michael Roberts

It’s just a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I am not going to discuss the politics of this war in this post. There are plenty of sources for debate on this. Instead, I want to look at the economic consequences of the war for both (...)
Central banks: boom or slump?

3 February 2023 - by Michael Roberts

Three of the major central banks met and raised their policy interest rates yet again in the so-called ‘fight against inflation’. Interest-rate levels are now at 15-year highs. But the financial markets took the comments of the central bankers (...)
Davos 23: going pear-shaped

23 January 2023 - by Michael Roberts

This week, the jamboree of the rich global elite of the World Economic Forum (WEF) has started again after the COVID interregnum. Top political and business leaders have flown in on their private jets to discuss climate change and global (...)
Polycrisis and depression in the 21^st century

6 January 2023 - by Michael Roberts

‘Polycrisis’ is the buzz word among leftists right now. The word expresses the coming together and interlocking of various crises: economic (inflation and slump); environmental (climate and pandemic); and geopolitical (war and international (...)
The Crisis of Neoliberalism and the Progressive Alternative

28 May 2022 - by Devaka Gunawardena

The current crisis in Sri Lanka is not only a political crisis of the regime of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. It is also a structural breakdown of the way in which neoliberalism has historically attempted to legitimise its own regime of accumulation. (...)
Urgent plea by Sri Lankan feminists to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis caused by the economic collapse in Sri Lanka

6 April 2022 - by Collective

Sri Lanka is facing the worst economic crisis in its post-independence history. Widespread food and fuel shortages are crippling the lives of people. Such a situation that has already lasted several weeks is now resulting in widespread protests (...)
The three contradictions of the Long Depression

14 March 2022 - by Michael Roberts

One of my basic theses about modern capitalism is that since 2008, the major capitalist economies have been in what I call a Long Depression. In my book of 2016 of the same name, I distinguish between what economists call recessions or slumps (...)
Forecast for 2022

3 January 2022 - by Michael Roberts

At the beginning of each year, I make an attempt to forecast what will happen in the world economy for the year ahead. The point of making any forecast at all is often ridiculed. After all, surely there are just too many factors to feed into (...)
Whither the global economy?

20 November 2021 - by Michael Roberts

How is the global recovery after the COVID pandemic going? The economic consensus is that the major economies are recovering fast, driven by rising consumer spending and corporate investment. The problem ahead is not a return to sustained (...)
The relative decline of US imperialism

22 August 2021 - by Michael Roberts

The swift collapse of Afghanistan puppet government when US troops withdrew from the war with the Taliban and left the country after 20 years has been likened to the fall of Saigon at the end of the 30-year ‘American’ war against the Vietnamese (...)
Interview with Éric Toussaint

The dual explanation of the crisis, the fake social turnaround by governments, the need for radical responses

12 July 2021 - by Eric Toussaint, L’Anticapitaliste

The spokesperson of CADTM International, Éric Toussaint, responds to the questions of the L’Anticapiltaliste weekly . Marxists often hesitated at the beginning of the present economic crisis: was it a classic, fundamentally capitalist crisis (...)
The West Has Been Hoarding More Than Vaccines

6 May 2021 - by Walden Bello

I’ve had my first Covid-19 vaccine jab, drawn from the limited supply of the AstraZeneca doses that has made its way to the developing world. As a senior, I’m part of a so-called priority sector eligible to receive it in the Philippines, a country (...)
The year of the pandemic

12 March 2021 - by Michael Roberts

It is one year to the day since the World Health Organisation (WHO) [declared the COVID-19 outbreak or epidemic as a ‘pandemic’->https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en, namely the global spread of the disease. Of course, COVID-19 (...)
Covid 2021: more calamity ahead?

4 December 2020 - by Michael Roberts

The news that a COVID-19 vaccine could well be available by the start of 2021 sent the stock markets of the world shooting up to new record levels. However, the rally was quickly tempered by the rocketing rise in COVID-19 infections as the (...)
Covid 2021: more calamity ahead?

16 November 2020 - by Michael Roberts

The news that a COVID-19 vaccine could well be available by the start of 2021 sent the stock markets of the world shooting up to new record levels. However, the rally was quickly tempered by the rocketing rise in COVID-19 infections as the (...)
Europe and the Pandemic

9 November 2020 - by Eric Toussaint, Manoel Barbeitos

Éric Toussant interviewed by Manoel Barbeitos for Tempos dixital. For example since the first semester 2019, industrial production had fallen in several key economies, with a reduction of production in Germany and in several industrial branches (...)
On the World Economic Crisis

20 July 2020 - by Eric Toussaint, Dan La Botz

The Covid-19 pandemic and the worldwide lockdown have triggered a depression as great as that of the 1930s. The causes of this crisis, the character of government policies, and the programs put forward by working class groups are of concern to (...)
The farcical Rupees (INR) 20 trillion ($265 billion) stimulus package

29 June 2020 - by Sankha Subhra Biswas

While the whole world is suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic with more than 10 million people affected by it, the economic crisis is more acute than ever. As a response, the governments of the developed as well as the developing countries came (...)
The downward journey of stock markets, repurchase of shares and the story of fictitious capital

12 May 2020 - by Sankha Subhra Biswas

A severe crisis has gripped the world financial markets since early March 2020 and needless to say, India has not escaped this onslaught. The Indian stock markets are unable to halt this deep slide. On certain days the markets shows some (...)
Cancel the debt so doctors and nurses can keep saving lives

7 May 2020 - by Collective

A call for urgent action to support doctors and nurses on the frontlines of the Coronavirus pandemic. We are all health workers, nurses, doctors. Every day we are on the frontline fighting this virus. Every day we are on the wards, in the (...)