Crisis

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 up with several financial stimulus to stabilize (...)
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 strength but it keeps falling once again in the next (...)
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 emergency rooms. Every day we see first-hand the (...)
The scarring

4 May 2020 - by Michael Roberts

Optimism reigns in global stock markets, particularly in the US. After falling around 30% when the lockdowns to contain COVID-19 virus pandemic were imposed, the US stock market has jumped back 30% in April. Why? Well, for two reasons. The first is that the US Federal Reserve has intervened (...)
SAAPE Call for Rapid Response from the South Asian Governments to Fight the COVID19 Crisis and to build unitedly long-term public health care for South Asians

12 April 2020 - by Collective

SAAPE is concerned about the great danger that COVID-19 pandemic poses in South Asia. The pandemic has already made the lives of the people miserable and woeful. The world is entering in a new phase of history. The pandemic has exposed the ugly face of the neoliberalism which has miserably (...)
CSOs Call to International Creditors of Bangladesh

10 April 2020 - by Collective

We the following Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) from all over the world, are calling on the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and all bilateral, regional and multilateral development financiers of (...)
COVID-19 pandemic: Statement by the Southern African People’s Solidarity Network (SAPSN)

5 April 2020 - by Collective

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a great danger to the SADC region. If the spread of the virus is not urgently arrested and is allowed to spread to high-density areas, slums, refugee camps and other centres of impoverishment, Southern Africa will face a health, economic and social disaster on a (...)
COVID-19 and debt in the global south: Protecting the most vulnerable in times of crisis II

2 April 2020 - by Daniel Munevar

This is the second part of a blog series covering the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable countries in the Global South. [Part 1] analyses the impact of debt burdens on health services. Part 2 discusses how the economic crisis will affect countires in the global south. Part 3 highlights the degree (...)
“The Coronavirus pandemic is part of a multidimensional crisis of capitalism”

31 March 2020 - by Eric Toussaint, Henri Wilno

You wrote in a recent article: “The coronavirus was the spark or trigger of the stockmarket crisis, not its cause.” Can you be more specific? While governments and mainstream media keep claiming that the stockmarket crisis is a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, I pointed out that all (...)
COVID-19 and debt in the global south: Protecting the most vulnerable in times of crisis I

18 March 2020 - by Daniel Munevar

This is the first part of a blog series covering the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable countries in the global south. Part 1 analyses the impact of debt burdens on health services. Part 2 discusses the channels different channels of economic transmission of the crisis. Part 3 highlights the (...)
No, the coronavirus is not responsible for the fall of stock prices

5 March 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

We are witnessing a big crisis in the stock markets of the Wall Street, Europe, Japan and Shanghai, and many blame the coronavirus for it. In the last week of February 2020, the worst week since October 2008, the Dow Jones fell 12.4%, the S&P 500 fell 11.5% and the Nasdaq Composite fell (...)
Debt in Times of Economic Crisis

2 March 2020 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar

Debt relief is now a call at all levels of state and society in Sri Lanka. The Prime Minister recently requested a three-year moratorium on debt repayments to India, the Government earlier announced a debt repayment moratorium of one year for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) with loans up to (...)
The People of Colombia Are Cracking Up the Walls of War and Authoritarianism

20 January 2020 - by Justin Podur

The protests that started with the national strike called by Colombia’s central union on November 21 to protest pension reforms and the broken promises of the peace accords have persisted for two months and grown into a protest against the whole establishment. And the protests have continued (...)
New Threats, New Resistances and New Alternatives

12 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

We conclude with thoughts about the agency for resistance to these neoliberal policies, both ones in existence since the early 1990s (Bond 2014) and those that are being re-introduced through SEZs and the renewed export-led ‘growth’ strategy. The SEZ strategy did not begin well, Treasury at (...)
Local South African Economic Conditions

6 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

As the world economy spirals into crisis stage, with fully-fledged deglobalisation and a new round of financial turmoil, the South African context is just as foreboding. Corporations and workers alike are ill prepared for the period ahead, especially if it entails another export-led drive (...)
Africa’s Renewed Crises of Unbalanced Trade, Disinvestment, Debt

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

In addition to China, Africa is meant to be one of the most critical markets for South Africa’s SEZs, and attracting other investment, trade and finance to the continent was one justification for entering the BRICS bloc, according to Jacob Zuma and his colleagues. In 2013, for example, deputy (...)
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 (...)
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 (...)
Global Economic Volatility and Socio Political Reactions

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

Trade and currency wars, financial volatility and economic turbulence are now the most important features of the world economy. The elements of a new international financial crisis are in place. Although we do not know when it will break out, it is unavoidable, and its impact on world economy (...)
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 (...)
The Banking Sector and the Global Crisis

18 September 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

The banking system in India is faced with the worst crisis in the last few decades of its existence. The Non-Performing Assets of the Indian banks – both private and public – points towards a full-blown financial crisis that has a significant impact on the economy and exhibits no signs of an (...)
A profits recession?

22 July 2019 - by Michael Roberts

This week, we get the first US company reports on earnings for the second quarter of 2019. And it looks as though there will be the first back-to-back drop in overall earnings since the mini-recession of 2016. S&P 500 companies are expected to report an average earnings fall of 2.8 per (...)