Crisis

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 (...)
Inequality and risk – both rising

23 May 2019 - by Michael Roberts

The US Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard, in a speech in Washington, revealed the extent of rising inequality in the US. Using the latest income and wealth data, she outlined that the incomes and wealth of working-class (the American establishments like to use ‘middle-class’) households in (...)
Boom and then bust?

30 April 2019 - by Michael Roberts

Last March, I posted that the global economy seemed to be in a fantasy world where stock markets hit new highs but output of goods and services, investment and trade was stagnating in the major economies. This week, the US stock recorded yet again new highs. As the Financial Times described (...)
A delicate moment

17 April 2019 - by Michael Roberts

The IMF-World Bank meeting in Washington this weekend revealed again that the world economy is slowing down and the prospect of an outright recession is getting much higher. The IMF economists cut their outlook for global growth to the lowest since the global financial crisis of 2009 amid a (...)
Structural violence and the struggle for state power in Rwanda

8 April 2019 - by Andy Storey

The 1994 Rwandan genocide occurred despite the existence of a peace and power sharing agreement (the Arusha Accords) to which all parties to the conflict had ostensibly subscribed. This paper addresses the failings of the Arusha peace and power sharing process and makes three core arguments. (...)
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 (...)
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 political economy of a long depression

23 May 2018 - by Joseph Choonara

It is now a full decade since the financial turmoil that heralded the beginning of the “long depression”. On a global scale, the recession that developed in the wake of the collapse of the Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers in autumn 2008 was over after a year. However, while the recession (...)
Shocking report: Macroeconomic indicators improve but Greece’s society is suffering

9 February 2018 - by Confédération hellénique des cadres, artisans et marchands

Greek society in economic decline: Three out of four are long-time unemployed. 51% of the households depends on pensions. One in five households is afraid to lose its home. 70% of the young Greeks want to look for a work abroad. 16.3% say they cannot afford to cover an extraordinary expense of (...)
The Asian financial crisis: Lessons learned and unlearned

18 August 2017 - by Yilmaz Akyüz

Governments in both mature and emerging economies no doubt draw lessons from financial crises in order to adopt measures to prevent their recurrence. However, it is often the case that such measures are designed to address the root causes of the last crisis but not the next one. More (...)