Finance against people
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The coronavirus pandemic has widened the gap between the Global North and the Global South
14 December 2021 - by Eric Toussaint
Confronted with the coronavirus pandemic that started end of 2019-beginning of 2020, the governments of long-standing imperialist powers (Western Europe, North America, Japan, Australia-New Zealand) and private pharmaceutical corporations have (...) -
Death of Doing Business Report greatly exaggerated as World Bank announces rebranding plans
10 December 2021 - by Bretton Woods Project
On 16 September civil society organisations had occasion for celebration, as the World Bank announced the cancellation of the Doing Business Report (DBR, see Observer Autumn 2021). The decision resulted from an independent investigation into (...) -
World inequality
9 December 2021 - by Michael Roberts
The world has become more unequal in income and wealth in the last 40 years. That’s according to the World Inequality Report 2022, available here. Produced by the World Inequality Lab had increased [within most (...) -
Mozambique: Credit Suisse fined $475 million and cancels $200 million of hidden debts
29 October 2021 - by Tim Jones
US authorities and the UK Financial Conduct Authority have collectively imposed a fine of $475 million on Credit Suisse for its role in the hidden debt scandal in Mozambique. Credit Suisse has also agreed to cancel $200 million of debt owed to (...) -
Coronavirus: Global Collective Commons vs Big Pharma
21 October 2021 - by Eric Toussaint
Research and production of vaccines were largely financed by public money The development and production of anti-Covid vaccines were extensively financed by public money The development and production of anti-Covid vaccines were extensively (...) -
Development banks have no business financing agribusiness
19 October 2021 - by Collective
On the eve of an annual gathering of public development banks in Rome, groups from around the world have signed a letter slamming them for bankrolling the expansion of industrial agriculture, environmental destruction and corporate control of (...) -
Press release
Debt Crisis: a wasted G20 Summit
18 October 2021 - by CADTM International
As usually happens on the eve of the annual assemblies of the IMF and the World Bank, a G20 summit was held on 13 October 2021 in Washington D.C. Industrial powers in the North and international institutions are more concerned about financial (...) -
The latest Bretton Woods bean-counting scandal nearly evicts IMF director Georgieva: “Torture the data until they confess” (or until you’re busted), economists profess
13 October 2021 - by Patrick Bond
After a major leadership crisis that further degrades the Bretton Woods Institutions’ number-crunching credibility by revealing a pro-corporate bias – one that in 2017 was aimed at pleasing Beijing’s “Communist” government – yet another discredited (...) -
The destruction and grabbing of collective commons
4 October 2021 - by Eric Toussaint
Since the dawn of capitalism the logic of collective commons has been systematically challenged by the capitalist class through commodification and private appropriation of wealth. One of their earliest objectives, when factories started to (...) -
Booms and bezzles
14 September 2021 - by Michael Roberts
Major stock markets are hovering near all-time highs and commodity prices (food and materials) are rocketing. At the other end of the scale, short-term interest rates are near or below zero, and even long-term government and corporate bonds are (...) -
Multinational Corporations and COVID-19: Intellectual property rights vs. human rights
11 September 2021 - by Peter Rossman
The multilateral trading system anchored by the WTO is not confined to cross-border trade in physical goods. It was also designed to protect corporate knowledge monopolies. Developing countries were told that strict adherence to the rules of (...) -
Credit ratings are punishing poorer countries for investing more in health care during the pandemic
31 August 2021 - by Ramya Vijaya
Economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic depends on sustained investment, low-income nations face a major obstacle: their credit ratings. A credit rating, like a credit score, is an assessment of the ability of a borrower – whether it’s a (...) -
The debt of integration: Montenegro’s Chinese loan and the traps of Europe
12 July 2021 - by Tijana Okić
The Balkans debt crisis continues to ravage the economies of the region, with Montenegro vainly turning to the EU for a bailout on multi-billion euro debts to Chinese contractors (Exim bank of China) on what is essentially part of the EU-imposed (...) -
AEPF Statement on Bangladesh Factory Fire
12 July 2021 - by Asia Europe Peoples’ Forum (AEPF)
A food and beverage factory in Bangladesh was engulfed in fire killing at least 52 workers and injuring more than fifty others. The workers were trapped inside the building since the only exit had been locked. This illegal practice to force (...) -
1% own 45% of the world’s personal wealth while nearly 3bn people have little or no wealth at all
24 June 2021 - by Michael Roberts
Just 56m or 1% of adults out of 5.3bn globally are millionaires in net wealth terms. And they own 45% of all global personal wealth. The other 99% own the rest and there are nearly 3bn people in the world that have little or no wealth at all (...) -
The economic response to the crisis benefits large companies
26 May 2021 - by Eric Toussaint, Roberto González Amador
Éric Toussaint is interviewed by Roberto González Amador from the Mexican daily La Jornada. The spokesperson for the international network Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts (CADTM) argues for an end to patents [1]. The seeds of a (...) -
Stop blaming the victims of the microfinance crisis!
24 May 2021 - by Amali Wedagedara, Nedha de Silva
The exponential growth of the microfinance industry in Sri Lanka does not correspond with its contribution to reducing poverty. Instead, it has escalated indebtedness among women, pushed them below subsistence and made victims of both personal (...) -
Unmasking the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
16 May 2021 - by GRAIN
In 2018, China’s biggest agrochemical corporation, Sinochem Group Co, announced that it had conducted field trials of hybrid wheat varieties in 230 locations in Pakistan. Since intellectual property rights prevent farmers from saving hybrid (...) -
Sri Lanka: Microfinance debt trap: Still awaiting reprieve
4 May 2021 - by Maheesha Mudugamuwa
Thousands of innocent villagers, especially in the Northern, Eastern, and North Central Provinces are holding protests to raise a collective cry against the longstanding issues related to the microfinance debt trap that had claimed the lives of (...) -
A grim new year for debt-trapped rural women in Sri Lanka
16 April 2021 - by Meera Srinivasan
M. Champa Irangani is in no mood to celebrate ‘Avurudu’, or New Year, the biggest annual festival that Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese community observes mid-April, while Tamils celebrate the Tamil New Year around the same time. “The New Year will (...) -
IMF and debt: a new consensus?
16 April 2021 - by Michael Roberts
There is much talk among ‘progressive’ economists that the IMF and the World Bank have turned over a new leaf. Gone are the days of supporting fiscal austerity, demanding that national governments get public debt levels down and insisting on (...) -
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21th Century: an ABC
Neoliberalism: An increasing gap among incomes and tax gifts to Capital
15 April 2021 - by CADTM
Evolution of low and high salaries since the 1960s The May 1968 general strike in France led to a considerable increase in the minimum wage over 15 years We do not have room to sum up the evolution of income inequalities over the last two (...) -
Series title: Ecuador: Progress and limits of resistance to the policies of the World Bank, the IMF and other creditors
Ecuador: Resistance against the policies imposed by the World Bank, the IMF and other creditors between 2007 and 2011
15 April 2021 - by Eric Toussaint
Ecuador provides an example of a government which officially decided to investigate the process of indebtedness so as to identify illegitimate debt and suspend its repayment. The fact that the government suspended payment of a large part of its (...) -
Series: 1944-2021, 77 years of interference from the World Bank and the IMF (Part 28)
The World Bank did not Foresee the Arab Spring Popular Uprisings and still Promotes the very same Policies that triggered them
12 April 2021 - by Eric Toussaint
In 2021, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF will reach the age of 77. These two international financial institutions (IFIs), created in 1944, are dominated by the United States and a few major allied powers that act to generalize policies contrary (...) -
[Press release] World Bank / IMF / G20 Spring Meetings Paltry measures doomed to failure
11 April 2021 - by CADTM International
At the spring meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions from 5 to 11 April 2021, the World Bank, IMF and G20 made new announcements in an attempt to respond to the debt crisis in the countries of the South, exacerbated by the economic and (...)
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