Financial crisis

South African Special Economic Zones : History of Limited Successes

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

Given both short- and longer-term trends in the world and South African economies, there is a danger of government and society placing inordinate hopes in what are variously termed Export Processing Zones, Industrial Development Zones and Special Economic Zones (SEZs), as sources of economic (...)
The mountain of corporate debt will be the seed of the next financial crisis

3 May 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

The scene is again set for a new major international financial crisis. Central bankers, leaders of institutions such as the IMF, the OECD and the Bank for International Settlements are all aware of the situation. Many articles in the specialized press proclaim it. One of the factors is the (...)
Things to watch in 2019: Debt and emerging debt crises

18 January 2019 - by Bodo Ellmers

More than a decade after the last global financial crisis hit, the next wave of defaults is lapping at our shores. Financing conditions will become more difficult in 2019. The world’s major central banks ‘normalised’ their monetary policies last year, meaning that the times of cheap and abundant (...)
The Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) Debt Default: Privatize Profits, Socialize Losses?

15 January 2019 - by Sushovan Dhar

Even when the Lehman Brothers collapse shook the entire financial world, the Indian political elites and the capitalist class were quite confident that the contagion would not spread to India. True, the Indian banks and financial institutions did not weather similar tsunamis as their Western (...)
Economic crisis and global disorder – An increasingly chaotic globalization

9 January 2019 - by Michel Husson

Ten years after the bankruptcy of Lehmann Brothers, more and more analyses are being produced centring on two questions: how did it happen? Can it happen again? But they are almost all centred on the workings of finance, past or future. The point of view adopted here is a little different, (...)
Argentina in turmoil

24 October 2018 - by Jérôme Duval

After Argentine President Mauricio Macri announced, on 3rd September, a brutal austerity plan under IMF supervision, the people hit the streets to express their anger at rising prices and budget cuts. Seventeen years after the 2001 crisis in Argentina, the Macri government, which came to (...)
The euro project and the international integration of the South-Eastern European economies

13 October 2018 - by Ana Podvršič

In the recent years, scholars in critical international political economy have considerably explored the differences and similarities between the countries of the European periphery. Most of the studies, however, have focused on the structural characteristics of the so-called Southern Eurozone (...)
The Next Crash

17 September 2018 - by Robert Reich

Trump and his Republican enablers are now reversing regulations put in place to stop Wall Street’s excessively risky lending September 15 will mark the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and near meltdown of Wall Street, followed by the Great Recession. Since hitting bottom (...)
Bailing out Banks after Lehman Brothers: A Holy Union for a Deuce of a Swindle

17 September 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

In this text, first published in 2008, Éric Toussaint exposed as inadequate governments’ responses to the international banking crisis and anticipated what actually occurred in the following years: a significant increase in public debt and an acceleration of austerity measures. He also explained (...)
A new global credit crunch to come?

4 August 2018 - by Michael Roberts

At the time of the general election in Turkey, I pointed out that Turkey was near the top of the pile for a debt and currency crisis. It was running a massive current account (trade and payments) deficit with other countries and its external debt (what it owes to other countries in credits) was (...)
How mainstream media deal about public debt issues

3 April 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

Éric Toussaint, spokesperson for the CADTM, refers here to the partial approach to the public debt issue developed by mainstream media at an international level: they never include the deleterious consequences of repaying public debt on people’s lives and on human rights in heavily indebted (...)
Dancing on the Volcano

22 November 2017 - by Eric Toussaint

The statements of Mario Draghi, Jean-Claude Junker, and Donald Trump remind us of all the past crises. They could very well have participated in the 1825, 1875 and 1929 crises without changing a single word. Capitalism is not yet on the brink of collapse. Too bad, we would like to see the end (...)
The euro crisis and contradictions between countries in the periphery and centre of the European Union

17 November 2017 - by Eric Toussaint

The crisis that started in the United States in 2007-2008, hit the European Union head on in 2008, and has been causing major problems in the eurozone since 2010. Banks from the strongest European countries are responsible for spreading this plague from the United States to Europe, because (...)
Panama and the Criminalization of the Global Finance System

20 April 2016 - by Michael Hudson, Sharmini Peries

Sharmini Peries: Within a week the 11 million documents called the Panama papers, published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has become a household name. The documents are connected to the Panama law firm Mossack Fonsesca that helped establish offshore accounts for (...)
The Subprime Specter Returns: High Finance and the Growth of High-Risk Consumer Debt

21 January 2016 - by Jennifer Taub

With more than half of American consumers classified as having subprime credit scores, it is no surprise that subprime lending is once again on the rise. Making expensive loans to the underemployed and overextended may help fuel economic growth; however, it is neither just nor sustainable. (...)
“Not at the cost of human rights” – UN expert warns against more austerity measures for Greece

15 July 2015 - by United Nations - Human Rights

ADDIS ABABA / GENEVA (15 July 2015) – The United Nations Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, today urged the European institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the Greek Government to fully assess the impact on human rights of possible new (...)
Financialisation, foreign debt and crisis

2 February 2015 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar

Since the end of the war, Sri Lanka’s economy is being transformed through a rapid process of financialisation. Such widespread financialisation facilitated infrastructure development, a real estate boom linked to urbanisation and expansion of credit leading to increasing indebtedness of the (...)
CETA: Taking away the means to deal with a financial and a EURO crisis

6 October 2014 - by Myriam Vander Stichele

The negotiated text of CETA (leaked on 5 August 2014) has some very alarming provisions about financial services and investments. These CETA rules seriously undermine the power of parliaments, governments and regulators to introduce, change or even maintain financial regulations and measures (...)
G20 finance ministers cannot hide failure to tackle major issues

24 September 2014 - by Jesse Griffiths

The communiqué from this weekend’s G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Cairns tried to paper over increasingly evident cracks in the global economy, trumpeted an OECD initiative to reduce tax dodging which is not as good as it seems, continued to focus on privately funded infrastructure, and (...)
Using Bankruptcy to Steal Pensions

10 August 2014 - by Dianne Feeley

Caught between a rock and a hard place, the majority of the 32,000 Detroit city workers and pensioners did not bother to cast a vote over whether they were willing to have their pensions cut or would prefer to take their chances in court. Although the Michigan Constitution guarantees that (...)
Alternatives to reverse the crisis in Europe

22 April 2014 - by Eric Toussaint

This text proposes a series of concrete alternatives to counter the current crisis shaking Europe. It presents nineteen immediate measures that should be taken vis-à-vis finance in general and the banking sector in particular. In addition to these measures, it proposes to socialise the banking (...)
Banks and the New “Too Big to Jail” Doctrine

13 March 2014 - by Eric Toussaint

We all know the saying, “Too big to fail”. The way governments have managed the crisis caused by the banks has given rise to, “Too big to jail,” [1] which is equally poetic! [2] Although the US government let Lehman Bros. go to the wall in September 2008, no other bank has been closed or broken-up, (...)
The empty proposals of Michel Barnier and the European Commission concerning the banks

10 February 2014 - by Eric Toussaint

At the end of January 2014, Michel Barnier, European Commissioner for internal market and services publicly announced a proposition of banking reform that would concern the 30 most important European Banks. The bankers responded with cries of terror at the idea that they be forced to separate (...)
Portugal: Precautionary Program

9 December 2013 - by Nuno Teles

They call it “insurance”, “precautionary program”, “return to the markets” , “post- troika” , etc... The idea is simple. The European Union has set up a fund of 500 billion euros, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM ), through which future bailouts will be funded. Additionally, this fund is (...)
Are BRICS any use for rebuilding the collapsing global financial architecture?

19 September 2013 - by Patrick Bond

In its most recent world public opinion survey, the Pew Research Centre found that ‘international financial instability’ is considered a major threat by 52 percent of those polled was a close second, after climate change at 54 percent). Here in South Africa, after the lifting of local exchange (...)