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Japan election: from stagnation to stagflation

8 February 2026 - by Michael Roberts

In Japan, a general election is taking place tomorrow, just months after Sanae Takaichi became the nation’s first female prime minister. Takaichi is an arch-conservative, ultra nationalist and a devotee of Margaret Thatcher. She became prime (…)
Thailand election: change or more of the same?

8 February 2026 - by Michael Roberts

The south-east Asian country, Thailand, is holding a general election on Sunday. Of the 72m Thais, 53m are eligible to vote. They will vote for the 500-seat House of Representatives. While 400 seats are filled through constituency races under a (…)
Depression and creative destruction

26 October 2025 - by Michael Roberts

The latest economic activity indicators called purchasing managers indexes (PMIs) confirm that the major economies are still crawling along – neither slipping into slump nor picking up pace. The global PMI stands at 52.4 in September (any score (…)
Argentina: the chainsaw breaks down

4 October 2025 - by Michael Roberts

Last week US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a $20bn swap line to Javier Milei’s government in Argentina and pledged to buy its bonds, as the Trump administration moved to shore up its ideological ally. The measures temporarily halted a (…)
A look in the rearview mirror: The vicious cycle of debt

21 July 2025 - by Ernest Mandel

On the anniversary of Ernest Mandel’s death on July 20, 1995, we are republishing an article he wrote during the first Third World debt crisis. The article was originally published in Inprecor, No. 217, April 1986. In this article, Ernest (…)
Japan: stagnation and confusion

19 July 2025 - by Michael Roberts

Tomorrow, a key election takes in the G7 economy, Japan. The focus is on whether the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner Komeito, which together suffered a major defeat in last autumn’s lower House of (…)
South Korea: under pressure

3 June 2025 - by Michael Roberts

South Korea goes to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new president after some tumultuous months following the attempted coup by the right-wing president Yoon Suk-yeol to arrest opposition leaders and close down parliament, where Yoon did not have (…)
Australia: stuck in the middle

2 May 2025 - by Michael Roberts

The island continent of Australia holds a federal election today (Saturday) with the country stuck in the middle of the trade war between the US and China. Around 18m Australians are eligible to vote and voting is compulsory (although the (…)
Long cycles

24 December 2024 - by Michael Roberts

I have long been sympathetic to the concept of long cycles in capitalist production and accumulation. This is the idea that capitalist production moves in cycles, not just in booms and slumps every 8-10 years or so, but also there are longer (…)
The US presidential election: part one – the economy

3 November 2024 - by Michael Roberts

I am doing two posts before the US presidential election on Tuesday. The first is on the state of the US economy; and the second will be on the respective economic policies of the two main candidates, Democrat Kamala Harris and former Republican (…)
CADTM International Council | Day 1 | The polycrisis of capitalism

10 October 2024 - by CADTM International, Pablo Laixhay

In early October, the CADTM hosted its International Council after the Autumn Meetings in Liège. Members of the CADTM network travelled from Mexico, India, the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Togo, Morocco, (…)
Sri Lanka: The conjuncture in the crisis

10 July 2024 - by Balasingham Skanthakumar

“Aaranchiya Subhai!” (‘Await Good News’) read posters plastered across the country recently. It was the build-up to Ranil Wickremesinghe’s televised speech on June 26, passing off a bad deal with official creditors on debt servicing as “Sri Lanka (…)
France: Macron’s gamble

30 June 2024 - by Michael Roberts

France votes over two rounds on June 30 and July 7 in a snap parliamentary election called by President Macron after his party suffered a heavy defeat in the June EU Assembly elections. France has two rounds of voting: if a candidate gets 50% of (…)
The Debt Trap and the interlinked Crises

12 November 2023 - by Eric Toussaint, Lidy B. Nacpil, Ahilan Kadirgamar, Kris Vanslambrouck, Anuradha Chenoy

We continue to witness country after country in the Global South falling victim to the ‘debt trap’ and inability to repay foreign loans. People in these countries bear the multiple burdens of indirect taxation as governments failing to repay (…)
Argentina election: from peso to dollar?

25 October 2023 - by Michael Roberts

Argentines will vote in general elections today with both the mainstream parties weakened by the legacy of multiple economic crises and challenged by a libertarian outsider, Javier Milei. The deeply unpopular current president Alberto (…)
Polycrisis again

8 October 2023 - by Michael Roberts

At the beginning of this year, I wrote a post on how the capitalist mode of production was in what some call a ‘polycrisis’, where various crises: economic (inflation and slump); environmental (climate and pandemic); and geopolitical (war and (…)
Deeper than ever, the crisis leaves capitalism out of breath

20 June 2023 - by Eric Toussaint

CADTM : Are we witnessing a crisis This is a major crisis of the globalized capitalist system, the worst crisis since those of the years 1914-1945 Éric Toussaint : Yes. All the warning lights are flashing: there is a very significant (…)
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 will (…)
Well founded pessimism

17 April 2023 - by Michael Roberts

Only last February, I posted that there had been a burst of optimism about the state of the world economy in 2023. The consensus view then was that the G7 economies (with the sorry exception of the UK) would avoid a slump this year. Sure, there (…)
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 (…)