Finance against people

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Finance against people

Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay

24 October 2019 - by Jerome Roos, George Souvlis

Debt-stricken countries like Greece have continued repaying their creditors even though it’s hammering workers’ living standards. They should stick it to the banks and default instead. The European debt crisis that began a decade ago has (…)
Bretton Woods Institutions’ neoliberal over-reach leaves global governance in the gutter

18 October 2019 - by Patrick Bond

This week, the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund will again be held in Washington, DC, with back-slapping now that the Bretton Woods twins have reached age 75 (they were founded at a New Hampshire hotel in 1944). (…)
Swiss Franc Mortgages: Illegitimate and Illegal

8 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

In Poland and France, along with Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, Greece and other Balkan countries, the scandal of household mortgages made out in Swiss francs has hit over a million victims of big grasping private banks. The Court of Justice of the (…)
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 (…)
Trapped in a debt cycle

27 September 2019 - by Gihan D Chickera

The entrapment of rural communities, especially rural women, in a vicious debt cycle generated by thousands of unregulated microfinance organizations has reached epidemic proportions, affecting almost three million people island-wide. Once seen (…)
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 (…)
Weapons of Legal Destruction: ISDS lawsuits and Lydian International’s Assault on Armenian Sovereignty

23 September 2019 - by Armen Abagyan

Over 3,300 investment agreements have been drawn up since the 1960’s. This byzantine nexus of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) safeguard the global Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) apparatus encompassing a 20 trillion dollar flow of capital, (…)
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 (…)
Microfinance has been a nightmare for the global south. Sri Lanka shows that there is an alternative

12 September 2019 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar, Niyanthini Kadirgamar

The global hegemony of finance capital is based on burgeoning household debt accompanied by devastating dispossession. This is more evident in peripheral societies, where state investment in the rural economy is abandoned for the myth of (…)
Financial institutions complicit in impact of austerity measures on human rights, says UN expert

10 September 2019 - by Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky

GENEVA (10 September 2019) – Austerity measures imposed by international financial institutions such as the IMF, regularly cause violations of human rights, says UN Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky in a (…)
Tunisia’s Truth Commission vs France, the IMF and World Bank

8 September 2019 - by Olfa Belhassine

On July 16, Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD) sent two memorandums calling first on France and then on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to apologize and pay reparations to Tunisian victims. It says they all have a “share (…)
Kenya: Perpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah

2 September 2019 - by Emma Park, Kevin P. Donovan

Kenya’s poor were among the first to benefit from digital lending apps; now they call it slavery. Across conversations in Kenya’s pubs and WhatsApp groups, debt is on everyone’s mind. The speed and ease of access to credit through new mobile (…)
Capitalists’ immoral trickery exposed by “Mauritius Leaks”

27 August 2019 - by Lindsey Collen

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the non-profit USA-based organization that published the Panama Papers, has now exposed the big companies that nip through the Mauritius off-shore to invest elsewhere : the companies are (…)
Finance: fiddling, fetish and fiction

14 August 2019 - by Michael Roberts

Nothing changes in the finance sector globally, despite the catastrophic impact of the banks on the world capitalist economy in the global financial crash and the ensuing Great Recession. In previous posts, I have highlighted the greed, (…)
Pakistan and World Bank Settlement of Investment Disputes – Do not pay the unfair fine; oppose the unjust decision of ICSID

22 July 2019 - by Farooq Tariq

This is a story of the dodgy deal by a multi national company and then earning massive amount of money through the so-called process of Settlement of Investment Disputes, a World Bank institution acting against developing countries. This is a (…)
Corporate debt: the catalyst for the next crisis in India?

30 June 2019 - by Sushovan Dhar

According to IHS Markit, a London based information provider, India is going to overtake the UK, its former colonial ruler, to become the world’s fifth largest economy this year and is projected to outdo Japan to feature at the second position in (…)
Lonmin’s murder, by money

6 June 2019 - by Patrick Bond

Autopsy reveals Lonmin—the British-South African company—corpse’s poisoning by microfinance, ‘development finance’ and corporate finance. The death of the 110-year old mining house Lonmin at a London shareholders meeting on 28 May occurred (…)
Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2019

29 May 2019 - by Erlassjahr.de, Jürgen Kaiser

Currently, 122 out of 154 countries examined are critically in debt, just under 80 per cent. The situation is particularly alarming in Bhutan, Mongolia, Gambia, Cape Verde Islands, Jamaica, Bahrain and Lebanon. In almost three-quarters of the 122 (…)
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 (…)
No DCFTA in Tunisia / لا للآليكا في تونس

2 May 2019 - by Collective

The European Union is currently negotiating a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with Tunisia. The EU wants its companies to get open access to the Tunisian market, and aims at imposing its norms, standards and procedures. Such (…)
South Africa: The support of the World Bank and the IMF to the Apartheid regime

29 April 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond

The World Bank and the IMF were accomplice of the apartheid for decades. They violated the UN embargo against the racist regime at the helm of South Africa. Between 1958 – 1968, the World Bank loans made possible the financing of the (…)
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: (…)
Financial globalization, N-S wealth distribution, resource transfers

18 February 2019 - by Yilmaz Akyüz

Geneva, 6 Feb (IPS/Yilmaz Akyuz*) — At a time when the world economy is seen poised for yet another financial turmoil, there is a widespread recognition that emerging economies (EMEs) are particularly vulnerable because of their deepened (…)
Illicit financial flows thwart human rights and development in Africa

5 February 2019 - by Imani Countess

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights turned 70 on 12 December and governments and civil society organisations around the world were commemorating the day with a range of activities. However, the threat of illicit financial flows to the (…)
The resignation of the World Bank president should encourage countries to terminate all agreement with the Bretton Woods institutions

21 January 2019 - by CADTM International

On Monday, 7 January 2019, Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank (WB) has announced his resignation. Kristalina Georgieva, the current Chief Executive Officer of the World Bank will assume the role of interim President effective February 1 (…)