Financial crisis

Deficits, debt and deflation after the pandemic

6 July 2020 - by Michael Roberts

The Great Lockdown enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic has driven governments across the globe to apply extensive bailout and fiscal stimulus programmes. On average, these measures of wage supplements, furlough payments, loans and grants to firms; and emergency spending on health and other (...)
The DiEM25 Plan to Confront the Covid-19 Crisis in Europe

27 May 2020 - by Eric Toussaint, Olivier Bonfond, Eva Betavatzi

Strengthen the European Union and its institutions, include the ECB; increase public debt as much as possible in order to save the private sector; not question the legitimacy of public debt; pay €2,000 into the bank account of each European citizen, whether rich or desperately poor; deplore the (...)
Millions forced to choose between hunger or Covid-19

26 May 2020 - by GRAIN

On the eve of May Day 2020, in full coronavirus pandemic, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released some hair raising statistics. About 1.6 billion workers from the informal sector are in dire straits because of the lockdowns governments have imposed to stop the spread of the virus. (...)
The downward journey of stock markets, repurchase of shares and the story of fictitious capital

12 May 2020 - by Sankha Subhra Biswas

A severe crisis has gripped the world financial markets since early March 2020 and needless to say, India has not escaped this onslaught. The Indian stock markets are unable to halt this deep slide. On certain days the markets shows some strength but it keeps falling once again in the next (...)
The debt dilemma

11 May 2020 - by Michael Roberts

I have mentioned many times on this blog that rising global debt reduces the ability of capitalist economies to avoid slumps and find quick way to recover (and see ‘Debt Matters’ in my book, The Long Depression and also in World in Crisis). As Marx explained, credit is a necessary component in (...)
The scarring

4 May 2020 - by Michael Roberts

Optimism reigns in global stock markets, particularly in the US. After falling around 30% when the lockdowns to contain COVID-19 virus pandemic were imposed, the US stock market has jumped back 30% in April. Why? Well, for two reasons. The first is that the US Federal Reserve has intervened (...)
Self-Extinction of Neoliberalism? Don’t Bet on It

4 May 2020 - by Gilbert Achcar

This article was first published in New Politics. For the second time since the turn of the century, governments in North America and Europe are intervening massively with public funds and in conjunction with central banks to bail out entire sectors of the economy and prevent a general economic (...)
Coronavirus, fictitious capital and financial crisis

25 April 2020 - by Sankha Subhra Biswas

The world has seen a spectre of corona virus! This deadly virus has already affected 2.84 million people with a death toll of almost two hundred thousand around the world. The number of people affected in India are 24,942 out which 779 persons have expired, as on April 25, 2020. Nevertheless, (...)
Covid-19: Likely financial conflagrations to come

21 April 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

The coronavirus pandemic will have lasting and dramatic consequences on people’s living conditions, as graphically described by Adam Hanieh https://www.cadtm.org/This-is-a-Global-Pandemic-Let-s-Treat-it-as-Such. Humans are affected differently depending on their social class, their gender and (...)
The post-pandemic slump

15 April 2020 - by Michael Roberts

The coronavirus pandemic marks the end of longest US economic expansion on record, and it will feature sharpest economic contraction since WWII. The global economy was facing the worst collapse since the second world war as coronavirus began to strike in March, well before the height of the (...)
We Won’t Pay for Their Crises Anymore!

15 April 2020 - by CADTM Europe

In the midst of the Coronavirus crisis, Mario Draghi stated in the pages of the Financial Times that “whatever it takes” must be done to guarantee the future of the Eurozone. He was reaffirming a principle that has been applied by European policymakers for a long time already: absorb the private (...)
Into the Great Economic Abyss

7 April 2020 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar

Societies across the world are facing tremendous challenges. And on March 31, 2020, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the situation as follows: “We are facing a global health crisis unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations — one that is killing people, (...)
Fighting Covid-19: Why and How to Suspend Debt Repayment Immediately

7 April 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

The territorial spread of the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a global health crisis which has created a completely new situation. The human suffering caused by the spread of the virus is enormous. It adds to other public health tragedies that affect, more particularly, countries dominated (...)
Emergency financing for Low-Income Economies to tackle COVID-19: Cost estimates for the impact of the crisis and emergency financing requirements

2 April 2020 - by Daniel Munevar

This briefing is provided to inform development of policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis and in support of calls from wider civil society for debt cancellations for the world’s poorest countries in the face of the current crisis. The COVID-19 crisis has the potential to devastate the lives (...)
Coronavirus Pandemic in the Shadow of Capitalist Exploitation and Imperialist Domination of People and Nature

31 March 2020 - by Siyada

The Coronavirus pandemic is threatening to truly become a humanitarian disaster at a global scale. It coincides with and exacerbates a multifaceted global crisis: political, economic, social, environmental and climatic. In other words, we are currently experiencing a crisis of a patriarchal, (...)
This is a Global Pandemic – Let’s Treat it as Such

31 March 2020 - by Adam Hanieh

In the face of the COVID-19 tsunami, our lives are changing in ways that were inconceivable just a few short weeks ago. Not since the 2008-2009 economic collapse has the world collectively shared an experience of this kind: a single, rapidly-mutating, global crisis, structuring the rhythm of (...)
Liberate South African public pension from stock market

27 March 2020 - by Dominic Brown

Globally, stock markets are reported to have lost more than $13-trillion dollars over the past month. South Africa was not spared. On March 12 and 13 the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) dropped by 10%, the biggest single fall in the JSE since 1997. The all share index (the largest 164 (...)
To confront capitalism’s multifaceted crisis the bankers must be expropriated and the banks socialised

26 March 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

Bank shares have been plunging since mid-February 2020. If the big and institutional holders are selling these urgently, it must be because they are at risk. Governments and banking authorities systematically lie about the results of banks’ stress tests. Mainstream media relay the false (...)
The Capitalist Pandemic, Coronavirus and the Economic Crisis

19 March 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

Translation in bengali for Bangladesh and West Bengal (India) A public health crisis The coronavirus pandemic is a serious public health problem and the human suffering caused by the spread of this virus will be enormous. If it massively affects countries of the Global South with very fragile (...)
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 (...)
Haiti 10 years after the earthquake: the fight for social and economic justice continues

13 January 2020 - by Iolanda Fresnillo

On January 12 2010 an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 on the Richter scale ripped through Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and other parts of Haiti. More than 1.5 million people, representing 15 per cent of the country’s population, were directly affected by the earthquake. According to the (...)
Le défaut de paiement de dette de Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) : Privatiser les profits, socialiser les pertes ?

31 décembre 2019 - par Sushovan Dhar

Même lorsque l’effondrement de Lehman Brothers a secoué l’ensemble du monde financier, les élites politiques indiennes et la classe capitaliste étaient tout à fait convaincues que la contagion ne se propagerait pas à l’Inde. Il est vrai que les banques et les institutions financières indiennes n’ont pas (...)
The fantasy world continues

29 November 2019 - by Michael Roberts

The fantasy world continues. In the US and Europe, stock market index levels are hitting new all-time highs. Bond prices are also near all-time highs. Investment in both stocks and bonds are delivering massive profits for the financial institutions and companies. Conversely, in the ‘real’ (...)
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 (...)
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 (...)