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No bailout with taxpayer money

24 February 2016 - by Prasenjit Bose

Delinquent corporate borrowers and negligent bankers need no state support. Development Financial Institutions should be revived for industrial and infrastructure financing
Debt bubbles “popping” in emerging economies

19 February 2016 - by Bretton Woods Project

Global economic instability has highlighted the vulnerability of developing countries to renewed economic turbulence and even the potential for new debt crises in developing countries, in particular Sub-Saharan Africa. During the summer of 2015 (...)
IMF to add China’s currency to SDR basket

19 February 2016 - by Bretton Woods Project

In late November, the IMF confirmed that China’s currency, the remnimbi or yuan, will be included in the IMF’s calculation (the ‘basket’) of the value of its international reserve asset, the Special Drawing Right (SDR), from October 2016. Created in (...)
World Bank safeguards review: “human rights-free zone”

16 February 2016 - by Bretton Woods Project

As the third and final consultation phase on the second draft of the World Bank’s proposed new environmental and social framework (ESF), replacing the current safeguards, progresses, civil society organisations (CSOs), the UN and certain member (...)
World Bank punches South Africa’s poor and coddles the rich

12 February 2016 - by Patrick Bond

Subsidised white capitalists, radical scholars and oppressed activists are amongst those who “must not be named”. Despite abundant evidence of pro-corporate bias, the Bank endorses the government’s “sound policy” on redistribution because Bank (...)
BRICS face brewing external capitalist crisis and growing internal strife

5 February 2016 - by Patrick Bond

Behind the current capitalist crisis lies the tendency to over-accumulate and generate gluts. Whereas the BRICS bloc’s elites pretend to be offering an alternative, they in fact are trying very hard to make the world system work for their own (...)
A dozen devils (in the details) which hobbled Mandela’s economy

4 February 2016 - by Patrick Bond

Is our society finally maturing to the point that the economics – not just political compromises, Black Consciousness ideologue Andile Mngxitama, Soweto community activist Trevor Ngwane (way back in 2003), Stellenbosch political economist Sampie (...)
The scourge of rising inequality – A case of Pakistan

26 January 2016 - by Abdul Khaliq

The issue of inequality, which was shunted aside amidst rapid growth over the last few decades, has resurfaced with a vengeance, particularly after the global financial crisis. The trend has been rising in most of the countries despite rapid (...)
China’s Path into Africa Blocked

18 January 2016 - by Patrick Bond

On Dec. 4-5, Chinese leaders visited Johannesburg’s central business district to pledge $60 billion to help industrialise the African continent. More than 40 African heads of state were in attendance for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (...)
Should Plantation workers be working at poverty level wages?

18 January 2016 - by Vijaya Kumar

Special correspondents and bigwigs in the planation industry keep hammering at us that plantation workers in Sri Lankan are vastly overpaid, any increases in pay will be spent on liquor, no increase in pay is possible unless tied to productivity (...)
The Blood of the Earth : Agriculture, Land Rights, and Haitian History

15 January 2016 - by Beverley Bell, Jean-Pierre Ricot

Yesterday, January 12, on the sixth anniversary of the 7.0 earthquake, Haitians mourned the countless lives lost. Among the many aftershocks they face is disaster capitalism, in which the Haitian elite and foreign corporations - backed by the US (...)
South African Capitalism’s Train-Smash

8 January 2016 - by Patrick Bond

The great sweeps of capital accumulation flowing above, through and from South Africa are leaving local businesses weaker than at any other time in memory. This may be just the medicine a mostly divided and yet often over-confident left (...)
Cuba: What lies beneath the agreements on the debt with the Paris Club and other creditors?

7 January 2016 - by Daniel Munevar

Last December, Cuba reached a historic agreement with the Paris Club to restructure its debt, following the default of the Caribbean island in 1986. According to the group of creditors, Cuba’s debt totalled 11 billion dollars in 2015, including (...)
’All in World Bank’: Manipulation in the Name of Deregulation

6 January 2016 - by The Tunisian Observatory of Economy

In November 2015, the Tunisian Observatory of Economic (TOE) published a critical analysis of a recent World Bank report, the latter of which is entitled “All in the Family: State Capture in Tunisia.” What follows is a summarized version of the (...)
An interview with Claudio Katz

A new political situation in Latin America: What lies ahead?

5 January 2016 - by Claudio Katz

Two recent events — the second-round victory on November 22 of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina’s presidential election, and the December 6 victory of the right-wing Democratic Unity Roundtable, winning two thirds of the seats in (...)
U.S. Workers and Puerto Rico’s Crisis

4 January 2016 - by Rafael Bernabe

Puerto Rico has been in the news lately, particularly the financial news. The possibility that its government may default on part of its $73 billion public debt has drawn the attention of Wall Street analysts. The New York Times has deemed the (...)
Africa draws red lines on the sands of the WTO ministerial

4 January 2016 - by Yash Tandon

At the ongoing WTO Ministerial in Nairobi, Kenya, Africa must be prepared to accept no deal than accept a bad one. It is time for progressive forces in the Global South to act in peaceful non-violent resistance against the injustices of the (...)
US interest rate rise could deepen debt crisis in developing countries

15 December 2015 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Commenting ahead of the anticipated rise in US interest rates on Wednesday, Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign said: “Many developing countries are already suffering from a fall in prices of their commodity exports. An (...)
Budget for Business: A red flag for the people

1 December 2015 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar

The 2016 Budget has been welcomed by the business and economic establishment. The big question is whether economic policies good for business are necessarily good for the economy and the people? To what extent are the economic policies in the (...)
Puerto Rico must escape the debt trap

30 November 2015 - by Pierre Gottiniaux

Since the end of the 19th century Puerto Rico has been some sort of unacknowledged US colony. Officially its few islands are called a ‘non incorporated territory’ with Commonwealth status, i.e. the status of a sovereign state but with limited (...)
New capitalist domination and imperialism in Africa

9 November 2015 - by Jean Nanga

The decolonization that began in the 1940s was essentially a passage towards neocolonialism, a mutation of the former colonies, a reconfiguration of the mechanisms of domination and exploitation by both the former colonial powers and other (...)
Foreign commercial debt still higher than concessional

18 October 2015 - by Paneetha Ameresekere

Despite the seemingly best efforts by the present regime to limit foreign commercial borrowings, such debt still continued to be higher than concessional debt, data showed. While total foreign debt year-on-year (YoY) declined by Rs 101,939 (...)
The Denial of Minimum Wage should be a Cognizable Offence

11 October 2015 - by Sushovan Dhar

Fulltime trade unionist of the Progressive Plantation Workers’ Union and Executive Council Member of one of India’s youngest national trade union federations, the New Trade Union Initiative, Sushovan Dhar spoke to Ceylon Today about trade unions (...)
Public-private partnerships in Uganda cost the country dearly

28 September 2015 - by Paul Harper

Privatisation of the Ugandan electricity sector, initiated in 1999 as a condition of the debt relief programme, was supposed to mean the end of state support. Yet, by 2013 a special committee of the Ugandan Parliament reported that subsidies (...)
Unlocking the chains of debt: speakers demand creation of parliamentary debt audit commission

28 September 2015 - by The News

Islamabad: Pakistan’s economy has been paralysed by an unpayable and largely unjust debt burden that is preventing the country from reaching its poverty goals and hindering the development of democracy, says a paper launched by Islamic Relief (...)