On 17 January 2021, we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961).
Author Archive | Éric Toussaint
Climate and environmental crisis: Sorcerer’s apprentices at the World Bank and the IMF
In December 2020, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the signature of the Paris Agreement on Climate, the UN General Secretary sounded the alarm because the situation has fundamentally worsened. In this article we analyze what the World Bank and the IMF have done in connection with the environmental crisis and climate change.
From Paul Wolfowitz (2005-2007) to David Malpass (2019-…): the U.S. President’s men control the World Bank
In 2020, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF are 76 years old. These two international financial institutions (IFI), founded in 1944, are dominated by the USA and a few major allied powers who work to generalize policies that run counter the interests of the world’s populations.
Reply to the letter by Philippe, King of the Belgians, about Belgium’s responsibility in the exploitation of the Congolese people
On 30 June 2020, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the former Belgian Congo’s independence, the news went viral over the planet: Philippe, King of the Belgians, had conveyed regrets for the colonial past, and particularly for the time when Leopold II owned the Congo as a personal possession (1885-1908), to the Congolese […]
The capitalist pandemic, Coronavirus and the economic 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 public health systems that have been undermined by 40 years of neo-liberal policies, the death toll will be very high. […]
No, the coronavirus is not responsible for the fall of stock prices
We are witnessing a big crisis in the stock markets of the Wall Street, Europe, Japan and Shanghai, and many blame the coronavirus for it. In the last week of February 2020, the worst week since October 2008, the Dow Jones fell 12.4%, the S&P 500 fell 11.5% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 10.5%.
Rosa Luxemburg and debt as an imperialist instrument
In her book titled The Accumulation of Capital, published in 1913, Rosa Luxemburg devoted an entire chapter to international loans in order to show how the great capitalist powers of the time used the credits granted by their bankers to the countries of the periphery to exercise economic, military and political domination on the latter.
Another look at the Federal Reserve’s panic in September 2019 and solutions to the crisis
You may recall that from 17 September 2019, the United States Federal Reserve injected massive amounts of liquidity into banks due to a quite abnormal situation on the repo market.(1) The repo market designates a mechanism used by banks to obtain short-term financing. They sell securities they hold in repurchase agreements (repo).
The Mexican debt crisis and the World Bank
In 2019, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF will be 75 years old. These two international financial institutions (IFI), founded in 1944, are dominated by the USA and a few allied major powers who work to generalize policies that run counter the interests of the world’s populations.
From the BRICS countries to the townships: racial and social segregation continues
Over 25 years ago now the people of South Africa won the struggle to end the Apartheid regime. Nevertheless, even though it is now against the law, de facto racial segregation is still apparent.
The mountain of corporate debt will be the seed of the next financial crisis
What have they done with the money? Have they invested in research and development, in production, in the ecological transition, in creating descent jobs, warding off climate change? Not at all!
The challenges for the European left regarding debt and the banks
The policy of Quantitative Easing (QE) has been implemented by the ECB since 2015 in the wake of what the Fed had done in the U.S. from 2008 to 2014. It consists of massively purchasing private and public debt securities from banks in the Eurozone and from corporations.
Adam Smith and the Yellow Vest Movement
It is sad to see how completely misrepresented Adam Smith (1723-1790) is when pundits call upon him to vindicate neoliberalism and the status quo. It seems many have not really bothered to read his works.
Facing the left-wing challenge in the European Union
One of the central and most concrete themes that the break should cover concerns the way public indebtedness is used to justify austerity policies.
The challenges for the Left in Europe and the Eurozone
The policies dictated by the European leaders have six fundamental objectives; Bail-out the private banks with public funds, preserve the Eurozone perimeter, bring neoliberal policies to bear more heavily on Greece, reinforce a Europe-wide authoritarian form of governance and more.
We struggle against illegitimate public and private debt which are at the core of the capitalist system
What we are fighting is a capitalist system that destroys nature.
Russian debt repudiation, 100 years on
One achievement of the Russian revolution that is often ignored is the fulfillment of a promise made by the Russian revolutionaries in 1905: that all debts contracted by the Tsarist regime that had been overthrown some eleven months earlier were cancelled.
The Odious Iraqi Debt
This article, originally written towards the end of 2003, is now published on our website for the first time in English. The odious Iraqi debt is still under-documented today, though it is highly relevant in our research and our proposals against all illegitimate, illegal, odious and unsustainable debts. It is a rare case where a […]
Latin America: 200 years of the infernal cycle of debt
Venezuela is an emblematic case of the infernal cycle that Latin America has been struggling with over the last two centuries. It all began in 1810, when Simon Bolivar, a figurehead of the Spanish colonies in their fight for freedom, began borrowing from London in very unfavourable conditions to finance the wars of independence.
Yanis Varoufakis’s self-incriminating account of the Greek Crisis (Part 3)
Yanis Varoufakis traces his collaboration with Alexis Tsípras and his alter ego, Nikos Pappas, back to 2011. That collaboration gradually broadened, starting with 2013, to include Yanis Dragasakis (who became vice-Prime Minister in 2015). There is a constant in the relations between Varoufakis and Tsípras: Yanis Varoufakis constantly argues for changes in the political programme […]
