In a hard-hitting speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg (France) on October 21, French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed that European countries should create their own sovereign wealth funds to protect national companies from foreign “predators.” “I’m asking that we think about the possibility of creating, each one of us, sovereign funds and maybe these […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
Asia and the Meltdown of American Finance
The boardrooms and finance ministries of Seoul, Bangkok, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur are today filled with a fair degree of schadenfreude at America’s troubles. Schadenfreude is not a very nice emotion; Theodor Adorno once defined it as “unanticipated delight in the sufferings of another.” But asking Asia’s business and governing elites to repress shivers of […]
New African Resistance to Global Finance
Far-reaching strategic debate is underway about how to respond to the global financial crisis, and indeed how the North’s problems can be tied into a broader critique of capitalism. The 2008 world financial meltdown has its roots in the neoliberal export-model (dominant in Africa since the Berg Report and onset of structural adjustment during the […]
Postscript to “The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis” (Monthly Review, April 2008)
Six months ago the United States was already deep in a financial crisis — the roots of which were explained in this article. Yet, the conditions now are several orders of magnitude worse and are affecting the entire world. We are clearly in the midst of one of the great crises in the history […]
World’s Labor Federations React to Financial Crisis with Proposals from Re-regulation to Socialism
Labor unions around the world have reacted to the financial crisis and the economic recession with words and actions reflecting their national experience, their political ideology, and their leaderships. Unions and workers have already seen the financial crisis and the growing recession result in the closing of plants and offices, in shorter workweeks, pay cuts, […]
The Global Financial Crisis: Will South Africa Be Unscathed?
For the last several months, headlines about the global financial crisis have regularly made the front pages of international newspapers. Over this period, Europe and the US have come to realise that corporations are facing the worst economic crisis since the 1929 crash. In South Africa, however, articles on the global crisis have tended to […]
It’s Our Turn Now: Resistance As If It Really Mattered
Of all the people I interviewed for my book, Inside the Red Zone, the words of one have never left me. In a little farming village 50 miles north of Baghdad, I spoke with a local sheik who described his arrest and detention by the U.S. Army. For two weeks, he and a dozen other […]
Responses from the South to the Global Economic Crisis
International Political Economy Conference Responses from the South to the Global Economic Crisis Caracas, Venezuela Final Declaration Academics and researchers from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela participated in The International Political Economy Conference: Responses from the South to […]
In Crisis, Germans Remember Das Kapital and GDR
Yes, the big economic crisis is hitting Germany, too. The evidence includes the hasty meetings of top politicians and the decision by the government coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats to save the suffering banks with 500 billion Euros in credit. Another piece of evidence: Karl Marx’s famous book Das Kapital is selling better […]
On the Financial Crisis of Iceland
The current financial crisis in Iceland is of course part of and connected to the international upheaval, but it also has its domestic roots. To put it briefly, for more than 17 years, we Icelanders have had a right-wing government led by the right-wing Independence Party in coalition with social democratic or center parties. The […]
Reading When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?
Reading Shlomo Sand‘s book When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? (Resling, 2008), I realized that there are actually several, not all related, arguments and debates within it. In other words, it does not have one thesis that can be accepted or rejected as a whole, but an attempt to address various historical issues […]
Russia Draws Closer to Venezuela
Zaa Nkweta, The Real News: Venezuela just announced that it plans to buy Russian tanks as well as Russian armed reconnaissance vehicles. At the same time, the Russian naval fleet is on its way to Venezuela to conduct joint military exercises. What do you make of this? Forrest Hylton: On the one hand it’s […]
The Problem Is Capitalism, Not Just the Banks
Don’t panic! That’s the panicked cry of governments and central bankers around the world. Meanwhile their behaviour shows that they expect a very, very deep recession. After repetition over more than a quarter of century — by mainstream economists, ministers, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — neo-liberal platitudes have been forgotten. Today, we […]
The Depression: A Long-Term View
The depression has started. Journalists are still coyly enquiring of economists whether or not we may be entering a mere recession. Don’t believe it for a minute. We are already at the beginning of a full-blown worldwide depression with extensive unemployment almost everywhere. It may take the form of a classic nominal deflation, with all […]
The Life and Times of Genora Dollinger
Child of the Sit-Downs: The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger, by Carlton Jackson, WKU Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2008. 256 pages, $39.00 (cloth). This wonderful book is a most welcome biography of Genora Dollinger, labor reformer and feminist. Genora (her husband told Dr. Jackson that she […]
Iran: Comprehensive Sustainable Development as Potential Counter-Hegemonic Strategy
The questions regarding variations in social development, economic progress, and political empowerment have produced a voluminous literature over the past century, and because of the complexity of these issues, much important reflection will continue well into the future. In the early 1980s, a United Nations’ Commission coined the term “sustainable development” as a public statement […]
Choreographing Permanent War
Notwithstanding the renewed public concern about the economy in the wake of the implosion of the global financial architecture, the so-called “war on terror” remains at the forefront of the American presidential election campaign as it heads into its final stretch. Despite continuing popular opposition to Washington’s blatant empire-building policies both within the US and […]
Wall Street vs Main Street: Finger Pointing vs System Change
Amid the current capitalist crisis, fear spreads and scapegoating surges. Media and politicians charge the predictable suspects. Arrests may follow. Few recognize the system as the problem, rather than this or that group reacting to the system’s demands and pressures. True, the word “capitalism” now arises in public discussion. But there it means big business, […]
The Mad Activist’s Declaration of Codependence
The sages of History say, Know Thyself — and I do. I used to be a peace activist, but thanks to the sages of pop-psychology, I see now that I am a codependent. Yet I refuse to be your ordinary, run-of-the-mill codependent, who’s stuck in a crappy relationship with just one needy, abusive individual. I […]
How the Crisis Saved the German Railroads
The rolling stock of the German railroads, due to be peddled off to the highest stock market bidders on October 27th, has been saved, at least temporarily, and is still nationally owned. That seems to be the one possible bit of good news in the present economic crisis. All the rest is bad. The railroad […]
