Subjects Archives: Financialization

U.S. corporations and military planners welcome the ‘legal maneuver space’ Israel has opened up for them to profit from warfare that slaughters and starves civilians.

THE World Bank has recently published a list of Gini coefficients for 61 countries relating in some cases to income distribution and in others to consumption expenditure distribution.

Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” which got passed by both houses in the U.S. and has now become law, is a massive assault on welfare spending.

This week, the world’s major central bankers have gathered in the sweltering heat of Sintra, Portugal (although I am sure the the aircon is good in their swanky hotel in the hills).

The Trump administration is dismantling the very programs created to correct generations of systemic racism and economic exclusion—programs that helped level the playing field for Black, Latino, Indigenous, and women entrepreneurs.

I hope readers will share this note and it prompts debate about the current fragility of pluralism in heterodox economics and society.

Starbucks, the largest coffee chain in the world and the 120th richest corporation in the United States, is being brought to court after being exposed for using slave labor in their coffee production chain.

The Department of Education will withhold money from tax refunds and Social Security benefits, garnish federal employee wages, and withhold federal pensions from people who have defaulted on their student loan debt.

Google recently announced it would acquire Israeli-American cloud security firm Wiz for $32 billion.

Donald Trump’s top economic advisor Stephen Miran revealed that Washington’s strategy is to use tariffs to force countries to pay the USA tribute to maintain its global financial and military empire. This is the idea behind the so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accord”.

“Everything gives way and nothing stands fast.” —Heraclitus, as quoted in Plato’s Cratylus1 During the “Age of Catastrophe” (1919–45), a series of profound economic, political, and ideological crises disrupted what had appeared to be the “normal” functioning of capitalism.2 In 1930, a key moment of this “age,” marked by the economic catastrophe of the Great […]

1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

Presenting new research, Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel mount a devastating critique of the impact of structural adjustment in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on recent data on Africa’s material resource use, Sullivan and Hickel show how during this period structural adjustment programmes led to a significant increase in ‘unequal ecological exchange’, a process whereby African countries were compelled to export more materials, energy, and other resources than they received in imports. The difference between the two, Sullivan and Hickel argue, represented a transfer of real tangible materials from Africa to the capitalist world economy, for free.

The decline in manufacturing jobs is common to most developed economies and is not unique to the U.S. Further, Donald Trump is nothing if not delusional, and his tariffs will only damage both the U.S. economy and others as well.

“We urge educational leaders not to be cowed by the threats of government officials whose erroneous interpretations of the Constitution would undermine the freedom to learn.” – PEN America

Today the Trump administration told the Ukraine war party that their game is finally up.

We need to build our own resilience against the increasingly unpredictable acts of our belligerent neighbours to the south.

The collective net worth of Trump’s top appointees is reportedly estimated to exceed $460 billion, including Elon Musk’s $400 billion net worth.

A CHORUS of “establishment” voices, from consultancy firms to the financial press, has been demanding a boost to domestic consumption as a means of reviving the flagging growth rate of the Indian economy. The latest to join this chorus is the Reserve Bank of India which in its latest Bulletin has asked for a boost to consumption to “rekindle the animal spirits” of the “entrepreneurs” in the economy.

A popular coal-miner’s riddle from the 1930s summarizes one of capitalism’s most visible and absurd contradictions. After a daughter asks her father why their home is so cold, he tells her they don’t have any money to purchase coal.