Subjects Archives: Financialization

After a quarter century of economic stagnation, African economic recovery early in the 21st century was under great pressure even before the pandemic, due to new trade arrangements, falling commodity prices and severe environmental stress.

Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky opened the New York Stock Exchange telling Wall Street his country is “open” for foreign corporations to exploit it with $400 billion in state selloffs.

Developed countries use 3.5% of their income to pay interest on their debt, while developing ones must use 14%, which complicates their situation.

Yves here. There have been a lot of suggestions about how to improve the Biden student debt forgiveness plan.

ECONOMISTS distinguish between two kinds of inflation: “demand-pull” and “cost-push”.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 30 2022 (IPS) – Most sub-Saharan African French colonies got formal independence in the 1960s. But their economies have progressed little, leaving most people in poverty, and generally worse off than in other post-colonial African economies. 

In no time after the retreat from Afghanistan, NATO is already immersed in another proxy war in Europe, and the alliance, at U.S. behest, is lurching toward the Arctic to counter Russia and China’s “big plans for the polar region.”

GOP war hawks slam Biden initiative for “undermining” Pentagon efforts to prey on desperate young people.

The Biden administration announcement of so-called student loan debt relief does little to alleviate the problem it claims to solve.

The basic justification of every policy of the West is the ideology of ecumenism the West is projecting, full of complacency and arrogance. However, it is a false ecumenism, as it corresponds only to the narrow interests of the Western ruling classes, not the interests of humanity, writes Valdai Club expert Dimitris Konstantakopoulos. This article was written as a follow-up to the author’s presentation at the expert discussion “The Global Ideological and Spiritual Landscape and Russia’s Place on the New Values Map of the World”.

Industrialist Barre Seid funded a new dark money group run by Trump judicial adviser Leonard Leo, who helped eliminate federal abortion rights.

Coinbase recently filed its interim financial report. It makes pretty grim reading. A quarterly net loss of over $1bn, net cash drain of £4.6bn in 6 months, fair value losses of over 600k…

The recent reporting on the Uber Files—a series of 124,000 communications, dated from 2013 until 2017, that Mark McGann, one of Uber’s top lobbyists, leaked to The Guardian—has shed light on the company’s strategies to gain global prominence during its nascent years.

Cuban scientists have announced the next stage of research on NeuralCIM, a neuroprotective drug for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

A June poll reveals American citizens’ anxieties on paying for housing in the coming year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the buffoonish British PM as one of Ukraine’s closest allies. If and when Johnson leaves office, he is tipped for a role as Ukraine Envoy.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR. Half a century after the 1970s’ stagflation, economies are slowing, even contracting, as prices rise again. Thus, the World Bank warns, “Surging energy and food prices heighten the risk of a prolonged period of global stagflation reminiscent of the 1970s.” 

Last week, Ukraine’s foreign private creditors agreed to the country’s request for a two-year freeze on payments on about $20bn of foreign debt.

“The people of Afghanistan have been made to suffer doubly for a government they did not choose.”

The post-colonial state in India had two primary tasks before it: one was to overcome the hegemony of metropolitan capital, so that a development strategy in relative autonomy from imperialism could be pursued; the second was to attack landlordism both to free the agrarian population from its clutches, and to increase agricultural output for rapid industrialisation based on a growing home market.