Subjects Archives: Financialization

  John Bellamy Foster is best-known as author of Marx’s Ecology (2000; in which he corrects the popular misapprehension that Marx did not ‘get’ environmental limits), and as editor of Monthly Review (monthlyreview.org), the journal founded by Marxist economist Paul Sweezy in the late 1940s.  In his latest book, The Endless Crisis (2012; written with […]

Angela Merkel’s face usually displays a rather plain, friendly, almost benign expression, matching her simple, benign words.  But in rare unguarded moments, some claim, they glimpse a very hard visage, which is matched, equally rarely, by hardly benign words, like her annoyed statement that Cyprus was “exhausting the patience of its euro partners.”  Yes, Angela […]

“An economic recovery has begun.”      — President Obama, Second Inaugural Address President Obama’s optimism — baseless as it may be — was surely appreciated at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.  For in what was described as the “most optimistic” meeting since 2007, 2,600 members of the global elite convened over the weekend […]

My voice is a crime, My thoughts anarchy, Because I do not sing to their tunes, I do not carry them on my shoulders. — Cherabandaraju, who was the lead accused in a “conspiracy case” involving poets and their poetry. It’s been two decades and a year since India’s elite embraced neo-liberalism.  Money — the […]

Bundestag Speech, 29 June 2012 Mr. President!  Dear colleagues! “Billions in taxes have been squandered.  Those who bear responsibility revealed themselves to be marionettes.  The part of the puppet master was performed by just the type of managers recently spoken of in loftier terms: investment bankers.” What the Handelsblatt wrote about the nationalization of the […]

I would like to focus this interview on three distinct but related questions: your vision of the world and the possibilities of changing it; your conceptual and political proposal on the implosion of capitalism and delinking from it; your analysis of the global context, seen especially from Africa and the Middle East.  What is your […]

The German taxpayers should be happy to have SYRIZA in Greece, says economist Yanis Varoufakis in an interview.  Greece is not unwilling to reform.

ZEIT ONLINE: Mr. Varoufakis, the Greeks say they want to keep the euro but vote for SYRIZA and its leader Alexis Tsipras, whose plan could lead to an exit from the monetary union. How does that work?

Yanis Varoufakis: SYRIZA also wants Greece to remain in the eurozone. But, at the same time, it wants to renegotiate the austerity program, because it doesn’t work. Just about everyone who knows anything about economics knows that by now.

Introduction The Greek crisis represents the deepening of a long systemic contradiction whose origins lie in the 1960s, in the stagnation of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of the South.  The industrial centers of the world economy were struck by a crisis of profitability, which was displaced outward in space and forward in time by […]

  The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe.  From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War.  This is a global crisis.  Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]

I met Matan Kaminer in Tel Aviv in January 2012, and we agreed to do an extended interview about the state of the left in Israeli society after the controversial J14 social justice protests. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?  How did you get involved in political activity? I was […]

After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik. “There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response.  “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.” Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a […]

Sasha Lilley: Protests against Wall Street have inspired many people to move their money from big banks to smaller banks and credit unions and encourage others to do the same.  Why might you be skeptical of this effort? Doug Henwood: There are several reasons.  First of all, I think a lot of the big banks […]

In a 1956 interview with Anna Louise Strong, Mao described American imperialism as a paper tiger.  Of course, the military strength of the United States is unparalleled, especially because this country accounts for about half of worldwide military spending.  Even so, the last three significant wars have shown that the country has been unable to […]

On November 6th, thousands of protesters staged a colorful encirclement of the White House in Washington D.C., protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline project and against expansion in extraction of tar sands oil.  Within just four days after this bold direct action, Obama ordered a thorough review of the pipeline plan and suspended decision-making on […]

  The current Occupy Movement has captured people’s imagination and refocused the national discussion on issues of economic injustice, social stratification, and corruptions of American democracy.  Contrary to what some people might think, the Occupy Movement is not composed solely of “young, idealistic college kids.”  People of many different ages, ethnicities, and ideological persuasions are […]

The Occupy Wall Street uprising has taken the nation by storm, beginning in the Financial District in Manhattan and then spreading to cities and towns in every part of the country and around the world.  The anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich that has been bubbling under the surface for […]

  The Social Economy Context The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has clearly expressed the hopes and great potentialities of the working class both in the U.S. and globally.  The 99 percent are speaking up and saying that they will no longer do the bidding of the 1 percent.  In essence it is the revolt […]

  It costs the state of New Jersey more money to hold a prisoner for one year than to fund one Princeton student’s tuition.  Here’s an overview of the disturbing trend of prioritizing prison over higher education in the US. PublicAdministration.Net was created as an online informational resource for individuals looking to pursue public administration-related […]

  In his Republic, Plato analogized elites to guard dogs who must be educated as to whom they must guard against and whom they must protect.  One of Plato’s nightmare scenarios was a ruling class that lost the ability to make this distinction and turned wholly predatory on its sustaining population.  Enter our present-day banking […]

The Knowledge Liberation Front proposes bankruptcy and basic income as “knowledge against financial capitalism.”  But does this proposal not actually serve as knowledge for financial capitalism: i.e., Bankruptcy + Basic Income = Social Democracy under the Neoliberal Regime of Accumulation?  An example of how the Left, not the Right, innovates capitalism? — Ed. See, also, […]