Subjects Archives: Financialization

A “rent good” is one whose supply cannot be augmented at will, simply through investing more on its production; its supply is subject to constraints imposed by nature, because of which there is a certain maximum rate of long-run growth which is exogenously given and cannot be altered at will.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a jaw-droppingly misleading graph that portrays China as spending more on its military than the U.S. In reality, the Pentagon’s budget is roughly three times larger.

A gas mogul’s case against Beto O’Rourke could deter candidates from ever talking about money in politics.

Following the UNGA resolution, Israel announced withholding of USD 39 million of Palestinian money, which is likely to cause further suffering and impact basic services delivery in the occupied territories.

According to preliminary estimates of the Bank of Russia, in January-September 2022, it strengthened to $198.4 billion, which is $123.1 billion more than in the same period last year. This surplus was taken out of the country (at the same time, half went to pay off the external debts of Russian companies with their replacement by domestic ruble lending) and is reflected in the balance of payments item “net capital outflow”.

The public sector in the U.S. has been shrinking rapidly since the 1990s as a deluge of privatization has, to various degrees, overtaken many so-called public services and institutions.

It is not uncommon to see U.S. citizens point to Denmark as a socialist alternative. And yet, just like in the United States, capital accumulation is the guiding principle in Danish society.

According to a new report published by Oxfam, the richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.

Kyiv has announced the addition of a fifth corporate logo to the Ukrainian flag following news that BlackRock will be playing a crucial role in the reconstruction of the nation. The world’s largest investment management firm will join Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and McDonald’s upon the now-omnipresent blue and yellow flag.

Germany is fearing its own demise at its own hands as the measures it takes to combat the ongoing energy crisis are causing its reserves to falter.

The International Labour Organisation’s Global Wage Report 2022–23 tracks the horrendous collapse of real wages for billions of people around the planet.

On December 13, the House Financial Services Committee held a long-awaited hearing into the collapse of the FTX crypto empire.

U.S. politicians and corporate media often promote the narrative that China lures developing countries into predatory, high-interest loans to build infrastructure projects as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

A series of measures in Congress’ annual omnibus spending bill show that Democrats have given up their fight to end the dark money era.

“In fact, Zelenskiy is far closer to Lenin than to George Washington. He is a dictator. He is a dangerous authoritarian who has used $100 billion in U.S. tax dollars to erect a one-party police state in Ukraine.” Who wrote this?  It is the opinion posted on Twitter by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Russia Today TV network (since 2005) and the Sputnik news agency (since 2014).

In 2013, Edward Snowden’s leak of documents pertaining to the inner workings of National Security Agency (NSA) sparked international revelations about the reach and unaccountability of Washington’s international surveillance apparatus. One series of documents that remain understudied, however, concern similar activities orchestrated by the Canadian government.

THE fact that income and wealth inequalities have increased quite dramatically under the neo-liberal regime is beyond dispute. The empirical work by Piketty’s team bears out the increase in income inequality. They use income tax data to infer about the share of the top 1 per cent of the population of a country in its national income.

Despite FTX’s collapse, a lawsuit linked to the exchange’s investor is trying to force regulators to allow crypto into the retirement market.

THE post-second world war period had seen a spate of welfare state measures in the advanced capitalist countries, especially in Europe, in emulation of what the Soviet Union was effecting.

With the Federal Reserve pushing up interest rates, we appear headed for a new recession.