Subjects Archives: Global Economic Crisis

This December, we bring you a special Christmas episode of our program, featuring the enigmatic operator behind the increasingly popular Twitter account known as “Neoclassical Marxism,” or @NMarxism. @NMarxism is a deeply satirical Twitter project, which deploys Modern Monetary Theory and some very dark humor to critique the neoclassical economics and neoliberal assumptions that unconsciously […]

You may recall that from 17 September 2019, the United States Federal Reserve injected massive amounts of liquidity into banks due to a quite abnormal situation on the repo market.(1) The repo market designates a mechanism used by banks to obtain short-term financing. They sell securities they hold in repurchase agreements (repo).

In response to the Wall Street decline, markets in Asia fell, with Japan’s Topix index down 1 percent while the Australian market dropped 2.9 percent, wiping $60 billion off share values. Markets in Europe also fell before recovering some of their losses later in the day.

The essays compiled in this special issue of Key Words address the theme of crisis. But which crisis?

Governments and central banks that were upbeat about global economic recovery are turning pessimistic. A coordinated fiscal stimulus across nations is the need of hour.

To fully appreciate the exquisitely excruciating crisis which the British state has landed itself in consider the fact that if Britain wants to get out of Europe it must surrender part of its sovereignty over Northern Ireland—and not only this, since there must be a border between Britain and the EU, this border must be drawn between Britain and the whole of Ireland!

“The overwhelming character of the ecological crisis will eventually…[force workers to recognize] that the main material conditions determining their lives are both economic and environmental—and indeed that the latter are more far-reaching.”

In this episode, we speak with Emma Caterine (@emmacaterineDSA), a law graduate and writer with more than a decade of experience working within economic justice, feminist, LGBTQ, and racial justice movements. We talk Democratic Socialists of America, MMT, the advantages of a federal jobs guarantee over a universal basic income, the place for sex work in a jobs guarantee program.

Trump wants to resolve the crisis for America, caused by neo-liberalism, within the basic confines of neo-liberalism itself, i.e. without violating its core characteristic, which is free global mobility of finance.

A decade after the Global Financial Crisis, developing countries still bear the scars in the form of lower growth and investment rates.

In this episode, we speak with Fadhel Kaboub (@fadhelkaboub), associate professor of economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Fadhel outlines a new critical approach to postcolonial political economy, arguing that re-gaining financial sovereignty is a crucial next step for postcolonial nations hoping to achieve social, economic, and environmental justice.

The rise of extreme right wing politics is a response by sections of the ruling classes internationally to the economic stagnation.

In our inaugural episode, we consider the recent resurgence of full employment politics in the United States from both a political and historical perspective with historian David Stein (@davidpstein).

What we are fighting is a capitalist system that destroys nature.

Unlike liberal economists, Marxists explore the primary role of internal contradictions within the capitalist economy. The MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY explains why.

The capitalist crisis will deepen as new bubbles created by easy money begin to burst.

The neoliberal model that has dominated mainstream politics and economics for decades is in crisis.… Mass dissatisfaction has joined with the growing realisation by the managers of the capitalist system that neoliberal policies are incapable of dragging the world economy out of the rut in which it now finds itself 10 years after the onset of the global financial crisis.

Yanis Varoufakis’s entire proposal regarding debt was and is unacceptable from a left-wing point of view because it presupposes evacuating any debate as to the legality and legitimacy of the debts whose repayment is being demanded of Greece.

For Klein, developing a meaningful anti-shock politics involves some combination of what Sanders represented and what Clinton symbolized: Sanders with respect to class and economics, Clinton as far as race and gender, and everything else. Imperialism and war scarcely enter the argument.

The Trump White House is neofascist in terms of its political base, its ideology, and the policies it is advocating. The rest of the U.S. state, the Congress, the judiciary… are not at present neofascist. So we are in a period which is analogous to what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung (bringing into line), which means a fight within the state.