Subjects Archives: Global Economic Crisis

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 circles close to the former Zapatero administration, attempts have been made to represent former Prime Minister Zapatero as the politician who “sacrificed himself to save Spain,” comparing him to former German Chancellor Schröder who, though aware that he would antagonize his electoral base with his clearly neoliberal policies, went ahead with them, for he […]

The Great Depression of the 1930s saw the outbreak of a multitude of radical social movements on the Left and on the Right — or ones that were simply sui generis like the “Share Our Wealth” campaign launched by the fiery Louisiana populist politician Huey P. Long, Jr.  Long came from a poor pinewoods parish […]

Like the Grinch who stole Christmas, the Conservative government of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper has just left a lump of coal in Canadian workers’ stockings.  A cover story in the Globe and Mail of December 22, 2011 announces that federal public pension programs are being targeted for cuts to reduce the federal deficit.1  The […]

Cory McCray, Founder of the Young Trade Unionists, and George Hendricks, Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU) Rep and Vice President of the Young Trade Unionists (YTU) If you head down to the IBEW Local 24 Union Hall Auditorium on W. Patapsco Avenue in Baltimore on the first Tuesday of any month, you’ll encounter a meeting of […]

World Peace Forum Teach-In, Vancouver, Canada, November 12, 2011 (Modified from Notes) We are at what social theorists call a “historic moment,” in which real change suddenly seems possible.  It is therefore all the more important to learn from past struggles.  One of the first lessens of a long history of dissent from the early […]

This is a reconstruction from notes of a keynote address delivered to the Power Shift West Conference, Eugene, Oregon, November 5, 2011. All of us here today, along with countless others around the world, are currently engaged in the collective struggle to save the planet as a place of habitation for humanity and innumerable other […]

  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 […]

Occupy Eugene rally, 15 October 2011 We are here as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which in a few short weeks has become a global movement in hundreds of cities around the world.  We are part of the 99 percent not only in this country but the world. I have been reading the […]

What’s the origin of the Islamic Republic’s biggest banking scandal? The financial conglomerate Amir Mansour Arya Investment Development Company allegedly procured several letters of credit from domestic banks totaling $2.8 billion — far above the company’s available collateral.  The Arya Group, founded by Amir Mansour Khosravi and now controlled by his son Mah-Afarid, controlled around […]

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) has released not one, but two, major research reports today.  Both analyze rising economic insecurity and draw on the findings from a large survey commissioned by IWPR and the Rockefeller Foundation in the fall of 2010. The first report “Women and Men Living on the Edge: Economic Insecurity […]

Over the last two decades or more, Republicans have been denouncing as “class warfare” any attempt at criticizing and restraining their mean one-sided system of capitalist financial expropriation. The moneyed class in this country has been doing class warfare on our heads and on those who came before us for more than two centuries.  But […]

September 21, 2011 Senator Joseph Lieberman Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee United States Senate SH-706 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-0703 Congressman Darrell Issa Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee House of Representatives 2347 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515-0549 If the U.S. Postal Service were forced […]

Two decades after neo-liberal economic reforms started in India as part of the agenda of imperialist globalisation, the condition of the masses of the labouring poor is worse in every part of the country except where some positive intervention has taken place to stabilise livelihoods.  The richest minority at the top of the income pyramid […]

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism is a short, accessible introduction to the ecological crisis that is intended for a wide audience — why did you decide to write a book like this, and why now? In the fall of 2008 I attended a conference where discussion of the environment was prominent, although […]

The prevailing understanding of economic troubles in the U.S. and Europe, the world’s two largest economies, is mistaken in a number of ways.  First: Imagine that you are driving a car down a road packed with snow and ice and you are worried about an accident.  At the same time you are ignoring the fact […]

Standard and Poor’s downgrades US debt, stock markets gyrate around the world, Sarkozy and Merkel perform yet another empty summit, the Chinese and Japanese economies look worrisome.  Serious commentators worry about global recession, another global banking collapse, eurozone dissolution, and austerity programs that only make matters worse.  Nouriel Roubini, famed Professor at NYU’s Stern School […]

Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, communicated by telephone with the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the afternoon of the 15th of August, 2011. President Ahmadinejad said to President Chávez that, in this sacred month of Ramadan, he and millions of Iranians are praying […]

  The Republicans have successfully changed the main emphasis of the economic debate from job creation to deficit control.  Why the urgency for balanced budgets?  After all, this anemic “recovery” has set itself apart from all previous post-war turnarounds precisely by its manifest failure to generate jobs.  Economic growth needs to considerably exceed 3% per […]

  It is very difficult to explain American politics to those who are not Americans and/or have not lived here long enough.  Add to that the confusion over basic economic principles, and it becomes almost impossible to explain the debt-ceiling debate to rational people. As noted by James Galbraith, this is not a fiscal crisis, […]