Subjects Archives: Political Economy

U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said his goal is “to get wages down,” complaining workers have too much power in the labor market. Economist Michael Hudson says this is “junk economics,” and corporate monopolies are driving inflation, not wages.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR. A class war is being waged in the name of fighting inflation. All too many central bankers are raising interest rates at the expense of working people’s families, supposedly to check price increases.

World military spending has passed U.S.$2 trillion for the first time, according to new data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Last year was the seventh consecutive year that world military spending increased; total expenditure has almost doubled this century.

One million people in the United States have died of COVID-19. Coronavirus was written on their death certificates as the cause.

Cryptocurrencies are collapsing across the etherspace. Neil and Jonathan talk to Izabella Kaminska, founder of the Blind Spot and keen cryptowatcher, about Terra, Luna and Tether, the death spiral of the stablecoins, and whether anyone in the real world should care.

Trade unions are angered over the government’s military spending on Ukraine which they say would be better spent on raising workers’ wages at a time when the economy is predicted to slide into recession.

Surging Trade As Bilateral Relations Grow Closer China and Russia have grown increasingly close in recent years, including as trading partners, in a relationship that brings both opportunities and risks as Russia reels from tough new sanctions led by the West in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Total trade between China and Russia jumped […]

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR: Central bank policies have often worsened economic crises instead of resolving them. By raising interest rates in response to inflation, they often exacerbate, rather than mitigate business cycles and inflation.

The material benefits of this pause to student loan payments are not something to be taken lightly. But considering the pause has clearly helped borrowers survive, the question for the Biden administration is simple: Why not make it permanent, and cancel all student debt?

This week President Joseph Biden stopped at an Illinois farm to say he’s going to help the  Ukraine ship 20 million tonnes of wheat and corn out of storage into export, thereby relieving  grain shortages in the international markets and lowering bread prices around the world. 

The controversy began when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Brian Nichols, made a statement on Colombian television channel NTN24 earlier in the month, saying that Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela were not welcome at the Summit, since these countries “do not adhere to the Democratic Charter of the Americas.”

For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an end.

Economist Michael Hudson discusses the decline of the U.S. dollar, the sanctions war on Russia, his concept of “free-trade imperialism,” and financial parasitism.

This week, Grace talks to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. They discuss Marx’s theory of nature and the relationship between humanity and nature under capitalism.

Prices of commodities can be broken down into the three main components: labour costs (v= the value of labour power in Marxist terminology, non-labour inputs (c =the constant capital consumed, and the “mark-up” of profits over the first two components (s = surplus value appropriated by the capitalist owners). P = v + c + s.

In our latest video, we go deep into U.S. sanctions, their consequences and the media manipulation around them.

The multipolar financial world is here. The United States can survive it–but only with major political and economic changes at home. It’s time to start thinking about what those need to be.

We wanted to draw readers attention to this piece by Samir Amin, which was written at the time of the Maidan Coup in 2014. —Eds. 1. The current global stage is dominated by the attempt of historical centers of imperialism (the U.S., Western and Central Europe, Japan—hereafter called “the Triad”) to maintain their exclusive control […]

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who’s once again in the running for the presidency, says that “God willing” he hopes to see the creation of a Latin American currency capable of overcoming the region’s dependence on the dollar.

With the publication of Orientalism in 1978, Edward Said would become one of the most influential scholars of our era. The book transformed the study of the history of the modern world, as it offered insights into how racist discourses created and maintained European empires.