Subjects Archives: Political Economy

ON September 23, the value of the rupee vis-a-vis the dollar fell to a new low: it crossed 81 to a dollar after some weeks of relative stability when it hovered between 79 and 80.

Like a traveler sailing the Archipelago who sees the luminous mists lift toward evening, and little by little makes out the shore, I begin to discern the profile of my death.
— Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

The UK government’s economic policies under new PM Liz Truss have caused a stir among, not only leftists, but also among mainstream economists.

Central banks (CBs) around the world–led by the U.S. Fed, European Central Bank and Bank of England–are raising interest rates, ostensibly to check inflation. The ensuing race to the bottom is hastening world economic recession.

Simon Hannah reports on the mounting crisis for British capitalism.

Eleven million dollars per minute! That’s how much all the countries in the world spend to subsidize fossil fuels. That’s what we pay.

Benjamin Wilson and Scott Ferguson join guest-host Jakob Feinig to discuss their forthcoming article about Money on the Left’s “uni” project to democratize university finance. Titled “Stop Trying to Find the Money–Create It!,” the article argues that the Public Banking Act can empower universities to issue new forms of public money that serve democratic communities and repudiate austerity.

As Pakistan drowns, as Puerto Rico is cast into darkness, and as Jacksonians remain thirsty, it’s past time for a climate tax on fossil fuel companies.

While the rich embark on trips to space and fantasize about colonizing Mars, nearly a billion people have no access whatsoever to electricity.

At the United Nations General Assembly, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government called for a global rebellion against the “imperialist and capitalist system” that is “bleeding the world dry.” Condemning illegal sanctions and war, it urged a new multipolar order.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 27, 2022 (IPS)—Inflation phobia among central banks (CBs) is dragging economies into recession and debt crises. Their dogmatic beliefs prevent them from doing right. Instead, they take their cues from Washington: the U.S. Fed, Treasury and Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs). Costly recessions  Both BWIs—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World […]

Present, all too present, on the earth, capitalism is not present to it. It is global.

Yves here. This piece gives a wide ranging, historically based description of how free market ideology supported colonialist exploitation and often expropriation under the banner of trade.

Abstract: Contemporary transnational capital aims at full spectrum dominance over the entire political economy of our planet. We learn from the first sentence of the Foreword of Karl Marx (1859), Zur Kritik derPolitischen Ökonomie: Erstes Heft, that he wished to critically investigate the system of bourgeois economy involving the six domains of capital, landed property, […]

Forget development. Washington’s primary interest in Africa today is keeping the Chinese and Russians out.

It is not just the immediate effect on Europe that threatens to be severely adverse; capital has already started relocating away from Europe to the United States, a trend that will inevitably gather momentum, so that long-term growth and hence employment prospects on that continent will also be affected.

The U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) is supposed to have a dual mandate of “maximum employment and price stability.” However, a close look at its policies since 1980 have shown it very willing to sacrifice the former for the latter.

By trying to convince voters that debt relief will cost them, and that a more egalitarian society is impossible, corporate media are defending America’s ruling class from an educated working class.

Sep 20, 2022 (IPS). Policymakers have become obsessed with achieving low inflation. Many central banks adopt inflation targeting (IT) monetary policy (MP) frameworks in various ways. Some have mandates to keep inflation at 2% over the medium term. Many believe this ensures sustained long-term prosperity. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) decided this week to take the side of Ukraine in the current war; blame Russia for the shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP); and issue a demand for Russia to surrender the plant to the Kiev regime “to regain full control over all nuclear facilities within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, including the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.”