While treasure fleets carried silver to Spain, far more ships were carrying men, fish and whale oil across the North Atlantic.
![“In the sixteenth and partly still in the seventeenth, the sudden expansion of trade and the creation of a new world market had an overwhelming influence on the defeat of the old mode of production and the rise of the capitalist mode.” — Karl Marx[1]](https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boat-200x200.png "Newfoundland = New found fish")
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
The political economy of COVID-19 vaccines
Vaccine grabs, the refusal to relax patents to enable mass production, and the use of vaccines for diplomacy run the risk that poorer nations may not be protected against Covid-19 quickly enough. This will prolong the pandemic, even for the richer nations.
Digital colonialism: the evolution of American empire
American “Big Tech” corporations are gaining massive profits through their control over business, labor, social media and entertainment in the Global South.
Parliament rejects Moreno’s privatization of Central Bank
Parliament’s Legislative Administration Council (CAL) reported that the project had 14 unconstitutional aspects. The bill presented 84 reforms to the Organic Monetary and Financial Code that would allow a $400 million loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Beyond the Sprouts of Capitalism
The contemporary political economy of the People’s Republic of China, the nature of the Chinese system, has been the subject of much discussion and debate in mainstream academic, media, and political circles, as well as on the left. Yet one can only make sense of contemporary China with a clear understanding of the country’s economic […]
Debt relief with Chinese characteristics
As China is poised to become the world’s largest creditor, concerns about debt sustainability have grown. Yet considerable confusion exists over what is likely to happen when a government runs into trouble repaying its Chinese loans.
Heterodox Properties with Lua Kamal Yuille
Money on the Left is joined by Dr. Lua Kamal Yuille to discuss heterodox economics, property law & the politics of vulnerability. We chat with Yuille about her path from law to heterodox economics, and, more specifically, about how Modern Monetary Theory has variously shaped and affirmed her critical perspective toward property law.
We have to change our suicidal ways and reconcile with nature to tackle climate crises and pandemics
Every day, entrepreneurs in Brazil cut down more of the Amazon to produce cheap soybeans for animals in Europe and America. Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia tear up their forests to produce cheap coffee and palm oil for the world.
Is the world poor, or unjust?
Social media has been ablaze with this question recently. We know we face a crisis of mass poverty: the global economy is organized in such a way that nearly 60% of humanity is left unable to meet basic needs. But the question at stake this time is different.
Crediting Xenophobia—rather than organizing—with raising workers’ wages
The Economist (2/15/20) ran a brief article last year with a startling headline: “Immigration to America Is Down. Wages Are Up. Are the Two Related?” Maybe, the article’s anonymous author answered, at least for the short term.
IP, vaccine imperialism cause death and suffering, delay recovery
Vaccine developers’ refusal to share publicly funded vaccine research findings is stalling broader, affordable vaccinations which would more rapidly contain COVID-19 contagion. The pandemic had infected at least 109 million people worldwide, causing over 2.4 million deaths as of mid-February.
Partners: China and Cuba
In the 1960s, the main forms of the Chinese assistance offered to Cuba were preferential trade and interest-free loans. From 1961 to 1965, China gave Cuba an interest-free loan of 60 million U.S. dollars.
Neoliberalism and Imperialism: Interview with Intan Suwandi
Recent cases of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, such as what happened in Bolivia, can serve as a striking example. International trade and financial institutions such as the Unholy Trinity (largely controlled by the North) also still play a major role in perpetuating imperialist relations between the South and the North.
Cold truth: The Texas freeze is a catastrophe of the Free Market
Texas’s electricity market “reforms” made the current crisis inevitable.
The UK’s Singapore-on-Thames delusion
I will not spend much time on this topic because it is so ridiculous. But the notion that the UK can become a ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ seems to underlie some Brexit fantasies. Do these have any foundation? – Tony Norfield
Taxes on the rich: One-sixth of what they used to be
A new IPS briefing paper highlights the unique role of tax policy in wealth concentration.
Vulture Funds plan to use the Pandemic to pillage the Global Economy
Before the pandemic, private equity had amassed $2.5 trillion–more than the GDP of Italy–in ‘dry powder,’ waiting for distressed assets to plunder. Covid-19 provided them with the perfect opportunity.
GameStop and Share Markets: Between the bad and the ugly, there is no G
The recent GameStop story coming out of the U.S. pushed arcane financial dealings into a prominence they rarely enjoy. The public was introduced to weird concepts such as “short selling and short squeezes” and, for a while, they are likely to be part of many Zoom conversations.
Water futures: the latest battleground in the defence of the fundamental right to water
Stock market trading in water futures is the latest battleground in the defense of the fundamental right to water.
The biopolitics of nursing homes
Historically, the châteaux of the Loire Valley were assessed by their windows. ‘A fifty-windowed castle’, an onlooker might surmise to suggest its worth. Russian boyars quantified their properties in souls–whether dead or alive, according to Gogol’s Dead Souls.
