Posts Tagged ‘economics’

A Bit Rich

09Dec09

  
A quick post on the current climate change conference taking place in Copenhagen. Governments have come together to discuss the necessary cuts in CO2 emissions to ensure the sustainability of our environment. All the focus has been on the US, Chinese, Indian and EU proposals as these nations are regarded as among the largest emitters of green [...]


Oxford & City University of New York Marxist Geographer David Harvey on why class analysis and class consciousness is as critical as ever;


From The Financial Times 9/09/09;
“Seventy-two City bankers are suing Dresdner Kleinwort and Commerzbank for £29 million of unpaid bonuses in the biggest case of its kind in the UK.
The lawsuit, filed yesterday in the High Court, is the latest sign that bankers are ready to fight for their pay packets in spite of public [...]


Continuing the ‘Slash & Burn’ series highlighting the phenomena in which the poorest sections of society pay for market crises and corporate failures, we now turn to California, who’s governor is already implementing his own form of economic ’shock therapy’.
Rather than increase personal taxes of the wealthiest or corporations, the state’s government has decided to cut [...]


Slash & Burn

27Aug09

Tory controlled Barnet council offer a glimpse into the future gutting of the welfare state likely to take place after the next election when the Conservatives will almost certainly win power;
A leading Conservative council is using the business model of budget airlines, Ryanair and easyJet, to inspire a radical reform of public service provision which is being [...]


September 2008 ;
“Lehman Brothers Collapse sends shockwaves around the world”
July 2009;
“Ex-Lehman Traders to get huge bonuses… Barclays will pay millions to staff at its new US arm”
“Barclays is to pay tens of millions of pounds to its investment bankers, who have made huge profits from trading in government debt, derivatives and foreign exchange.
Some of [...]


Reading Friedrich Engel’s ‘Socialism: Utopian & Scientific‘ (a highly readable pamphlet on the follies of Utopian Socialism and the development of scientific Socialism by Marx), I came across a prescient paragraph which describes the rise and fall of the global capitalist economy as well now as it did in 1880;
“As a matter of fact, since [...]


The following video clips are of an interesting interview with political economist Paul Engdahl speaking about the current economic recession and possible depression and it’s likely outcomes.
Check out part 1 of the interview-

“In this first segment of the interview, Paul Jay discusses how the global economic crisis will impact Europe with author and political economist [...]


These men are the embodiment of capitalism at its most rampant, self deluding and greedy. Perhaps write them a nice letter and ask them where your pension fund went.


Shock Therapy

25Jan09

As anyone who has read Naomi Klein’s thesis ‘The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism’ will be aware, the wealthy international and national political elites (generally based in The City of London and Wall Str of New York) often use periods of crisis and emergency to implement policies the general public would not usually [...]