A review of Martin Wolf, Fixing Global Finance: How to Curb Financial Crises in the 21st Century (Yale University, 2009), £18.99 The great global economic crisis has put many institutions brutally to the test and destroyed them. One of these… Continue Reading
Social scientists and journalists have bandied about terms such as “globalisation” and the “new economy” for some time. Behind much of this lies the argument that the working class is dead and with it Marxist hopes of working class self-emancipation.… Continue Reading
“We are on the edge of the abyss. One slip and we will be into depression like that of the early 1930s.” That message has been repeated a thousand times in one way or another since the banking system imploded… Continue Reading
The United States is caught up in the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.1 This crisis calls into question the stability and indeed the very survival of capitalism. Unlike the savings and loan crisis 20 years ago, which… Continue Reading
The biggest financial crisis for 79 years, followed by the most expensive nationalisation of all time; a combination of recession and inflation with completely unpredictable effects; a new explosive flashpoint of international tension, this time on the Black Sea midway… Continue Reading
I agreed with much of Chris Harman’s latest article.1 My comments below will focus on the disagreements in order to further the discussion. (1) As I have argued before, I think there has been a substantial recovery of the rate… Continue Reading
We cannot understand the system we live in or how to fight it simply by the repetition of slogans. We need serious analysis and debate. For that reason, I welcome Jim Kincaid’s rejoinder to my articles in recent issues of… Continue Reading
Chris Harman has invited comment on his recent writings on the world economy and there is certainly much for Marxists to debate. We are confronted with a global economy, hugely uneven to be sure, but which in 2007 was producing… Continue Reading
There is a hierarchy of precedents for financial crises. In August, as things began to unravel, the initial comparisons were with the 1998 collapse of Long Term Capital Management. That is, a freak event in which the sins of a… Continue Reading
In 1980, median income of the richest 10 percent of countries was 77 times that of the poorest 10 percent. By 2002, this gap had increased to 122 times. The number of poor people rose between 1987 and 1998, and… Continue Reading