The search for profit - and the march to war
10 January 2020
Unable to reverse its falling rate of profit, capital is increasingly turning to adventures abroad.
Economy
Economy
The truth about the Irish economic 'miracle'
3 December 2019
A new pamphlet shows how the Irish government uses a financial flag of convenience to undermine the tax bases of other EU nations, notably Britain, France and Germany.
Can capitalism be progressive?
Joseph Stiglitz has won a Nobel Prize for Economics and established himself as a powerful critic of capitalism – but he still seems wedded to it…
Economy: Post-Brexit boom
A new study suggests that Britain will achieve a science and technology boom over the next two decades.
Future growth for Britain
3 October 2019
A new study from a French bank predicts a science and technology boom in Brtain over the next two decades. Unlike many reports into Brexit, it looks at the long term and predicts a positive future.
Euro finance shock - more to come
26 March 2019
The EU’s financial weakness from earlier financial crises reappeared at the end of 2018 after the European Central Bank announced that growth would be lower than expected and inflation higher. That was a dress rehearsal for what is to come.
Brexit and the world economy
18 March 2019
Brexit is about politics first and foremost. But with a global economic slump coming, it makes economic sense too.
Active policy for Britain
20 December 2018
In this book Professor Philip Whyman makes the case for rebuilding Britain as an advanced industrial economy by rejecting options that tie the government to EU control.
No pay, no productivity
Stop all this talk about higher productivity being the route to higher pay. In fact, the reverse is true: only when pay rates rise will capitalists be forced to invest…
A new vision needed
19 December 2017
This report from IPPR gives a good, detailed analysis of our situation. It rightly suggests we need a new economic approach, but says too little about what must be done to put things right.
How crashes happen
There’s only one way to avoid financial crashes: break the power of finance capitalism…
Economy: Brexit forecasts revised
The International Monetary Fund now accepts that its forecast of a post-Brexit vote financial crash has proved overly pessimistic.
Statement signals Brexit shift
Last year’s Brexit decision is starting to influence Britain’s economic direction, if Chancellor Philip Hammond's first Atumn Statement is anything to go by.
Real wages falling, says Governor
14 December 2016
Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, identified last week that real wages in Britain have fallen for the first time in 150 years.
'Owner-employees' fiddle to go
14 December 2016
The government has abandoned the attempt to spread the concept of “owner-employees”, introduced four years ago by the Coalition government.
Economy: EU-driven decline
The UK’s overall balance of payments – now known as the current account deficit – deteriorated sharply last year.
Network Rail: sleight of hand
25 April 2016
The government is revaluing Network Rail’s balance sheet in a transparent attempt to shore up its own crumbling accounts.
EU drives record balance of payments deficit
2 April 2016
The UK’s overall balance of payments – now known as the current account deficit – deteriorated sharply last year, thanks to a phenomenal deficit with EU countries.
Trade gap with EU widens
14 March 2016
The latest round of trade figures issued last week dramatically underlined the reality behind Britain’s unequal trade with the European Union.
Inequality, social justice and surplus value
You can’t buck economic laws. It’s not an accident that capitalism doesn’t distribute the results of labour equally.
Trade deficit on the rise, again
11 February 2016
The trade deficit rose again in the final quarter of last year, pushing above the previous year’s total according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday.
Trade gap widens
The latest official figures show that exports of goods and services fell in October while imports rose, leaving Britain in the red to the tune of £4.1 billion.
Rate threat
In Washington the US Federal Reserve is preparing to raise interest rates, even though this would destabilise already fragile economies across the world.
Here comes another crash
12 October 2015
The US Federal Reserve is preparing to raise interest rates, even though this would destabilise already fragile economies across the world – which are being told to prepare for a rise in corporate failures.
Not a real change
25 August 2015
This book by Christian Felber, an economist and university lecturer in Austria, outlines an “alternative” to the economic chaos and social suffering caused by financial capital. Some of his ideas are utopian; but there’s also stimulating thought about how to mitigate capitalism’s callousness.
No good comes from the rich
26 July 2015
All parliamentary parties hold the view that very rich people are good for the economy. By implication workers can only hope to have crumbs from the table. That’s never been a convincing argument – and this book from Andrew Sayer shows how the opposite is true.
New figures show scale of production crisis
29 May 2015
The economy grew by just 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2015, said the Office for National Statistics on 28 May, confounding – as ever – predictions from City analysts, who had been expecting higher growth.
EU membership: Britain’s choice
29 May 2015
The paper that won the Institute of Economic Affairs’ 2014 Brexit Prize argues that Britain could thrive outside the EU by improving our links with the rest of the world
Blundering to disasters
2 May 2015
This excellent book, recently updated, is a manual of policy-making and implementation. It analyses many of the most conspicuous policy disasters committed by governments in recent decades.
Welcome to the zombie economy
16 March 2015
A new book exposes the devastating impact of austerity across society, though it places too much faith in restoring the lost world of social democracy.