In a world where much commerce is conducted digitally and cash use is falling, the central banks are stuck in the past, supplying notes and coins while credit is controlled by the private retail banks. But that could soon change…
A trenchant analysis indicts the abdication of state responsibility and the persistent belief in the power of markets to fix the current financial mess…
The dominance of finance capital has dragged Britain deep into debt, even before Covid-19. Rebuilding the economy after the ravages of the pandemic will require a completely different approach…
The Covid-19 crisis has made it even more essential to get to grips with capitalism’s monetary mess. Quite simply, Britain’s whole business model is wrong.
29 March 2020
Yes, there is an economic crisis as well as the health and social crisis. But the politics of despair will get us nowhere. Instead, workers need to get to grips with the financial issues involved.
20 March 2020
The stock market is in freefall and shares are collapsing in value. Havoc is being created – fortunes are being made – by financiers selling Britain short.
The June 2016 referendum result was entirely rational. It represented a sophisticated view of the connection between economics and politics.…
The bankers of the world like to talk about how they create “value”. As an exceptional new book lays bare, they are good at making profits, but the rest of us are bearing the costs…
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.
18 March 2019
Brexit is about politics first and foremost. But with a global economic slump coming, it makes economic sense too.
Members of several unions gathered at the Scottish Parliament on 12 December to protest against that day’s annual budget announcement from the minority SNP administration.
During the last two centuries, finance capital has progressively become remote from and hostile to the real economy…
Globalisation is really about keeping capital accumulation hidden from scrutiny…
Two closely related financial opportunities present themselves next year when Britain leaves the EU…
21 January 2018
Now effectively in the hands of US private equity companies, the Co-op Bank has ordered a further round of branch closures.
With 20:20 hindsight, a former chairman of the Financial Services Authority looks at debt…and the EU
14 March 2017
The attempt by Germany’s stock to create an EU-wide monster is fragmenting.
In a demonstration of the failure of free market economics, the Co-op Bank has been put up for sale by its largely US hedge fund controllers.
Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer work for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. In early 2015 Obermayer received a message, “Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data?” This book is the story of what happened next.
23 August 2016
Cooperatives, according to their backers. Some even think they can blunt the effect of privatisation. The reality is somewhat different.
26 June 2016
The recent sale of the Barclays “secret” gold and precious metals vault, allegedly somewhere inside the M25, to the Chinese bank ICBC highlights the murky role of British banking interests.
No wonder the City of London and the banking mafia in Canary Wharf in their multitude of banking skyscrapers shriek so loudly about the “dangers” of Britain leaving the EU.
It is plain that the capitalist world is in an absolute mess – and that another financial crisis is brewing.
Deliberate policies from successive governments have turned Britain into a debtor country, with foreign credit used to finance imports and mortgages.
Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor, has been appointed to the board of directors at Morgan Stanley, the US-based financial services firm, while Gordon Brown is to join a global investment firm.
The Co-op Bank has closed the accounts of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. The action follows on the heels of the closure of 20 accounts held by British pro-Palestine groups.
The “Save our Bank” campaign – the cooperative and mutualists who have seen the demise of the Co-op Bank and control passing to private equity and hedge fund – is still trying to fight back against the new owners.
During Socialist transition some workers were in more mechanised workplaces than others, some less rationally organised or working with less up to date equipment etc. So the same product(s) produced from different locations could not at this time be directly exchanged with other products solely on the basis of the number of hours worked.
How to run industry and finance without capitalism was one of the things the Bolsheviks learned how to do in the Soviet Union after the October Revolution – and we can learn something from studying how they did it.
7 February 2015
A fascinating book studies the respective roles of the state and private enterprise in innovation. It challenges the false image that businesses are an innovative force while the state is not, and shows the opposite is closer to the truth.
