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.
Economy
Economy
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.
And Johnson is calling us economically illiterate!
If you don’t agree that foreign investors should buy up swathes of London you are “economically illiterate”, says London Mayor Boris Johnson.
Economy: What recovery?
This is what capitalist economic recovery looks like. Our GDP per head is still lower than it was in 2008. Real wages have been cut. Debt has risen.
A dangerous idea
This book from a professor of international political economy recounts the intellectual and practical history of austerity and judges it a dangerous disaster. The author shows that austerity does not work as advertised. It does not reduce debt and does not promote growth; instead budgets are cut, economies shrink.
Autumn Statement: The attack continues
In his Autum Statement George Osborne continued the attack on British workers under the banner of reducing the deficit. His Westminster rivals said little more than “me too” or “it won’t be as bad if you elect me”.
Deficit and debt
Inextricably linked, though quite different, the terms deficit and debt are often used interchangeably by politicians.
Production for use
Products are presented in the form of commodities and exchanged via capitalist markets. And we can easily delude ourselves into imagining that things have always been arranged as they are now.
Capitalism’s dodgy claims
Capitalism claims to be by nature enterprising. The claim is repeated so often and is so rarely questioned that it has assumed the guise of an indisputable truth.
Twenty-five abnormal years
Normally we associate the workings of capitalism with attributes such as mass unemployment and economic downturns. But the twenty-five years following the end of the Second World War were markedly different from all other capitalist periods.
Debt, trade imbalance, fake economic miracle. Yes, it’s happened before. In Germany
Germany has been directly and indirectly responsible for the mess the eurozone now finds itself in. And this is an issue on which the country has some form, around 80 years ago...
Boom produces bust
The surge in capitalist markets from 1997 to 2007 was only achieved by deliberate, reckless stimulation of credit growth, enacted through a combination of abnormally low interest rates (relative to inflation) and exceedingly lax regulation of both credit and housing markets.
The myth of the market
Over the past 32 years, Britain’s political leaders have lectured us with their mantra of disaster, “Let the markets decide!” Though the personnel in Downing Street have changed, the message has remained obsessively constant.
Absolute decline
Marx analysed 19th-century capitalism as being in decline, never to recover. Many claim this shows Marx was wrong, because capitalism always manages to recover from its frequent crises. Yet Marx was right.