What we can learn from the 20 years between the 9/11 attacks and the January 6 coup attempt.
Bin Laden and Trump: Two Bookends to America’s Imperial Decline
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Finance
The Black Death Killed Feudalism. What Does COVID-19 Mean for Capitalism?
How will the coronavirus transform the relationship between state and market? A look at oil, food, and finance.
China’s Bigger Economic Threat
America should worry less about China’s economic success and more about a potential Chinese financial implosion.
The BRICS: Challengers to the Global Status Quo
Can the BRICS wrest control of the global economy from the United States and Europe, or will their internal contradictions tear them apart?
Derailing the High-Speed Trading Bullet Train
Europe is way ahead of the U.S. in curbing dangerous high-speed financial speculation that adds nothing of value to the economy.
Does Corruption Create Poverty?
The issue of corruption resonates in developing countries. In the Philippines, for instance, the slogan of the coalition that is likely to win the 2010 presidential elections is “Without corrupt officials, there are no poor people.”
Multilateral Money
While U.S. investors are debating whether the financial crisis is ending, the damage is still spreading in developing countries. Countries more remote from the meltdown’s epicenter, like those in sub-Saharan Africa, did not feel the pinch immediately, but are now facing big drops in foreign investment, crashes export income due to falling commodity prices, and decreased remittances from citizens working abroad, where their jobs are the most vulnerable to the crisis. The fragility of low-income countries’ economies means that the crisis is likely to last longer and hit them harder.
Pirate Bankers, Shadow Economies
Corruption isn’t an issue that Jacob Zuma, the current president of the African National Congress — South Africa’s liberation party — is particularly enthusiastic about. Until prosecutors dropped charges in early April, Zuma stood accused of 18 counts of corruption, graft, fraud, and racketeering related to a rigged multibillion-dollar arms deal. He was alleged to have accepted 783 payments from French arms multinational Thint via his financial advisor Shabir Sheik, who was later convicted for graft, fraud, and corruption. Sheik has since emerged from prison, serving just 28 months of his 15-year term.
Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood
Skyrocketing oil prices, a falling dollar, and collapsing financial markets are the key ingredients in an economic brew that could end up in more than just an ordinary recession. The falling dollar and rising oil prices have been rattling the global economy for sometime. But it is the dramatic implosion of financial markets that is driving the financial elite to panic.
All Fall Down
Ten years after the Asian financial cataclysm of 1997, the economies of the Western Pacific Rim are growing, though not at the rates they enjoyed before the crisis. The region has been indelibly scarred by the crisis. There is greater poverty, inequality, and social destabilization than before the crisis. South Korea’s painful labor market reforms, for instance, have produced the quiet desperation behind one of the highest suicide rates among developed countries.