Recessions, monetary easing and fiscal stimulus

As the stock markets of the world gyrate up and down like a yo-yo, all talk in the financial media is on whether a new global recession is coming and when.  The financial pundits search for economic or financial indicators that might guide them to tell.  The favourite one is the ‘inverted bond yield curve’. 

The political economy of Peterloo

Today is the 200th anniversary of what has come to be called the Peterloo massacre.  On 16 August 1819, 60,000 working people gathered at St Peter’s Field in Manchester England to demonstrate for the right to vote, against the terrible conditions and pay of factory workers and for the right to organise at the workplace,

Finance: fiddling, fetish and fiction

Nothing changes in the finance sector globally, despite the catastrophic impact of the banks on the world capitalist economy in the global financial crash and the ensuing Great Recession. In previous posts, I have highlighted the greed, recklessness and instability of the finance sector and its operational leaders. As Marx said, finance is the epitomy

The Handbook of Karl Marx: profitability, crises and financialisation

The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, edited by Matt Vidal, Tomas Rotta, Tony Smith and Paul Prew, brings together a series of chapters by prominent Marxist scholars covering all aspects Marxist theory, from historical materialism, dialectics, political economy, social reproduction and post-capitalist models. The editors have done an excellent job in arranging the various contributions

US profits revision

Last Friday, the US real GDP growth figures for the second quarter of 2019 were released.  The annualised rate of real GDP growth slowed in Q2 to 2.1% from 3.1% in the first quarter.  This was the slowest growth rate since the end of 2016. US real GDP was 2.3% higher than in the same

The world’s scariest economist?

Mariana Mazzucato is one of the world’s most influential economists, according to Quartz magazine.  She has won many awards for her work.  She is an adviser to the UK Labour Party on economic policy; she “has the ear” of radical Congress representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she advises Democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Elizabeth Warren and also Scottish

A profits recession?

This week, we get the first US company reports on earnings for the second quarter of 2019.  And it looks as though there will be the first back-to-back drop in overall earnings since the mini-recession of 2016.  S&P 500 companies are expected to report an average earnings fall of 2.8 per cent in the second

Greece: completing the vicious circle

So the full circle is completed.  The corrupt pro-business conservative New Democracy party in Greece that was ousted by the anti-capitalist Syriza party in 2015 has been returned to office in yesterday’s general election, with an outright majority over all other parties. New Democracy party got just under 40% of the votes cast. Syriza under

Imperialism and profitability at Lille

The joint conference of the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy (IIPP), the French Association of Political Economy (AFEP) and the Association of Heterodox Economists (AHE) brought together a large gathering of radical economists in Lille France last week.  The theme of the conference was Envisioning the Economy of the Future and the

The G20 and the cold war in technology

Last weekend’s G20 summit in Osaka resolved nothing substantial in the ongoing trade and technology war that the US is now waging with China. At best, a truce was agreed on any further escalation in tariffs and other measures against Chinese tech companies.  But there was no long-lasting agreement reached.  And that’s because this is