South Africa: the dashing of a dream

South Africa has a general election tomorrow, 25 years since the end of apartheid and six years since the death of Nelson Mandela.  In those 25 years, the aspirations and hopes of most black South Africans (90% of the 58m South Africans) and, for that matter, many white South Africans, have been disappointed.  In those

HM Athens: Greeks bearing gifts

The first Historical Materialism conference held in Athens was very well attended – making it the biggest of such events in southern Europe and with mostly younger attendees.  As is usual with HM conferences, there was a plethora of papers and sessions on all sorts of subjects around the theme of the conference, Rethinking Crisis,

Progressive capitalism – an oxymoron

Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel (Riksbank) prize winner in economics and former chief economist at the World Bank, as well as an adviser to the leftist Labour leadership in the UK.  He stands to the left in the spectrum of mainstream economics. He has just published a new book called People, Power, and Profits: Progressive

Boom and then bust?

Last March, I posted that the global economy seemed to be in a fantasy world where stock markets hit new highs but output of goods and services, investment and trade was stagnating in the major economies.  This week, the US stock recorded yet again new highs.  As the Financial Times described it: “The US economy appears

Jokowi’s challenges

Indonesia has a general election today.  For the first time in Indonesian history, the president, the vice president, and members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), will be elected on the same day with over 190 million eligible voters – that’s the largest single day electorate in the world (India votes over a whole month. In the presidential election,

A delicate moment

The IMF-World Bank meeting in Washington this weekend revealed again that the world economy is slowing down and the prospect of an outright recession is getting much higher.  The IMF economists cut their outlook for global growth  to the lowest since the global financial crisis of 2009 amid a bleaker outlook in most major advanced

Invisible Leviathan – Marx’s law of value in the twilight of capitalism

My foreword to Invisible Leviathan, by Professor Murray Smith of Brock University, Ontario, Canada, published by Brill in November 2018.   Relevant, I think, to my recent presentation on the contribution of Marx to economics made at the Rethinking Economics conference at Greenwich University, London. The message of Murray Smith’s book is aptly portrayed by its

Pluralism in economics: mainstream, heterodox and Marxist

Last weekend’s Rethinking Economics conference on Pluralism in Economics was excellent.  The organisers at Greenwich Rethinking Economics did a great job in getting together a range of top speakers on many aspects of modern economic ideas: money, inequality, imperialism and gender issues.  They even managed to persuade top economist, Michael Kumhoff at the Bank of

Getting longer but lower

The first three months of 2019 have shown a significant slowing in global economic activity.  Global manufacturing output (as measured by JP Morgan economists) is actually falling. So too is global trade for the first two months of this year. And just today US retail sales for February also showed a slowdown. We’ve had falling

The fantasy world of the Long Depression

This week, the US Federal Reserve Bank decided to stop raising its policy interest rate for the rest of 2019.  The Fed started hiking rates from near zero back in late 2016 on the grounds that the Long Depression (in economic growth, investment and employment in the US and in other major economies) was over.