Vulture capitalism

Grace Blakeley is a media star of the radical left-wing of the British labour movement.  She is a columnist for the left-wing journal, Tribune, and a regular panellist on political debates in broadcasting – often the only spokesperson on the left advocating socialist alternatives. Her profile and popularity took her last book, Stolen, straight into

Inflation and interest rates: the US experience

Once again the US Federal Reserve is in a quandary.  Does it cut its policy interest rate soon in order to relieve pressure on debt servicing costs for consumers and businesses and perhaps avoid a stagflationary economy (ie low or no growth alongside higher inflation); or does it hold its current interest rate for borrowing

Inclusive economics and the IMF

The great and the good have just finished attending a special World Economic Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  The theme of the conference for the over 1000 delegates from corporations, governments and international agencies was global cooperation and inclusive growth.  In other words, how to reverse the growing international trade wars and rising inequality of

Further thoughts on the economics of imperialism

Back in 2021, Guglielmo Carchedi and I published a paper in Historical Materialism called The Economics of Modern Imperialism.  The paper focused exclusively on the economic aspects of imperialism. We defined that as the persistent and long-term net appropriation of surplus value by the high-technology advanced capitalist countries transferred from the low-technology dominated countries.  We

India: Modi and the rise of the billionaire Raj

A general election in India starts today.  970m Indians, more than 10% of the world’s population, will head to the polls in what will be the largest election in history for the Lok Sabha (House of the People) parliamentary elections.  The poll will spread across India and take up to 4 June to complete.  Opinion

The tepid twenties

The semi-annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank starts this week.  The agencies and their invited guests will discuss the state of the world economy and the challenges ahead and present policy solutions.  At least that’s the ostensible idea.  Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, has just been re-appointed for another five-year term

China’s unfair ‘overcapacity’

The recent nonsense issued by the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on China’s ‘overcapacity’ and ‘unfair subsidies’ to its industries is particularly pathetic.  As Renaud Bertrand put it: “the so-called threat of China’s industrial overcapacity” is a buzzword that actually means that China is simply too competitive, and by asking it to address this, what

From the Magnificent Seven to the Desperate Hundred

In Q1 2024, global stock markets recorded their best first-quarter performance in five years, buoyed by hopes of a soft economic landing in the US and enthusiasm about artificial intelligence.  A MSCI index of worldwide stocks has gained 7.7% this year, the most since 2019, with stocks outperforming bonds by the biggest margin in any

Bitcoin 24

Last week, Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison.  He ran the highly successful FTX bitcoin hedge fund that supposedly made millions for his clients.  But Friedman was exposed and convicted of stealing $8 billion from his FTX customers. He was found to have siphoned billions in customer funds into FTX’s sister hedge

The state of capitalism

The book, The State of Capitalism, is an ambitious work.  Written by the NAMe Collective with the lead from Professor Costas Lapavitsas from SOAS University, London, it seeks to analyse all aspects of capitalism in the 21st century from a Marxist perspective.  It has been widely praised by the likes of Yanis Varoufakis and Grace