The Covid-19 crisis is deepening existing fissures and adding new threats to an already scarred and anxious world. As a localized health crisis became a global pandemic, many countries put broad swathes of their economies into a policy induced coma to halt the spread of the virus and ease the burden on overstretched health systems. As a result, the global economy will experience a recession this year on a scale not experienced since the 1930s. The damage will be both lasting and severe,...
Read More »COVID 19-related debt relief: a consortium proposal to the SDR basket countries
By T. Sabri Öncü & Ahmet ÖncüIn Memory of David Graeber (1961–2020)This article first appeared in the Indian journal, Economic and Political Weekly, on 21 November, 2020On 30 March 2020, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a $2.5 trillion COVID-19 crisis package for developing countries.[1] The UNCTAD...
Read More »In Memory of David Graeber – COVID 19-related debt relief
By T. Sabri Öncü & Ahmet Öncü In Memory of David Graeber (1961–2020) This article first appeared in the Indian journal, Economic and Political Weekly, on 21 November, 2020 under the title “A Consortium Proposal to the SDR Basket Countries” On 30 March 2020, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a $2.5 trillion COVID-19 crisis package for developing countries.[1] The UNCTAD proposals were: (i) $1 trillion to be made available through the expanded use...
Read More »Inequality and Morbid Symptoms of a Financialised System
This article appeared in a special, June 2020 edition of the Real-World Economics Review that majored on The Inequality Crisis. Today as the world endures the crisis of a global pandemic, “an old order is ending in convulsions”. So writes Rebecca Spang, historian of the French revolution in The Atlantic (Spang, 2020). In the 1790s, money, debt and the non-payment of taxes by France’s rentiers, played a critical role in revolutionizing France. Today purveyors of money and debt – creditors,...
Read More »Inequality and Morbid Symptoms of a Financialised System
This article appeared in a special, June 2020 edition of the Real-World Economics Review that majored on The Inequality Crisis. Today as the world endures the crisis of a global pandemic, “an old order is ending in convulsions”. So writes Rebecca Spang, historian of the French revolution in The Atlantic (Spang, 2020). In the 1790s, money, debt and...
Read More »Put Fairness at the Heart of Finance
This article appeared in the UK-based Church Times on 26 June, 2020 The coronavirus pandemic is a moment of reckoning for globalisation and our international financial system. The pandemic has shown how unjust the international system is towards low income countries; given us the opportunity to imagine another economy; and served as a warning. If we do not fix the system to prepare for the coming, graver crisis of earth systems breakdown, the survival of humanity is at risk. Just as it was...
Read More »Put Fairness at the Heart of Finance
This article appeared in the UK-based Church Times on 26 June, 2020 The coronavirus pandemic is a moment of reckoning for globalisation and our international financial system. The pandemic has shown how unjust the international system is towards low income countries; given us the opportunity to imagine another economy; and served as a warning. If we do not fix the system to prepare for the coming, graver crisis of earth systems breakdown, the survival of humanity...
Read More »Rebuild the ramshackle global financial system
The following appeared in Nature magazine on 17 June, 2020 Economic researchers neglect the role of financialization in global existential crises. Riddled with comorbidities, the current global monetary and financial set-up precipitates crises with increasing frequency. At first, these were on the fringes of the global economy; in 2007–09 they moved to its very core. Since 1971, national economies, and all our lives, have been shaped by this ‘system’, which can be described only as...
Read More »Rebuild the ramshackle global financial system
The following appeared in Nature magazine on 17 June, 2020 Economic researchers neglect the role of financialization in global existential crises. Riddled with comorbidities, the current global monetary and financial set-up precipitates crises with increasing frequency. At first, these were on the fringes of the global economy; in 2007–09 they moved to its very core. Since 1971, national economies, and all our lives, have been shaped by this ‘system’,...
Read More »Debt, wealth and climate: globally coordinated Climate Authorities for green financing
By T.Sabri Öncü & Ahmet Öncü This article first appeared in the Indian journal, Economic and Political Weekly on 18 April 2020. The authors’ contact details are at he foot of this article.Abstract Based on the German Currency Reform of 1948 and the “Modern Debt Jubilee” of Steve Keen, a globally coordinated orderly debt deleveraging mechanism is proposed to address the global debt overhang problem. Since the global debt overhang and lack of sufficient climate finance...
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