Tag Archives: Neoliberalism

The foregoing article is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of my book “Grand Deception: the Truth about Bill Browder, Magnitsky Act and Anti-Russian Sanctions.” Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Shock therapy gave Russia one of the worst and longest economic depressions of the 20th century, an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe for a peace time crisis, and a criminally inequitable privatization of public assets. The reasons why things happened this way in Russia generally aren’t well understood...

André Vltchek is a "public intellectual." He is a genuine Leftist.He is criticizing more than narrative control. In his view the elite has also commandeered the culture.NEOThe West has Performed ‘Philosophical Coup’ against the Left André Vltchek

Sometimes there is clarity. Like when the Koch brothers-funded report on US health care came up with the ‘wrong’ conclusion – that is the right conclusion – $US2 trillion dollars worth of right conclusion. And like when a hard-core German economist breaks ranks and lays out the case for scrapping the Eurozone. Clarity. In the past week there have been some notable contributions to the debate about the viability of the Eurozone. Two German academics, coming from opposite directions,...

So is Mexico so eager to open talks with the U.S. on NAFTA if it was “the worst deal ever approved” by Washington? A deal that was helping Mexico get one over on their neighbors to the north. The answer likely has something to do with the devastation that neoliberal “free trade” brings with it wherever it goes.  Like most countries before they embraced neoliberalism, Mexico before NAFTA was once home to a diverse and robust domestic agricultural sector, less reliant on imported food and...

Increasingly, however, academics and development practitioners are looking at a less visible and tangible obstacle – the capture of the State by economic and political elites. The extreme concentration of economic and political power reinforces the ability to unduly co-opt, corrupt and divert the democratic process, and influence the role of the State, perpetuating measures that reinforce privilege on the one hand and inequality and exclusion on the other. This elite capture is manifested...

After my day in the sun as a poet, I am back to being an economist. I have been researching operational issues relating to how a society can take back control and Reclaim the State, as part of the work I am doing for our follow up book (with Thomas Fazi) that I hope to get out next year sometime. The current book Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, 2017) is very conceptual. The Part 2 follow up will be conceptual in part but...

You know, an Italian won the British Open golf championship yesterday (the first Italian to ever win a golf major) because of the uncertainty surrounding Brexit negotiations. The causality is impeccable. I am sure about that, although it might take me a while to work it out. But if a British golfer cannot win their Open Championship (Rose tied for second, two shots back) then it must be because of Brexit. Everything else that goes wrong is, so why not the golf? It is the same when three...

Must-read. Michael Hudson gives the background on Argentina's fall in terms of neoliberal capitalism. Michael Hudson: What really is at issue is whether all debts should be paid, or not? I think that there should be an international rule that no country should be obliged to pay its debts to the wealthy One Percent, especially to a creditor class that prefers to hold its domestic wealth offshore in foreign currencies. No country should be obliged to pay its bondholders if the price of...

Former Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky was quoted as saying during the 1979 Austrian election campaign that: “I am less worried about the budget deficits than by the need for the state to create jobs where private industry fails”. That is the statement of a social democrat. That is a progressive Left view. In June 1982, with French unemployment at 7.2 per cent (having risen from 2.4 per cent in 1974 after a near decade of austerity under the right-wing Prime Minister Raymond Barre), the...

The US has already tested this strategy in Iraq and Libya, according to Sergei Shoigu MOSCOW, July 11. /TASS/. Russia will always counter the US neocolonialist strategy aimed at weakening legitimate governments in other countries, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in an interview with the Italian daily Il Giornale published on Wednesday. "The issue at hand is the neocolonialist strategy, which the US has already tested in Iraq and Libya and which boils down to supporting any,...