The IMF is the leading international monetary agency whose public purpose is to maintain the stability of the global financial system through loans linked to proposals designed to enhance economic recovery and growth. In fact, the IMF has been under the control of the US and Western European states and its policies have been designed to further the expansion, domination and profits […]
Financial capitalism is photophobic; it doesn’t like the light and thrives on opacity”, says Gerardo Pisarello. He is deputy Mayor of Barcelona, where the panel he speaks on takes place. This late November event is the culmination of several days of convergences between NGOs and social movements to formulate a ‘Common Project on Debt for Europe’. Shedding light on the […]
These three agreements solidify the creeping corporate coup d’état along with the final evisceration of national sovereignty. Citizens will be forced to give up control of their destiny and will be stripped of the ability to protect themselves from corporate predators, safeguard the ecosystem and find redress and justice in our now anemic and often dysfunctional democratic institutions.
The scarcity of jobs and the low pay are direct consequences of jobs offshoring. Under pressure from “shareholder advocates” (Wall Street) and large retailers, US manufacturing companies moved their manufacturing abroad to countries where the rock bottom price of labor results in a rise in corporate profits, executive “performance bonuses,” and stock prices.
According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year. Let that number sink in for a moment. You can’t support a middle class family in America today on just $2,500 a month – especially after taxes are taken out.
The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret US-EU pact TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), for which President Obama initiated US-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP. Both pacts exclude China.
While the Guardian and Observer market themselves as caring about justice and equality, but do nothing to bring them about apart from promoting tinkering with the present, hugely unjust, global neoliberal order, Corbyn’s rhetoric suggests that the apple cart needs upending.
The era of central banks printing electronic cash in a QE free-for-all – cheap money directly boosting “market volatility” – may not be over, yet. Let’s see what happens this Thursday, when a symposium of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, will be examining what to do about “market volatility”.
Central banks absolutely love to drive up stock market prices for the benefit of the 0.0001 percent. So expect more delusion ahead. But be sure everything that’s solid melts into air. Including the neoliberal dream.
Washington’s ability to put its Fifth Columns into the streets of Moscow had an effect on insouciant Americans and Europeans. Many Westerners today believe that Putin stole his election and is intent on using his office to rebuild the Soviet Empire and to crush the West. Not that crushing the West would be a difficult thing to do. The West has pretty much already crushed itself.
Only in the insanity of corporate America can nonviolent animal rights activists be charged as terrorists while a white supremacist who gunned down African-Americans in a South Carolina church is charged on criminal counts. Only in the insanity of America can Wall Street financers implode the global economy through massive acts of fraud, causing widespread suffering, and be rewarded with trillions of dollars in government bailouts.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from these warning signs is what they tell us about the need not simply for ‘change’, but for fundamental systemic transformation. The science of impending doom does not prove the inevitability of human extinction, but it does prove the inevitability of something else: the extinction of industrial civilisation in its current form.
Earlier this year, the US assured its allies at the Camp David summit that under the nuclear deal, Iran’s growing geopolitical influence in the region would be curtailed. Simultaneously, the US gave Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and others the green light to accelerate support to the Islamist militants of their choice in Syria.
