The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Rebecca Solnit -
In December, reports surfaced that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pushed his Wall Street bailout package by suggesting that, without it, civil unrest in the United States might grow so dangerous that martial law would have to be declared. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned of the same risk of riots, wherever the global economy was hurting. What really worried them wasn't, I suspect, the possibility of a lot of people thronging the...
Glenn Ashton -
Major retailers like Pick n Pay have asked suppliers for explanations as to why the food costs have remained high, while transport and input costs have fallen. This is indicative of fundamental problems in the food marketplace.
The cynical world view of many, that food producers are all too quick to raise prices when margins are threatened but loath to reduce them when increased profits are locked in, appears valid.
There is usually a lag for input costs to affect prices of grocery items;...
Saliem Fakir -
Every-time capitalism is hit by a crisis it is described as being an errant event. The latest scandal which has rocked the US financial sector, where trusted and the likeable figure Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme for almost two decades, is once again dismissed as the work of a rogue element.
But rarely will the pundits of the new economy, which rely on the use of innovative speculative financial instruments to make inflated profits from thin air, blame its faulty free market philosophy and...
Glenn Ashton -
The time has come to shift towards a more equitable society.
The present disruption in the marketplace will continue to rock the global financial system for years. This economic shake-out signals many things, perhaps even the end of capitalism as we know it. After all, free market capitalism is meant to stand on its own two feet, independent of state interference. It was never meant to have been rescued by taxpayers funds, as is now the case. The average citizen was never consulted about...
Shortly after the G7 meeting last Friday, US Secretary Paulson announced that the Bush administration would move to 'sort of' nationalise some banks. But Pepe Escobar argues that this won't be enough to calm the markets in the current financial crisis, particularly as everybody is ignoring the elephant in the room - the massive US trade deficit. Corporate US offshores everything. With a smaller US deficit, the world would not have been so polluted by so many toxic US finance instruments,...
The reason Lehman Brothers went down is twofold, says Joseph Stiglitz. Not only were their assets bad, but their products were also very non-transparent. The company simply engaged in a great deal of accounting gimmickry and lost people's trust. Financial markets are based on trust says Stiglitz, and what happened with Lehman Brothers is a breakdown of trust. No one wanted to turn their money over to helping Lehman Brothers because they didn't know what Lehman's assets were worth.
