June 2009
The G20's continued push for trade liberalisation contradicts the same countries' assertion that markets, especially the financial sector, need further regulation.
June 2009
It had to happen sooner or later. The first bill on nationalization has been submitted to the State Duma. That such a bill would appear in Russia only after similar legislation was introduced in Britain and the United States might seem paradoxical, at least at first glance. After all, Moscow officials would rather die than be accused of an attempt to revive communism. This is especially true of senior government officials in the "economic bloc" whose job is to please investors.
June 2009
Russian officials have become optimistic again. Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev criticizes his Minister of Finances Alexey Kudrin in public because he said that Russia’s favorable economic trends had become a thing of the past, and the Central Bank representatives joyfully speak about the growth of gold and currency reserves.
May 2009
There has been a distinct deficit of good news lately. News influences financial markets, and that is why leaders try to organize, distribute and manipulate the news in such a way as to convert today's headlines into tomorrow's quick profits.
The trillions that governments around the world have spent since the crisis broke out have been spent more on producing positive headlines than in instituting measures to halt the crisis.
May 2009
The world is looking at China to save it from depression, but China has built its export based economy on the backs of its rural population, which is too poor to absorb the industry's output now that global demand has slumped.
May 2009
European Cross-Sectoral Network on the combined crises
We call upon the UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development (1- 3 June 2009), and especially the European leaders attending the event to focus on reforms that directly benefit people and the planet.
We speak as representatives of a network of European civil society organisations across many sectors, demanding a strong political change of direction. The current system results in food, climate, energy, social, financial and economic crises.
May 2009
Charles Santiago, Helmut Markov, Ignacio Garcia Bercero
"ASEAN should build a different kind of regionalism and not sign bilateral Free Trade Agreements with the EU", says Malaysian MP Mr. Charles Santiago in Brussels in a debate with Mr. Bercero, chief negotiator for the EU in the EU-Korea FTA and Mr.
April 2009
Speech delivered at the Conference on the Global Crisis sponsored by Die Linke Party and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin, March 20-21, 2009. Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than predicted by the gloomiest analysts.
April 2009
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown may have declared the death of the Washington Consensus. However the G20 summit’s decision to entrust the most neoliberal institution of the IMF with overseeing the process suggests we have missed a precious opportunity for radically reforming the global economy.
The media hype over the build-up to the London summit of the Group of 20 representing the world’s biggest economies, and over the meeting’s atmospherics, was dismayingly followed by a stunning silence on the content of its decisions and their implications.
April 2009
The Russian elite and world leaders support the same strategy to deal with the economic crisis - saving the rich by combining the worst traits of the market capitalism with the most inefficient forms of government regulation, writes Boris Kagarlitsky.
In contemporary Russia there is a popular fad to discuss economic crisis at different round tables and forums.
