Two Labour Strikes, a Strategy and One Reality
May 16, 2008
Today’s guest editorial on developments in Egypt and Lebanon from regular Fanonite contributor Alberto Cruz of CEPRID.
On April 6th a general strike was called in Egypt. One month later, on May 7th, another one was called in Lebanon. The causes were the same in both countries: calls for an increase in the minimum wage and improvements to workers’ statutory benefits and also to protest against the neoliberal, IMF-friendly, pro-Western political attitudes of the respective governments. The responses of the Egyptian and Lebanese governments were the same, although with different results: attempts to defuse the protests with repression, confronting the people and increasing the minimum wage as a last resort. The media account of the two strikes was the same too: minimizing the effects of the protest in government and international media, while the few media that can be described as independent in these countries reflected the strike calls’ success.
Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood
February 21, 2008
Walden Bello on the travails of global capital.
Skyrocketing oil prices, a falling dollar, and collapsing financial markets are the key ingredients in an economic brew that could end up in more than just an ordinary recession. The falling dollar and rising oil prices have been rattling the global economy for sometime. But it is the dramatic implosion of financial markets that is driving the financial elite to panic.And panic there is. Even as it characterized Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke’s deep cuts amounting to a 1.25 points off the prime rate in late January as a sign of panic, the Economist admitted that “there is no doubt that this is a frightening moment.” The losses stemming from bad securities tied up with defaulted mortgage loans by “subprime” borrowers are now estimated to be in the range of about $400 billion. But as the Financial Times warned, “the big question is what else is out there” at a time that the global financial system “is wide open to a catastrophic failure.” In the last few weeks, for instance, several Swiss, Japanese, and Korean banks have owned up to billions of dollars in subprime-related losses. The globalization of finance was, from the beginning, the cutting edge of the globalization process, and it was always an illusion to think that the subprime crisis could be confined to U.S. financial institutions, as some analysts had thought.
Commanding Heights
February 4, 2008
The Battle for the World Economy
Here is an excellent three part series from PBS that presents a rather celebratory but interesting account of globalization.
1. The Battle of Ideas
A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack …. The year is 1914.
Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world’s economic order.
Financial hypocrisy
November 26, 2007
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out that the “contrast between the IMF/US Treasury’s advice during the East Asia crisis and what has happened in the sub-prime debacle is glaring”. Stiglitz’s insider’s view not only confirms Naomi Klein’s disaster capitalism thesis, it also provides rare insights into the whole cynical enterprise of the multilateral financial institutions.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the East Asia crisis, which began in Thailand on July 2, 1997, and spread to Indonesia in October and to Korea in December. Eventually, it became a global financial crisis, embroiling Russia and Latin American countries, such as Brazil, and unleashing forces that played out over the ensuing years: Argentina in 2001 may be counted as among its victims.
There were many other innocent victims, including countries that had not even engaged in the international capital flows that were at the root of the crisis. Indeed, Laos was among the worst-affected countries. Though every crisis eventually ends, no one knew at the time how broad, deep, and long the ensuing recessions and depressions would be. It was the worst global crisis since the Great Depression.
