The European Commission exploits every crisis to increase its own powers. It seized control of the vaccine procurement programme but bungled it.
Brazil suffers from a double affliction. With 270,000 Covid‑19 deaths it is second only to the US—although per head mortality is higher in Britain and other European countries.
Everyone is talking about debt. This is mainly because of the enormous amounts governments are borrowing to cover extra spending in responding to the pandemic.
Is world history going into reverse? The great historian Fernand Braudel argued that the modern capitalist world economy always has had a city at its centre, starting in the later Middle Ages with Venice.
The neoliberal imperialists who have returned to office in Washington with Joe Biden are finding the world has become more complicated since they left with Barack Obama four years ago.
Farcical aspects aside, the row over the European Union’s vaccine supplies reveals the inability of the present system to manage the Covid-19 pandemic.
French president Emmanuel Macron said last week that France would offer “no repentance or apologies” for the colonisation of Algeria or the eight-year war it waged against Algerian independence, in which perhaps a million people died.
The most bizarre single feature of capitalism is probably the stock market. It seems to have the ability to defy mere economic reality.
For many of us—especially those lucky enough not to have caught Covid-19—the past year has been as if our lives have been put on hold.
Whether or not there is a trade deal between Britain and the European Union, we will experience a hard Brexit, with a fair degree of economic disruption. Such an outcome was not inevitable
It’s anyone’s guess whether Britain and the European Union (EU) can reach an agreement on their new trading relationship, which is due to start on 1 January.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused an enormous jolt to the world economy. We are in the midst of the biggest global slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
