Economics

Economic slowdown shows up the weakness of the system

Britain’s economy contracted for the first time in seven years during the second quarter of 2019.

Pound zig-zags are due to Europe crisis

The pound rose on the foreign exchange markets last week after Boris Johnson became the new prime minister. Alex Callinicos looks at why.

The IMF - a brutal loan shark for capital

Pakistan’s government has raised gas prices by 200 percent less than a year after it was elected promising to “eradicate poverty”.

City bosses fear crisis as Woodford investment fund falters

The near-collapse of an investment fund is sending shudders through the City of London - but it could also affect ordinary people

Can growth be good?

Growth is central to capitalism, but the expansion of production can be organised to protect people and the planet if it is coupled with radical change, argues Simon Basketter

Another accounting scam

Over a quarter of audits carried out by the major accountancy firms don’t meet the standards of the accountancy regulator.

Does money make the world go round?

12 March 2019
In the past few weeks discussion of the obscure economic school is Modern Monetory Theory has gone viral

Karl Marx can spark joy for you

26 January 2019
Sarah Bates enjoys Marie Kondo’s new show Tidying Up. But, she writes, its popularity says something deeper about life under capitalism and our relationship to commodities

Falling budget deficit means little to those at the bottom

27 August 2018
Sarah Bates argues that Tory boasting about reducing the deficit does not tell the real human cost behind austerity

Syriza signs up for decades more austerity as final bailout deal ends in Greece

20 August 2018
Greece exited its final bailout agreement on Monday—the mechanism through which the European Union (EU) and the bankers have forced austerity on ordinary Greeks.

Marx’s explanation of why capitalism goes into crisis

12 February 2018
This year marks 200 years since Karl Marx’s birth. Sadie Robinson looks at his analysis of what lies behind economic crises.

Games of the stock market

09 February 2018
Last week's fall in financial markets shows up the volatility of the system and Tomáš Tengely-Evans looks at how investors will treat anything as a commodity to be gambled

Panic after big slump on stock markets

06 February 2018
Fear gripped the ruling class as US stock markets haemorrhaged £1 trillion overnight on Monday.

Lies about the single market

02 February 2018
Sadie Robinson looks at the new pamphlet by the Labour Party right wingers claiming to bust “Lexit myths”. It weakly accepts the limits of the bosses’ system

The rich business - why competition makes ‘ethical capitalism’ an impossibility

28 January 2018
Bosses fear a backlash at rising inequality. And so they should, writes Tomáš Tengely-Evans—their system is to blame

The great PFI swindle

20 January 2018
It’s a long way from the partly built 40-mile £750 million Aberdeen bypass, work on which has been routinely delayed, to the £4 billion luxury development in Doha, Qatar.

Workers need a pay rise the budget won’t deliver

19 November 2017
Chancellor Philip Hammond will likely claim that he’s scrapped the 1 percent public sector pay cap when he delivers his budget this week.

We will need sterling resistance to stop the bosses’ sabotage

29 September 2017
It’s not a paranoid fantasy to argue that parts of the establishment want to derail the left wing Labour leadership’s plans.

Ticking debt ‘time bomb’ may blast holes in weak recovery

26 September 2017
Millions of people are scraping by in badly paid jobs and are being forced to take out loans. Ten years after the ‘credit crunch’, Sarah Bates looks at what’s behind the debt explosion