Debt

Debt Is Political: Why Wealth Flows From Poor To Rich

August 5, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Capitalism, Debt, Federal Reserve, wealth inequality

You may think that today, given the events of recent weeks, we might be talking about the wars that seem set to spiral out of control, particularly with Israel appearing so determined to escalate its hostilities with Hezbollah that it is willing to make accusations on entirely and visibly flimsy grounds. You might think that we will talk about how it’s not at all clear who’s in control, particularly in that country that so often fancies itself as the world’s policeman or woman, as the case may be. And indeed, we certainly intend to cover these topics in the future. However, today we will focus on a very closely related topic, and that is debt.

How Unelected Regulators Unleashed The Derivatives Monster

August 4, 2024 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Banking, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Regulation

While the world is absorbed in the U.S. election drama, the derivatives time bomb continues to tick menacingly backstage. No one knows the actual size of the derivatives market, since a major portion of it is traded over-the-counter, hidden in off-balance-sheet special purpose vehicles. However, when Warren Buffet famously labeled derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction” in 2002, its “notional value” was estimated at $56 trillion. Twenty years later, the Bank for International Settlements estimated that value at $610 trillion. And financial commentators have put it as high as $2.3 quadrillion or even $3.7 quadrillion, far exceeding global GDP, which was about $100 trillion in 2022.

Debt Is Wage Theft, Debt Steals Leisure Time, Debt Can Suppress Strikes

August 2, 2024 Jason Wozniak, Sara Nelson, Brittany Alston, Olivia Schwob, Jackson Potter and Teresa Romero, In These Times. Strategize! Debt, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Debt is fundamentally a labor issue. When labor is weak and unionization low, workers are forced to take on debt to offset costs for necessities like healthcare, housing and food. The more debt we have, the more we are compelled to work under the bosses’ conditions — rather than fighting for our own. Interest-heavy loans act as a regressive kind of pay cut, reaching deep into workers’ take-home earnings. Just to keep up with debt payments and interest, workers take on more hours and multiple low-paying jobs. And data shows debt can make workers more unlikely to strike.

Student Debt: It’s A System That’s Rigged

July 24, 2024 Maddy Clifford, In These Times. Educate! California, Class Struggle, Debt, Los Angeles, Student Loans

Leimert Park has long been one of the main hubs of Black life in Los Angeles and an innovative foil to the glitz, glam and paparazzi that many associate with the City of Angels. But anyone who knows better knows that LA’s working class, vibrant neighborhoods and excep-tionally creative locals actually make the city run. LA’s Juneteenth celebration emerged from Leimert Park in 1949; Tavis Smiley has production studios there; one of the city’s best haunts for book lovers, Eso Won Books, was there for more than 30 years; genius musicians like John Lee Hooker and Kamasi Washington could be found playing cheap shows at Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn or the World Stage; and Issa Rae used the television show Insecure to draw attention to how special the area is.

‘You Are Not A Loan!’ Introducing The Nation’s First Debtors’ Union

July 23, 2024 Hannah Appel and Astra Taylor, In These Times. Strategize! Capitalism, Debt, Debtor's Unions, Systemic Racism, Unions

A dozen members of Debt Collective were arrested at a Capitol Hill protest in May demanding that President Joe Biden “fund education, not genocide.” Before they were taken away by police, the protesters unfurled banners reading “You Are Not A Loan” and “$1,700,000,000,000” (the current amount of outstanding student debt). The connection was clear: Biden can and must use his executive powers to cancel all student debt and fund education, not to authorize and fund Israel’s destruction of Palestine. Organizers and activists came from all over the country to Washington, D.C., to tell him so. The “Fund Education, Not Genocide” action in May was just a sliver of what we’re about — and what we’re capable of.

St. Paul Is Erasing $100 Million In Medical Debt

July 3, 2024 Melvin Carter, Next City. Create! Debt, Healthcare, Medical Debt, Minnesota, St. Paul

We all deserve the right to access life-saving medical care without being trapped by staggering costs that leave us unable to pay for our housing, food and other basic needs. Over the next year, 43,000 residents of Saint Paul, Minnesota will receive a letter in the mail telling them that their medical debt – the crippling hospital bills that have been hanging over their head for years – have been paid off. Using federal pandemic relief funds, left over from the city’s response to COVID-19, to erase medical debt for our low-income neighbors is not a move without controversy: Critics, including some residents and elected officials, have argued that dealing with residents’ medical debt isn’t the role of government.

IMF-Driven Policies Spark Deadly Protests In Kenya

June 27, 2024 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. Resist! Debt, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kenya, Mass Action, State Violence, Taxes

At least 23 Kenyan protesters were killed on Tuesday after hundreds stormed the nation’s parliament in response to a proposed tax-hike bill, which threatens to deepen the country’s cost of living crisis. The IMF’s pressure on Nairobi to balance its budget is central to the issue. Videos of bodies strewn across the concrete and protesters storming the parliament went viral on social media. This follows protests the previous week that brought the nation to a standstill. President William Ruto, elected to address the cost of living crisis, is now seen attempting to combat dissent with force, having failed to improve conditions.

China’s Future: Economic Decline Or The Next Industrial Revolution?

March 14, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report China, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Japan, Real Estate

China’s economy is what we’re going to talk about today. Where is it at after decades of breakneck growth, after executing the greatest industrial revolution ever? Where is it headed? Trying to understand this is not easy. The disinformation that is fake news and even what I often call fake scholarship that distorts the view that any honest person may be trying to take on China’s economy is simply overwhelming. It’s absolutely wall-to-wall propaganda, no matter which Western publication or website you open.

How To Go From Neoliberalism To A Productive, Sustainable Economy

February 10, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Banks, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Neoliberalism

In our last show, which we entitled “The Debt Explosion: How Neoliberalism Fuels Debt Crises“, we promised that our next show would be about what the solution is, what is the solution to the myriad problems that we were describing. And that is indeed what we are going to discuss today. The solution, we feel, in the United States and in all countries that have gone down the road of neoliberalism and financialization involves a root and branch reform of the financial system. And this would be the foundation for the urgent economic transformation. It will be the single largest component of the economic transformation that so many of us realize we also badly need.

The Debt Explosion: How Neoliberalism Fuels Debt Crises

January 13, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Debt, Neoliberalism

Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss the massive explosion of debt in the US and around the world, and how neoliberal economics leads to large bubbles based on speculation and asset-price inflation.

The ‘Ghost Budget’: How America Pays For Endless War

January 8, 2024 Linda Bilmes, Scheer Post. Educate! Debt, Pentagon Budget, Taxes, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were enabled by a historically unprecedented combination of budgetary procedures and financing methods. Unlike all previous U.S. wars, the post-9/11 wars were funded without higher taxes or non-war budget cuts, and through a separate budget. This set of circumstances – one that I have termed the “Ghost Budget” – enabled successive administrations to prosecute the wars with limited congressional oversight and minimal transparency and public debate. I adopted the name “Ghost Budget” because the term “ghost” appeared frequently in post-9/11 government reports in reference to funds allocated to people, places, or projects that turned out to be phantoms.

Most Important Stories Of 2023: Gaza, Ukraine, China, BRICS, Dedollarization, Bank Crises, Inflation

December 31, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Argentina, Brazil, BRICS, China, crypto, De-dollarization, Debt, dollar, Donald Trump, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fed, Federal Reserve, Gaza, Imran Khan, India, interest, Iran, Israel, Janet Yellen, Javier Milei, Jerome Powell, Joe Biden, Lula da Silva, Narendra Modi, New Years Eve, Pakistan, Pedro Castillo, Peru, Russia, Sam Bankman-Fried, Saudi Arabia, SBF, UAE, United Arab Emirates

These were the most important geopolitical and economic issues of 2023, including the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, US-China tensions, BRICS expansion, growing de-dollarization, inflation crisis, crypto fraud, bank crashes, European de-industrialization, and more.

How The International Monetary Fund Continues To Shrink Poorer Nations

October 27, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Debt, International Monetary Fund, Neoliberalism, Poverty, Privatization

From 9 to 15 October, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their annual joint meeting in Marrakech (Morocco). The last time that these two Bretton Woods institutions met on African soil was in 1973, when the IMF-World Bank meeting was held in Nairobi (Kenya). Kenya’s then President Jomo Kenyatta (1897–1978) urged those gathered to find ‘an early cure to the monetary sickness of inflation and instability that has afflicted the world’. Kenyatta, who became Kenya’s first president in 1964, noted that, ‘[o]ver the last fifteen years, many developing countries have been losing, every year, a significant proportion of their annual income through deterioration of their terms of trade’.

An Urgent Call For Debt, Climate And Economic Justice

October 10, 2023 Debt for Climate. Resist! climate crisis, Climate Justice, Debt, Economic Justice

Communities all over the world are struggling and resisting the impacts of multiple crises. At a time of intensifying climate impacts and speculative increases of food and energy prices, governments, particularly in the Global South, are responding to unsustainable public debts and the lack of development and climate finance, with a rising wave of austerity, subjugation and extractivism. We vehemently denounce the role of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that, together with other private and public lenders, perpetuate a flawed international financial architecture that exacerbates debt, climate, and economic crises, violating the basic needs and rights of millions of people and nature who have the least contribution, responsibility or control over these catastrophes.

Blackrock Is A ‘Modern Day Dutch East India Company’

August 16, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Resist! BlackRock, Debt, Neocolonialism, New York City (NYC), Zambia

On August 14, US-based organizations rallied in front of the BlackRock world headquarters in New York City to demand that the massive investment company cancel the USD 220 million it holds in Zambia’s external debt. Organizations that participated in the action include the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition, the Peoples Forum, the Debt Collective, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, Friends of the Congo, and Friends of Swazi Freedom. For years, Zambia has been stuck diverting public funds to service its foreign debts.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources