The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Saliem Fakir -
Every-time capitalism is hit by a crisis it is described as being an errant event. The latest scandal which has rocked the US financial sector, where trusted and the likeable figure Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme for almost two decades, is once again dismissed as the work of a rogue element.
But rarely will the pundits of the new economy, which rely on the use of innovative speculative financial instruments to make inflated profits from thin air, blame its faulty free market philosophy and...
Dean Baker -
Imagine that the United States was researching biological weapons and it inadvertently allowed a deadly bacteria to get into the atmosphere. The bacteria quickly spread around the world, leading to sickness and death everywhere.
Fortunately, US scientists have developed a drug to treat the disease, which the United States generously shares with the other wealthy countries and a select group of developing countries. Unfortunately, there are a number of developing countries with whom the...
Glenn Ashton -
The time has come to shift towards a more equitable society.
The present disruption in the marketplace will continue to rock the global financial system for years. This economic shake-out signals many things, perhaps even the end of capitalism as we know it. After all, free market capitalism is meant to stand on its own two feet, independent of state interference. It was never meant to have been rescued by taxpayers funds, as is now the case. The average citizen was never consulted about...
Shortly after the G7 meeting last Friday, US Secretary Paulson announced that the Bush administration would move to 'sort of' nationalise some banks. But Pepe Escobar argues that this won't be enough to calm the markets in the current financial crisis, particularly as everybody is ignoring the elephant in the room - the massive US trade deficit. Corporate US offshores everything. With a smaller US deficit, the world would not have been so polluted by so many toxic US finance instruments,...
The reason Lehman Brothers went down is twofold, says Joseph Stiglitz. Not only were their assets bad, but their products were also very non-transparent. The company simply engaged in a great deal of accounting gimmickry and lost people's trust. Financial markets are based on trust says Stiglitz, and what happened with Lehman Brothers is a breakdown of trust. No one wanted to turn their money over to helping Lehman Brothers because they didn't know what Lehman's assets were worth.
