Economist Michael Hudson analyzes the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate, and Signature Bank, explaining the similarities to the 2008 financial crash. He also addresses the US government bailout (which it isn’t calling a bailout), the role of the Federal Reserve and Treasury, the factor of cryptocurrency, and the danger of derivatives.
TRANSCRIPT: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/…
Read More »It’s been a big week for the major central banks. First, the European Central Bank (ECB) called an emergency meeting because government bond yields were rising sharply in the more indebted Eurozone economies like Italy and Spain. That threatens to deliver a new sovereign debt crisis as happened after the Great Recession from 2010-2014, leading to the Greek nightmare.
Morbid symptoms: The political economy of authoritarian neoliberalism
Adam Fabry, Universidad Nacional de Chilecito, Argentina
‘The Crisis of Neoliberal Globalization and the Global Rise of Authoritarianism in the 21st Century’
Berch Berberoglu, University of Nevada, Reno, USA
‘A Model State of Authoritarian Neoliberalism? An Analysis of the Orbán Regime in Hungary’
Attila Antal, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Hungary
‘Authoritarian Neoliberalisms, Social Reproduction and Social Policy in Croatia, Hungary and Poland’
Noemi Lendvai-Bainton, University of Bristol, UK
Paul Stubbs, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb , Croatia
Neoliberalism and Authoritarianism: A Long-term Perspective from the Southern Cone of Latin America
Hernán Ramírez, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brasil
Links to associated literature by panellists:
Antal, A. (2019). The Rise of Hungarian Populism: State Autocracy and the Orbán Regime, Bingley: Emerald Publishing. Available on: https://www.emerald.com/insight/publi….
Berberoglu, B. (2020). The Global Rise of Authoritarianism in the 21st Century: Crisis of Neoliberal Globalization and the Nationalist Response, London: Routledge. Available on: https://www.routledge.com/The-Global-….
Fabry, A. (2019). The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism. London: Palgrave. Available on: https://www.springer.com/la/book/9783….
Ramirez, H. (2019). Neoliberalismo e (neo)autoritarismo: Uma perspectiva de longo prazo a partir de casos do Cone Sul da América Latina. Available on: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat…
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Princeton, New Jersey (Scheerpost) — America’s defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire. With the exception of the first Gulf War, fought largely by mechanized units in the open desert that did not – wisely – attempt to occupy Iraq, the United States political and military leadership has stumbled from one military debacle to another. Korea. Vietnam. Lebanon. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Libya. The trajectory of military fiascos mirrors the sad finales of the Chinese, Ottoman, Hapsburg, Russian, French, British, Dutch, Portuguese and Soviet empires. While each of these empires decayed with their own peculiarities, they all exhibited patterns of dissolution that characterize the American experiment.Read More »
A lot of ink has been spilled to explain exactly what happened in the Suez Canal, where a massive container ship got wedged across the narrow channel, idling ships or forcing lengthy detours around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
Early speculation on social media laid blame on the captain and crew, mechanical failures, or mysterious forces of nature. Was it the fault of a drunken navigator, as was claimed in the 1989 grounding of the Exxon Valdez, which spilled oil across Prince William Sound? Was there a failure of the steering gear that controls the ship’s rudder, or a did a loss of propulsion make it impossible to control the steel behemoth?Read More »
Lucio Oliver, UNAM, Mexico (9:15)
Late last week, Google and Apple both suspended Parler – the social media platform of choice for the alt-right – and demanded a “moderation improvement plan” from Parler. Amazon, as of midnight, also suspended Parler from its web hosting services, citing “inadequate content-moderation practices.” Okta, an identity management software company in San Francisco, California, was notified that Parler had a free trial of its product and subsequently rushed to terminate access.Read More »
Someone at CNN was tasked with writing a thrilling story about a brave democratic congressman who did not shy away from confronting the Capitol intruders.
How a swift impeachment was born under siege
Rioters were still ransacking the halls of the US Capitol when two Democrats stuck in lockdown together in the House office buildings across the street started drafting the impeachment resolution that led to the unprecedented second impeachment of President Donald Trump almost exactly one week later.
California Rep. Ted Lieu was forced to evacuate his office in the Cannon Office Building as insurrectionists converged on the Capitol. Grabbing a crowbar in his office, Lieu said he and his chief of staff called the top aide to Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline while wandering the halls and asked if they could hunker down in Cicilline’s office in the Rayburn House Office Building. …
Just as writers and artists today are responding to the Anthropocene through climate fiction and eco art, earlier generations chronicled an environmental crisis that presaged humanity’s global impact.
The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch that powerfully expresses the planetary scale of the environmental changes wrought by human activity.Read More »
Masterplan, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesIn the 1909 short story “The Machine Stops,” EM Forster imagined a future where the atmosphere had become poisonous, leaving little life at the surface apart from a few ferns. Humans had all moved to a network of vast subterranean cities—the Machine—where they lived physically isolated from each other but digitally linked via an internet-like device to communicate with friends, listen to short lectures, and play music. Few bothered to ramble at the surface with a respirator or fly to other colonies via airship, for civilization was structured on “bringing things to people” rather than “people to things.” One of the denizens of this sedentary future, Vashti (“a swaddled lump of flesh […] with a face as white as a fungus”), recalled “those funny old days, when men went for a change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!” Vashti and her peers abhorred intimacy with others or communion with nature, and preferred their utter dependence on the Machine. Vashti’s son Kuno was unusual in his desire to escape, but he could not venture far from the Machine given his need for its artificial air. Read More »
Journal of People 