In the first part of our interview, Austrian Marxist Michael Pröbsting, author of The Great Robbery of the South and Anti-Imperialism in the Age of Great Power Rivalry, discusses his views on imperialism in the 21st century with Green Left’s Federico Fuentes.
Global Financial Crisis (2007–2008 financial crisis, GFC)
Capitalism is in crisis and new Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers has offered little by way of analysis and even less optimism, argues William Briggs.
The war in Ukraine has made an already critical food crisis worse. Fingers point to grain supply shortages, but the problem is far deeper and linked to the economic system that turns food into a profitable commodity, writes William Briggs.
Major multinational corporations such as Shell and BP have made much of cutting ties with Russia. The publicity value has been significant, but it has a hollow ring to it, argues William Briggs.
In 2009, economist Steve Keen walked from Canberra to Mount Kosciuszko after losing a bet that the Australian housing market would crash 40% after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). However, he had been one of the few economists who actually predicted the coming of the GFC. And he still maintains that a crash in the Australian housing market is coming.
Yet another report has been released showing the capitalist “trickle down” promise is rubbish.
The World Inequality Report 2018 — produced by the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics — busts the neoliberals’ myths about globalisation and privatisation working for everyone. It shows that the wealth gap is widening and, in some countries, very dramatically.
I know exactly where I was on August 9, 2007. It was a hot summer’s day — “debtonation day”.
Bankers all over the world had lost their collective nerve and refused to lend to each other. The globally synchronised financial system froze, and began its descent into sustained failure. It then took more than a year, and Lehman Brothers’ collapse, before the world understood the gravity of the crisis.
Ten years on, that slow-motion crisis, a prolonged period of disinflation, noflation and deflation, is still playing out.
As expected, the major banks are preparing to launch a media war against the Turnbull government’s proposed $6.2 billion bank levy, as outlined in Treasurer Scott Morrison’s May 9 federal budget speech.
Australian Bankers’ Association head Anna Bligh was furious. She said a campaign was being considered, claiming the government was playing “fast and loose” with the nation’s financial system.
The onset of the Global Financial Crisis can be dated to July 2007, when two Bear Stearns hedge funds holding almost US$10 billion in mortgage-backed securities collapsed. That same month, bankers at Lehman Brothers paid themselves $US5.7 billion in bonuses.
Little more than a year later, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy with debts of $US613 billion. It was the largest bankruptcy in history.
Greece's austerity-and-debt-driven crisis has prompted a humanitarian catastrophe.
The Australia-Greece Solidarity Campaign says half of all young people cannot find work, there is a growing shortage of essential medicines and child malnutrition rates have reached levels not seen since World War II.
The global financial crisis had its origins in the US when interest rates fell from 6% in January 2001 to 1% in mid-2003. This led to banks and other financial institutions awash with cheap money to conclude that lending to home buyers at obvious risk of defaulting their repayments was a safe bet.
The preparations for the federal budget, due to be handed down by Treasurer Joe Hockey on May 13, began on October 22 last year. This is the date on which Hockey announced a National Commission of Audit.
The commission is chaired by Tony Shepherd, who just happens to be the President of the Business Council of Australia, the organisation representing Australia’s 100 largest companies. Shepherd’s appointment amounts to an invitation to big business to tell the government how it wants the economy to function in its favour during the Coalition’s term of office.
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