Archive for February, 2009
As written by Walden Bello: This is the final installment on the analysis of the economic crisis we are now facing. Collapse of the Real Economy But instead of performing their primordial task of lending to facilitate productive activity, the banks are holding on to their cash or buying up rivals to strengthen their financial [...]
Continuing from the article by Walden Bello: Dynamics of the Subprime Implosion The current Wall Street collapse has its roots in the Technology Bubble of the late 1990s, when the price of the stocks of Internet startups skyrocketed, then collapsed, resulting in the loss of $7 trillion worth of assets and the recession of 2001-2002. [...]
Continuing from Walden Bello: Financialization Given the limited gains in countering the depressive impact of overproduction via neoliberal restructuring and globalization, the third escape route – financialization – became very critical for maintaining and raising profitability. With investment in industry and agriculture yielding low profits owing to overcapacity, large amounts of surplus funds have been [...]
Continuing from Walden Bello: Globalization The second escape route global capital took to counter stagnation was “extensive accumulation” or globalization, or the rapid integration of semi-capitalist, non-capitalist, or pre-capitalist areas into the global market economy. Rosa Luxemburg, the famous German radical economist, saw this long ago in her classic “The Accumulation of Capital” as necessary [...]
Continuing from Walden Bello: Neoliberal Restructuring Neoliberal restructuring took the form of Reaganism and Thatcherism in the North and Structural Adjustment in the South. The aim was to invigorate capital accumulation, and this was to be done by 1) removing state constraints on the growth, use, and flow of capital and wealth; and 2) redistributing [...]
Day after day the news from around the world gets worse and worse and these parts are from a piece written by Walden Bello that help to explain why the collpase is happening. The fundamental crisis: overaccumulation Orthodox economics has long ceased to be of any help in understanding the crisis. Non-orthodox economics, on the [...]
This election cycle there is a lot said and a lot used about free trade and globalization in the campaigns. The region known as the Rust Belt is the area hit the hardest by free trade agreements. This area includes Pennsylvania, Ohio, and any place that has lost manufacturing jobs because of agreements like NAFTA. [...]
I realize that this post will most likely draw a bit of attention….so be it….this is from an article written by Joe Sims and it appeared in Political Affairs magazine. This is a bit lengthy but it is worth the time to read. As it turned out, a disproportionate number of the people they “fucked” [...]
First of all we need to establish one thing—credit is fictitious capital or wealth, if you will. Simply put the sale of a commodity consists of —the exchange of the commodity for the commodity of money. The seller may accept a promise of payment in the future which then becomes—the seller is the creditor and [...]
Welcome to Inkwell Institute….we will be posting papers and such on many subjects, but will try to zero in on economic, political and society. We will be giving analysis to complex issues as simply as we can–we wanr everyone to understand what is a stake….without knowledge and wisdom we will continue along the paths that [...]
