8th December, 2008 My piece in today’s Guardian, The Credit Crisis Myth, was resoundingly rubbished in many of the comments. Reminds me of when my book, The Coming First World Debt Crisis came out in 2006… Then it was: Chicken Licken – The sky is falling! Read the article (and comments)
8th December, 2008 Are some journalists guilty of “careless headlines or injudicious reporting” which risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies of a very serious nature? Peter Wilby discusses reporting on the current crisis in his piece today for the Guardian. In it he also refers to my 2003 New Statesman article warning of the coming debt crisis.
Has media reporting deepened the present crisis? Read More »
8th December 2008 Members of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America are occupying the Republic Windows and Doors factory this weekend – something rarely seen here since the 1930’s. Obama sided with the workers, saying ” I think they’re absolutely right and understand what’s happening to them is reflective
Bank of America denies credit – Workers occupy Chicago factory Read More »
7th December, 2008 On friday 5th December the Financial Times finally acknowledged that ‘real borrowing costs remain high‘. For those readers that may have missed it let me recap: UK interest rates are now at 2%. The three-month Libor rate (the London inter-bank offer rate – fixed by a committee of the British Bankers Association)
6th December 2008 The tears of millions of Americans stripped of livelihoods and healthcare remain hidden from view, unlike the tearful special pleading of the unscrupulous leaders of the finance sector, and this week, of the auto industry CEO’s. The latest unemployment numbers to emerge from the Dept. of Labor imply immense pain and anguish;
The tears of the unemployed, of auto CEOs and bankers Read More »
6th December 2008 From the Institute for Policy Studies – a new report released November 24th details the ratios of financial bailout spending to spending on development aid and climate crises. The key finding published in the report is that the $4.1trillion that the United States and European governments have committed to rescue financial firms
The financial bailouts dwarf other global crisis spending by 40x Read More »
5th December 2008 Have fretted for weeks about the heroic Obama’s economic appointments. Refuse to go along with the knee-jerk ‘sell-out’ accusations. Was really pleased about Tim Geithner – whom I met when he backed not just Jubilee 2000, but also a battle I fought at the IMF (with Prof. Kunibert Raffer) to draft an
Has Obama been skewered by those who called it wrong? Read More »
4th December 2008 ‘Financial writers’ and establishment economists seem to live in a different world. They often bring to mind bats, hanging upside down in the cavernous, soaring rafters of a barn, analysing the world from a great distance, and upside-down. Take one Diana Henriques – described as a ‘senior financial writer for the New
4th December 2008 I wrote this post yesterday, and then accidentally deleted it….Trying again. Readers might know that the British Queen visited the London School of Economics recently and asked Professor Luis Garicano, director of research why, if the hole in the international economic system was so large… “everyone missed it?´ A very good question
Crack-down on binge-drinkers, lapdancers and bankers Read More »
1st December 2008 Watching our British politicians squabble and spin this last week over the Pre Budget Report – while Rome burns – was depressing. Why are our politicians so off-beam? Why does their response to this crisis seem so petty and botched? The answer may lie in their ties to the finance sector. The
