In spite of all the emphasis on the need for going green, oil consumption is not falling and a grey market is developing as a result of sanctions.
Oxford Business GroupIn this episode of their program Geopolitical Economy Hour, economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson explain the end of the British empire’s sterling area with the rise of the US dollar system, its central role in imperialism, and why it ultimately failed to accomplish Washington’s hegemonic goals.
RADHIKA DESAI: Hello everyone. Welcome to the fourth Geopolitical Economy Hour, our fortnightly show on the political and geopolitical economy of our times....Geopolitical Economy
Cancelling loans put the Wunder into Wirtschaftswunder. Treat poor nations the same today.The Guardian
To residents of Memphis’s resource-poor, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods, the Scorpions were easy to spot. The plainclothes patrols were known for driving their unmarked Dodge Chargers through the streets, often all too recklessly, sowing fear as they went, spitting venom from their windows, jumping out with guns drawn at the slightest sign of an infraction. On the night of January 7th, Tyre Nichols was two minutes from home when members of that squad pulled him over. Probable cause: reckless driving (if you believe the official story). Five Scorpions, all of them trained use-of-force specialists, proceeded to take turns hitting him with everything they had, including boots, fists, and telescopic batons. The 29-year-old photographer died three days later. Cause of death? “Excessive... Read more
The latest prison figures show state and federal government departments are still failing First Australians. read now...In October 2022, about eight months after the war in Ukraine started, the University of Cambridge in the UK harmonized surveys conducted in 137 countries about their attitudes towards the West and towards Russia and China.
The findings in the study, while not free of a margin of error, are robust enough to take seriously.
These are:Sentiments of this nature have caused some ire, surprise, and even anger in the West. It is difficult for them to believe that two-thirds of the world’s population is not siding with the West.
- For the 6.3 billion people who live outside of the West, 66 percent feel positively towards Russia and 70 percent feel positively towards China, and,
- Among the 66 percent who feel positively about Russia the breakdown is 75 percent in South Asia, 68 percent in Francophone Africa, and 62 percent in Southeast Asia.
- Public opinion of Russia remains positive in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, and Vietnam.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 26, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
War
How The U.S. (And UK) Sabotaged Peace In Ukraine
[Moon of Alabama, via Naked Capitalism 2-23-2023]
Corruption watch. (h/t Naked Capitalism)
Glenn GreenwaldThe trajectory of mainstream economics can be understood in terms of how the discipline historically responded to moments of crises by attempting to “theoretically fix” the understandings related to five core “questions” of capitalist political economy – namely land, trade, labour, state, and legal-institutional framework. This involved legitimising improvements in land that led to the dispossession and the destruction of the commons, justifying free trade based on comparative advantage as opposed to mercantilist state intervention, reducing labour to a factor of production that was supposedly rewarded based on its marginal productivity and hence not being exploited, legitimising state intervention to stabilise capitalism and developing a legal-institutional framework to protect markets from popular democratic pressures. These “theoretical fixes” served to ideologically legitimise, preserve, and perpetuate the core content of capitalist social relations even as it corresponded with the modification of the surface-level appearances of capitalism.