Given recent changes in the IMF, it is ironic to see European governments inflicting old-IMF-style programmes
on their own populations. The danger is that austerity measures will not only kill European economies, but also threaten the very legitimacy of European democracies, writes Ha-Joon Chang.
Financial experts, warning of future crises, call for re-affirming
finance as a global commons, first recognized at Bretton Woods in 1945. The
Transforming Finance group, as beneficiaries and active participants in
global capital markets, affirm their responsibility to reform
finance in a signed statement.
The Commission of Experts of the UN General Assembly President
in 2009, chaired by the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz,
presented its report to the UN but little of its recommendations were
followed up. Below is an extract of a paper that summarises and comments
on the Commission’s report, by Yash Tandon.
The economic lessons of the 1930s need not be repeated. Two of the world's leading economists say the time is ripe for a Manifesto in
which mainstream economists offer the public a more evidence-based
analysis of our problems. By Richard Layard and Paul Krugman.
Historically, austerity has always hit hardest on those who have
the most to lose: the rich and powerful. Today’s austerity has reversed
that historic pattern — and widened the gap between society’s most
financially fortunate and everyone else. By Salvatore Babone.
For far too long, we have allowed Wall Street to play us as marks in a
confidence scam of audacious proportion. It’s time for action to bust the banking trusts,
replace the current Wall Street banking system with a Main Street
banking system, and to take back America. By David Korten.
We are in the second phase of an economic crisis which is global in its
scale and reach, affecting all our major institutions and established
ways of thinking. How did we get here? And what can we do now to prevent
worldwide economic meltdown? A brief by the New Economics Foundation.
