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Europe’s biggest bank retreats from the oilsands
Economic CrisisEurope’s largest bank has joined the list of global investors retreating from new financial commitments in the fossil fuel industry, including investments in oil-rich Alberta. HSBC, whose global assets total more than $2 trillion, announced Friday that as the climate change crisis deepens, it will no longer finance new coal-fired power plants (with a few targeted exceptions), Arctic drilling or new oilsands projects, including pipelines.
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Nearly Half of Canadians are Left with $200 or Less After Paying their Monthly Bills and Debt
Economic CrisisNearly half of Canadians are $200 or less away from financial insolvency each month after paying their bills and debt obligations. This is down 12 points from September 2016, when 56% of Canadians were facing the same challenge. The current 44% who are $200 or less away from financial insolvency includes those who are left with $1-$200 (17%), and the more than one in four (27%) who are left with nothing and already consider themselves insolvent at the end of the month.
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The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Worse Than the Last One
Economic CrisisWe’ve made it through 2017. The first-season installment of presidential Tweetville is ending where it began, on the Palm Beach, Fla., golf course of Mar-a-Lago. Though we are no longer privy to all the footage behind the big white truck, we do know that, given the doubling of its membership fees, others on the course will have higher stakes in the 2018 influence game.
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For Whom the Wall Fell? A Balance Sheet of the Transition to Capitalism
Economic CrisisMost people’s expectations on November 9, 1989, were that the newly established capitalism in Eastern Europe will result in economic convergence with the rest of Europe, moderate increase in inequality and consolidated democracy. These hopes and expectations are fulfilled most likely in only one country (Poland) and, at the very most, in another two rather small countries (Estonia and Albania).
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Monetary Imperialism
Economic CrisisThe most destructive fiction of international finance is that all debts can be paid, and indeed should be paid, even when this tears economies apart by forcing them into austerity. Yet European countries, and especially Germany, have shied from pressing for a more balanced global economy that would foster growth for all countries and avoid the current economic slowdown and debt deflation.
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The Current Conflict In Spain Has A Lot to Do With Economic Failure
Economic CrisisAs Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy threatens to take over the autonomous region of Catalonia, it is becoming clearer even to casual observers who the bad guys are in this conflict. Generally, when one side is peaceful and seeks dialogue, and the other is committed to resolving the disagreement through force, repression, and violence — well, you get the picture.
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World’s 8 Richest Have as Much Wealth as Bottom Half, Oxfam Says
Economic CrisisOxfam bases its figures in part on Forbes’s annual list of billionaires and the magazine’s estimates of their wealth. This year, Oxfam said, new data gathered by Credit Suisse about the global poor led it to lower its estimates of their assets, and revise its findings about how few rich men — the eight are all men — were needed to equal the wealth of 3.6 billion people.
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Economic power to the people!
Economic CrisisSadly little known today, Robinson was a radical, defiantly outside the mainstream. She engaged the orthodoxy of her day in fiery debates, defending the core belief that the free-market profit system was no way to organize the economy and society. In this, Robinson was very much like the Marxist economists of her day, although she was explicit that she was not a Marxist.
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The Basic Income debate
Economic CrisisIf BI is used to top-up low wages, then it will create incentives for employers who used to pay decent wages to reduce wages so they won’t have to compete with companies that benefit from subsidized labour and, in any case, BI will serve as a public subsidy for cheap labour strategies. That means our precious public dollars will be re-directed into the coffers of corporations, not to human needs.
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Basic Income and the left: The political and economic problems
Economic CrisisThe discussion over BI touches on real political and economic anxieties. The attack on the social welfare state, the depreciating power of organized labour and an economy producing increasingly low-wage precarious jobs have led many to search for alternative mechanisms and policies to address these problems. It is no wonder that BI with its promise of streamlined access to minimal economic security has attracted many adherents on the Left.
