reheated

Time To Put Finance Where It Belongs

It is time to put finance back in its box
By Philip Augar, Apri 13, 2009

Nicolas Sarkozy arrived at the Group of 20 summit having said: “The all-powerful market that is always right is finished.” The French president left it proclaiming “a page has been turned” on the Anglo-Saxon financial model. Whether or not a page [...]

EU Banks Lost Even More than US Banks

IMF Boosts Global Loss Estimate to $4 Trillion: Roubini Estimates $1.8 Trillion Fall on U.S. Banks/Brokers, Up to $2 Trillion on European Banks, Rest on Asia
April 7: IMF to say that toxic debts racked up by banks and insurers around the world could spiral to $4 trillion. The IMF said in January that it [...]

U.S. Economy Lost 663,000 Jobs in March, Unemployment Now as High as 15.6%

Payrolls fell 663,000 in March 2009 after falling 651,000 in February 2009 and 741,000 in January 2009. Economy has lost over 2 million jobs in 2009 year-to-date and 5.1 million jobs since recession began in December 2007.
Unemployment rate rose from 8.1% to 8.5% in March 2009 (a 25-year high). Decline in labor force and shift [...]

Postcapitalism: Movement Has Alternatives to G20

It’s hardly surprising that some want to trash the City, but to claim that the G20 protesters have no alternative is nonsense
By Seumas Milne
When mass protests exploded on the streets of Seattle in 1999 against the kind of globalisation embodied in the World Trade Organisation, their anti-capitalist message was widely portrayed as utopian. A decade [...]

FT: “City turned into anti-capitalist carnival”

By FT Reporters
Protests by thousands of anti-capitalist demonstrators in the City of London ahead of the G20 summit turned violent on Wednesday when windows at a branch of Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the UK’s biggest banks, were smashed and police charged the crowd.
Four marches, led by representations of horsemen of the apocalypse, converged [...]

London and Berlin March vs G20

London protesters march in 1st of many G20 rallies
By DEAN CARSON
LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of people marched across central London Saturday to demand jobs, economic justice and environmental accountability, kicking off six days of protest and action planned in the run-up to the G20 summit next week.
More than 150 groups threw their [...]

EuroMayDay: “Maastricht Rule Straitjacket on Social Progress”

Labour ministers from the Group of Eight wealthy nations and six other major economies are to gather in Rome on Sunday for talks on the “human dimension” of the financial crisis sweeping the planet.
The three-day “Group of 14″ meeting will bring together the G8 leading industrial powers with the emerging giants China, India and Brazil [...]

We, the Movement, Predicted the Great Recession

Once beaten for stating the obvious, our time has come
Katharine Ainger, Thursday 26 March 2009
Ten years ago, the anticapitalist movement predicted this recession. Now it must envisage an alternative global future
It was 1999 and the summer of corporate love. Many pundits – now talking of “bad apples” and applauding bailouts – were predicting the [...]

Berlusconi Drags Italy into 3-Year Recession

Italy is the only leading country forecast by the IMF to be facing three consecutive years of contraction (FT)
GDP fell 1% in 2008
Q4 activity contracted by 1.9% qoq. Leading and sentiment indicators suggest Q1 contraction will be as severe as Q4
Mar 4: Senior official of the Bank of Italy said the 1.8% contraction in Q4 [...]

Cash for Trash

By Paul Krugman

Monday, March 23, 2009

Over the weekend newspapers reported leaked details about the Obama administration’s bank rescue plan, which is to be officially released this week.
If the reports are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then [...]