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Showing posts with the label financial crisis

January 21, 2010: The day corporate dictatorship destroyed the last remnants of US Democracy

globinfo freexchange     As we described many times in this blog, corporate power grew rapidly since the early 70s with the rise of neoliberalism and its subsequent establishment as the dominant culture, especially in the West.  In the motherland of neoliberalism, the United States, corporations essentially legalized corruption in politics during the 70s in order to capture the entire political system and put it under their complete control. As David Harvey describes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism :                          The supposedly ‘progressive’ campaign finance laws of 1971 in effect legalized the financial corruption of politics. A crucial set of Supreme Court decisions began in 1976 when it was first established that the right of a corporation to make unlimited money contributions to political parties and political action committees was protected under the First Amendment guaranteeing the rights of individuals (in this instance corporations) to freedom of speec

August 12, 2020: The day capitalism officially died and replaced by something even worse

globinfo freexchange   It was the 12th of August, 2020. Nine o'clock in the morning, in London, the news came out that the national income of Britain (GDP) had fallen by more than 20% . That had never happened before in the history of capitalism - British GDP falling by 21% or so in one year. It was not anticipated. The markets were expecting a fall of 8,9,10%. No one was expecting a 21% fall. Fifteen or sixteen minutes later, the London stock exchange went up by 3% . There can be no explanation of that along the lines of capitalism.     This is how the Greek economist, Yanis Varoufakis, described essentially the official death of capitalism and its replacement by something even worse. The thing he calls "technofeudalism". While Varoufakis in various discussions struggles to explain why capitalism is already dead, it's rather funny that people still willing to debate on something that's already dead (capitalism) against something that's far from being practi