Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
It may feel like capitalism isn’t working because western wages should be higher. But really it has an vice-like grip
An avalanche of recent books and articles about the “crisis of capitalism” is predicting its demise or dépassement. For those who remember the 1990s, there is a strange similarity between this and the literature of the time, which argued that the Hegelian “end of history” had arrived. That theory was proved to be wrong. The former, I believe, is also factually wrong and misdiagnoses the problem.
The facts show capitalism to be not in crisis at all. It is stronger than ever, both in terms of its geographical coverage and expansion to areas (such as leisure time, or social media) where it has created entirely new markets and commodified things that were never historically objects of transaction.
The territory’s recession is getting deeper and the US is threatening its special trading status, bringing serious consequences for Beijing
Almost six months after the protest movement that has upended life in Hong Kong began, the region is now facing serious questions about its future as Asia’s leading international business centre.
The most recent violence in the autonomous Chinese region have been the worst disturbances of the six-month long pro-democracy protests. US lawmakers have passed legislation threatening Hong Kong’s special trading status and the territory has slumped into its worst recession for 10 years.
President of the European Central Bank says US/China tariff war should be seen as an opportunity
Christine Lagarde has called for European governments to boost innovation and growth with higher rates of public investment, in her first major speech as president of the European Central Bank.
Speaking to an audience of bankers in Frankfurt, Lagarde said that rising trade barriers triggered by the US/China tariff war should be grasped by European governments as an opportunity to build a stronger internal market.
Prospect of crashing out of EU leaves UK more exposed to global financial risks, thinktank says
The UK’s GDP growth rate will slip to 1% next year even if a no-deal Brexit is avoided, according to the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation.
The OECD said the economy would slow down from growth of 1.2% this year if parliament passes Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal before the 31 January deadline, before returning to 1.2% in 2021.
The country’s traditional powerhouses on the centre-left and the centre-right face a moment of reckoning
Postwar German politics has a reputation for being moderate, consensual and a touch on the dull side. But there have been moments of high drama. In November 1959, for example, the Social Democratic party (SPD) abandoned its historic ambition to replace capitalism with socialism, dropped the Marxist account of class struggle and began to pitch itself as a broad-based Volkspartei (people’s party). History vindicated the decision. For the next 50 years or so, the SPD vied for power with the country’s other great political force, the CDU (and its CSU Bavarian ally), as both parties regularly achieved a vote share of over 40%.
Famed for their practice of big-tent politics, what the CDU and SPD would give for such numbers now. The agonies of Brexit and the rise of rightwing populism have claimed the political limelight around Europe. But those looking for clues to the continent’s future would do well to watch Germany closely over the coming weeks.
Like the big banks, big tech uses its lobbying muscle to avoid regulation, and thinks it should play by different rules. And like the banks, it could be about to wreak financial havoc on us all. By Rana Foroohar
‘In every major economic downturn in US history, the ‘villains’ have been the ‘heroes’ during the preceding boom,” said the late, great management guru Peter Drucker. I cannot help but wonder if that might be the case over the next few years, as the United States (and possibly the world) heads toward its next big slowdown. Downturns historically come about once every decade, and it has been more than that since the 2008 financial crisis. Back then, banks were the “too-big-to-fail” institutions responsible for our falling stock portfolios, home prices and salaries. Technology companies, by contrast, have led the market upswing over the past decade. But this time around, it is the big tech firms that could play the spoiler role.
You wouldn’t think it could be so when you look at the biggest and richest tech firms today. Take Apple. Warren Buffett says he wished he owned even more Apple stock. (His Berkshire Hathaway has a 5% stake in the company.) Goldman Sachs is launching a new credit card with the tech titan, which became the world’s first $1tn market-cap company in 2018. But hidden within these bullish headlines are a number of disturbing economic trends, of which Apple is already an exemplar. Study this one company and you begin to understand how big tech companies – the new too-big-to-fail institutions – could indeed sow the seeds of the next crisis.
Returning infrastructure investment to 1970s levels may be undeliverable, says IFS
Labour and the Conservatives have triggered a public spending bidding war, promising massive programmes of borrowing that will return public investment to levels last seen in the 1970s, according to Britain’s leading experts on the public finances.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said plans unveiled by Sajid Javid, the chancellor, and John McDonnell, his Labour shadow, would represent a decisive break with the past, but warned that a future government might have trouble delivering projects on the scale envisaged.
Mitsotakis government seeks foreign capital from new residents in prosperity drive
Not so long ago the idea of Greece announcing tax relief measures to entice the global rich would have been regarded as a joke. With the EU’s weakest economy, and a leftist government in power, the world’s wealthy were keen to keep their distance.
But in a marked departure of policy, the centre-right administration led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis has offered an array of incentives to attract the rich.
Forced labour in China’s internment camps taints the supply chains of many western companies. We need to take action
Any western company doing business in Xinjiang should consider their supply chains tainted by forced labour drawn from internment camps. Hardly a drop in the ocean of the vast global economy, this involves companies such as Ikea, H&M, Volkswagen and Siemens.
This month, the United States banned the import of products made by a firm in Xinjiang over its use of forced labour. It also blacklisted 28 Chinese entities for their role in the repression of Uighurs and issued visa restrictions on key Chinese officials. Following suit, two major Australian companies have now also announced they are ending partnership with their cotton supplier in Xinjiang.
Credit Suisse survey shows Brexit effect has reduced number of UK millionaires by 27,000
The number of wealthy Chinese people has overtaken the number of rich Americans for the first time, according to a report by Credit Suisse.
The bank’s annual wealth survey found there were 100 million Chinese people among the world’s top 10% of richest people, compared with 99 million in the US.
The world is sleepwalking towards a fresh economic and financial crisis that will have devastating consequences for the democratic market system, according to the former Bank of England governor Mervyn King.
Lord King, who was in charge at Threadneedle Street during the near-death of the global banking system and deep economic slump a decade ago, said the resistance to new thinking meant a repeat of the chaos of the 2008-09 period was looming.
Jubilee Debt Campaign says the Fund broke its own rules by not ensuring sustainable debt burden
Debt campaigners have accused the International Monetary Fund of encouraging reckless lending by extending $93bn (£75bn) of loans to 18 financially troubled countries without a debt restructuring programme first.
In advance of the IMF’s annual meeting in Washington next week, the Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) said the the Fund was breaking its own rules by providing financial support without ensuring that the debt burden was sustainable.
The only tool he has to placate US consumers is successive interest rate cuts – but the whole world is playing at that game
Donald Trump’s cunning plan to make America great again by launching a trade war with China has officially backfired. Last week, a keenly watched measure of US manufacturing showed firms cutting back on production and jobs at a rate not seen since 2009. Recession warning lights are flashing and the outlook seems a world away from the cheery one presented by the president when he entered the White House in 2017.
It is quite something for a president to impose a trade policy that weighs heavily on parts of a crucial sector for the US economy – and it’s a bizarre tactic given that the votes of manufacturing workers delivered him his first term in office.
The Guardian’s just published a leader on Labour’s universal credit policy, concluding that the “plan makes sense”.
The shocking failings of universal credit are justly blamed on the government having listened to the wrong people when setting it up. The sensible reforms set out by Labour show that the opposition has been listening to the right ones. Never mind that the package of changes announced by Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday was misleadingly described as a plan to “scrap” universal credit. His party’s proposals to end the five-week wait for initial payments, scrap the benefit cap and two-child limit (and heinous “rape clause”) are sound. So are promises to review the sanctions system, ditch the “digital only” approach and hire 5,000 new advisers to help those who struggle with online applications.
The army’s zero-tolerance drugs policy has been scrapped less than a year after it was introduced, the defence secretary has confirmed.
Speaking at a ConservativeHome fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Ben Wallace told Tory members he had changed the policy because it should be for commanding officers, and not the government, to decide to strip an individual of their job.
I changed it. I took the view that some people are young and irresponsible and it should be up to their commanding officers to decide, whether it’s a young lad or girl who’s made a mistake, whether they should be allowed to remain in the armed forces or not.
And people who have left and want to rejoin, the same should apply to them as well. I think, you know, that doesn’t mean to say you should be able to do drugs in the armed forces.
It should be up to commanding officers to understand their workforce, to understand whether that individual is the problem, or if there’s a medical problem and they think they need help, or whether indeed it was a mistake.
Central bank approves quarter-point interest rate reduction
Trump tweets: ‘Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve fail again!’
Under pressure from Wall Street and the White House, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates on Wednesday for a second straight meeting, but declined to signal if it would continue to drop rates in the future.
Mario Draghi says bank will reboot quantitative easing in month Lagarde succeeds him
The European Central Bank has announced a fresh stimulus package in an attempt to prevent the fragile eurozone economy from grinding to a halt, with an interest rate cut and plans to pump €20bn (£19bn) a month into the financial markets.
In one of his final acts in his ECB presidency, before Christine Lagarde takes charge in November, Mario Draghi said governments across the eurozone needed to take greater steps to reboot growth by ramping up public spending or cutting taxes.
Trump has taken the stage at the National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Conference and appears to (so far) be sticking to the teleprompter.
He has touted the importance of HBCUs and celebrated his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, as a champion for the institutions.
Trump is expected to soon start speaking at the National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Conference. The president was scheduled to take the podium at 2:15 p.m. E.T. but is apparently running behind.
French economist’s Capital and Ideology expands on themes in Capital in the 21st Century, which sold 2m copies
Six years after being catapulted to fame with a blockbuster about the concentration of wealth, the French economist Thomas Piketty has returned with an epic new book on capitalism.
Abiding by the rule that every bestseller demands a follow-up, Capital and Ideology expands on the themes sketched out in Capital in the 21st Century, which sold 2m copies worldwide after its publication in 2013.
Prices are at record levels and demand is growing for fishermen north of the border after China imposed tariffs on live lobsters
Long hours, rolling ocean swells, and the occasional spring snowstorm are all part of the job for Francis Morrissey.
“It’s bred into you from the time you’re a child: you either like the ocean or you don’t,” said the fisherman and business owner from the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. “Even when I’m in the office, I wish I was out there.”
Eurozone growth came in unchanged on its third estimate: 0.2% growth in the second quarter of the year.
A minor beat on the headline year-on-year growth rate, remaining at 1.2% against 1.1% expectations, but otherwise no shocks.
Labour has confirmed that it will not vote for an election on Monday even if a bill intended to stop a no-deal Brexit passes before then.
If we vote to have a general election, then no matter what it is that Boris Johnson promises, it is up to him to advise the Queen when the general election should be. And given that he has shown himself to be a manifest liar, and someone who has said that he will die in a ditch rather than stop no deal, and indeed his adviser, [Dominic] Cummings, has been swearing and shouting at MPs saying they are leaving on 31 [October] no matter what, our first priority has to be that we must stop no deal and we must make sure that that is going to happen.