The pension scandal behind the corporate burqa: the milkman is everyman

Brian Landers 28 October 2010
A lucid demonstration of how the corporate and financial system robs people of their pensions using one revealing and appalling example that gets no coverage in the UK media.

Violent lessons

Emilia Chodorowska 17 October 2010
What’s holding young people back? The widening gap: violence, language difficulties and lack of resources in inner city London schools.

Why China's exchange rate is a red herring

Avinash D Persaud 13 October 2010
Martin Coyne/Demotix. All rights reserved The US obsession with the Chinese exchange rate is a classic example of blaming foreigners for domestic woes. And we’ve been here before. In the 1980s, the US government – reacting to political pressure from ailing US manufacturers – engineered a massive yen appreciation. That did as little to save US manufacturing jobs then as a rise in the yuan would do today. (First published 10 April 2010)
Photo: Martin Coyne/Demotix. All rights reserved

Currency wars: China buying time

Tony Curzon Price and Charles Diamond 13 October 2010
China is being pressed to revalue the yuan; Thailand has imposed limits on money flows into Thailand; Brazil is appealing for an end to competitive devaluations ... the currency war between China and the USA will have disturbing political repercussions. (Audio conversation, 45 mins)

A soundbite for the poor

Ivan Briscoe 12 October 2010
How should civil society convey the countless loopholes, miseries and quiet victories of development in this digital era of time-compressed argument and ideological insinuation?

Double trouble again

Peter Johnson 30 September 2010
Many economics commentators continue to prescribe policy based on accounting necessity. We should stop worrying about the bookkeeping and get to grips with the real value of different parts of our economy.

The real Greek economy: owners, rentiers and opportunists

Aristos Doxiadis 23 September 2010

Rebuilding the Greek economy will require creative interaction with the underlying realities of Greek society: the family, the small business, the habits of rentocracy and of low-trust opportunism. (This article was first published in Greek in the Athens Review of Books, June 2010)

We let it slip... Mervyn King at the TUC

Mervyn King 22 September 2010
Mervyn King, independent public servant, explains and apologises in public. The governor of the Bank of England's address to the UK's Trades Union Congress. Manchester, Wednesday 15 September 2010

Always waste a good crisis: reflections on King's call to the Trade Union Congress

Tony Curzon Price 22 September 2010
The UK's coalition government should come clean: the cuts are about much more than deficit reduction. The project to reform the state is an important one that cannot be built on the pretense of "There is no alternative"

The Mate Market

Peter Johnson 8 September 2010
Every online dating candidate is visible, in unsparing detail, to every other. The chances of finding the right person now look very high, and the risks of making a mistake vanishingly low. Where once we might have met some hundreds of potential partners during our life, now we can meet millions. Satisfaction guaranteed?

Knotty independence: who guards the BBC

Tony Curzon Price 3 September 2010
The Director General of the BBC was photographed coming out of Downing Street with notes about how the national broadcaster will cover the government's unpopular spending cuts. To understand the BBC's reaction, you need to think of it as a business

World Bank crisis-lending contravenes Eurodad responsible lending principles

Nora Honkaniemi and Clare Birkett 31 August 2010
Despite commitments by the World Bank to significantly reduce conditions attached to its loans, research from Eurodad reveals that a massive 57 conditions were attached to three loans given to Ghana in 2009. 12 out of the 57 conditions were stipulated in a side document, and not made explicit in loan agreements themselves, contravening responsible financing principles.

These economic policy conditions restrict the right of Ghana - a country with good democratic credentials - to decide for itself how to recover from the global crisis and boost sustainable investment. The reforms that the World Bank imposes may hinder not help Ghana's development and democratic institutions.

Chirac's Saudi scandal

Richard W. Rahn 25 August 2010
Inflated commissions from arms sales to Saudi Arabia probably made their way into personal and party coffers. If the allegations are proved, the USA has some power – including pursuing parties through its courts – to punish

How billionaires can help the world

Lorenzo Fioramonti 23 August 2010
The Giving Pledge promoted by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett is a huge commitment of funds by the super-rich to philanthropic ends. At its core is a view that business, however conducted, is just a means to an end, the source of money to be distributed to good causes by wealthy elites. Business leaders would do well to apply their zeal and skills to reforming the objectives and operations of their vast engines of wealth.

CDC Group: a Case Study in Blinkered Development

Nic Benton 19 August 2010
CDC has made a long journey from supporting rural development in British colonial territories to pursuing high returns, often channelled through tax havens. The author argues that CDC has lost sight of wider development goals and needs to reset its ethical and investment standards.

Euro: Writing on the wall?

Our debate about the euro and the euro zone crisis.

More

Un€conomic$

More

Syndicate content