Focus on the Global South - India Programme

Trade and Finance

Ecuador advances the fight against illegitimate debt

Wednesday, 25 February 2009 05:17 Sonila Swaminathan

Beverly Keene, Jubilee South
Buenos Aires, November 22, 2008

"We will seek to punish the guilty and not to pay the illegitimate debt," declared President Rafael Correa upon receiving the Report of the Ecuadoran Debt Audit Commission on November 20, before a packed Quito auditorium of ministers, parliamentarians, local authorities, diplomats, international guests and representatives of the country’s numerous social, political, cultural, and religious movements and organizations. Jubilee South was a privileged witness to this historic moment.

Free Trade Agreements contribute to financial and other crises

Wednesday, 25 February 2009 05:04 Sonila Swaminathan

“FREE TRADE” AGREEMENTS CONTRIBUTE TO FINANCIAL AND OTHER CRISES
February 2009

Myriam Vander Stichele
Our World is not for Sale Network

While the financial crisis and its consequences are spreading around the world and even the most erstwhile ‘free market’ governments are discussing how to re-regulate the financial sector, ‘free trade’ agreements continue extreme deregulation of the financial industry. The terms of these agreements prohibit countries from reforming their financial sector so as to remedy the financial, economic, environmental, food and social crises now growing, and from ensuring that finance is directed towards the transformation to sustainable societies.

People Over Profits, Society Over The Market

Wednesday, 25 February 2009 04:55 Sonila Swaminathan

: The Balay Kalinaw People’s Agenda to Respond to the Economic Crisis

Friday, 30 January 2009 08:18
Prompted by the worst economic meltdown in our generation, we come together to collectively discuss the implications of the current crisis in the Philippines.

Our analysis begins with a consensus that the multiple crises we experience today – characterized by persistent underdevelopment and stagnation, massive unemployment, food insecurity, strife and conflict, widespread poverty and hunger, ecological destruction – result from a development thrust that promotes profits over people.

THE COMING CAPITALIST CONSENSUS

Monday, 09 February 2009 03:08 Sonila Swaminathan

By Walden Bello*
Published on Wednesday, December 24, 2008 by Foreign Policy in Focus

Not surprisingly, the swift unravelling of the global economy combined with the ascent to the U.S. presidency of an African-American liberal has left millions anticipating that the world is on the threshold of a new era. Some of President-elect Barack Obama’s new appointees – in particular ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to lead the National Economic Council, New York Federal Reserve Board chief Tim Geithner to head Treasury, and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk to serve as trade representative – have certainly elicited some skepticism. But the sense that the old neoliberal formulas are thoroughly discredited have convinced many that the new Democratic leadership in the world’s biggest economy will break with the market fundamentalist policies that have reigned since the early 1980s.

'Govts Must Inject Demand Into The Economy Directly'

Thursday, 04 December 2008 02:53 Sonila Swaminathan

The new paradigm must entail a foodgrain-led growth strategy (on the basis of peasant agriculture), sustained through larger government spending towards this end, which simultaneously rids the world of both depression and financial and food crises.

PRABHAT PATNAIK'S PRESENTATION AT THE UN

'Govts Must Inject Demand Into The Economy Directly'

Below we give the text of the presentation made by Professor Prabhat Patnaik at the United Nations on October 30, 2008 as a member of the UN Task Force on the present global financial crisis. (Sub-headings have been added - Ed)