Economics

By Alex Howlett In cities like New York, San Francisco, and Boston, housing prices and rents are high and rising. The usual prescription for bringing down housing prices is to build more housing. On the face of it, this makes…

By Jonathan Power In her famous decree in 1767 Empress Catherine the Great proclaimed Russia to be a European power. She wanted Russia to be a major player in European politics. She compelled the Europeans to accept Russia as a…

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flower “We oppose the extraterritorial application of unilateral measures.“ That is not Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Russia, or China talking about the most recent unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States against Venezuela, i.e.…

“This Sunday the primary elections have just taken place in Argentina, which although they only defined the candidates of each force for next October’s elections, had a relevant importance to evaluate the advance of the opposition to Macri’s government; and…

In the previous article, “The vicious circle of wealth concentration“, we described the mechanisms of accumulation through which economic power not only accelerates its appropriation of income, but also, because of its dominant position, remains unscathed from traditional methods of…

Transnational state capital can be just as harmful as its private counterparts. We need local, democratic and sustainable alternatives. Milan Babic for OpenDemocracy This article is part of ourEconomy’s ‘Decolonising the economy’ series. In a 2001 essay, Naomi Klein passionately called…

The soil of Latin America stores enormous quantities of valuable mineral raw materials, necessary for the countries of the continent and for the world economy. The countries of South America have large tracts of land and forests. Some border seas…

An economic system that serves everyone and the planet is necessary for our survival. Here are some guiding principles. By David Korten for openDemocracy We’re running out of time. There’s spreading awareness of the institutional failure that is driving humans…

When I was a young man, I spent six years of wild adventure in the tropics working as an investigative journalist in some of the most bewitching parts of the world. I was as reckless and foolish as only young men can be. This is…

The ultra-rich are benefitting from disaster capitalism as institutions, rules and democratic oversight implode. By George Monbiot for The Guardian Seven years ago the impressionist Rory Bremner complained that politicians had become so boring that few of them were worth…