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More noise, more self-respect, more daring News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Wednesday, 3 September, 2008 - 20:07
Wildcat

Firsthand account translated from Wildcat issue 81 (original article at: http://www.wildcat-www.de/wildcat/81/w81_dacia.htm) of the Romanian Renault/Dacia strike earlier this year, which forced wage increases of 30-40% and, in the context of a migration-induced labour shortage, inaugurated a strike wave which has since hit Constanta port and ArcelorMittal. More reports from Romania forthcoming.

More noise, more self-respect, more daring

Strike at the Dacia-Renault plant in Romania: a turning point


The crisis of the global economy News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Wednesday, 13 August, 2008 - 00:56
Vasily Koltashov (Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, Moscow)

An endless series of Experts have recycled their opinions in Credit Crisis Anniversary-Festschriften over the last few weeks, but this one from the Moscow Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (www.igso.ru) actually has a historical perspective stretching beyond the calendar year. Good account of consumer credit gigantism as short-term supplement to 30 years of falling real wages in the 'old' industrial world, and of high commodity prices as effect rather than cause of inflation (i.e. more money 'created' than commodities produced).


Backstage at a Bank Funeral: Feds Swoop In on an Unsuspecting Town OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by ewelke on Wednesday, 16 July, 2008 - 15:43
Damian Paletta


In a time of credit crisis, small to medium bank branches are failing, forcing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to go in and clean up the mess. Coming in stealthily to avoid public panic and sudden withdrawal of all a bank’s funds, which would result in a sinking of the bank and possibly others in the area, the FDIC makes a quick job of taking over the bank.


How should the Middle East invest its oil profits? OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Tuesday, 24 June, 2008 - 20:50
Michael Hudson

Short article from Bahrain weekly 'The Gulf' in which the author of 'Super Imperialism' and 'Global Fracture' makes what is hardly the 'modest proposal' he pretends it is, and perhaps also gives a clue as to what he thought he was doing as 'economic adviser' to Denis Kucinich's presidential run. Hudson proposes that an unspecified bloc of 'Middle Eastern' state-capital should try to settle the dollar-standard blackmail once and for all by offering to buy the US out of the military infrastructure (i.e.


Copyfarleft – a Critique Editorial content | Articles
Submitted by mute on Tuesday, 3 June, 2008 - 18:19
Stefan Meretz

In July last year Mute published Dmytri Kleiner's critique of copyright and its 'radical' copyleft alternative, presenting a reformist programme based on Ricardo's 'iron law of wages'. But Marx demolished this analysis 140 years ago, argues Stefan Meretz. Time for FLOSS to catch up?

 


Hillary joins the vast, rightwing financial conspiracy OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Friday, 18 April, 2008 - 21:31
Michael Hudson

Michael Hudson on the fiscal policy continuity from Reagan's supply side 'voodoo' through (Bill) Clinton-era government by Goldman Sachs bond traders (a tradition continued with Bush's appointment of Paulson) to the present crisis.

Resurrecting Greenspan
Hillary Joins the Vast, Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

By MICHAEL HUDSON


Hanging in the balance (PFI & PwC) OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Tuesday, 15 April, 2008 - 17:56
Private Eye

From Private Eye, the otherwise barely-reported story of the recent Treasury paper underlying the UK government's renewed commitment to more! bigger! better! PFI, which draws on the 'analysis' of PFI fee-farmers PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG etc.

    It has screwed scores of hospital budgets, snarled up the school building process and lumbered taxpayers with billions of pounds of hidden debts, yet the private finance initiative continues to thrive.  Why?


Big cheques in the post OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Thursday, 3 April, 2008 - 18:56
Private Eye (In the Back)

Last year's Royal Mail strikes responsded to an ongoing attack on postal workers' conditions, the origins of which can be traced directly to the competitve, 'harmonized' market being gradually introduced under the EU Postal Directives of 1997 and 2002.  The threatened closure of post offices across the UK also falls within the Directives' market logic.  (It remains to be seen if local post office user campaigns, whose bandwagon now groans under the weight of Ken Livingstone and a posse of embarrassed/embarrassing Labour MPs, will manage to organize in solidarity w


Death data drive new market OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Tuesday, 25 March, 2008 - 03:20
Sophia Grene (FT Fund Management)

Courtesy of the Financial Times, the latest news on the financial sector's most self-allegorizing activity: death hedging.  Or more prosaically, the develpment of 'longevity derivatives' and associated indices, through which fund managers can hedge against the risk that people (not to speak of broker-dealers) might not die soon enough.  In this update, Deutsche Börse has introduced live (so to speak) data feeds from undertakers to find out the age of the bodies they bury.

Death data drive new market


Cityphilia OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by saladofpearls on Wednesday, 16 January, 2008 - 17:08
John Lanchester

This starts off as sounding like a Bobo anti-gentrification rant - 'what! you mean Clapham is suffering from rising prices! The poor middle classes can't afford to dine out anymore!


The fight for equal pay for women: Britain's 'Guardian' defends union's dirty deals OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Wednesday, 9 January, 2008 - 19:23
Chris Marsden

From World Socialist Web Site (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/guar-j09.shtml), a telling example of what 'the real world' means when invoked by government, unions and sympathetic media.  The story of a group of women care-workers employed by Cleveland and Redcar council who were forced to turn to 'no win no fee' lawyers after to obtain back-pay withheld through a council-Unison stitch-up.  Guess whose side the 'Guardian' was on...


Building worker newsletter - autumn 2007 Editorial content | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Tuesday, 27 November, 2007 - 22:44
Building workers rank & file committee

Bulletin from the Building Workers Rank & File Committee on organization beyond union opportunism in an Olympically-inflated sector where 'precarity' has a literal life-and-death meaning, and employer attempts to divide and stratify labour in relation to immigration status and other questions of 'legality' (eg 'fake self-employment') is endemic.  (Also reproduced on Libcom.org and Indymedia.co.uk)


Excerpt on the invasion OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Thursday, 16 August, 2007 - 02:32
Angela Mitropoulos

This extract from an unfinished text by Angela Mitropoulos, posted on archive : s0metim3s (http://archive.blogsome.com/2007/08/07/indigenous-land/#comments), gives part of the historical background (which some European readers may have overlooked) to the current military-medical invasion of Aboriginal land in Australia's Northern Territory.  Most importantly, the text explains the concrete connection between intervention in the name of 'health' and 'ed


The Chinese Road OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by unterschreber on Wednesday, 15 August, 2007 - 20:54
Richard Walker & Daniel Buck

From New Left Review (http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2678) some solid statistical evidence -- particularly strong on intersections of national, municipal, private and foreign capital -- for a point that might have seemed to border on truism but apparently is not gasped in mainstream 'China studies: the expansion of Chinese industrial capitalism in the last 20 years can is broadly comparable to the same process in Europe and America in the 19th century, and speculation over notions like 'the paradoxes of market socialism' is useless.  (Anyone who doubted this s


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