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What is very curious in the present state of affairs is that, unfortunately, no other country other than China retains those rights. No other major partner (of the G20) has fully retained those rights, although some of the emerging countries such as India and Brazil have done something to that effect. Instead, they have generally accepted the dictates of the US.

It is important to understand that this is the central problem. The problem is the global integrated monetary and financial system, ruled as it is by the dollar, that is ruled by the exclusive prerogative of the US Treasury and Federal Reserve, of the US state. This is not acceptable. That is the problem. The problem is not the exchange rate of the Yuan or that of the Rupee or any other currency. Absolutely not.

First, for those who assume that the system is not so bad, and who accept that the US dollar should continue to be effectively the major, if not absolutely the exclusive international currency, the idea would be to restore the system as it was before the 2008 financial breakdown along with, perhaps, some minor regulatory reforms (most of which are essentially more cosmetic and rhetorical than real). This is exactly what the Stieglitz Commission and the Stieglitz report aim at. It accepts that the US dollar should remain the almost exclusive international currency (with some minor concessions). But it also accepts the right of the US government to manage the currency exclusively and on its own. As for everyone else, they have to adjust to the US dictates. This is, of course, not acceptable, especially for the South. If the Europeans, the British, the Japanese accept it that is their business. But I don't see why the Asians, the Latin Americans, the Africans should accept it. And it is not accepted, certainly not by China and some of the emerging states - India and Brazil in particular. Although it is not accepted morally by African states, in practice they have completely accepted to submit to its consequences - they have done nothing to respond to the challenge. So, that is the Stieglitz style solution. And it has completely failed. Nobody pays attention to the Stieglitz report, which has been dropped in the waste-basket, and nobody really cares about it. It has not convinced the partners, especially from the South. Even the North does not give any consideration to the recommendations of Stieglitz.

The HKMD reads: "We agree to ensure the parallel elimination of all forms of export subsidies and disciplines on all export measures with equivalent effect to be completed by the end of 2013. This will be achieved in a progressive and parallel manner, to be specified in the modalities, so that a substantial part is realized by the end of the first half of the implementation period. We note emerging convergence on some elements of disciplines with respect to export credits, export credit guarantees or insurance programmes with repayment periods of 180 days and below. We agree that such programmes should be self-financing, reflecting market consistency, and that the period should be of a sufficiently short duration so as not to effectively circumvent real commercially- oriented discipline."

In sharp contrast to the joint proposal, the US maintained that the deadline for phasing out export subsidies must remain the same for both industrialized and developing countries. Under Article 9.4 of the Agreement on Agriculture, the developing countries are provided a longer duration as part of special and differential treatment flexibility. But the US wants to deny that flexibility and by suggesting the same time period for everyone, the US is disregarding the existing WTO provisions and the ministerial mandates, developing country agriculture negotiators maintained.

In a nutshell, the developed countries have resorted to an unprecedented form of cherry-picking to suit their interests by altering the existing ministerial decisions and mandates underpinning the four elements in the export competition pillar. But the same developed countries along with some developing country allies have launched a war-like effort to deny minimal credible developmental outcomes such as the permanent solution for public stockholding programs for food security and the special safeguard mechanism for developing countries, trade envoys argued.

Mexico owed over $50 billion, 90% to foreign private creditors - primarily US, Japanese and British banks. These banks had gone on a lending binge during the 1970s using the profits oil exporting countries had deposited with them from the oil spike. American overspending, notably on the Vietnam War, was recycled as debt to the rest of the world and, to help this, controls on international movements of money were dismantled.

Four of the fifteen largest lenders to Latin America by 1982 were British banks: Lloyds, Midland, Barclays, and Natwest. American lenders included Citicorp, Bank of America, and Chase Manhattan.

At the end of the 1970s the US Federal Reserve sprung the trap, massively hiking interest rates in order to save their banks from inflation. The costs for this move were pushed onto Third World countries like Mexico. Two years later, the inevitable happened.

“Apparently, the TPP’s proponents resorted to such extreme secrecy during negotiations because the text shows that the TPP would offshore more American jobs, lower our wages, flood us with unsafe imported food and expose our laws to attack in foreign tribunals,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “When the administration says it used the TPP to renegotiate NAFTA, few expected that meant doubling down on the worst job-killing, wage-suppressing NAFTA terms, expanding limits on food safety and rolling back past reforms on environmental standards and access to affordable drugs.”

“Many in Congress said they would support the TPP only if, at a minimum, it included past reforms made to trade pact intellectual property rules affecting access to affordable medicines. But the TPP rolls back that past progress by requiring new marketing exclusivities and patent term extensions, and provides pharmaceutical firms with new monopoly rights for biotech drugs, including many new and forthcoming cancer treatments,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. “The terms in this final TPP text will contribute to preventable suffering and death abroad, and may constrain the reforms that Congress can consider to reduce Americans’ medicine prices at home.”

The TPP Intellectual Property Chapter would roll back the “May 2007” reforms for access to medicines. The TPP Environment Chapter would roll back the “May 2007” reforms by eliminating most of the seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements that past pacts have enforced. The TPP Investment Chapter would expand the scope of policies that can be challenged and the basis for such challenges, including for the first time ever allowing investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) enforcement of World Trade Organization intellectual property terms and new challenges to financial regulations.

In the era of the Enlightenment, during the lifetimes of Francis Bacon, Descartes or even Hegel, in no place of Earth the standard of living was more than twice as high as in its poorest region. Today, the richest country, Qatar, boasts an income per head 428 times higher than the poorest, Zimbabwe. And these are, let’s never forget, comparisons between averages – and so akin to the facetious recipe for the hare-and-horsemeat paté: take one hare and one horse…

As the authors of the quoted article warn, the prime victim of deepening inequality will be democracy – as increasingly scarce, rare and inaccessible paraphernalia of survival and acceptable life become the object of a cut-throat rivalry (and perhaps wars) between the provided-for and the left-unaided needy.

And he adds: “Growing income inequality, though obviously undesirable from a social perspective, doesn’t necessarily matter if everyone is getting richer together. But when most of the rewards of economic progress are going to a comparatively small number of already high income earners, which is what’s been happening in practice, there’s plainly going to be a problem.” [ii]

But Piketty advances such an argument without breaking completely with the architecture of neoclassical economics. His theory thus suffers from the same kind of internal incoherence and incompleteness as that of Keynes, whose break with neoclassical economics was also partial. Deeply concerned with issues of inequality, just as Keynes was with unemployment, Piketty demonstrates the empirical inapplicability over the course of capitalist development of the main conclusions of neoclassical marginal productivity theory. His work has thus served to highlight the near-complete unraveling of orthodox economics—even while staying analytically within the fold.28

This overall incoherence, as we shall see, ultimately overwhelms Piketty’s argument. He is unable to explain why capitalist economies tend to grow so slowly as to generate such a divergence between wealth and income (and between capital and labor). Hence, while his analysis sees slow growth or relative stagnation as endemic to this system, he neither explains this nor is concerned directly with it. Significantly, he replaces more traditional notions of capital as a social and physical phenomenon with one that equates it with all wealth.29

Nor does he address the relations of power—principally class power—that lie behind the inequality that he delineates. His analysis is confined largely to distribution rather than production. He neither follows nor (by his own admission) understands Marx, though at times clearly draws inspiration from him.31

This event raises several political questions for progressives: what type of ‘bank’ do the BRICS leaders propose; why is it needed; are these the appropriate leaders to organise and control the new institution; and is it something progressives should view favourably?

An international ‘development’ bank is a non-profit, cross-country, public sector institution that makes loans to governments for long-term projects, either directly productive ones (e.g., a hydro-electric dam) or supportive of productive activities (e.g., roads and highways).  A development bank's sine qua non lies in offering loans at more favourable terms than private banks.

For example, in place of a requirement that US$ 200 million to Zambia be used to build a hydro-electric damn, conditions would require the government to privatize public enterprises, savagely cut government employment, and drastically slash public spending.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators — whom the world press refer to as los indignados — gathered in the square of Puerta del Sol in Madrid on 15 May 2011, protesting against the banks’ stranglehold on the economy and a democracy they felt no longer represented them. They outlawed flags, insignia and speeches on behalf of organisations and parties, and soon had a slogan: “United, the people do not need parties.”

Podemos’s creation stemmed from the realisation that “15-M [15 May] was locked in a social movement-based conception of politics,” said sociologist Jorge Lago, a member of Podemos’s citizens’ council, part of its wider leadership structure. “The idea that a progressive build-up of strength among the demonstrators would inevitably produce political results proved to be false.” Associations to fight tenant evictions and resistance networks against health sector cuts were established, but the movement ran out of steam and fell apart.

But what should happen when a government that social movements regard as over-timid comes under fire from conservatives? Should they play into their enemy’s hands by joining the criticism, or keep silent, betraying their cause? There is no easy answer to this.

Whole sections of the 'west' are in recession or near zero growth. This was not caused by some kind of mass activity by working people. It wasn't caused by governments in one or several countries spending too much. What has caused the recession in the first instance is that the financial sector ran up huge debts, far, far in excess of public debts and deficits, as it went in for some wild speculative behaviour - a good deal of which involved them selling debts to each other!

So, the speculative bubble which burst in 2010, was in essence an attempt by financial capitalists to find more and more profitable opportunities. In the anarchic lunacy which is called 'good business', more and more of them borrowed money to buy debts which they thought would be profitable for them.

What has happened this time round in the boom bust cycle is that the capitalists have a huge great brake on the system: their own debts. However, as you know, the big lie - no The Big Lie - that has been put about for the last two years is that the big brake is government debts, ie the money and the interest payments that are paid out for our benefit on education, health, welfare - and, though I don't agree with it - defence, because theoretically it's there to defend us. 

It’s not simply that Trump has effectively channeled their pain and anger through his rhetoric. The harsh truth is that Trump gets traction on trade—and his glaring defects get a pass from many—because he’s filling a huge vacuum in the country’s political discourse. For years, neither of the two main political parties has articulated a vision of international trade that puts workers, communities, and our environment ahead of corporate interests.

Only last month, the Obama administration, backed by corporate interests, successfully blocked the Indian government’s massive solar energy program by persuading the WTO that India’s promotion of domestic solar panel manufacturing violated WTO rules.

Clinton’s positions remind us that we have to resist the temptation to distill the trade struggle into a contest between candidates. Instead, we must build a movement for trade justice that rejects both Trump’s opportunism and the long-standing neoliberalism of the Democratic and Republican parties.

While the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and others adhere to a rigid “neoliberal” ideology that favors deregulation, privatization, and the interests of the global North and the private sector over the poor, UNCTAD has a rich history of favoring people-centered development, promoting interests of the global South, and being a voice of the poor majority in international forums.

It is despicable that in a conference focused on trade and development, rich countries successfully prevented UNCTAD from calling for changes to the WTO, to allow more flexibility for development in poor countries. They even successfully blocked a call for a resolution to trade-distorting subsidies in agriculture that damage developing countries every day.

The EU and US even opposed inclusion of “Special and Differential Treatment” — the simple historical recognition of the fact that rich and poor countries have different economic capacities and need different rules to promote prosperity — although this was finally included.

In fact, in a private meeting between U.S. civil society and Robert Gerber, the Deputy Head of the U.S. delegation, he told us that he thought that analyzing “the global economic crisis” itself was outside of UNCTAD’s mandate, which was to focus on trade and development. I’m not sure how to make an argument that these things are not related, but I guess when you’re the United States at the United Nations, you don’t have to have a logical argument.

He also said the language in the text that was most important to the United States was on UNCTAD’s efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability; we’re looking forward to seeing the U.S. push hard for similar issues regarding the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and U.S. aid in Haiti, among other places.

the non-EU bloc of developed countries) was asked directly at one point during the negotiations why he did not want this language included, the representative responded gruffly, “we don’t want any competition in intellectual thinking!”

The style is welcome, 
akin to that of the best interdisciplinary scholarly blogs (like Crooked Timber, where Debt has been the subject of a symposium): clear, intelligent, and free of unexplained specialist jargon.

Partly, his maverick status rests on his politics – he is the anarchist saying things about debt, money, markets, and the state that the powers-that-be would rather not look squarely in the face. But largely his argument is a move in an interdisciplinary struggle: anthropology against economics.

“Can we really use the methods of modern economics, which were designed to understand how contemporary economic institutions operate, to describe the political battles that led to the creation of those very institutions?” Graeber’s answer is negative: not only would economics mislead us, but there are “moral dangers.”

In 2008, Clinton denied responsibility for refusing to regulate derivatives. He changed his mind in 2010, then blaming his advisors, among whom were Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and the Chair of his Council of Economic Advisors, Joe Stiglitz. Larry Summers went on to become President of Harvard University. Joseph Stiglitz went on to be Chief economist of the World Bank and then professor at Columbia University. Summers showed little remorse for his role in the deregulation era. Joe Stiglitz, in contrast, became the best known critic of deregulation.

at what point did Stiglitz, in his role as a senior Clinton policy advisor, become convinced of the severe damage that would result from deregulation? ... As one important example, the general tenor of the 1996 Economic Report of the President, written under Stiglit’s supervision as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, is unmistakably in support of lowering regulatory standards, including in telecommunications and electricity. This Report even singles out for favourable mention the deregulation of the electric power industry in California — that is, the measure that, by the summer of 2002, brought California to the brink of economic disaster, in the wake of still more Enron-guided machinations.”

Professor Stiglitz’s great contribution has been to challenge both these assumptions. As he has shown, asymmetric information is a pervasive feature of how real-world markets operate. The free market is an ideological myth. In the real world, imperfect information makes for imperfect markets.

If its effects are at best debatable and at worst laying the ground for the next round of financial crises, why has there been so much QE? It is because it has been the only weapon that the rich country governments have been willing to deploy in order to generate an economic recovery.

QE has become the weapon of choice by these governments because it is the only way in which recovery – however slow and anaemic – could be generated without changing the economic model that has served the rich and powerful so well in the past three decades.

This model is propelled by a continuous generation of asset bubbles, fuelled by complex and opaque financial instruments created by highly leveraged banks and other financial institutions. It is a system in which short-term financial profits take precedence over long-term investments in productive capabilities, and over the quality of life of employees. If the rich countries had tried to generate recovery through any other means than QE, they would have to seriously challenge this model.

There is one criticism of austerity politics that is both true and, simultaneously, flatly false: that it is ideological. This claim is ambiguous and needs to be unpacked.

Yet Labour’s cuts, though slower and a little less deep, would in any other circumstances be considered a scandal. During George Osborne’s emergency budget in 2010, the chancellor was able to remark that he had inherited from Labour plans for cuts averaging 19 per cent across all departments. (Osborne had ‘merely’ increased the planned cuts to an average of 25 per cent across all departments). This was why canny Labour right-wingers had urged colleagues to calm down the anti-cuts talk, knowing that a Labour government would implement similar policies.

But those dismissing austerity as ideological mean precisely that there is a purely technical, non-ideological means of crisis-resolution. In this sense, the criticism of austerity as ideological is obviously in bad faith. It simply says, ‘their cuts are stupid, ours are going to be super-clever’.

Two months after the February 28 interim agreement between Greece and the EU ‘troika’—the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank—in which both sides agreed to continue negotiating—little has changed. In fact, led by its de facto spokesperson, hardline German finance minister, Walter Schaubel, the Troika’s position has continued to harden since February 28.

These measures are particularly annoying to the northern Europe finance ministers and their bankers, since other European governments have introduced, or have plans to introduce, many of the very same ‘labor market reforms’ in their countries. Deepening labor market reforms everywhere throughout the Eurozone is a prime objective of business interests and their center-right politicians and governments.

It has been estimated that more than US$250 billion in assets would be eventually affected by a default, and no one knows the connections linking these assets—i.e. what are the possible contagion effects. The memory of the Lehman Brothers default in 2008 is obviously stronger in the USA than it is today in Europe—hence the Furman public warning. Privately, US officials are even more concerned than Furman, according to the business press.

If the IMF leadership praised the dictatorship, insisted on austerity and advocated squeezing poor people for more taxes, what business does it have today in giving similar advice to Tunisia, or anywhere in the Middle East and North Africa, or for that matter Europe or anywhere at all? What can we learn about IMF thinking in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, as well as Palestine?

In contrast, there was no IMF conditionality aimed at reforming the dictatorship and halting widespread corruption by Ben Ali and his wife's notorious Trabelsi family, or lessening the two families' extreme level of business concentration, or ending the regime's reliance upon murderous security forces to defend Tunisian crony capitalism, or lowering the hedonism for which Ben Ali had become famous.

In addition to expanding Public Private Partnerships (PPPs, a euphemism for services privatization and outsourcing), the IMF named its priorities: "adopting as early as possible a full-fledged VAT, complementing energy subsidy reform with better-targeted transfers to the most needy, and containing the fiscal cost of the pension and health reforms."