I have just attended the 10th annual Historical Materialism conference in London where I presented a paper (among hundreds of others) and heard the contributions of many others.  But more on that in my next post. ...

Germany, US and UK among the biggest tax heavens in the world. UK: New index reveals UK runs biggest part of global secrecy network This new edition of the Financial Secrecy Index shows that the United Kingdom is the most important global player in the financial secrecy world. While the UK itself ranks only in 21st place, it supports and partly controls a web of secrecy jurisdictions around the world, from ...

Plunging Greek Wages Crater Q2 Disposable Income By 9.3%, Government Borrowing Rises To Record by zerohedge Can someone please explain this whole "Grecovery" concept to use because neither we, nor apparently the people of Greece which are not only unemployed and broke, but have negative savings, and collapsing wages, social benefits and disposable income, seem able to understand it. Here is the latest absol ...

ATHENS — In an era when central bankers like Ben S. Bernanke dominate the global economic stage, few hold as much power within their own country as Georgios A. Provopoulos, the governor of the Bank of Greece, who has played a crucial role in keeping Greece out of bankruptcy and in the euro zone. But now Mr. Provopoulos faces one of the bigger challenges of his tumultuous reign: an investigation into whether ...

Just 8.4% of all the 5bn adults in the world own 83.4% of all household wealth (that’s property and financial assets, like stocks, shares and cash in the bank).  About 393 million people have net worth (that’s wealth after all debt is accounted for) of over $100,000, that’s 10% own 86% of all household wealth!  But $100,000 may not seem that much, if you own a house in any G7 country without any mortgage.  ...

The Netherlands is host to companies that are involved in human rights violations all over the world. This follows from new research by SOMO (The Research Centre on Multinational Corporations) on the relationship between Dutch tax and investment policy attracting international businesses to the Netherlands, and human rights. Whilst the Dutch government, in its recently published policy statement on corporat ...

The Vice President of the European Commission, Olli Rehn, in charge of Economic and Monetary Affairs is becoming the most unpopular Commissioner in Spain. He emphasizes over and over again that labor market rigidities are causing the high unemployment in Spain. Labor rigidities is a polite way of accusing the Spanish trade unions for the high rate of unemployment that exists in Spain. Indeed, labor rigiditi ...

Financial 'investors' have already made a killing on Greek debt, but this activity isn't inevitable – such vultures can be challenged 'Vulture funds honed their skills against developing countries.' Photograph: Craig Fujii/Associated Press Not everyone is unhappy about the desperate straits of the Greek economy. A group of financial "investors" made a killing on Greek debt on Tuesday – purely by being the m ...

Germany has profited from the euro crisis to the tune of 41 billion euros in reduced interest payments. Strong demand for its debt has cut yields and made it cheaper for Germany to borrow. Meanwhile, the crisis has only cost Germany a mere 599 million euros thus far. Germany is profiting from the debt crisis by saving billions of euros in interest on its government debt, which has enjoyed a steep drop in yi ...

Detroit hit the Trifecta yesterday—the third in a series of body blows that politicians have landed on the city’s working people. The Michigan legislature passed “right-to-work” in December and gave the governor the right to impose “emergency managers” on cities two days later. When Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr announced Chapter 9 bankruptcy Thursday, he was following a predicted trajectory that wi ...