Kliberal opinion holds that the international monetary and financial system is a device for promoting the interests of all participating countries by providing a convenient payments arrangement within which trade can be carried on.

When Azerbaijan as the Presidency of this year's Conference of Parties (COP29) held at Baku, in Azerbaijan, informed delegates working on extended time that participating countries had arrived at an agreement, there were many who disagreed.

The collapse of COP29, slated as a climate finance summit, should come as no surprise. Developed countries had shown in multiple ways that when it comes to the crunch they would walk away.

In global climate negotiations, that continued at the twenty ninth edition of the Conference of Parties (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, there is agreement on one issue.

Trump's victory in the US Presidential election conforms to a pattern presently observable across the world, namely a collapse of the liberal centre and a growth in support either for the Left, or for the extreme Right, the neo-fascists, in situations in which the Left is absent or weak.

Changes in global natural gas trade have reflected geopolitical alignments but these may shift, depending on policies of incoming US President Donald Trump.

The Kazan summit of the BRICS countries was a historic one for several reasons: first, it created a new category called “partner nations” as a step towards full membership, and accepted 13 such new “partner” countries, among whom were Cuba and Bolivia.

While the evidence that GDP growth in China has slowed is clear, the dire predictions they have given rise to are exaggerated.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize, the Nobel for "Economic Sciences", has always been controversial. This is true of the 2024 award to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson as well.

The latest World Employment and Social Outlook Report (update for September 2024) from the International Labour Organisation highlights some disturbing trends.

In early October, in a show of pique, a European Commission proposal to impose additional tariffs of up to 35.3 per cent (on top of the pre-existing 10 per cent) on electrical vehicles (EVs) imported from China, was passed by a majority vote in the European parliament.

The "inevitable striving of finance capital", Lenin had written in Imperialism, (is) "to enlarge its spheres of influence and even its actual territory".

The fact that the world economy has slowed down since the financial crisis of 2008 is beyond dispute. In fact even conservative American economists have started using the term “secular stagnation” to describe the current situation (though they have their own peculiar definition for it).

Europe is clearly battling to stall its decline in the global economy. Most recently, the Mario Draghi report on “The future of European competitiveness” commissioned by the European Union reflected that sentiment.

West Africa, which had been largely under French colonial rule, never saw decolonisation of the sort that India did.

The FOCAC summit suggests that China is entering a new phase of economic relations with Africa, with more targeted investments reflecting changed global realities.

During the entire post-war period when it has been in existence in the metropolitan countries, democracy has never been in as bizarre a state as it is today. Democracy is supposed to mean the pursuit of policies that are in conformity with the wishes of the electorate.

China's restrictions of a year ago on export of critical materials may not have yet been disruptive. But the speculative price increases they have triggered could explain renewed concerns about supply.

During Modi’s visit to Ukraine (why he visited Ukraine at all at the present time remains a mystery), Zelensky asked India not to purchase fuel from Russia in violation of western sanctions, that is, to fall in line with the “unilateral” western sanctions.

A Good deal of analysis of the recent political upheaval in Bangladesh has focussed on the high-handedness and authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina's government; it has either missed altogether, or generally underplayed, the change that has occurred in the economic situation in that country.

The French economist J B Say had believed that there could never be a problem of aggregate demand in any economy, that whatever was produced was ipso facto demanded.

The Sri Lankan government announced that it has reached an agreement with its foreign private creditors to restructure the $12.5 billion of its external debt that they hold. The agreement incorporates a novel instrument: a macro-linked bond for which the payout is linked to the GDP performance of the debtor country.

After rising rapidly from early 2020, global food prices have been falling from July 2022. But domestic food prices have continued to rise, especially in low income countries. We explore these trends and the possible reasons.

In his opus The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 Adam Smith drew a distinction between the progressive state, the stationary state and the declining state.

The coming to power of governments led by fascists is either a reality or a threat today over large parts of the world. In Europe at present there are several countries where fascists are leading governments; France was on the verge of being added to this list, in which case it would have been the second major European power, after Italy, to have a fascist government.

The fundamental issue raised by Hollywood writers when they had gone on a strike against being replaced by artificial intelligence, somehow receded to the background after the resolution of that particular conflict; but it remains a fundamental issue.

There has been a significant diffusion of production occurring in the world economy. Many call this phenomenon a shift from a US-led world economy to a "multipolar world economy", but no matter what one thinks of this description, the fact of diffusion is indubitable.

Against all odds, in the elections to India’s parliament, whose results were announced last week, the opposition I.N.D.I.A. alliance managed to prevent the rampaging ruling party, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from securing a majority on its own.

The current protests in US university campuses demanding "divestment" from firms linked to Israel's military machine, are reminiscent of the protests that had swept these campuses in the late sixties and early seventies demanding an end to the Vietnam war.

Both private and public sources of capital have been disturbingly procyclical for low and middle income countries, forcing them to become net providers of financial resources to the North and to multilateral institutions.

Thames Water, one of England's many regional water monopolies, infamously privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and symbolising the dramatic turn in economic policy that neoliberalism implied, is finally collapsing.

India's government has since the year of its G20 Presidency claimed to have restored the country's role as the 'Voice of the South' in global dialogues. That is often backed up by reference to its efforts to focus attention on the problem of debt stress and default in poor developing countries, and to the induction of the African Union into the G20.

At the time of writing, the 13th ministerial meet of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is under way in Abu Dhabi. Among the many issues that are being discussed are two of concern for less developed countries generally and India in particular.

Maldives is vulnerable to debt distress as the IMF suggests, but that is not a problem to be resolved only by the Maldives government but by an international community that has aggravated the island nation's vulnerability.

In The Junius Pamphlet written from jail in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg had said that the choice before mankind was between barbarism and socialism. Liberal opinion would contest this, arguing that the barbarism that marked the two world wars and the period in between was unrelated to capitalism;

Recruitment drives held over the last week of January, in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Rohtak in Haryana, for Indian workers to undertake construction and caregiver jobs in Israel have captured global attention.

On January 10, the IMF announced its decision to release $4.7 billion out of a $57 billion bailout package sanctioned in 2018 to perennially debt-distressed Argentina, then under a right-wing government headed by Mauricio Macrio.

As fears of inflation recede, the prospect of a medium-term slowdown in the global economy looms. The problem is that global leaders have lost control of both macroeconomic policy and the economy.

The significance of Lenin’s Imperialism lay in the fact that it totally revolutionised the perception of the revolution. Marx and Engels had already visualised the possibility of colonial and dependent countries having revolutions of their own even before the proletarian revolution in the metropolis.

The recent collapse of the protracted negotiations to restructure Zambia's external debt, following a default in November 2020, underlines the failure of the prevailing international financial architecture to address global challenges.

The claim that COP28 marked a significant step forward in the battle against climate change is not corroborated by the willingness of the developed countries to commit the needed finance.

Financial imbalances that impact on countries' net international investment positions are now much more important than current account imbalances, in determining debt stress.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had witnessed the emergence of two different paradigms of colonialism: the first, of which India was the classic example, involved the conquest of countries which had had a history of established central administrations.

New estimates of offshore wealth held globally allow for a more granular examination of wealth held abroad by India residents. The results are disturbing—and raise questions about why Indian tax authorities are not doing more to prevent this.

Significant segments of the non-Communist Western Left see the developing contradiction between the United States and China in terms of an inter-imperialist rivalry.

The IMF's stance on modes of financing the climate mitigation and adaptation effort amounts to a call to absolve developed countries of their historical responsibility.

In response to the attack by Hamas on October 7, Israeli forces have not only pounded the Gaza strip with massive bombing, killing nearly 2000 Palestinians and wounding at least 7000 (till Friday night), but have cut off all supplies of food, electricity, gas and water to Gaza.

One of the most intriguing questions at present is why Europe's political leadership has become complicit in what appear to be US efforts at undermining European economies.

The G-20 meeting in Delhi was occurring in the midst of an acute economic crisis of the world economy. The advanced capitalist economies are expected by the IMF to witness a growth slowdown from 2.7 per cent in 2022 to 1.3 per cent in 2023.

At the Johannesburg summit of the BRICS countries, it was decided to expand the group beyond its original five, namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, to include six more countries. These are: Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Much of the ex-colonial world, having set up dirigiste regimes to wrest control over its natural resources from metropolitan capital and to build up industries behind protectionist walls, was sought to be re-assimilated into imperialist hegemony through the neo-liberal economic order; but in one segment of this world decolonisation itself was never completed.

On July 14 this year, the shaky government of a debt-stressed Pakistan, won itself a surprising reprieve. The country had experienced a collapse in foreign reserves to less than one month worth of imports and was on the verge of defaulting on its external debt of more than $120 billion.

To address the debt crisis in the LMICs and prevent its recurrence, it is necessary to address the failure of the international order to provide space for poor countries to earn the foreign exchange needed to service external debt.

With three middle income countries serving or designated as consecutive Presidents of the G20, it is expected to serve as a forum to advance dialogue on debt justice and climate finance. But progress may be slow and limited.

The June 22-23 Summit for a New Global Financing Pact promised to catalyze a revolution in climate finance and empower the Global South. But it failed to meet its lofty goals, concluding without a single firm commitment or concrete proposal to help developing countries reduce their debt burden and move away from fossil fuels.

India and other third world countries can morally justify their being a part of G-20 alongside the imperialist powers, only if they raise common and pressing problems of the third world as a whole at G-20 meetings.

On July 1, Sri Lanka's parliament approved through a majority 122-versus-62 vote, a plan to restructure the government's domestic debt totalling 15.4 trillion Sri Lankan rupees (SLR) at the end of March 2023.

How exactly is the dollar’s status as reserve currency related to imperialism? This question has two parts: how this status of the dollar is related to U.S. imperialism, and how it is related to the overall imperialist arrangement.

After Sri Lanka and Pakistan, Bangladesh has become the third country in our neighbourhood to become afflicted by a serious economic crisis. It has asked for a $4.5 billion loan from the IMF, apart from $1 billion from the World Bank and $2.5-3 billion from multilateral agencies and donor nations.

Many economists these days talk of a process of "de-globalisation" taking place; some others talk of the neoliberal regime of yesteryears no longer existing.

Under pressure from globalised finance capital, most countries of the world have enacted legislation fixing the size of the fiscal deficit as a proportion of GDP; generally it is 3 per cent, and in India it is 3 per cent for the centre and 3 per cent for the states.

A New York Times News Service report reproduced in The Telegraph of Kolkata (May 7), discusses the findings of a global public opinion survey carried out by the Bennett Institute of Public Policy of Cambridge University.

Recent changes in some Latin American tax regimes, especially in Colombia, provide useful pointers for taxation strategies in other developing countries.

Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, has finally acknowledged what has been obvious to most people for quite some time, namely that the imposition of sanctions against countries that the US is hostile to, runs the risk of jeopardising the hegemony of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

The world economic outlook released in time for the recently concluded spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF presents a gloomy picture. Global GDP growth is expected to fall from 3.4 percent in 2022 to 2.8 percent in 2023, and recover only marginally to 3.0 percent in 2024.

Except in war-time, capitalism invariably seeks to control inflation by creating a recession; and this is so even when the inflation has been caused by an autonomous increase in capitalists' profit-margins which are downward inflexible and hence would not be reduced by a recession.

The month of March 2023 has come out to be yet another nightmarish experience for the world of global finance, after the collapse of Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

The differences in performance between less developed economies have tended to blur the North-South divide in the global distribution of balance of payments surpluses and deficits. But for most, that divide remains a reality.

There is nothing mysterious about the reasons for the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and the Signature Bank in the United States.

There is an overwhelming asymmetry between the level of "development" and the possession of natural resources among countries of the world. Take the group of most advanced countries, the G-7 comprising the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada.

The IMF cannot resolve Pakistan's debt crisis, though it is influencing policy on the grounds that it can.

Economic theory makes much of "rent goods". A "rent good" is one whose supply cannot be augmented at will, simply through investing more on its production; its supply is subject to constraints imposed by nature, because of which there is a certain maximum rate of long-run growth which is exogenously given and cannot be altered at will.

To mitigate the worst effects of climate change and prevent societal breakdown, we must shift to renewable energies and reduce extreme inequality. But doing so would require massive increases in public spending, which is why governments must overhaul their outdated and regressive tax systems.

Jayati Ghosh warns against historically disastrous approaches to the sovereign-debt crisis hitting low- and middle-income countries.

Tight monetary policies in rich countries obviously affect people in the countries where they are applied, but they also cause ripple effects across the world. We were already in a very unequal world before the most recent global price increases.

The IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva has now openly admitted that the year 2023 will witness the slowing down of the world economy to a point where as much as one-third of it will see an actual contraction in gross domestic product.

As COP27, the climate summit at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, ended after a being prolonged, assessments of what it achieved were mixed. But the overwhelming sense was that the summit had yielded little, since on most counts it had not gone beyond the pledges agreed to at COP26 held in Glasgow last year and incorporated in the Glasgow Climate Pact.

The post-second world war period had seen a spate of welfare state measures in the advanced capitalist countries, especially in Europe, in emulation of what the Soviet Union was effecting.

A spike in India's imports from China and a widening of the trade deficit it records with that country points to fundamental weaknesses in India's industrial development trajectory.

The large cryptocurrency exchange FTX went out of business on November 11. Many have likened this phenomenon to the collapse of the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis of 2008, believing the FTX collapse to be as important an event in the cryptocurrency world as the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the official financial system.

There are two defining and portentous features of the current world economic situation. One, which is well discussed, is the world-wide increase in interest rates in response to the pervasive inflationary upsurge; it would indubitably generate recession and unemployment, which, notwithstanding all protestations to the contrary, is the real objective behind it.

Coping with the adverse fallout of tighter monetary policy in the advanced economies will require developing country governments to shift from openness that increases their own vulnerability to a more creative and flexible approach that provides greater policy autonomy.

The IMF's most recent World Economic Outlook, released in time for the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, presents a confusing picture of what shapes the present global conjuncture.

The most intriguing question with regard to Liz Truss’ resignation as the prime minister of Britain after a mere 44 days in office is this: what is it about her economic programme that the ''market'' (read ''finance capital'') found unpalatable? At its core after all was tax-cuts for the rich, which the ''market'' should have lapped up.

On September 23, the value of the rupee vis-à-vis the dollar fell to a new low: it crossed 81 to a dollar after some weeks of relative stability when it hovered between 79 and 80. And it fell despite the Reserve Bank's running down of foreign exchange reserves in a bid to hold up its value.

The cessation of natural gas supplies from Russia to Europe in retaliation against Western sanctions imposed on Russia because of the Ukraine war, is threatening Europe not only with a winter with inadequate heating that will take a big toll in terms of lives among poor people, but also with large-scale closures of enterprises; such closures would push up the unemployment rate, and significantly increase poverty and destitution among the workers.

The major food crisis now emerging in much of the world is not about supply shortages. It reflects ologopolistic and speculative behaviour in global food markets, along with falling purchasing power and currency depreciation in low and middle income countries.

The rush of sovereign bondholders to less developed countries was seen as an opportunity by many governments. But increased dependence on those bonds has not only contributed to a debt crisis but made resolution near impossible.

Economists distinguish between two kinds of inflation: "demand-pull" and "cost-push". Demand-pull inflation is said to occur when there is excess demand in a situation where supply cannot be augmented, because full capacity output has been reached in one or more crucial sectors.

The hegemony of the US dollar was based on the fact that the world's wealth-holders considered it to be "as good as gold", even when it was no longer officially convertible to gold at a fixed rate, as it had been under the Bretton Woods system, after the collapse of that system.

Exchange rates have behaved very differently from what many pundits predicted at the start of the Ukraine war. This requires careful reconsideration of the various factors that determine their movement.

There are many misconceptions about Scandinavian capitalism. A very common one is the belief that since the Scandinavian countries developed vigorous capitalist economies, without ever having acquired any colonies of their own, they constitute a clear refutation of the claim that capitalist development necessarily requires imperialism.

All is not quiet on India's external economic front. The rupee seems to be on a trajectory of accelerating decline, with its value relative to the dollar (as per the Reserve Bank of India's reference rate) falling from Rs. 76.4 at the beginning of April to Rs. 79.1 at the beginning of July.

Over the last three years the Indian rupee has experienced continuous decline, with bouts of sharp depreciation influenced by multiple factors but led principally by capital outflows.

When the COVID pandemic affected every one of the world's nations, the way forward seemed obvious, even if difficult to traverse. Given the rapid spread of the disease and its severity that overwhelmed long neglected health systems, and the cost to lives and livelihoods that shutdowns of economic and social activity implied, quick access to drugs and vaccines to manage the pandemic were crucial.

The meltdown in May 2022 in the cryptocurrency world, in which the values of digital coins plunged and rendered some near-worthless, is a wake-up call. It once again shows that cryptocurrencies are nothing but a bunch of insubstantial, digital 'bits' created by speculators as 'coins' for speculation.

Central banks all over the capitalist world are raising, or are about to raise, interest rates as a means of countering the currently rampant inflation, which is certain to push a world economy that is barely recovering from the effect of the pandemic, back towards stagnation and greater unemployment.

The chancellor of the exchequer of Britain, whose official residence is only next door to the British prime minister's, is Rishi Sunak, a person of Indian origin. Britain's home secretary is Priti Patel, also of Indian origin.

Russia and Ukraine together account for 30 per cent of the world’s wheat exports. Many African countries, in particular, are heavily dependent on them for their food supplies, which are now getting disrupted because of the war; and this disruption would continue since the war is also affecting the acreage being sown under foodgrains there.

Having embraced neoliberal reform in the late 1970s, Sri Lanka had privileged access to large borrowing from the IMF and private financial markets. Exploiting that privilege has proved to be a poison pill.

When the world's financial leaders met mid-April at Washington for the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the mood was one of gloom.

So much has been written on the Sri Lankan economic crisis that the facts are by now quite well-known (see for instance C P Chandrasekhar, Frontline April 22): the massive build-up of external debt; the huge Value Added Tax concessions that pushed up the fiscal deficit and made the government borrow abroad even to spend domestically;

Governments of rich countries are the ones showing the greatest panic in responding to rising global oil prices, but the relative price of petrol is already much higher is low and middle income countries with bigger poor populations.

Sri Lanka's economy is sliding into chaos afflicted with multiple crises, triggered by a steep fall in foreign exchange revenues during the Covid pandemic, a difficult to manage external debt servicing burden, a collapse in the volume of foreign exchange reserves, and finally the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine.

The complacency generated by India's low external debt exposure and large foreign reserves ignores the composition and character of that exposure.

The juggling which US imperialism has to do to maintain its hegemony becomes more bizarre by the day. First, it kept needling Russia ("provoking the bear") "on behalf of the western alliance" by expanding NATO to its very borders, knowing full well that Ukraine's joining NATO would be totally unacceptable to Russia.

While the world remains preoccupied with the geopolitical and humanitarian fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its economic consequences are increasingly a matter for concern.

Before joining the neo-liberal order, India used to have "rupee payment arrangements" with the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries under which the main international reserve currency, the US dollar, was used neither for settling transactions nor even as the unit of account in terms of which the trade-related transactions were denominated.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has roiled energy markets. All sides lose. The US and its allies because of energy shortages and inflation; Russia because oil is crucial to its economic performance.

The Indian economy is currently mired in a vicious cycle of inflation, stagnation, and budget deficit expansion. And this spiral is projected to worsen with adverse changes in the global economy.

Current measures of climate responsibility understate the emissions created by final demand, especially in the advanced countries, because they ignore how countries can "export carbon emissions" through imports. But measures to address this through trade protectionism will be counterproductive.

Signs of investor reticence are visible across all emerging markets. There is a more serious fear of the exit of foreign investors from equity and bond markets, consequent to a readjustment of monetary policy in the advanced economies. Indian stock markets are faltering as well, yet India is one of the better performers.

Global leaders, especially in the developed world, still fail to grasp the gravity of the climate challenge. Although they acknowledge its severity in their speeches, they mostly pursue short-term national interests, without clear and immediate commitments to act.

Inter-country economic inequalities have been greatly accentuated by the pandemic, to a level that is likely to become unsustainable and generate significant geopolitical tensions.

The US-China trade war has not affected the continued increase in the US trade deficit. But the real purpose is control of frontier technologies.

Capitalism is conventionally portrayed as a dynamic system driven by private investment sustained by forces of competition. However, evidence from the globalisation years suggests that neither growth nor the levels and pattern of investment support that view.

President Lopez Obrador of Mexico has been putting in place a range of economic changes that represent a turn away from neoliberalism and re-institution of a dirigiste regime. Unsurprisingly, he is being attacked by the Western press for this temerity.

The perfect storm of Covid-19 and climate change delivers the glaring message that the apocalypse is now. The novel coronavirus mutates into more transmissible, drug-resistant variants, while climate catastrophe plays out in real time.

One thing most economists agree on regardless of their ideological persuasion, is the importance of productivity increases. Yet, of all economic concepts widely in use, that of aggregate productivity may be the most problematic and full of conceptual and measurement holes.

Following years of negotiations, most nations have now agreed on the need of a global minimum corporate tax rate to prevent multinationals from evading taxation in the jurisdictions in which they operate. While this is a step forward, it is disappointingly short of what is needed and possible.

Europe should realize that their own governments are operating against their own interests to suit Big Pharma. The pandemic will not be over until global mass vaccination is completed. So even without an international solidarity, it is in the self-interest of Europeans to demand that their governments put people above profits.

While the global minimum tax proposal in the finance minister's communique before the G7 summit is a step forward, it is disappointingly short of what is needed and possible. Yet it caught the media's almost-undivided attention, because it speaks of a new effort by the richest nations to transform fiscal rules in search of revenues.

The G-7 countries have promised to donate a billion anti-Covid vaccine doses to developing countries, which although sounds a lot, is, in reality, a meagre amount compared to what the advanced capitalist countries have hoarded or need for their own population.

For universal vaccination to become a reality a massive increase in output is required and what stands in the way of it is capitalist property right. Despite largely using public funds to develop the Covid-19 vaccines, a few multinational drug companies wish to cling to their monopoly positions to profiteer from human misery.

The Biden administration's decision to stop opposing a proposed COVID-19 waiver of certain intellectual-property rights under WTO rules is a welcome move. But ending the pandemic also requires scaling up knowledge and technology transfer, as well as public production of vaccine supplies.

With ambition restricted to the core, there is little hope of an adequate recovery from the pandemic, let alone a Green, Resilient and Inclusive one in the periphery. The grossly unequal vaccine access will perpetuate the pandemic's adverse effects for quite some time to come.

The US is nowhere near as economically dominant as it was even a decade ago. Yet President-elect Joe Biden can take several relatively simple steps that would have far-reaching benefits for the US economy, the American people, and the rest of the world.

The differential ability, resulting from preexisting global inequality, to address the Covid crisis with increased government spending is likely to substantially worsen those inequalities.

The Indian intelligentsia suggests that the Indian kisans should move away from producing foodgrains towards other crops and import foodgrains from metropolitan countries, but it would take India back to the pre-Green Revolution days.

The novel coronavirus pandemic further enhanced the monopoly power of the big tech giants, but the lawsuits and regulatory moves in the West suggest that their easy, unchecked expansion may be coming to an end.

As a trade promoting arrangement the RCEP is no game changer, but it possibly serves China’s interests by giving China a freer access to a 'common market' of considerable size and significance, without the presence of India and the United States, which share the objective of wanting to counter China's rise.

Because a pandemic can be overcome only when it is overcome everywhere, embracing an every-country-for-itself approach would seem irrational. And yet, as the unseemly competition for vaccine doses indicates, that is exactly what many countries have done.

Dependence on remittances is proving to be an additional source of vulnerability among low and middle income countries in Covid times. But not all are affected to the same degree: and those more dependent and facing larger losses are badly hurt.

South Korea has successfully managed the Covid-19 pandemic, providing evidence of a strong public health system and buttressing the view that besides success with growth, South Korea has also considerably improved its social sectors like education and health.

The US Justice Department has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Google for the misuse of monopoly while the US Federal Trade Commission is likely to launch an antitrust case against Facebook due to complaints of its anti-competitive practices, but this may just be an election year stance.

Growing divergence in economic performance between China and the rest of Asia indicates both reduced regional integration and setbacks in some of China’s Asian neighbours.

As per the statistics provided by the International Labour Organization (ILO), workers across the world have suffered while the billionaires never had it so good, but the third world workers suffered the most due to the loss of autonomy of their governments in the era of globalization.

The pandemic, just as any other crisis, has become a mechanism for the centralisation of capital arising from the inability of small wealth-holders to face stock-price collapses that the billionaires can face and the pooling together of vast masses of small capitals into a few large ones.

The shift in IMF recommendations from fiscal austerity to enhancing public expenditure, is seen as a telling shift, although this recommendation is nothing more than just obvious, given the pandemic's fall-out in the form of compressed demand and increased unutilized capacity in industry.

Developed countries have opposed IMF support for debt stressed developing countries on the grounds that the money would be used to meet debt obligations due to China, but if China is seen as using debt to buy influence, then that can be prevented, ironically, by paying off the debt.

Lebanon has been in the grip of an economic crisis for quite some time and with the coronavirus crisis the world recession has become even more acute. These phenomena are common in the third world and they follow from the pursuit of neo-liberal policies that are not concerned about improving the conditions of the people or the economy.

Across the world, the governments are under the pressure to proactively allocate resources to address the pandemic leading to a shift in priorities and focus on expenditures that render an environmentally just recovery. Proactive fiscal policies have been adopted in Asia as well, but the responses vary across countries.

Developing Asia's external debt can emerge as a major vulnerability not so much because of the volume of debt, but because of its composition, especially the greater reliance on short term debt and foreign holders of debt securities.

The recently concluded EU-Vietnam FTA is likely to increase Vietnam's exports at the expense of other developing countries, triggering competitive policy shifts inimical to long term development. In India, it is likely to be exploited by a neoliberal government to push its agenda to sign similar agreements.

The performance of financial markets and the real economy have diverged sharply in the aftermath of the Covid-induced crisis. The Fed's actions have a role to play, by infusing the cheap liquidity that fuels speculative investment and lending.

The build up of external debt in developing countries is putting further strain on their already dwindling public revenues. Deferring debt service payments by the G20, instead of writing off some debt, will only increase their burden in the future.

As the world grapples with the fall-out of the Covid-crisis, the Trump administration is ramping up its protectionist rhetoric vis-à-vis China. If this leads to new sanctions it would not help the US but worsen the Covid-induced trade crisis.

The sharp and rapid increase of inequality due to the Covid-19 pandemic is driving home the urgency of internationalism. Jayati Ghosh explains how we can change the global economic architecture to enable a Global Green New Deal.

Early evidence shows that official response to the Covid-induced crisis in the US and Europe may lengthen recession. If the needed fiscal effort is not put in place even a delayed recovery may prove elusive.

Globalized finance, by nature, prevent welfare spending by third world governments and enforces their subservience vis-a-vis advanced economies. Delinking from current globalization therefore tantamount to freedom from hegemony of finance capital.

The exodus of finance from third-world countries is impairing their ability to manage foreign-exchange reserves. Unlike swap-line accommodation by the US, fresh issue of SDRs will help boost the reserves of these countries without any discrimination.

India has betrayed the developing world by blocking a proposal for the IMF to issue new SDRs, which would have provided much-needed liquidity at a time of crisis.

In a dramatic post-Coronavirus-pandemic turn, the agreement between OPEC and some non-OPEC oil exporters has collapsed, causing global demand-supply imbalances and depressed prices. Back home Indian governments’ response of raising excise duty on fuel might intensify the recession.

The production setback triggered by the coronavirus epidemic in China will soon be fed by countries turning propagators. Prospects of deep recession now seem daunting as the fragility of neo-liberalism is revealed.

Although unresolved trade tensions and shocks like the coronavirus epidemic are valid concerns for the world economy, the low growth syndrome that policy has not addressed predates these new concerns.

As prospects of the collapse of the WTO Appellate Board draws near, "emerging markets" like India cannot take even the current level of "free" trade for granted. They must rethink the open-door policy, especially the free flow of finance.

In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include an imperative to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all." Yet, in the last four years, matters have deteriorated significantly.

Lowering interest rates to revive economic activity has been ineffective, because the global slowdown since 2008 is not the result of "dented animal spirits" of capitalists, but the contractionary and inequalizing tendencies of neoliberal capitalism.

The world economy is facing a looming recession; protectionist measures by the U.S. and China will worsen the crisis for all. What is required to counter the recession is incresing government expenditure within each country.

Which emerging markets have seen significant depreciation of their exchange rates? And should “currency manipulation” be blamed for that?

In the U.S.-China tariff war, there is no economic gain to be derived by either side. But the U.S. is pushing ahead by bringing in the national security angle because the political stakes are too high.

World trade is slowing. While the US triggered trade war with China is part of the explanation, the real driver is a loss of momentum in the world economy.

Prabhat Patnaik argues that no matter how politically successful across the world the Right is today, it is incapable of leading people out of the current state of crisis and unemployment.

C.P. Chandrasekhar argues that despite the "opening up" of the BRI and the concessions being offered by China on BRI projects, the initiative still has China at the centre with the aim of widening its sphere of influence.

The decision of the US government under Trump to end the waivers from sanctions on imports of oil from Iran that were given to eight countries could trigger a spike in oil prices. That can have adverse implications for India's balance of payments stability and inflation trends.

Despite the failure of unconventional monetary policies to reverse the global slowdown and new downside risks, the IMF is only willing to grudgingly accept the need for a fiscal stimulus.

China's trade with Asian developing countries is more significant than ever - but not always in ways that benefit them.

Governments and central banks that were upbeat about global economic recovery are turning pessimistic, making this one more episode of a green shoot that died young.

U.S. coup attempts, particularly in Venezuela, reveal the nature of imperialist intervention specific to the era of neo-liberalism. Efforts to overthrow democratically-elected government to advance a corporate agenda have never been so explicit earlier.

The 'synchronised recovery' that global policy makers are periodically referring to has bypassed much of the world’s working people. If growth is improving and unemployment is on the decline, then one should expect that wage growth would improve. The fact that it is falling poses a conundrum.

The world capitalist crisis of reduced aggregate demand and the protectionism of the U.S. has resulted in a reduced export demand for world economies. Third world countries face enlarged trade and current account deficits, to overcome these deficits, countries like India will have to take measures on their own level.

Contemporary Fascism around the world is emerging as neo-liberal capitalism’s “gift” to mankind in the period of its maturity, when it submerges the world economy in a crisis, and reaches a dead-end from which there is no obvious escape.

China is seeking a more influential role in the global economy, and it hopes to achieve this through greater use of its currency by others.

Neo-liberal capitalism is marked by the hegemony of international finance capital which has many consequences, among which is the alarming upsurge of fascism, differing markedly from the fascism of the 1930s.

The G20 summit in Hamburg was an occasion for public affirmations of the continued power of progressive ideas and calls for action around issues that really matter, in the form of an alternative summit, performance art demonstrations, and marches.

There is no sign of any consensus coming out of the G20 on the need for a mix of globally coordinated policies and a fiscal push to pull the world economy out of recession. What we have once again is a set of statements that says everything and therefore nothing.

Prabhat Patnaik mourns the deaths of three of his close friends, all brilliant people: Arup Mullick, Basudev Chatterji, and Nirupam Sen, whose outstanding character and intellectual genius will be greatly missed.

The very limited Barclays prosecution comes in the wake of a half-hearted investigation effort, which has thus far completely let off all those who took the world economy to the verge of a crisis akin to the Great Depression. It is not clear if anything will finally come out of even this case, which is aimed at merely teaching a lesson to those who hurt a bunch of financial investors by violating insider rules.

Fresh research from UNICEF shows that the number of children in poverty, in rich countries has increased as a result of austerity policies. An average of one in five children in 41 high income countries lives in poverty. Children and their rights do not even seem to feature in the G20 manifesto, even as it stresses the ending of austerity policies and encouraging public budgets that promote development and poverty eradication.

World financial leaders gather at Washington for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF amid fears of another global recession. But the perspective and will needed to address the problem appear to be absent.

With global growth slowing and financial markets experiencing a downturn, the fallout for India is a matter of concern. The channels through which these effects could be transmitted are more in number than conventionally recognised.

The recent increase in global food prices has once again set off alarm signals in developing countries, especially in South Asia, where food inflation has been a major problem for some years now. Evidence from South Asian countries corroborates the fact that domestic factors do play a role in the international transmission; while rising global prices put upward pressure on domestic prices in a much rapid manner, its downward movements are less rapidly or effectively transmitted and often do not have any such impact.

Global food prices are spiking once again, creating fears of a renewal or intensification of the global food crisis. Given that recent domestic food price changes in different Asian countries point to a broader trend whereby they have been strongly related to international price changes, this is a matter of extreme concern.

The injection of cheap money at home to invest in emerging markets for profit by the US Federal Reserve, and its pressure on emerging market economies to allow their exchange rates to appreciate, in the hope that it would expand US exports and reduce its imports and facilitate a recovery, are a sure recipe for conflict.

Across the world governments are debating whether it is time to exit from their fiscal response to the global crisis and return to austerity and fiscal consolidation. This may be premature, since the question whether there was indeed such a generalized and adequate fiscal response that triggered a recovery remains unanswered.

There was a sudden resurgence in Keynesian ideas everywhere when the global financial crisis broke in September 2008. But, equally suddenly, financial markets have once again turned back on state intervention and policy makers are giving in to demands for massive cuts in public expenditure that would require enormous sacrifices from their populations.

John Kenneth Galbraith's analysis of the capitalist economy in the delightfully written tract ''A Short History of Financial Euphoria'' remains as relevant today as it was then. However, unlike what Galbraith offers, the solution to capitalism's proneness to recurrent bouts of speculation has to go beyond capitalist markets and profit motivation.

Despite scepticism about its sustainability, evidence shows that the crisis of 2008-09 has bottomed out and a recovery is likely, driven by the fiscal stimulus offered by governments across the world. But figures from the ILO indicate that the impact of the stimulus on employment appears uneven, with export dependent economies in Asia too adversely affected.