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financial crisis

Development/Growth

Why should India risk an economic disaster to save the American Dream?

17th January 2018

Shelley Kasli writes: Recent changes in India’s foreign direct investment policy allows 100 percent FDI (from current 49%) for single brand retail trading and construction, among others, paving the way for global players. In reality, India is being drawn into the spiral of debt economics to protect the American Dream from turning into a Nightmare….

Development/Growth

Deutsche Bank: The next financial crisis is probably around the corner

7th November 2017

Financial crises are happening more frequently, and the next panic is almost certainly brewing – mostly thanks to skewed government and central bank policies -according to research by Deutsche Bank. It comes as a warning to India, where the RBI has just approved a massive ‘recapitalisation’ programme to bailout banks struggling with ballooning corporate debt….

Economy

Gail Tverberg: The next financial crisis is not far away

9th August 2017

We should expect financial collapse quite soon – perhaps as soon as the next few months. Our problem is energy related, but not in the way most experts have claimed. It’s much more related to the election of President Trump and to the Brexit vote. Most people don’t understand how interconnected the world economy is….

Development/Growth

India’s massive corporate bad debts and natural resource auctions

4th August 2017

India’s former energy secretary E.A.S. Sharma writes in The Wire: Everyone knows that the NPA problem is due to the lack of due diligence on the part of banks. If banks were to refuse new loans to some of these indebted companies, nearly 40% of the coal blocks assigned to them would not get developed….

Economy

Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis

18th May 2017

From Journeyman Pictures: The financial storm of 2008 began brewing in when the US congress pushed the idea of home ownership for all. When it all went wrong, they opted for gargantuan bailouts for the big banks. This documentary offers fresh insight into the greatest economic crisis of our age: the one still awaiting us….

Extreme speculation in commodities trade can play havoc with food prices

Economy

Commodity derivatives: Playground for speculators, graveyard for farmers?

3rd April 2017

In a major push to widen the scope of commodity derivatives market in India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has recently allowed options trading on commodity exchanges. Kavaljit Singh argues that what’s good for financial investors and commodity speculators is not necessarily good for the already vulnerable Indian farmer and small entrepreneurs….

Development/Growth

What 12’financial experts predict for the economy in 2017

7th January 2017

What lies ahead for the economy this year? Will there be a global economic collapse as predicted by many or will the early positive signs in stock markets around the world continue? While focused on the U.S., this compilation by Daisy Luther of forecasts by 12 leading experts has implications for the entire global economy….

Economy

Mike Maloney: This is the financial peak

5th September 2016

Monetary historian Mike Maloney says in this podcast: Within the next few years you’re going to see probably the greatest crash in history. I have often said that the crisis of 2008 was just a speed bump on the way to the main event. We are in the process right now of seeing this unwind….

Economy

Gail Tverberg: How Peak Oil was misunderstood

29th August 2016

Instead of the scenario envisioned by many Peak Oilers, it’s likely that we will in the very near future hit a limit similar to the collapse scenarios that many early civilizations encountered when they hit resource limits. We don’t think about our situation as being similar, but we too are reaching decreasing resources per capita….

Conflict/Dispossession

Dmitry Orlov: Negative interest rates and the impending global financial collapse

25th June 2016

What the flashing neon words on the wall seem to be saying is: negative interest rates are on the way throughout the “developed world.” In due course, they will demolish any remaining value of the US dollar, and blow up the bond bubble. In turn, this financial collapse will trigger the next stage: commercial collapse….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Industrial civilisation can’t wean itself off fossil fuels painlessly

4th April 2016

Chris Martenson writes: The data seems to confirm this: Humanity is not going to painlessly wean itself off of fossil fuels. Instead, we will hit some sort of a wall: a food/population crisis, a climate crisis, or a debt/fiscal/economic crisis. Each of those candidates has its roots in our global society’s addition to fossil fuels….

NEWS ARCHIVE

NEWS UPDATE #87

17th March 2016

The Guardian reports: According to a new NASA study, the average global surface temperature in February was 1.35C warmer than the average temperature for the month between 1951-1980, a far bigger margin than ever seen before. The unprecedented leap led scientists, usually wary, to label the new record a “shocker” and warn of a “climate emergency”….

CLIMATE CRISIS

NEWS UPDATE #85

3rd March 2016

Sukumar Muralidharan reports on Catch News: This year’s economic survey is a catalogue of crises. For one thing, it records that the situation in agriculture has been dismal on account of two successive years of poor monsoons. This is only the fourth time in 115 years that such a misfortune has hit the Indian economy….

Economy

Has the crash of the global financial markets begun?

1st March 2016

T Sabri Öncü writes: Some insist that the global economy is in “secular stagnation,” but the facts suggest we may be entering the “worst” depression in history. Global markets have been on a slippery slope since 2007, and things have only been getting worse. The picture looks dismal, no matter which theoretical lens one uses….

Protesters block Silicon Valley shuttles, smash Google bus window

TheVerge.com

Bookshelf

New Book: Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

27th January 2016

Douglas Rushkoff writes: We’ve to stop looking at our economy as a broken system, but one that’s working absolutely true to its original design. We are not witnessing capitalism gone wrong — an egalitarian currency system corrupted by greedy bankers — but, rather, capitalism doing exactly what it was programmed to do from the beginning….

Reuters

Digests/Specials

Alert: Global financial crash ahead?

16th January 2016

The Guardian reports: Investors face a “cataclysmic year” where stock markets could fall by up to 20% and oil could slump to $16 a barrel, the Royal Bank of Scotland have warned. In a note to clients, it said: “Sell everything except high quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital.”…

Cagle.com

Economy

Hopium economics and the madness of infinite growth on a finite planet

8th January 2016

Satyajit Das writes in The Times of India: Policy makers have sold the future for a precarious, short-lived stability. There is a striking similarity between the problems of the financial system, irreversible climate change and shortages of vital resources like oil, food and water… The world is remarkably unprepared for the crisis that is unfolding….

Economy

Charles Eisenstein: Everything You’ve Been Told About Debt Is Wrong

24th August 2015

With the United States’ household debt burden at $11.85 trillion, even the most modest challenges to its legitimacy have revolutionary implications. Charles Eisenstein, Yes! Magazine The legitimacy of a given social order rests on the legitimacy of its debts. Even in ancient times this was so. In traditional cultures, debt in a broad sense—gifts to…

Economy

Why the Greek Tragedy is Just the Opening Act

6th July 2015

Sajai Jose Alexis Tsipras, the first Left Greek Prime Minister. Credit: SpaceShoe/Flickr, CC 2.0. Cover image of old woman in Athens is also by Spaceshoe Greece has become the first developed country to default on an International Monetary Fund loan, itself a fraction of a €323 billion national debt – equivalent to more than 175% of the country’s…

Economy

News update

13th August 2014

(Editor’s note: Rumours of another global economic meltdown has been doing the rounds of online forums for at least couple of years now, but of late there seems to be a spike in the commentary warning about such a possibility. Commentators offer different reasons for why this might happen, but what’s pertinent is that most…