The data economy can be summed up as follows: the acquisition and exploitation of personal information on behalf of the marketing and commercial profiling industries. This includes practices such as lead generation which encompasses things like online surveys and cold calling, market research, signing up to a company’s mailing list, viral […]
It’s a shameful thing to be in debt. Once you’re in debt, you’re not supposed to talk about it. It’s your fault. You borrowed too much. You must accept the consequences of your immoral actions, after all, no one forced you to take out that loan. Lenders, on the other […]
After the May Day action, which brought 50,000 people to the streets of Manhattan, OWS activists met to consider their next steps. As powerful as May Day had been, it did not shape a narrative for the future. So “Occupy Theory”, the working group that publishes Tidal (http://occupytheory.org), convened a […]
The question of the repayment of public debt is undeniably a taboo subject. Heads of state and governments, the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission and the mainstream media present it as inevitable, indisputable and obligatory. The people have no other choice than to knuckle […]
Rachel Newton, the National Coordinator of the People’s Charter, tells the OT about the growing resistance against the austerity cuts and her delegation to Greece to meet anti-austerity politician, Alexis Tsipras. In the recent Greek elections, whilst the anti-austerity party, SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left, came second to […]
We walk inside the high church of the big bank. Oh, it is JP Morgan Chase, and buried somewhere deep in the headquarters is the beautiful Ms. Blythe Masters, creator of the credit default swap (CDS), and head at the world commodities desk. We stand at the teller’s window and […]
Millions of people are being made jobless in Western economies due to the obsession with neoliberal economics amongst Western policy elites. I would like to argue that the West is in decline relative to powers like China because of a lack of openness in economic thought. This may sound like […]
Chris Cook explores how reality based action can lead to a resilience economy For thousands of years the toxic combination of the inexorable mathematics of compound interest on debt and private ownership of the commons (particularly land) have led to the unsustainable concentration of wealth in the hands of the […]
At a discussion on “the future of capitalism” at the Guardian Open Weekend on 24 March, a case was made by one of the panelists – Will Hutton – for what he called “good capitalism”. This is one that encourages private entrepreneurship but subordinates the market to the broader needs […]
Everything you wanted to know about the terrifying shadow banking system but were afraid to ask. By John Aziz, an independent financial writer from England. Meet James. James bought a house. It cost him £150,000, of which £30,000 had come from his own savings, leaving him with a £120,000 30-year […]