Analysis

Details: Written by ITUC; Created: 30 April 2014

ITUC May Day Statement

Building Workers’ Power is vital to drive economic, industrial and social transformation. The international system today is heavily stacked against workers and their families, and governments are increasingly cowered by big finance and big business.

A tiny proportion of the world’s population holds vast power and wealth, while millions upon millions of people have no job or work in precarious and exploitative conditions for little reward.

Details: Written by Luke Holland / CESR; Created: 29 April 2014

After a lengthy process of consultation and deliberation, talks over the post-2015 sustainable development agenda are now moving into the cut and thrust of practical negotiation. As the process enters this more overtly political phase, there is a very real threat that the voice of powerful actors, especially those from the private sector, may drown out global civil society’s demands for a human rights-based framework, and with it the possibility of a genuinely transformative agenda.

Details: Written by ITUC; Created: 28 April 2014

Despite the world’s outcry which followed the death of 1.138 workers in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh a year ago, or the silent death of more than 107,000 workers a year due to asbestos exposure, workers around the world continue to see employers and governments prioritising “competitiveness” or cutting vital inspection and enforcement services and removing regulatory protection over workers’ lives and health.

Details: Written by Thomas Palley; Created: 27 April 2014

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a six hundred and eighty-five page tome that definitively characterizes the empirical pattern of income and wealth inequality in capitalist economies over the past two hundred and fifty years, and especially over the last one hundred. It also documents the grotesque rise of inequality over the past forty years and ends with a call for restoration of high marginal income tax rates and a global wealth tax.

(Also a debate on this same book with Krugman and Stiglitz)

Details: Written by Christian Freymeyer; Created: 24 April 2014

Earlier this month, Nigeria leapt past South Africa to emerge as Africa’s largest economy. The financial world has watched the shift intently, with a keen interest on the amount of money coming into Nigeria. But keeping an eye on the huge sums of money flowing out is just as important.

The economic growth didn’t happen overnight. Rather, Nigerian officials decided it was time to recalculate the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), based on new statistics they claim more accurately reflect the country’s present economic situation.

Details: Written by Mohammed Mesbahi; Created: 23 April 2014

The danger is not commercialisation per se but our constant identification with its inner and outer manifestation, in which humanity’s intelligence is led in the opposite direction from nature and spiritual evolution.

What is evil, anyway, if not our identification with it?

Read the article

Details: Written by Natalia Millàn Acevedo; Created: 22 April 2014

Is European Union really committed to Human Development? EU has made an undeniable progress in promoting the integration of policy coherence for development (PCD) at the discursive level, nevertheless European policies developed in the last five years have not only had profoundly negative consequences for other countries and people, but have made living conditions significantly precarious for large part of the population living in Europe. There appears to be a more than significant gap between the policy commitments undertaken by the European institutions and Member States, and the real actions to promote greater PCD at both EU and national levels. This article, written by Natalia Millán, analyses the dual role of the European Union in promoting real Human Development.

Details: Written by Roberto Savio; Created: 19 April 2014

(IPS) - In case you missed it, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the third and final part of a report on Apr. 13 in which it says bluntly that we only have 15 years left to avoid exceeding the “safe” threshold of a 2°C increase in global temperatures, beyond which the consequences will be dramatic.

And only the most myopic are unaware of what these are – from an increase in sea level, through more frequent hurricanes and storms (increasingly in previously unaffected areas), to an adverse impact on food production.

Details: Written by Eurodad; Created: 18 April 2014

As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) prepares for its Spring meetings, new research reveals that the number of conditions it attaches to its loans are rising – and they continue to be linked to harsh austerity measures and interfere in sensitive policy areas.

Conditionally Yours: An analysis of the policy conditions attached to IMF loans is the latest in a series of reports on the IMF’s lending practices produced by the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) over the past decade.

Details: Written by Christian Freymeyer; Created: 16 April 2014

A $35 million mansion in California, artwork totaling €18 million, and a $38 million dollar private jet.

These sound like items purchased by the world’s wealthiest oligarchs, right?

Well, they were actually acquired by Teodorin Obiang, son of President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea. When his father convenes with other leaders for this week’s EU-Africa summit, a wide range of topics will be covered. But there’s one issue in particular that should be given a loudspeaker during the talks in Brussels: illicit financial flows.