Category: Economy
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COVID-19: A View from the Great Depression of the 1930s
The Great Depression. It rests in our collective consciousness as a time when unemployment was rampant, when soup kitchen and bread lines were long, when misery was widespread, when dust … Keep reading »
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‘Open the Economy’? The Pandemic, Costs, Benefits, Capitalism
It is mid-June 2020. Everywhere there is a push to ‘open the economy’. What is meant, of course, is to bring back, as soon as possible, the profit-seeking activities of … Keep reading »
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The Bank of Canada: In Crisis and Beyond
Viewing the COVID-19 pandemic as a purely exogenous shock, Canadian economists and policymakers have tended to predict a quick return to economic growth once health restrictions are lifted. As an … Keep reading »
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COVID Life and the Asset Economy
Following the 2007-08 financial crisis the creation of a less unequal and fairer world appeared to be a major prospect. As is by now all too familiar, after the financial … Keep reading »
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Don’t Blame the Virus for Capitalism’s Latest Crisis!
Is corona-virus driving Canada into recession? Some people want us to think so. As early as March 27, CBC News referred to “the recession caused by COVID-19.” The Toronto Star … Keep reading »
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Washing our Hands of Financialized Pensions
Rethinking Retirement After COVID-19 The unemployment crisis brought on by the coronavirus outbreak has suddenly destroyed the earnings of hundreds of thousands of working people in Canada. For many jobless workers, … Keep reading »
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Conversion as Strategy: From GM to Workplace Plans
In February 2019, shortly after GM’s announcement that its Oshawa assembly operations would be shut down, Sting was in Toronto. He was performing The Last Ship, his musical about the … Keep reading »
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Covid-19, Google, and the future of Toronto’s Waterfront
Waterfront Toronto is a tri-government agency with a mandate to re-develop the waterfront. In its search for a ‘funding and development’ partner it has been effectively captured by Google’s digital … Keep reading »
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Here Comes Bourgeois Socialism – Again
What should we think of the recent praise of “the welfare state” and public services coming from different voices among the ruling classes in the world? Their conversion is as … Keep reading »
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When Oil Markets Go Viral
The ecological dimensions of COVID-19 have become increasingly prominent in much recent discussion, with several important contributions exploring the pandemic in relation to capitalist agribusiness, widespread loss of biodiversity, and … Keep reading »
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The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Exposing the Plague of Neoliberalism
In a time of crisis, capitalism reveals itself as a disimagination machine whose underlying message is that the market provides the only forms of agency left. Keep reading »
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Coronavirus, Crisis, and the End of Neoliberalism
Suddenly, we find ourselves in a transformed world. Empty streets, closed shops, unusually clear skies, and climbing death tolls: something unprecedented is unfolding before our eyes. News about the economy … Keep reading »