In thrall to the markets
Governments across the world are engaged in a beauty contest judged by the ratings agencies which pronounce on their credit-worthiness, and the hedge funds which decide whether a country’s debt – its bond issues - are worth buying.

The fault lies within the system itself
The recall of fault-ridden products, which is spreading throughout industrial manufacturing, tells us much about the acute contradictions that permeate the global corporations within the capitalist drive to maximise profits.

Resistance grows as crisis deepens
Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a wave of opposition is engulfing Europe. Workers are joining a wave of action which threatens to bring the continent to a standstill as they try to resist being made to bear the costs of the deepening global crisis.

Bankers plan to bankrupt Greece
European governments have joined forces with the likes of Goldman Sachs and a large collection of globalised banks. They are ganging up to bully the Greek government into upping the assault on the country’s working people.

Greek debt crisis: a warning from history
Greece has moved centre stage as the global debt contagion engulfs Europe. But Italy, Portugal and Spain are not far behind, whilst France and even Germany, whose banks have many billions invested in the other countries, are waiting in the wings. No wonder EU leaders are holding a crisis meeting tomorrow.

Debt contagion spreads
In the aftermath of Davos, the annual skiing trip for the bankers, businessmen and tame governments of the global economy, one key theme runs through the post-mortems in the wake of the economic and financial crash: the free market requirements of corporations are in open conflict with the political constraints of a world of capitalist nation-states.

Britain's debt is 'nitroglycerine'
As they gather in Davos with the leaders of the global capitalist economy for the annual World Economic Forum, Britain’s New Labour government is struggling to find some crumbs of comfort in the 0.1% “return to growth” for the last quarter of 2009. The figure is worse than the most pessimistic of predictions and knocks a huge hole in Chancellor Alistair Darling’s fanciful budget.

'Business is business'
In the days preceding the deal that saw Cadbury sold to Kraft yesterday, the leaders of the Unite trade union wrote to shareholders asking them to consider the wider “public interest” and prevent British jobs being transferred to production facilities in the United States. But major shareholders naturally had other considerations and Unite’s appeal fell on deaf ears.

Business as usual for bankers
Despite the mind-blowing size of bank bail-outs, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are struggling to have even a modest impact on the behaviour of those held responsible for the collapse of the global financial system. It is quite a demonstration of capitalist power relationships, with politics coming a distant second.

Can't pay, won't pay!
Who was consulted when Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling decided to put the rescue of the global capitalist system ahead of every other priority? Was there a rash of Blair-style focus groups? Were any opinion polls commissioned? Not that we know of.

Japan's crisis goes from bad to worse
Today is the 20th anniversary of the bursting of Japan’s bubble economy of the 1980s. The culmination of attempting to deal with the relentless impact of two decades of precipitous decline has destroyed the health of two finance ministers in less than a year and the prospects for their successor are not bright.

Getting to grips with the crisis
As we prepare our Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions, it is of the greatest importance that our analysis and the policies we put forward, are based on the most accurate and well-rounded estimation of the nature and scale of the global crisis and its impact on ordinary working people.

Darling's con trick fools no one
Chancellor Darling’s pre-budget report (PBR) is a confidence trick aimed at disguising the massive cuts in spending that either New Labour or the Tories (or a national government?) will impose when next year’s general election is over.

Bailouts beyond belief
How a government that has saddled taxpayers with liabilities of up to £850 billion – roughly £40,000 for each household – for bailing out the banks can now parade itself as the party for ordinary people as opposed to the “Tory toffs”, is beyond belief.

Co-operatives can help unlock the future
Imagine, if you will, a global society of communities whose citizens wake each day filled with enthusiasm about the prospect of working together, co-operating on the land and in the buildings they own to meet their needs for food, clothing, housing, education, health and transport.

The mirage in Dubai
Dubai was a property dream literally built on sand and borrowed money, where the rich could enjoy the sun and watch their assets soar in value. But like so much of recent capitalism, it has proved more mirage than substance.

Banks a millstone round society's neck
Nine million people in the UK don’t have access to credit from banks, so have no choice but to use rip-off lenders. The cost of a £100 loan with a company such as Provident Financial can be £49.50 – nearly 50% of the amount borrowed, or an APR of 545.2%.

GM wields the big stick
Nick Reilly, head of General Motor's international operations, is touring Europe on a mission. He's been to Poland and Belgium. Yesterday in England he met New Labour's august Lord Mandelson and Tony Woodley, deputy leader of trade union Unite. Today Reilly is in Spain.

The apostles of growth have had their day
Gordon Brown is in big trouble. The financial system he piloted to prominence during his years as Chancellor is in ruins. Rupert Murdoch has turned The Sun against him. The majority of the UK population is in favour of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and his letter-writing skills have slipped, angering army wives and mothers.

The mother of all bail-outs
In the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics, the New Labour government has put in a credible bid for victory in the financial events with the sums spent on bailing out the banks. The increasing size of the bail-outs shows one thing – the crisis is getting worse rather than better.

Good bank, bad bank? Peoples bank!
The European Union is expected today to approve plans for the Northern Rock bank to be split in two – so-called “good” and “bad” banks. The Rock has been state-owned since the spring of 2008.

More shocks on the way
The disarray – and fear – in ruling class circles over the future prospects for the financial system is growing apace. Far from rescuing the banks, unprecedented levels of state intervention have, according to Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, and others, reinforced existing weaknesses.

Mind the gap
Despite an agreement to swap half of the 1,200 threatened jobs for a two-year pay freeze and lower pensions, Vauxhall workers in the UK should be warned against welcoming their prospective new Canadian and Russian employers too early.

Dollar 'time bomb' adds to turmoil
The reaction to the global meltdown has so far consisted of so many variations on a common theme: governments deepening their debt to provide backing for too-big-to-fail stricken banks and central banks inventing new money. The single lyric on the hymn sheet is “save the system, return to growth!”

Not me, guv'!
Listening to Gordon Brown yesterday reminded you that New Labour is not actually responsible for anything, despite a dozen years in office. Above all, the government has washed its hands of any shared liability for the financial crisis that has overwhelmed the economy.

Blair keeps the wheels of profit turning
Former Prime Minister Blair put in a rare but brief television appearance last night. My, but how he has aged! His new death’s head mask is entirely appropriate for the role he is now playing.

Brown presents the bill
A year and a day ago the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, took the decision to instruct Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy after 158 years of trading. It was a case of too big to fail and too big to save. Within days, the world economy fell off a cliff and has never recovered.

'Ugly political backlash' warning
Some economists are saying that the recession is officially over. Well, we know these same “experts” were caught with their trousers down before last autumn’s meltdown, (being re-enacted on television tonight) even while lesser mortals like A World to Win were warning about the collapse of the financial house of cards.

70 years on - preventing a new apocalypse
Business editors are scouring the world for signs of a recovery. But, despite government intervention to stimulate the credit markets, including the temporary effects of car-scrappage schemes, latest figures show the UK capitalist economy facing its worst nightmare.

Not holding back the tide
US President Obama has re-appointed Bob Bernanke as chairman of the US central bank the Federal Reserve for a second four-year term. You can see why.

Counting the cost of the meltdown
While the International Monetary Fund suggests that the recession has bottomed out, all the signs merely indicate a pause in the crisis before a further lurch towards slump in the coming months.

Two years into the crisis and the human toll mounts
Two years ago this week, the global capitalist economy entered uncharted territory. It started with a crisis in the credit markets – the so-called “credit crunch” – and within a year it had led to a precipitate collapse in economic output in all sectors.

Occupations confront the state as crisis deepens
Hopes of a recovery in the health of the banking sector and the real economy look more like pipe dreams in the wake of worse than expected figures from Lloyds and Northern Rock. Both sets of losses reveal the impact of the deepening recession.

No arguing with the profit motive
Extreme weather events throughout the world mark the impact of profit-driven capitalist growth on a changing climate brought about by burning fossil fuel. Wildfires are sweeping across swathes of Southern Europe and Canada, Turkey is hit by floods, and mid-summer torrential rain is lashing the UK.

Banks show who rules Britain
So Alistair Darling is going to “get tough” with the banks over their lending rates. Don’t make me laugh! The fact is that the banks have simply stuck two fingers up to the government and let New Labour know that when it comes to real power, they are in charge.

Regulators dance to the banks' tune
That Goldman Sachs, the world’s largest investment bank, is set to pay record bonuses that even exceed those made before the credit crunch, is only one sign that nothing has changed in the world of global finance. This comes hard on the heels of decisions by Alistair Darling and the European Union to leave the banking system more or less as it was before it collapsed gratefully into the arms of taxpayers.

'Honey - I shrank the economy', a nightmare by Brown & Darling
The graph from the Office of National Statistics, showing Britain’s incredible shrinking economy, surely has a much bigger immediate impact on our ability to grasp what is happening than the many thousands of words pouring from journalists’ keyboards and spewing from politicians’ mouths.

If it can't be fixed, scrap it!
At the end of last week, Lord Mandelson, the authentic, unelected voice of global capital within the New Labour government, stated what he saw as the “simple problem”. He was making a bid for supranational influence in Washington, in a speech entitled “Can we fix globalisation?".

Crisis over? Who are they kidding!
Finance ministers in Italy for this weekend’s annual meeting of the G8 capitalist countries aren’t short of sources to help them interpret economic statistics, and they’re getting plenty of advice about what needs to be done. The trouble is that not only are the statistics contradictory, but so is the advice.

New improved 'fantasy finance' fuels the crisis
The maelstrom of scandal and political in-fighting that is shaking the New Labour government to its foundations – who knows what other ministers may have resigned by the time you read this – is fuelling the fires of the global crisis of capitalism.

Lies, damned lies and statistics
Apparently the number of people imagining that there will be more jobs available in the next six months in the United States has increased. This measure of “confidence” sent markets soaring yesterday. But these are the kinds of reports that sustain the now-fading springtime images of economic green shoots. Those who believe them should be warned about too much optimism.

'Green shoots' fantasy world
From international speculator George Soros, to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, to global stock markets, there is a concerted attempt to declare that the worst of the economic crisis is over. That’ll be no comfort for 244,000 in the UK who have joined the ranks of the unemployed and the thousands of school and university leavers this summer, whose job prospects are the worst for a generation.

Rail network heads for meltdown
The Faustian bargain between New Labour, the state and capitalist corporations is collapsing around the government’s ears and nowhere more so than in the rail industry. Led by the debt-ridden National Express, many companies that hold the rail franchises sold to them by the government are close to pulling out of their contracts because they can’t make enough profit to pay their way.

It's capitalism, stupid!
In the ominously quiet moments as the world awaits the next body blow in the struggle between the ill-matched but inseparable financial and economic systems, some of those on the sidelines look for an explanation that goes beyond greed.

The truth behind Brown's boom
A committee of MPs today blames the “reckless behaviour” of the banks for the financial crisis, which is as neat a way as any of letting the New Labour government off the hook.

Darling's big fraud fools no one
Alistair Darling’s crisis budget is a gigantic attempted fraud that will fool no-one. New Labour’s Chancellor bears comparison with Bernard Madoff who, last month, was convicted of the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person.

Green shoots in Finaghy
Governments and central banks throughout the world have been struggling with a myriad of unco-ordinated measures to deal with the global financial crisis that has triggered a precipitate fall in output and rising unemployment.

'Creative destruction' order of the day
Despite the G20’s attempts at confidence-boosting rhetoric, the interdependent components of the global economy remain locked in a deadly embrace, wrestling with each other as they plummet to the ground.

Spin gives way to the real world
Last week, a photo-opportunity thinly disguised as the G20 emergency economic summit; this week, the real world has reasserted itself. London endured days of synthetic bonhomie that saw world leaders grinning from ear to ear as if everything was under control. Now the smiles have vanished and a new phase of the global crisis is emerging.

Getting it right about Marx
Mounting street-level opposition to the capitalist G20 governments London gathering prompted the Evening Standard to observe this week that the impact of the combined financial and economic crises is making Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalist society attractive to a rapidly increasing number of people looking for explanations and solutions.

Being anti-capitalist is only a start
As the leaders of the world’s richest countries start gathering in London for Thursday’s G20 summit, a picture can convey more than words about what confront Obama, Brown et al. The latest cover of Time magazine just about sums up the desperate nature of the global economic crisis. It depicts a small boat with six people desperately rowing to prevent it falling off the edge of a massive waterfall. The headline is: “All together now (please?)”

Capitalism can't and won't 'put people first'
While most of the world’s media yesterday focused on the US plan for tighter regulations for the disintegrating financial sector and Gordon Brown’s grand tour aimed at talking up next week’s G20 summit, the real, productive economy was going to hell in a handcart.

'Cash for trash' is just rubbish
If someone suggested that you spend a sizeable proportion of your income on buying a pile of household waste from the local refuse tip, you would rightly think they were off their heads. That, however, is exactly what’s happening in the United States in what is now being dubbed by some as President Obama’s “cash for trash” programme.

The horse has bolted
Current and former leaders of global agencies are leap-frogging each other with increasingly dramatic attempts to give expression to the scale and rapidity of the disintegration and collapse of the world’s financial and economic systems. Their warnings contrast sharply with the feeble efforts of national government agencies like the UK’s Financial Services Authority.

Plan B has to be co-ownership
When Gordon Brown announces that the “old idea that markets were by definition efficient” is over and that “laissez-faire” has “had its day”, you can see how the crisis of confidence in the capitalist system has pervaded the highest reaches of government and the state. What plan B is, however, is altogether another question.

G20 reduced to spectators
There they were on a warm spring weekend in Horsham, West Sussex, with a simple agenda: agree a plan to prevent the global economy from slipping from recession to deep slump, or at least suggest an outline of a strategy that their bosses could sign up to at the G20 summit in London next month.

A question mark over the system itself
The Financial Times major series of articles grandly entitled “The Future of Capitalism” should at least have a question mark after it, especially as the main contributors are, to say the least, struggling to come to terms with what’s actually happened, let alone what lies ahead.

A tipping point is reached
It’s difficult to know which of two momentous pronouncements yesterday has the most profound significance for the future of the global capitalist economy.

How to 'rescue' the banks from the owners
On the day the Royal Bank of Scotland reported the biggest annual loss in UK corporate history – a mind-boggling £24 billion – and news emerged of former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin’s £700,000 a year pension, New Labour announced its third rescue package for the stricken bank.

A global protection racket
Global car maker General Motors is demanding an additional $18 billion in addition to the $13.4 billion in loans already received from the US Treasury to keep it afloat whilst it slashes jobs and production.

Hoping for the best - preparing for the worst
When the Governor of the Bank of England says it out loud, it’s because it has already happened. As Mervyn King said himself, he’s not paid to make predictions. It’s why only six months ago he didn’t even acknowledge the possibility. So, in confirming the obvious he says the UK economy faces its deepest recession since the post-war years of 1945 and 1946, and its worst peacetime decline since 1931.

The only thing we have to fear is capitalism itself
The dispute over the use of imported labour at a UK oil refinery looks like a minor side show compared to the global disquiet over a key part of Barack Obama’s economic package. The president’s throwback to 1930s Roosevelt-style government spending, and its inward-looking Buy American component, is causing concern amongst ailing corporations, as well as countries dependent on exports to the US.

Avoiding a repeat of history
Karl Marx cited the words of his teacher Georg Hegel, when he recalled, “all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice”, with Marx adding: “The first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” That déjà vu feeling came to mind while watching TV and reading the news over the weekend.

A Tom Paine for the 21st century!
The economy is in such a steep decline that the top global corporations are now feeling the impact. The collapse of consumer demand is cutting the ground from under giants like Sony, which expects a record $2.9 billion annual operating loss, and Microsoft which is cutting 5,000 jobs worldwide – about 5% of its estimated 96,000 employees – and refusing to make a forecast of future profitability.

The bankruptcy of 'politics'
The failure of a second state bail-out to resuscitate the corpse of British banking, as Lib Dem spokesman Vince Cable so eloquently put it, is a dramatic indication that the entire financial system is close to the precipice. With this looms the increasing possibility of state bankruptcy and an end to what now passes for conventional politics.

Corporations warn against bail-out risk
Massive government spending to support financial institutions in countries including the US, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and Australia will significantly further damage the weakening global economy, especially if, as predicted, China suffers a sharp slowdown this year. Those are not my words but come from an organisation that speaks for the major global corporations.

Bankers' government is bankrupt
Is there such a thing as a banking “expert”? We ask this question in the light of today’s announcement that New Labour has recruited a top City banker to the government to – wait for it – try and save the banking system.

Capitalism heads for year zero
Barack Obama yesterday raised the spectre of an irreversible crisis, with the situation getting “dramatically worse”, if his spending plans to boost the US economy were delayed. Is he being alarmist? And will his plans for a $775 billion “shock therapy” treatment work?

New debt time bomb primed
As the economy heads inexorably for catastrophic collapse, the failure of capitalist politicians to come up with any answers – or indeed accept any responsibility for the crisis – is glaring. That, however, does not mean there are no solutions to hand. It’s just that they don’t spring from a conventional approach to what’s happening.

Don't pay the price for their follies
As the minor surge of festive consumer hysteria peters out, analysts are preparing for an unprecedented perfect storm in 2009 with unpredictable economic and social consequences.

Henry Ford's model runs into the sand
Global production of cars is coming to a standstill. This is just the most dramatic and immediate result of a rapidly deteriorating crisis which has paralysed the global financial system and rapidly sent the world economy into recession.

Brown prepares to cut and run
In 1997, New Labour chose Things Can Only Get Better by D:ream as its theme song for the election campaign. As speculation rises that prime minister Brown may call an election early in 2009, it is time for someone to record Things Can Only Get Worse.

Just one big lie
When Bernard Madoff, who is allegedly responsible for a $50 billion fraud that has hit banks, hedge funds and wealthy individuals, told his staff that he was "finished" and that "it's all just one big lie", he could just as easily been referring to the global capitalist financial system as a whole and not just his own “investment” fund.

Thinking the unthinkable
Despite Gordon Brown’s notions of saving the world – let alone Britain – the pound is now falling to its lowest-ever levels against the Euro. It is currently trading at 1.04 euros to the pound at some bureaux de change. Things are so bad that insiders are thinking the unthinkable – jettisoning Sterling and adopting the Euro!

A system beyond repair
The global economy is in bad shape, nowhere more so than in the UK and each panic measure only makes matters worse. Following a total of 2% cut in the previous two months, the Bank of England has reduced its rate by a further 1% to 2% – equal to the lowest rate since the Bank of England was founded in 1694, when capitalism began to make its mark. That’s how serious the crisis is.

New Labour's borrowing bombshell
When the government borrows, who does it borrow off? This question from a reader arose in response to Monday’s crisis budget, when chancellor Darling announced record sums of borrowing. It’s an arrow that gets straight to the heart of the problem.

'Extraordinary measures' the order of the day
The capitalist system is both broke and broken – and neither New Labour nor the Tories can fix it. Banks can’t and won’t lend, the housing market has collapsed, job losses are piling up (Woolworths finally collapsed this morning) and the state itself is being pawned in the hope that there’ll be money in the future to redeem the pledge.

Darling deludes no-one except himself
The measures set out in the New Labour government’s emergency budget yesterday were designed to set pulses racing and induce a collective sigh of relief across the country. Instead, the record amounts of borrowing required will not only reinforce the economic and financial crisis but also point towards the possibility of state bankruptcy in the not too distant future.

Time to slay the dragon
As the clocks struck midnight in Washington on Sunday, the Bush government scrambled to rescue Citibank, formerly one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions, to prevent it from total collapse when the markets opened today. Another weekend, another bail-out of bankrupt banks as the era of fantasy finance unravels in remorseless fashion.

Shocks to the system
It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of even one of the economic events of the last 24 hours. Fears of a severe recession sent financial markets into freefall once more while retailers launched their January sales two months early in an attempt to tempt now wary consumers into deeper debt.

Can we do it? Yes we must!
As the political leaders of 20 of the biggest economies gather in Washington to work out how to fix the global capitalist economy as, like a runaway train, it heads straight for the buffers, the range of “solutions” is piling up. None of them have a hope of taking off.

The 'great debt unwind' continues apace
Central banks are slashing base rates across Europe in a renewed, desperate attempt to minimise the impact of the unstoppable descent into slump. Their combined efforts can be compared to joining hands in a line to confront an avalanche of snow head-on. You just know what the result will be.

Banks get quids but there's no quo
It is not long since Prime Minister Brown announced a £400 billion bail-out package including a £37 billion gift to the banks, but the big lie has already been exposed. The story a month ago was that the government and the Bank of England were going to do whatever it takes “to maintain the stability of our system and to make sure that there is stability for families and for businesses right across our country”.

'Walking blind into a minefield'
The impending collapse of so-called “emerging” economies from Ukraine to Turkey illustrates dramatically the domino-effect of the global financial crash, with the weakest countries going to the wall first. Rising political tensions at national and regional level are also dangerous signals that the crisis is destabilising international relations.

When limits are reached
Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve, admitted yesterday that the credit crisis had exceeded anything he had imagined. Talking about the operation of financial markets he said: “It had been going for 40 years with considerable evidence that it was working very well.” Either he was looking down the wrong end of the telescope, or his theoretical models were wrong.

No easy fixes
To those who have been preaching state intervention as the solution to the credit crunch and the recession it must seem as though their time has come. Out go the discredited free-market assumptions of the late 20th century and in come the theories that found favour in the late 1930s and the immediate post-war.

Time to cut the losses
In the last week, stock markets the world over have been showing the classic signs of bipolar disorder, but in the most concentrated form. Euphoric, manic, hysterical highs followed by the deepest depression. Much of it, say some of the commentators, is internally generated, the result of speculators feeding off each other’s panic.

Too much 'civilisation'
Nothing sums up the insanity of the capitalist system more than unemployment. Just think about it. People want to work; the means of production like offices, shops, factories, plant and equipment all exist; yet all of a sudden, workers are thrown on the dole.

The storm is just starting to blow
Gordon Brown is being feted as the “master of the universe”. Stock markets yesterday were delirious with joy, making record-breaking, stratospheric leaps as governments around the world bailed out the banks. Right-wing Tory newspapers joined in unalloyed praise for the bankers’ government.

'The worst is yet to come'
The emergency state bail-out today of Britain’s major banks to the tune of £37 billion marks the end of an era and is the clearest indication that the recession that prompted the global financial crash is already turning into economic depression.

From fantasy finance to economic crash
When corporations at the heart of American capitalism, Ford and General Motors, find themselves close to bankruptcy, there is no surer sign that financial mayhem is turning into economic disaster for the masses who actually work for a living rather than speculate with other people’s money and lives.

Banks bail-out is a con and a swindle
The £50 billion bail-out of the banks is a desperate act by a cornered government. Worse, it is a futile bid to shore up a capitalist financial system that is in meltdown precisely because of the actions of the very same people the money is being handed over to.

Political crisis takes centre stage
The scale and spread of the historically unprecedented disintegration of the world’s financial system, and its impact on global markets is beyond the control of any one government. And now it is equally clear that no co-ordinated action is possible either.

Meltdown and revolt
The global capitalist financial system is grinding to a halt amid a meltdown of support for bailing out banks and political paralysis in the United States, the most indebted country of all. Without forms of finance/credit, the economy itself cannot function. It’s that serious.

Another way is possible
The increasingly desperate attempts to bail-out the financial system in America and Europe have raised fundamental questions about economics and politics that were considered dead and buried not so long ago.

Panic in Washington
The chaos in Washington last night, with members of Congress shouting at each other across the table, ignoring President Bush who was chairing the emergency cross-party summit, shows how the frenzy in the crumbling financial system is finding its mirror image in politics.

Drive the merchants from the temple
When the Archbishops of Canterbury and York weigh in against what they see as the excesses of market capitalism and financial speculators, something is definitely up. The most senior figures in the Church of England haven’t suddenly become revolutionaries, however, but reflect a growing sense in society that the economy is going to hell and that ordinary people are the principal victims.

Post-capitalist irony
Ironically, the best case for the abolition of private ownership of production and finance is now being made by capitalism itself. For example, banks which until just a few months ago were firmly in the private sector are now state owned or controlled. As yet, the world as we know it has not come to an end following this remarkable turnaround.

'Managing' the crash
Every passing day sees more of the consequences of the global meltdown coming to light. Financial institutions implode and disappear and increasingly desperate measures are taken by private sector banks, central banks and governments.

An 'orderly' failure
Manchester United have a new sponsor this morning – the federal government of the United States of America! Yesterday, the global insurance company AIG was in private hands. This morning, 80% of the shares are owned by the government following a hastily-arranged take-over to prevent the company’s total collapse and a systemic failure of the global financial system.

On a knife edge
The Financial Times puts it like this: “The world has not ended. The international economy has not yet collapsed. But one thing is now quite clear: the banking system as we know it has failed.”

A Sunday crash on Wall Street
It has come to something when the right-wing Daily Telegraph starts talking about the possibility that "capitalism is collapsing under the weight of its internal contradictions". But with Lehman Brothers, one of the world’s biggest investment banks going to the wall overnight, and another, Merrill Lynch, disappearing in a rescue takeover on the same day, you can understand the paper’s concerns.

Escape from Neverland
New Labour’s crisis deepened over the weekend, with the Chancellor Alistair Darling’s open admission about the seriousness of the credit crunch. He said today’s economic times are “arguably the worst they’ve been in 60 years”.

Global economy goes belly up
When the debt-fuelled boom came to an end a year ago, official pronouncements from every part of the world assured us that the economic fundamentals were sound. Gordon Brown was to the fore in his confidence that after ten years in his care, the British economy was better placed than most to weather what he and others told us was as a temporary problem affecting the world of finance dubbed the "credit crunch".

The credit crunch one year on
In the shadows of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, the effects of the slow-motion implosion of the global capitalist economy one year on from the start of the credit crunch are becoming apparent in China. Whilst many factories have been shut, apparently to reduce pollution for the period of the Games, there are questions whether many of them will reopen when the medals have been awarded.

Policies for the crisis - finance
Centrica’s prediction of a 60% rise in household energy bills over the next two years comes as dire news for the millions already drowning in unaffordable debt. It signals a continuing upward price spiral which is rapidly eroding the value of wages and salaries, just as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) foreshadows the onset of a global recession.

Policies for the crisis – housing
The worsening recession is taking an increasing toll on jobs, mortgages and home ownership, and threatens to bring down the entire banking system at the same time. Housebuilders are laying off workers, mortgages are virtually unobtainable while many owner-occupiers cannot afford to maintain payments and face the prospect of repossession.

The rich cash in
Shares in General Motors have fallen to the lowest level for over half a century, a sure sign of the deepening global recession. Just as stark in the world of fantasy finance is the one-third decline in the value attributed to Countrywide, the US’s largest mortgage lender, since it was merged with the Bank of America in January.

Hunger haunts the Big Apple
Problems of hunger and malnutrition in many parts of the developing world are common knowledge. But less well known is that in the United States itself, the world’s richest country, growing numbers are finding it difficult to put food on their table as prices rise at their sharpest for nearly 20 years.

Poverty street for more young and old
Life for children and pensioners is getting worse under New Labour. Figures published yesterday show that 22.7% of children and 23% of pensioners are living in poverty and that the numbers are rising at both ends of life. After two successive years in which child and pensioner poverty have grown, 3.9 million children and 2.5 million pensioners are living on incomes below the minimum required for a reasonable standard of living.

A perfect economic storm
The Bank of England and the European Central Bank kept interest rates steady this week, despite pressures for a cut to boost economic activity. The central banks were paralysed by contradictory movements in the global economy that render them helpless.

Strike back against the banks
When banks refuse to lend, what is the point of a commercial bank? It’s not a fanciful question. Banks throughout Britain and other countries are on a lending strike because their balance sheets are shot to pieces. For example, tens of thousands of people whose mortgage deals are up for renegotiation cannot get a loan at any price and face losing their homes. Small businesses are in a similar state.

'Well-placed' - pull the other one
New Labour was always fond of telling anyone who would listen that globalisation dominated by powerful corporations and open markets, worked to everyone’s benefit. We were in a new period of economic history, where old-style capitalism was no more. What then to make of the following: "We are facing a testing period in the economy. We are facing the first real international economic crisis of globalisation."

Brown's fantasy world
The Bank of England’s inflation report makes grim reading. Bland assurances about the strength of economic fundamentals as the credit crisis erupted in the autumn have been replaced, superseded with expectations of soaring inflation – “above 3% for several quarters”, and recession, with governor Mervyn King declaring: “The central projection is for growth to slow sharply in the near term, reflecting the squeeze on real incomes.”

Will Hutton's fantasy world
I wonder what Will Hutton, writer on economic affairs, chief executive of the Work Foundation and former editor-in-chief of The Observer thought at breakfast this morning as he scanned today’s financial headlines, where the talk is all gloom and doom? Just two days ago, in Sunday’s Observer, Hutton argued that the US economy was showing the world the way forward, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

A global car crash
Any lingering doubts about the trend towards recession were swept away last night as the world’s vehicle makers announced their April results. Falling off a cliff would sum it up. General Motors sales fell 23%, Ford 19%, and Chrysler nearly 30%. And to make matters worse for the manufacturers, the effect of spiralling fuel prices has shifted sales from high-profit trucks and gas-guzzling SUVs to more fuel-efficient but less profitable models. The idea that a US recession wouldn’t affect the rest of the world also took a beating as Toyota dropped 5% and Nissan 2%.

Debt crisis behind Grangemouth strike
Members of the Unite trade union at Grangemouth are set for the first strike at an oil refinery for 73 years over pension rights. The dispute brings the potential impact of declining production of oil into sharp focus. The threat of a major impact on availability of fuel in Scotland and the North of England has driven already record prices higher and triggered panic buying as supplies from the North Sea oil and gas field are cut off.

The real costs of the price of oil
The price of a barrel of oil reached and passed $115 yesterday. It has doubled in a year. As the price of oil goes up so must everything else, as everything that is produced, distributed and consumed depends on it in some way. The higher the price of oil goes, the deeper will be the global economic slump.

Food prices revolt grows
Governments across the globe are being shaken by mass protests, as people take to the streets demanding lower food prices. According to the World Bank, increases in global wheat prices reached 181% over the 36 months leading up to February 2008, and overall global food prices increased by 83%. The UN says the price of rice has soared by 75% in just two months.

IMF predicts the unpredictable
Headline reports of the stark admissions, predictions and warnings in the two latest reports from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) literally overshadow the impact of the developing financial and economic crisis on the world’s population. A third report, also released this week, for the weekend spring meetings of the central bankers and finance ministers has been almost universally ignored.

Housing market misery
The morbid concern over the sharp fall in house prices in March not only expresses middle-class obsession with property values. It is also graphically illustrates how the market economy in housing results in gross distortions. In human misery terms, it means growing numbers of repossessions, more homelessness, overcrowding, extortionate rents and children denied the space to grow up or do their homework.

Out of control
Some people you meet have a touching faith in global capitalism, although they would never put it like that. They believe that the authorities are more or less always in control of affairs and they will always be able to “manage the crisis” to avoid disaster. The assumptions behind this are that a) capitalism is a rational system that follows a predictable logic b) they have all the answers up their sleeves. Of course, if you add a) and b) together, there is no chance of challenging, let alone defeating, the economic system.

Speculation feeds rice price crisis
Across Asia, sudden stratospheric increases in rice prices have prompted countries to ban exports amid fears that shortages could provoke food riots following street protests in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia. World prices for rice, the staple food of about 2.5 billion Asian people, have almost doubled since the beginning of the year, joining those of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities which have surged since the end of 2006.

Send for Dr Who!
Regulate! Regulate! Regulate! This is the cry heard with increasing stridency on both sides of the Atlantic as the global financial crisis continues to take its toll on both bankers and ordinary people’s lives. This sounds plausible enough, even mildly anti-capitalist. But in truth, regulation is a non-starter when it comes to dealing with the depth and breadth of the meltdown.

Credit chain breaks at weakest link
Hedge funds are not just investment opportunities open only to wealthy individuals. They also apparently come in the shape of Iceland. Now, pardon the pun, Iceland’s finances are in meltdown and it could be the first country to fall victim of a global credit crunch that shows no signs of abating.

Policies for a crisis without precedent
The global financial crisis, which this weekend claimed the giant investment bank Bear Stearns and led to a hysterical response on world stock markets, has no precedent. Comparisons with the Wall Street crash of 1929 or even the “bankers’ panic” of 1907 don’t even begin to get near the essence of the crisis.

Prayers as 'the great unwinding' claims another casualty
Guests on last night’s Newsnight (BBC2) talked about a ‘crumbling house of cards built by the capitalist financial system’. They weren’t talking about our book A House of Cards, from fantasy finance to global crash but they might as well have been. Instead, they were discussing the latest bankruptcy of a major financial group.

American dream in tatters
The first fall in US household wealth in five years reveals the growing impact of a financial and economic crisis that will be felt by every person on the planet. World prices for oil – now over $100 dollars for a barrel of crude, gold nearing $1000 an ounce, food driven skywards by demand for biofuel, and many other basic commodities are spiralling, whilst the warning signs of recession, including declining retail sales are appearing everywhere.

Debt tsunami builds
The emergency legislation to allow a temporary period of public ownership of what now seems are the most worthless parts of Northern Rock, is increasingly looking like a finger plugging a hole in the dyke (or levee for American readers) as the global financial system continues to haemorrhage on debt.

Darling going down with the ship
"Floundering - SS Corporate Globalisation taking on heavy water - pumps failing." That was the essence of the emergency message relayed to the world yesterday by chancellor Alistair Darling as he announced public ownership of failed bank Northern Rock following failure to strike a deal with venture capitalists led by Sir Richard Branson. His was the equivalent of announcing "don't panic" to passengers on the Titanic.

Non-doms have their way
The government's ignominious retreat over modest proposals for taxing super-rich, non-domiciled foreigners - the so-called "non-doms" - is a further sign of New Labour's confusion and decline as the party favoured by big business. After a decade of helping to turn London in particular into the playground of the rich, the government is losing its touch to such an extent that there are clear indications that business is turning back to the Tories.

Staring at 'economic calamity'
The world's financial ministers are all in a dither, and it is not surprising. At the weekend meeting of the G7 - the world's richest economies - ministers took a few steps towards acknowledging the scale of the economic unravelling that is both cause and consequence of the global credit crunch. Then most did a sharp about turn, rejecting America's call for a global reflationary package and claiming things could be contained.

Millions in mortgage crisis
The thing about capitalism is that it appears to solve problems only to recreate them in a new, more dramatic form. Take housing, for example. Until recently it seemed that everyone could buy a home, watch its value rise and borrow against the property to buy consumer goods to keep the economy moving. Now up to two million households in Britain and a similar number in the United States face a struggle to retain their homes as the economic and financial crisis takes its toll.

IMF rearranges deckchairs on sinking ship
Make no mistake, the global capitalist elites know they are in a major crisis and are stumbling around trying to find a way out. The call by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, for countries to spend their way out of recession is perhaps the most dramatic expression of the panic now gripping policy makers. Another cut in US interest rates is also expected to add to the sense of turmoil.

A rogue financial system
To describe Jérôme Kerviel, the man who allegedly wiped out a year's profits for the French bank Société Générale by making the wrong call on which way stock markets would move, as a "rogue trader" is convenient but entirely superficial. Kerviel was, after all, only engaged in what traders all over the world are doing every minute of the day in New York, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and other major financial centres.

Seize the initiative
"Bloodbath in share prices", "the dark 1970s", "panic and desperation" - just some of the headlines littering newspaper pages and websites in response to the turmoil in the financial markets. While yesterday's dramatic rate cut by the US Federal Reserve gave shares a small boost, nothing is resolved. Far from it.

Fear and panic greet Davos elite
The fear and panic stalking the world's stock markets is the surest expression that a global economic recession is under way with the potential to become a catastrophic, full-scale slump. What shape this will take is impossible to predict, but it would clearly involve the destruction of capital and assets on an unprecedented scale throughout the global capitalist economy.

Banks' losses threaten action on climate change
Despite Government loans and guarantees in the region of £55billion and the sale of a choice part of its assets to J P Morgan, (perhaps coincidentally the first of Tony Blair's private sector income streams), Northern Rock's problems are not easing. It isn't making enough to repay the penal interest rates charged by the Bank of England. Plans for a state takeover - nationalisation - are well-advanced.

The year of the bailiff
The extent to which we are cajoled, enticed, seduced and even tricked into spending more than we have - especially over the end-of-year holiday period - is revealed through startling figures. A poll conducted by the Norwich Union found that 73% people who responded said they would run out of money by today - several weeks before their next pay day at the end of the month.

The system's broke - and Larry can't fix it
Any lingering doubts that the global financial crisis of 2007 would presage a deep, worldwide recession evaporated as 2008 opened for business with a quick-fire salvo of bad news for the economy. US manufacturing slumped to its lowest since April 2003, and global manufacturing growth slipped closer to negative territory - contraction - adding to fears that the US recession is spreading.