Economy

The global economy is now in its fifth year of crisis. Living standards for the vast majority have been steadily getting worse, with falling real wages and a complete dearth of jobs. Despite this, profits for the biggest companies continue to rise. Adam Booth examines the gaping and growing inequality in the society.

The cat-and-mouse game between piracy supporters on the one hand and state authorities and major multinational companies on the other is heating up. The recent spate of persecution of websites and individuals involved in piracy opens up a new phase. In the second part of his article on online piracy, Niklas Albin Svensson asks: what’s the alternative to copyright and patents? And how should we fund culture and the arts?

It has been revealed that the US National Security Agency has been given backdoor access to telephone exchanges and a long range of online accounts from major service providers, underlining how the state breaches users’ privacy on a massive scale in order to get intelligence. Niklas Albin Svensson looks at the latest manoeuvres of the capitalist state and the implications for the labour movement.

The cat-and-mouse game between piracy supporters on the one hand and state authorities and major multinational companies on the other is heating up. Over the past few years there has been a marked increase in the persecution of websites and individuals involved in piracy. Democratic rights are being thrown overboard and the full force of the state applied in the media industry’s ruthless pursuit of profits.

As part of the recent Annual Budget, George Osborne, the Tory Chancellor, announced government plans for a new “Help to Buy” scheme, aimed at increasing the number of residential property purchases. Far from solving Britain’s housing crisis, Osborne and the Coalition have helped to create the conditions for yet another bubble that will undoubtedly burst. Adam Booth looks at the housing question in the UK and latest government policy.

Despite his best attempts, George Osborne, the British Chancellor, could not hide the doom and gloom of the UK economy from his annual Budget, given on Wednesday 20th March. Figure after figure highlighted the dire straits that the economy is in, and Osborne’s announcements only added further misery for working people and the poor.

The credit agency Moody’s has stripped Britain of its triple A credit rating, humiliating the coalition government. It comes on top of news that the UK’s economy shrank in the last quarter of 2012, whilst the other two main credit agencies have the UK on “negative watch”. All this increases fears of the British economy heading for a triple-dip recession. The austerity programme has failed and it has to be changed.

The Bank of England, via its Monetary Policy Committee, has issued its latest report. Like every other report from the Bank for the last few years, this most recent document has sought to revise all previous estimates for the economy downwards. Once again, the representatives of capital are feeling pessimistic.

In September 2012, the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), at it’s annual meeting of delegates from the whole trade union movement, passed Resolution 27. For the first time in its history the TUC voted a resolution which called for the full public ownership of the banks and financial institutions. Darrall Cozens takes an in-depth look at the question of the nationalising the banks.

As world leaders were meeting to discuss the global economic “recovery” at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, official figures were released showing that the UK economy – far from being on the road to recovery – had shrunk by 0.3% in the last quarter of 2012. Adam Booth reports on the economic situation in Britain.

Far from heralding a new promise for the British economy, the 1% growth figure announced a month ago has already been buried by a pile of bad news. Few economists are looking towards 2013 with any real hope. Socialist Appeal editor Rob Sewell explains why.

The world economic crisis has led to such a deterioration of the health of public finances worldwide that the recent World Economic Outlook
(WEO) of the IMF has the apt title “Coping with High Debt and Sluggish
Growth”.