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• Series: The banks and the “too big to jail” doctrine (Part 3)

  Drug and Bank Lords

  30 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  The British bank HSBC, which employs 260, 000 people worldwide, is present in 75 countries, and claims to have 54 million customers [1] is another example of the “Too Big to Jail” phenomenon. [2] Over the last ten years, HSBC has laundered $881 million [3] for Mexican and Columbian drug cartels that are responsible for tens of thousands of firearm related assassinations. These relations continue in spite of dozens of warnings from different US government agencies including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The profits from this business are so important that not only does HSBC continue, but it has also opened specialized services in its Mexico offices where drug dealers may simply hand in stocks of cash for cleaning. [4]

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• Series: The banks and the “too big to jail” doctrine (Part 2)

  Bank abuses in the real estate sector and illegal foreclosures in the United States

  30 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  From 2010 to 2013, US authorities made agreements with banks, not to prosecute them in the home mortgage and illegal foreclosures scandal. Instead, they merely had to pay a small fine. Since the outbreak of the crisis in 2006-2007, more than 14 million families have been evicted from their homes — at least 500,000 illegally. With help from social movements such as Strike Debt [5], many victims have become organized to resist the sheriffs and refuse these evictions. In addition, thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the banks.

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• Series: The banks and the “too big to jail” doctrine (Part 1)

  Banks and the New “Too Big to Jail” Doctrine

  30 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  We all know the saying, “Too big to fail”. The way governments have managed the crisis caused by the banks has given rise to, “Too big to jail,” [6] which is equally poetic! [7] Although the US government let Lehman Bros. go to the wall in September 2008, no other bank has been closed or broken-up, no directors have been condemned to prison [8]. The only exception in the western world is Iceland, where the courts have put three bank directors in prison. Larus Welding, the CEO of Glitnir, Iceland’s third biggest bank at the time, which went bankrupt in 2008, was condemned, in December 2012, to nine months in prison. Sigurdur Einarsson and Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, the two principal directors of Kaupthing [9] were condemned to five years and five and a half years in prison in December 2013. [10]

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• Sexual politics

  21st Century Socialist-Feminism: Part 2

  28 August 2014, by Johanna Brenner

  Looking back, we can see how the fate of socialist-feminism is closely tied to the fate of the broader institutions of working-class struggle. Socialist-feminists have always engaged in a two-sided effort: to bring an anti-racist, class-based feminist perspective into social movements and left political parties and a socialist perspective into feminist politics and women’s movements. Social-welfare feminism, social-democratic feminism, revolutionary socialist feminism, revolutionary women of color feminism, indigenous feminism, are some of the different currents within socialist-feminist politics. We can think of socialist feminism very broadly— to include all feminists (whether they would identify with the label or not) who see class as central but would not reduce relations of power and privilege organized around particular identities (e.g., gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, nationality) to class oppression. Revolutionary socialist feminism is distinguished from social welfare or social-democratic feminism in that, whether implicitly or explicitly, revolutionary socialist feminists are unwilling to allow capitalism to set the horizon for what can be envisioned or struggled for.

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• Sexual politics

  21st Century Socialist-Feminism: Part 1

  26 August 2014, by Johanna Brenner

  Looking back to the heady days of feminism’s “second wave” in the United States, it is distressing to acknowledge that the movement’s revolutionary moment is a dim memory, while key aspects of liberal feminism have been incorporated into the ruling class agenda. Liberal feminist ideas have been mobilized to support a range of neo-liberal initiatives including austerity, imperial war, and structural adjustment.

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• Series : Bretton Woods, the World Bank and the IMF : 70th anniversary (Part 6)

  The cancellation of German debt in 1953 versus the attitude to the Third World and Greece

  26 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  The United States cancelled the debts of some of its allies. The most obvious instance of this kind was the way the German debt was largely cancelled by the 1953 London Agreement. In order to make sure that the economy of West Germany would thrive and thus become a key element of stability in the Atlantic bloc, the creditor allies led by the United States made major concessions to German authorities and corporations - concessions that went beyond debt relief. A comparison between the way West Germany was treated after WWII and the current attitude to developing countries or to Greece today is a telling story.

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• Series : Bretton Woods, the World Bank and the IMF: 70th anniversary (Part 5)

  Why the Marshall Plan ?

  25 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  As its initial name indicates (International Bank for reconstruction and development), the World Bank (WB) had two main objectives:
  1. bring financial support to the reconstruction of the countries that had been devastated by the Second World War;
  2. grant loans to contribute to the development of backward countries (as developing countries were then called). The US, that call the music at the WB and on the international scene, decided that they would do without the WB for their reconstruction mission in Europe and unilaterally set up a large financial programme intended to restore the European productive apparatus in the countries within their orbit.

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• A Renewed Strategic Perspective on Socialist Work in the Labor Movement

  16 August 2014, by Labor Commission of Solidarity

  This February, the Solidarity Labor Commission held a two-day retreat at which we reflected on Solidarity’s labor work and the rank-and-file union perspective that has guided it for decades. This outline of a renewed strategic perspective is what emerged from our discussions. Although there is much here that is new, this perspective reflects our attempt to interpret the trajectory of union reform work since the 1980s and the political dynamics of the current period through the lens of Solidarity’s long-standing commitment to a politics of “socialism from below.”

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• Women’s liberation:? The Marxist tradition

  15 August 2014, by Sharon Smith

  “If women’s liberation is unthinkable without communism, then communism is unthinkable without women’s liberation.”

  —Russian revolutionary Inessa Armand

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• Series : Bretton Woods, the World Bank and the IMF: 70th anniversary (Part 4)

  SUNFED versus World Bank

  6 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  From 1950 to 1960, having no Marshall Plan to promote their growth, the developing countries proposed that a new UN body be created, based on a “one country, one vote” system designed to facilitate loans to their industries: SUNFED (Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development). The industrialized countries were fiercely opposed to this move, and successfully imposed a counter-proposal, the International Development Association (IDA), a branch of the World Bank, thus effectively putting an end to SUNFED. [11]

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