THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL BUSINESS

“I moved from microcredit to a much broader concept, which neatly includes microcredit itself. This new concept will bring a fundamental change in the architecture of our capitalist economy by bringing it closer to a complete and satisfactory framework freeing it from the basic flaws which lead to poverty and other social and environmental ills. This is the concept of social business.

Let me return for a moment to the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Unfortunately, media coverage gives the impression that once we fix this crisis, all our troubles will be over. The economy will start to grow again, and we can quickly return to “business as usual”.

But even it were desirable, business as usual is not really a viable option. We forget that the financial crisis is only one of several crises threatening humankind. We are also suffering a global food crisis, an environmental crisis, a healthcare crisis, and the continuing social and economic crisis of massive worldwide poverty. These crises are as important as the financial one, although they have not received as much attention.

We’re Euroseptic

Date: 23-05-2010
 Source: TIME

The euro was sold as a symbol of Europe’s strength and as something that might one day rival the U.S. dollar for the title of world’s reserve currency. It’s turned out to be neither. True, Europe’s leaders remain committed to their great experiment with monetary union, and for that reason, any talk that the euro zone will soon collapse — a standard prediction among U.S. economists — is likely to prove off the mark. But to make the euro what it was supposed to be, Europe will have to endure a painful period of economic reform. Over the past few months, we’ve learned that however politically united the continent might be, the euro is only as strong as Europe’s weakest parts.

MACROECONOMICS OF THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: MONETARY AND FISCAL RESPONSES

Die wissenschaftliche Reflexion zur Finanzkrise:

With the eurozone in turmoil, Wall Street under fire and the UK under a coalition government facing huge financial stress…

Are you alert to the latest on the global financial crisis?

To read the latest research on the global financial crisis, visit the Oxford Journals Financial Crisis Collection.
This collection holds a number of articles and themed issues on the financial crisis across a variety of leading journals.

The Financial Crisis Collection will continue to grow throughout the year, as new articles are published, so remember to check back for newly added content.

Europe’s deflation torture is a gift to the Far Left

If Europe’s ultra-Left has so far reaped little dividend from the great „Crisis of Capitalism“, this will surely change as the eurozone’s 1930s policies of wage deflation sap the credibility of the governing centre and the EU itself.

Hätten wir so scharf formuliert, was wäre dann passiert?

Aber wir haben in Ö. ja kein wirkliches Problem: bei der Verwaltung sparen wir massiv (Kanzler: Bezirksschulinspektoren können eingespart werden!) und den Steuerhinterziehern und Sozialschmarozern geht es nun an den Kragen (gemeint sind natürlich die kleinen Leute und nicht beispielsweise die Finanzindustrie, die ihre gesamten Ertragsteuerzahlungen auf faktisch 7% bis 10 % reduziert haben) Gewinne im großen Stil in Steueroasen zu verschieben scheint kein Problem zu sein, wenn wir nur die „nicht angemeldete“ Haushaltshilfe und den im Pfusch arbeitenden Gärtner erwischen ist nicht nur das Budget gerettet sondern  auch Gerechtigkeit gegeben!

Nur weiter so! das in dem Artikel geschilderte Szenario wird dann nicht mehr lange auf sich warten lassen. (GR)

 By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 6:20PM BST 23 May 2010, The Telegraph

 

The tragedy of the interwar years in Germany was that the Social Democrats – then the world’s foremost socialist party – became fatally tainted by acquiescing in Bruning’s deflation torture from 1930 to 1932. They did so, of course, because they dared not confront the orthodoxies of the Gold Standard.

By then the fixed-exchange mechanism had gone horribly wrong – in much the same way that EMU has gone horribly wrong – because the surplus countries were not recycling demand to maintain equilibrium. It had become a job-destruction machine. The result in Germany was the Reichstag election of July 1932 when the Communists and Nazis won over the half the seats.

 As historian Simon Schama wrote over the weekend in the Financial Times – „The world teeters on the brink of a new age of rage: we face a tinderbox moment“ - there is typically a lag-time between economic shocks and social fury. Luckily there is no Fascist threat this time. It is the (more benign) Marxist Left that stands to gain.

We commend Angela Merkel for her leadership in Europe

The Observer, Sunday 23 May 2010

The crisis in the eurozone is rapidly evolving into a test of strength between European governments and global financial markets.

The stakes were raised last week when Angela Merkel, German chancellor, announced a ban on naked shorting, a particularly sharp financial transaction by which traders gamble on falls in the prices of assets they don’t actually hold.

The prohibition is unlikely to ease pressure on the single currency, at least in the short term. In fact, the unilateral move was interpreted by markets as an act of erratic regulatory spite, resulting in more panic selling.

„We are still halfway through the world’s worst financial crisis ever“

Mervyn King, Governor der Bank of England in der Business Week und im Guardian. 12 May 2010

„The financial crisis is far from over. As debt has moved from the financial to the public sector, the banking crisis has turned into a potential sovereign debt crisis.“

BOE’s King Says ‘Very Clear’ That Euro Area Needs Fiscal Union

May 12, 2010, 8:46 AM EDT, Business Week

By Scott Hamilton

May 12 (Bloomberg) — Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said it was “very clear” the euro area needs a fiscal union after members breaching the region’s deficit limits forced leaders to adopt a bailout package worth almost $1 trillion.

“Within the euro area, it’s become very clear that there is a need for a fiscal union to make the monetary union work,” King told journalists at a news conference in London today. “We rely on a prosperous European economy for us to rebalance our own economy.”

The European Commission said governments should toughen budget rules and speed up enforcement procedures for countries breaching the region’s deficit limits after the Greek fiscal crisis prompted leaders to rush together a rescue package for highly indebted nations. The predicament led some political leaders and economists to call for greater fiscal integration among euro members, which retain control over their public finances.

After the Crisis: Planning a New Financial Structure

Learning from the Bank of Dad Speech given by Paul McCulley, the Managing Directpr of PIMCO, at the Minsky Conference

From the standpoint of what I want to talk about tonight, a great deal of it has already been discussed today. I feel a little bit like St. Louis Federal Reserve President Jim Bullard did at lunch when he said that Paul Krugman, who spoke just before Jim, had already given 90% of his speech. That’s basically true for me as well. Paul’s speech was superb, laying out six possible culprits in the financial crisis.1 I want to focus on Paul’s Number 3, the Shadow Banking System. Paul was drawing a lot of his comments today from the work of Professor Gary Gorton of Yale, which is absolutely fantastic material. Have a lot of you read Gary’s essay, „Slapped in the Face by the Invisible Hand“?2 I see a lot of nods here. That’s where the phrase that Paul used, „Quiet Period,“ came from. Gary coined it. He’d be a great person to have here next year at the Minsky Conference. And one of the fascinating things that he details is the nature of banking. That’s where I want to start tonight. Let’s start with first principles. If we do, then I think we can understand why we shouldn’t look at the conventional banking system and the Shadow Banking System as separate beasts, but intertwined beasts.

Grasser: „Staatspleite Griechenlands ist einziger Weg“

Das hätten wir gar nicht gedacht, dass der unseren Weblog liest (hfk). Shr kluger Kommentar eines FBK-Arbeitskreismitgliedes: „Auch eine kaputte Uhr zeigt zwei mal am Tag die richtige Zeit!“

25.05.2010 | 10:23 |  (DiePresse.com)

Das „Glutnest Griechenland“ sei so lange diskutiert worden, bis das ganze Haus gebrannt habe, sagt Ex-Finanzminister Karl-Heinz Grasser. Athen hätte einen Euro-Austritt mit Schuldennachlass aushandeln sollen.

Nach Ansicht des ehemaligen Finanzministers Karl-Heinz Grasser hätte die Europäische Union anstelle eines Milliarden-Hilfspakets zur Rettung des Euro einen Austritt Griechenlands aus der gemeinsamen Währung inklusive einen Schuldenverzicht aushandeln sollen. Dann hätte der Euro an Reputation und Glaubwürdigkeit gewonnen, meint Grasser in einem Interview mit dem „Wirtschaftsblatt“ (Dienstag).

„No Gold Watch“

May 22, 2010, Mark Thoma

David Warsh paints a somewhat gloomy picture of the „fate that, in varying degrees, awaits almost all retirees in Western Europe and North America in the next twenty years“:

No Gold Watch, by David Warsh: Another generation of US workers, at least significant numbers of them, are being forced into retirement sooner than expected and without ceremony, by the Bust. As Catherine Rampell noted in The New York Times last week, millions of people have been dismissed – file clerks, ticket agents, autoworkers and the like – who might otherwise have stopped working in more orderly fashion.

 “But because of the recession,” Rampell writes, “winter came early.”

This has happened before, notably in the 1980-82 recession, when the steel and domestic manufacturing industries led the casualty list; and, after 1990, when banks and other financial institutions shed millions of jobs. This time clerical and administrative workers have borne the brunt – 1.7 million of them have lost their jobs since the recession began in the fourth quarter of 2007. These are people for whom there was no gold watch. Is there anything for them besides the informal respect and affection of their peers? …