In Memoriam, Frank Ackerman

It is with great sadness that we announce that Frank Ackerman, a frequent contributor to Triple Crisis blog and one of the founders of Dollars & Sense (which maintains Triple Crisis), died on July 25th of this year.

Frank contributed five posts to Triple Crisis earlier this year; the fifth was Inequality, Sunk Costs, and Climate Policy (and the other four are linked at the top of that post). Frank revised the first three of those posts into the cover feature for the March/April issue of D&S, Can We Afford a Stable Climate.

Last September, at the 50th-anniversary celebration for the Union for Radical Political Economics, Frank spoke on a panel with two other D&S founders, Ann Davis and Arthur MacEwan, and D&S co-editor Chris Sturr, on the early history of D&S.  You can listen to Frank’s remarks here.  (The article about the history of D&S that Frank mentions at the beginning of his remarks can be found here.) Thanks to D&S collective member Cadwell Turnbull for recording and editing the talk.

There will be an event honoring Frank tomorrow at Tufts University.  The event begins at 4:30 in the Alumnae Lounge at the Aidekman Center on Tufts’ Medford campus.  Several speakers will discuss Frank’s research on climate change, environmental regulation, and economic modeling. The presentations will go on until about 6:00, and a reception will follow.

September 17, 2019 | Posted in: Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Trade, Currency War Weapons Double-Edged

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Anis Chowdhury
Cross-posted at Inter Press Service.
The US-China trade war has flared up again less than two weeks after US President Donald Trump delayed new tariffs of US$160 billion on Chinese imports until December, purportedly to avoid harming the holiday shopping season.

Ratcheting Up War Talk

Earlier, after two days of trade talks without much progress, Trump claimed on 1 August that China had not kept its promise to buy more US farm exports. He then announced 10 per cent tariffs on US$300 billion worth of Chinese imports, besides the 25 per cent already levied on US$250 billion of goods from China.
China’s Commerce Ministry responded on 5 August by stopping purchases of US agricultural products. Its central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) also allowed China’s long over-valued renminbi (RMB) currency to fall below the RMB7 per dollar ‘threshold’ to its lowest level in more than a decade, causing US equity markets to plunge.
In response, Trump tweeted, “It’s called ‘currency manipulation’.” Supporting the President, the US Treasury officially claimed, for the first time since 1994, that China was manipulating its currency.

Why the Climate Crisis Is Also the Crisis of Capitalism

By Ying Chen and Güney Işikara (guest post)

Many people are wary of bringing a critique of capitalism into the discussion of climate change, even if they are genuinely concerned about the crisis and actively looking for effective solutions. All it takes is the mention of any word ending with “-ism,” and skeptics will conclude that the discussion is unnecessarily ideological.

However, looking at the climate crisis through a Marxist lens can give us greater insight into the political inertia that has stalled the implementation of any kind of coordinated national response to climate change. The way capitalism operates in the United States, with its all-encompassing forces that have played a major role in creating today’s environmental disaster, is also standing in the way of the implementation of a comprehensive solution. We can only understand the impact of capitalism on the current crisis by viewing capitalism as a specific economic system and assessing its historical impact—as well as its limits and contradictions.

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Agroecology as Innovation

By Timothy A. Wise*

Cross-posted at Food Tank. 

Recently, the High Level Panel of Experts of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released its much-anticipated report on agroecology. The report signals the continuing shift in emphasis in the UN agency’s approach to agricultural development. As outgoing FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva has indicated, “We need to promote a transformative change in the way that we produce and consume food. We need to put forward sustainable food systems that offer healthy and nutritious food, and also preserve the environment. Agroecology can offer several contributions to this process.”

The commissioned report, “Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition.” Two years in the making, the report makes clear the urgent need for change. “Food systems are at a crossroads. Profound transformation is needed,” the summary begins. It stresses the importance of ecological agriculture, which supports “diversified and resilient production systems, including mixed livestock, fish, cropping, and agroforestry, that preserve and enhance biodiversity, as well as the natural resource base.”

Industrial Policy Finally Legitimate?

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Cross-posted at Inter Press Service.
For decades, the two Bretton Woods institutions have rejected the contribution of industrial policy (IP), or government investment and technology promotion efforts, in accelerating and sustaining growth, industrialization and structural transformation.

Finally, two International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff members, Reda Cherif and Fuad Hasanov, have broken the taboo. They embrace industrial policy, arguing against the current conventional wisdom that East Asian industrial policies cannot be successfully emulated by other developing countries.

Farming First: A Recipe to Feed a Crowded World

By Timothy A. Wise

Cross-posted at Mark Bittman’s Heated at Medium. 

One version of an old joke features a shipwrecked economist on a deserted island who, when asked by his fellow survivors what expertise he can offer on how they can be rescued, replies, “Assume we have a boat.” Economists have a well-deserved reputation for making their theories work only by making unrealistic assumptions about how the real world operates.

I was reminded of the joke often in the five years I traveled the world researching my book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food. Policy-makers from Mexico to Malawi, India to Mozambique, routinely advocated large-scale, capital-intensive agricultural projects as the solution to widespread hunger and low agricultural productivity, oblivious to the reality that such initiatives generally displace more farmers than they employ.

Italy and China’s One Belt One Road Initiative

By Sara Hsu

China has become a leader in globalization, most visibly through its One Belt One Road initiative, which spans several continents and aims to build up infrastructure and trade between China and the rest of the world. While the program has, for the most part, remained controversial in the West due to a fear of Chinese imperialism, in March 2019, Italy broke with the G7 major economies and signed up for the program. Some analysts have expressed concerns that this move will allow China a back door into Europe’s heartland, while others see it as a shrewd move on the part of the Italians, allowing them to obtain much-needed financing for a number of endeavors. So, which is it, and is this a win-lose or a win-win situation?

China Has Strategic Objectives In Going Global, Does Africa?

From The Real News Network.

If Africa as a continent does not have strategic objectives of its own, the history of impediments to African economic development will be repeated in its engagement with China, says Ethiopia’s Alemayehu Geda.  

LYNN FRIES: It’s The Real News. I’m Lynn Fries. My guest on today’s show is Ethiopia’s Alemayehu Geda, who is a Professor of Economics at University of Addis Ababa. We are meeting at the UN Geneva, where Professor Geda just presented at anexperts meeting. Professor Geda, welcome.

ALEMAYEHU GEDA: Thank you very much.

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World Bank Financialization Strategy Serves Big Finance

 By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis ChowdhuryCross-posted at Inter Press Service.

The World Bank has successfully built a coalition to effectively advance its ‘Maximizing Finance for Development’ (MFD) agenda. The October 2018 G20 Eminent Persons Group’s (EPG) report includes proposals to better coordinate various international financial institutions (IFIs) in promoting financialization.

New Pan-Agency Development Financing Report Suggests Major Economic Crisis Brewing

By Jesse Griffiths

Cross-posted at ODI.

The 2019 Financing for Sustainable Development report from the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Financing for Development was launched today.

For those – like me – who worry that the world is sleepwalking into another crisis, it’s not reassuring. It confirms that global debt is at record levels and ‘financial fragilities’ have built up across the globe. It’s also disappointingly light on solutions that could reverse these trends.

What is the IATF report?

The IATF is a group of fifty major international institutions that work on finance issues, including various United Nations bodies, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization.

This report is its annual stocktake on progress towards meeting commitments to finance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It’s an impressive undertaking, covering all major financing sources, with a mandate to look at the global financial and economic system as a whole.