The Third Plenum of the Communist Party of China ended last week. The Third Plenum is a meeting of China’s Communist Party Central Committee composed of 364 members which discusses China’s economic policy for the next several years. As China is a one-party state, in effect this sets out the policies of the government and, in particular, that of President Xi.

The term ‘soft landing’ is somewhat odd. I suppose it means that the world economy has not crashed into the runway, but instead lightly settled down. But really, there has been no landing at all – if we mean by that a slump or contraction in real GDP globally. Anyway, to use another aphorism, the world economy is really ‘a curate’s egg’, an old-fashioned term to described something that is partly bad and partly good, or more exactly something that is obviously and entirely bad, but is described out of politeness as nonetheless having good features that might redeem it.

If over the rest of this decade, the world economy slows or goes into recession and Mexico cannot export its way out of such a crisis, pressure will be on Sheinbaum to apply ‘fiscal austerity’ to reverse the gains made by labour under AMLO. When Lula in Brazil gave way to Dilmar Rousseff as president, a similar situation to Mexico now, the downturn in the world economy in the 2010s forced Rousseff to adopt pro-capitalist measures, eventually leading to her downfall through impeachment by Congress. Sheinbaum will need to avoid a similar fate as Mexico’s first woman president.

Superficially in the recent period the U.S. has attempted to display two apparently contradictory sides of its policy to China. ... In reality, this “soft cop/hard cop” U.S. approach is not contradictory. It was two sides of the same coin. In particular it is rooted in the real situation, as opposed to the myths regarding, the U.S. economy and the implications of this for U.S. foreign policy and domestic policy. These are rooted in the inability/refusal of the U.S. to abandon its aggressive military and foreign policies and a similar refusal/inability to carry out rational domestic transformations even of a reformist kind. By these the U.S. dooms itself to defeat by China in peaceful economic competition—with consequences which are examined at the end of what follows.

Despite the fact that China’s economy continues to far outgrow all major Western economies the Western media is energetically promoting a myth of “peak China”—i.e. that China’s economy either has or is about to drastically slow down.

Indonesia has got the classic formula for development in poor countries in the world of 21st century imperialism. Its economy is founded on basic commodity production that is highly capital intensive, severely damages the environment and does not provide many good jobs for the people, while the rich pay little tax and public services are limited. And the old Suharto elite remain in control.

What did the WEF Risks Report conclude from its survey of Davos participants? “As we enter 2024, we highlight a predominantly negative outlook for the world over the next two years that is expected to worsen over the next decade. … The outlook is markedly more negative over the 10-year time horizon, with nearly two-thirds of respondents expecting a stormy or turbulent outlook.” Not good for capital and even worse for working people.

Monthly Review | How much does it cost to maintain an empire? A stunning new analysis by Gisela Cernadas and John Bellamy Foster shows the true scale of U.S. military spending.

Michael Roberts | At the beginning of this year, I wrote a post on how the capitalist mode of production was in what some call a ‘polycrisis’, where various crises: economic (inflation and slump); environmental (climate and pandemic); and geopolitical (war and international divisions) had come together in the early 21st century. Polycrisis, the new buzzword among leftists, is in many ways similar to my own description of the contradictions of the Long Depression of the 2010s that have to come to a head in the 2020s.

The Swiss investment bank expects the country’s oil sector to grow significantly in 2022.

The rebranded “digital bolívar” will wipe out six zeroes from the current “sovereign bolívar” and enter circulation on October 1.

Last week the US Federal Reserve raised its growth forecasts for the US economy for this year and next. Fed officials now reckon the US economy with expand in real terms by 6.5%, the fastest pace since 1984, a few years after the slump of 1980-2. This is a significant rise from the Fed’s previous forecast. Also, the unemployment rate is expected to drop to just 4.5% by year-end, while the inflation rate ticks up to 2.2%, above the official target rate set by the Fed.

It all depends on whether the UK economy can ‘’grow out’’ of its debt burden as it did after the second world war through a combination of high public investment and rising inflation (that eventually forced the devaluation of the pound). Given that the profitability of capital in the UK is at an all-time low and the business investment rate worse than in any other major economy, the prospects of achieving that are small. Before this parliamentary term ends, the UK economy could be facing a new economic crisis.

The move represents a legalisation of the de facto dollarisation seen in recent years.

Spectre‘s Ashley Smith talked to Michael Roberts about his projections for the world economy.

Upon its launch ten years ago, Germany's Industry 4.0 program promised a fourth industrial revolution changing the way we work. Yet for all the talk of novelty, it followed age-old capitalist imperatives: using labor-saving technology not to lessen our workload but subject us to even tighter workplace discipline.

Spectre Journal – The old regime of the Green Revolution is dying, while a new, more baleful, cycle of agrarian capitalism is waiting to be born. In this interregnum, there has emerged a spectacular groundswell of anti-capitalist resistance by farmers and agrarian workers.

Before the pandemic, private equity had amassed $2.5 trillion – more than the GDP of Italy – in 'dry powder,' waiting for distressed assets to plunder. Covid-19 provided them with the perfect opportunity.

The Dirty Fight for Prop 22 and the Gig Economy

In response to the pandemic, politicians in Ottawa set up an emergency wage subsidy scheme that was meant to help workers. But some of Canada’s biggest firms have milked the subsidy scheme for billions while paying out dividends and laying off staff.