At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance.

10 Years Since Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy – Did the Economy Really Recover? September 19, 2018 MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have you with us once again. On September 15, 2008, the financial meltdown began with the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers. That was 10 years ago. The shock waves that hit the economy threw 9 million families out of their homes who could not afford to pay their rising mortgages. So Congress and the president in the 1990s killed Glass-Steagall, written in 1933 to save us from the excesses of the financial industry. And then Congress gave us Dodd-Frank in the wake of the 2008 crisis that bailed out Wall Street, but not America. And now Trump seems to continue the process with killing Dodd-Frank ...

This interview was conducted at Peking University for the Second World Conference, May 7, 2018. It was conducted by Lau Kin Chi of the Global University for Sustainability. A visual transcription is available here. I was born in Minneapolis, which is the only city in the world that was a Trotskyist city. During the 1930s it was a center of Trotskyism and my parents worked with Leon Trotsky in Mexico. When I was 3 years old my father was put in jail under the Smith Act as a political prisoner for having the works of Lenin and Marx on his shelves and for being one of the leaders of the Minneapolis general strikes from 1934 to 1936. So I grew up knowing many members of the Russian Revolution, ...

Michael Hudson: Argentina’s New $50 Billion IMF Loan Is Designed to Replay its 2001 Crisis, July 23, 2018. The recently elected neoliberal government of Mauricio Macri has decided to seek a $50 billion IMF credit line, which will only enable more capital flight for the upper class and greater unpayable debt for the rest of the population, says the economist Michael Hudson. SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore. For several months now. Argentines have been taking to the streets to protest against neoliberal austerity measures of President Mauricio Macri. The most recent such protest took place on July 9 on Argentine’s Independence Day. There have also been three general strikes thus far. In the two years since he took office, President Macri has laid ...