Suchergebnisse

Public banks are banks located within the public sphere of a state. They are pervasive, with more than 900 institutions worldwide, and powerful, with tens of trillions in assets. Public banks are neither essentially good nor bad. Rather, they are dynamic institutions, made and remade by contentious social forces. As the first single-authored book on public banks, this timely intervention examines how these institutions can confront the crisis of climate finance and catalyse a green and just transition. The author explores six case studies across the globe, demonstrating that public banks have acquired the representative structures, financial capacity, institutional knowledge, collaborative networks, and geographical reach to tackle decarbonisation, definancialisation, and democratisation. These institutions are not without contradictions, torn as they are between contending public and private interests in class-divided society. Ultimately, social forces and struggles shape how and if public banks serve the public good.

Four decades of neoliberal market fundamentalism and its relentless assault on the public sector and our understandings of publicness have generated a profound crisis of social reproduction and environmental sustainability. Private sector financial solutions and market signals have not tackled climate change at the speed and magnitude required, often instead magnifying our social, economic, political, and environmental challenges. This paper discusses the rediscovery of public banks and their potential - to finance low-carbon, climate-resilient development, and as a public sector alternative that can overcome the shortcomings of the private sector and market approaches mentioned above. The paper suggests an ideal-type public bank that would be needed for a green transformation that is also in the public interest. The ideal type is crafted around five central features: mandated role; financial sustainability; operational strategy; democratization of governance; and integral integration of workplace and community. The defining characteristics of each feature can be found in existing public banks. Putting forward an alternative conceptualization that focuses on the public interest, sustainability and social equity concerns, this paper contributes important insights to the current debates on sustainable development and a just and equitable green transformation. ; Paper prepared for the UNRISD session at the Resilience 2017 Conference

Mexican society has experienced three costly finance-related crises in 1982, 1994-95, and 2008-09. In each case the continuity of capitalist development depended in large part on state authorities drawing the worst financial risks into the state apparatus, that is, on socialization. While most understandings of socialization remain at a largely technical understanding, I argue that the socialization of financial risk in Mexico rests on distinctively class-based material and institutional processes. The processes of socialization have been historically constitutive of neoliberalism and the current phase of financial accumulation in Mexico. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

Mexican society has experienced three costly finance-related crises in 1982, 1994-95, and 2008-09. In each case the continuity of capitalist development depended in large part on state authorities drawing the worst financial risks into the state apparatus, that is, on socialization. While most understandings of socialization remain at a largely technical understanding, I argue that the socialization of financial risk in Mexico rests on distinctively class-based material and institutional processes. The processes of socialization have been historically constitutive of neoliberalism and the current phase of financial accumulation in Mexico.

McDonald, D.A. and Ruiters, G., editors, 2012: Alternatives to Privatization: Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South, London: Routledge. xii + 520pp. £85.00 hardback. ISBN 978-0-415-88668-0 hardback, 978-0-203-14706-1 paperback.

McDonald, D.A. and Ruiters, G., editors. 2012: Alternatives to Privatization: Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South. London: Routledge. xii + 520 pp. £85.00 hardback. ISBN: 978-0-415-88668-0 hardback. ISBN: 978-0-203-14706-1 paperback.

Abstract.The 1982 Mexican presidential decision to statize all domestic commercial banks was meant to reset state bank capital relations and salvage some form of state-led capitalism. However, bank statization had the counterintuitive and ultimately unintended consequence of enabling a more rapid transition to neoliberalism, financialization and market-led capitalism than otherwise may have been possible. The implications of this are profound as alternatives to neoliberalism that seek a return to state-led development are ultimately flawed without more collective, local, and substantively democratic calls for the control of credit and, hence, human development.Résumé.La décision présidentielle mexicaine de 1982 d'étatiser toutes les banques commerciales domestiques avait pour but la reconfiguration des relations capitalistes État-banque afin de récupérer une certaine forme de capitalisme étatique. Or, ce processus eu pour conséquences inattendues l'accélération de la transition au néolibéralisme, à la financiarisation et au capitalisme de marché. Les implications sont profondes pour les alternatives au néolibéralisme qui, cherchant un retour au capitalisme d'État, s'avèrent inefficaces sans un contrôle collectif, local et démocratique du crédit et, par ricochet, du développement humain.

Reinterprets the post-1980s ascent of neoliberalism in Costa Rica by acknowledging the primacy of social classes & the state role in designating & molding middle class conflict, & the consequences of historical class struggle for the state, through alterations in the social relations of production. Against policy-based & "common sense" approaches to neoliberalism it is contended here that neoliberalism is most properly regarded as an historical, class-rooted ideology that holds that all social, political, & ecological dilemmas can be remedied through a more explicit mode of free-market activity. The ascent of Costa Rican neoliberalism articulates both a new type of political hegemony & imperialism, each of which seeks to surmount recurrent obstacles to progressive capital valorization & to reinscribe US power. References. K. Coddon

Chinese authorities created four new asset management companies (AMCs) in 1999. These have since undergone profound transformations which have been influential in China's contemporary integration into the world market. Conventional interpretations see these powerful AMCs in largely technical and asocial terms. By contrast, we employ a critical geographical analytical framework to understand the transformation of these AMCs as an expression of the state's spatial–temporal strategy to create conditions of political economic stability now by displacing the conditions of financial instability and crisis into the future. This strategy does not come without unintended and destabilizing consequences, nor is it without class-based social and political implications. (China Q/GIGA)