The U.S. credit card system siphons off excessive amounts of money from merchants. In a typical $100 credit card purchase, only $97.25 goes to the seller. The rest goes to banks and processors. But who can compete with Visa and MasterCard?... [read more]
W Stephen Gilbert delivers an up-to-date, state and fate of the retail trade in Britain, it is partly warmingly, personal and anecdotal, and partly a critical overview: part one... [read more]
The US Postal Service, under attack from a manufactured crisis designed to force its privatization, needs a new source of funding to survive. Postal banking could fill that need.... [read more]
Crushing regulations are driving small banks to sell out to the megabanks, a consolidation process that appears to be intentional. Publicly-owned banks can help avoid that trend and keep credit flowing in local economies.... [read more]
W Stephen Gilbert delivers an up-to-date, state and fate of the retail trade in Britain, it is partly personal and anecdotal, and partly a critical overview: part three.... [read more]
On Easter Saturday I revisited Salisbury to see for myself. This was, after all, a holiday weekend, and Salisbury should be packed with people. Yes, car parks were full but…... [read more]
In a blatant example of “do as I say, not as I do,” the US government is profiting handsomely by accepting marijuana cash in the payment of taxes while imposing huge penalties on banks for accepting it as deposits.... [read more]
What do you do if you’re the victim of injustice against major
institutions, walled up behind teams of legal eagles whose expertise
focuses first and foremost on closing ranks and damage limitations?... [read more]
The investment potential of the Russian economy offers good reasons why it is time for the West to take a more positive attitude towards the country. The President-elect might be doing everyone a favour in the long run, David Morgan argues.... [read more]
It is not easy for any of us to get our heads around the complexities of modern economics. Many capitalists themselves and certainly most politicians no longer understand how the system really works... [read more]
Phone companies do too little to ensure the minerals they use are conflict-free. Here's what you can do to hold them to account, says George Monbiot.... [read more]
Iqbal Tamimi considers the fate of the Roma women of Iraq: from dancing and prostitution before the US invasion of Iraq to harassment and begging on the streets afterwards.... [read more]
With both mainstream political parties apparently united in their determination to privatise the UK postal system, Mick Brooks makes the case for resisting so-called "part-privatisation".... [read more]
Calls for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have been increasing, most recently as part of the “Green New Deal” introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and supported in the last month by at least 40 members of Congress... [read more]
The Fed is aggressively raising interest rates, although inflation is contained, private debt is already at 150% of GDP, and rising variable rates could push borrowers into insolvency. So what is driving the Fed’s push to “tighten”?... [read more]
From the moment the news came out that on Sunday March 4th in Salisbury, one of England’s revered cathedral cities, a Russian spy and his daughter had been poisoned by some form of ‘nerve agent’ my reaction was ‘Oh dear’. ... [read more]
When she spoke after Manchester’s tragedy: “May’s speech did not address allegations that in 2011, while she was Home Secretary, Libyan Islamists previously under surveillance in Britain were given back their passports and helped by the government to fly to Libya to fight Muammar Gadaffi’s administration.... [read more]
Former Labour shadow cabinet minister, Bryan Gould, explains the consequence of the decline of British manufacturing is that we have run a perennial trade deficit in every year since 1982... [read more]
One glance on Sunday morning at The Guardian website demonstrated quite clearly what is wrong with Britain – and, probably, the rest of the ‘developed’ world... [read more]
Much of the left would agree that the European Union does not always function in the best interests of either the European or International working class... [read more]
Greece could restore the liquidity desperately needed by its banks and economy by nationalizing the banks and issuing digital loans backed by government guarantees... [read more]
If you were a university student at any time from 1962 to 1989, you received a maintenance grant; it started off at a little under £400 p.a. and reached £1,430 in 1980... [read more]
By changing the rules, this government has sabotaged the promise of a UK community energy revolution and secured the dominance of the big six energy companies, writes George Monbiot.... [read more]
The horrific carnage we have seen unleashed in Gaza in recent weeks - a humanitarian catastrophe - would not have been politically or economically affordable without the tacit acquiescence of the global jewellery industry... [read more]
Dr Robert Braun, veteran politician and senior member of Hungary’s opposition party, MSZP, speaks with Dr Tomasz Pierscionek about Hungary’s transition from Eastern Bloc state to neo-liberal democracy and describes the challenges currently facing the country... [read more]
Former MP and member of the Labour shadow cabinet, Bryan Gould, discusses the findings of a recent OECD report which revealed that UK housing is among the most overpriced in the world... [read more]
Part 5 of Eric Toussaint's series Banks versus the People: the Underside of a Rigged Game shows that big banks continue playing with fire, because they are persuaded that governments will save them whenever necessary... [read more]
The paragon of modern tech risks losing its shine by dodging queries about Indonesia, and an orgy of unregulated tin mining, writes George Monbiot.... [read more]
Ellen Brown reports on how former Peace Corps volunteer Will Ruddick and several residents of Bangladesh, Kenya, face a potential seven years in prison after developing a cost-effective way to alleviate poverty in Africa’s poorest slums... [read more]
Companies like EDF, seeking to terrify protesters with lawsuits, are likely to become victims of their own aggression, writes George Monbiot.... [read more]
Paula is depressed. She has no motivation to look after herself, to eat or to get dressed. Some days she stays in bed and doesn’t open the curtains. Felix McHugh discusses the hurdles one of his clients faces in trying to navigate the welfare system.... [read more]
For the five or six generations of solitary, sedentary boys in the middle of which fell my vintage (the baby boomers), the hobby par excellence was collecting stamps, recalls W Stephen Gilbert.... [read more]
W Stephen Gilbert delivers an up-to-date, state and fate of the retail trade in Britain, it is partly warmingly, personal and anecdotal, and partly a critical overview: part two...... [read more]
W Stephen Gilbert reflects on the politics of poppy wearing, its dissociation in popular society from what it actually represents and its hijacking by politicians. ... [read more]
The rise of China is almost universally hailed as a great success story. Ted Sprague considers the largely unreported human cost of China's forward march.... [read more]
'New' Labour is too close to big business to deliver the radical change the country needs, but it is by far the lesser of the two evils on offer, writes Richie Nimmo.... [read more]
In the second article in his series, 'Contextualising the Threat of Islam', Richard Greeman looks back on the US government's long history of constructing official enemies to justify foreign aggression and domestic repression alike.... [read more]
With politicians and financial experts grasping at straws in their efforts to resolve the worst economic crisis in decades, Mick Brooks outlines the case for the nationalisation of the banking system.... [read more]
Guardian journalist George Monbiot poors scorn on the notion that climate change issues are the preserve of a misanthropic middle-class snobbery.... [read more]
Samuele Mazzolini examines a bold new intiative from the Ecuadorean government, aimed at establishing a coordinated transnational policy among debtor nations with respect to the crippling debt burdens that are stifling progress in the developing world.... [read more]
Annabelle Williams on the events company which has found itself at the centre of a storm over its links with the international arms trade.... [read more]