Author: Michael Roberts

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Around the world

Chile: another turn to the right?

November 16, 2025 Michael Roberts
Chile has a general election today. Around 15 million voters can take part in the first round to elect a new president, the lower house and half the seats of the senate. Incumbent President Gabriel […]
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In the U.S.

Liberation day

April 2, 2025 Michael Roberts
It’s not April Fool’s Day (1 April).  But it might as well be, as later today U.S. President Donald Trump announces another barrage of tariffs on imports into the U.S. in what Trump calls ‘Liberation […]
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China

China’s Third Plenum directed toward quality growth and improved living standards

July 24, 2024 Michael Roberts
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 […]
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China

China’s unfair ‘overcapacity’

April 11, 2024 Michael Roberts
The recent nonsense issued by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on China’s ‘overcapacity’ and ‘unfair subsidies’ to its industries is particularly pathetic.  As Renaud Bertrand put it: “The so-called threat of China’s ‘industrial overcapacity’ is […]
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Around the world

Pakistan’s misery continues

February 10, 2024 Michael Roberts
Pakistan has a general election on 8 February. It will decide on the next government of the world’s fifth-most populous nation and the governments of its four provinces — Punjab, Singh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. […]
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China

Xi meets Biden

November 16, 2023 Michael Roberts
This was the only second face-to-face meeting during the Biden presidency. It seems the aim was to clarify just how close the U.S. and China are to conflict over Taiwan and other security issues, as […]
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Around the world

1.2% of adults have 47.8% of the world’s wealth while 53.2% have just 1.1%

August 23, 2023 Michael Roberts
Every year, I bring to the attention of readers of my blog the results of the latest Credit Suisse Wealth Report.  It is produced by economists Anthony Shorrocks (with whom I graduated at university), James […]
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Capitalist crisis

Food, trade and slumpflation

August 11, 2023 Michael Roberts
The latest measure of U.S. consumer price inflation for July actually showed an uptick in the year-on-year rate to 3.2% from 3% in June.  That is mainly a result of comparison (‘base effects’, they are […]
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Around the world

Britain’s royal rip-off

May 6, 2023 Michael Roberts
Today in Britain, King Charles III will be crowned in a ‘coronation’.  All the other remaining monarchies in Europe (Scandinavia, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain) don’t bother with a coronation, but the British monarchy has had a […]
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In the U.S.

The wage price spiral refuted

December 2, 2022 Michael Roberts
Do ‘excessive’ wage rises lead to rising inflation and thus drive economies into a wage-price spiral?  Back in 1865, at the International Working Men’s Association, Marx debated with IWMA Council member Thomas Weston.  Weston, a […]