Political Economy for Health Blog
Posts are by members of the Peoples Health Movement PEH Network. Anyone may comment but your first comment will be held for approval; after that you will have direct access.
This blogsite is a resource of the People’s Health Movement. Its purpose is to provide a platform for discussion of the applications of political economy to the struggle for health. (The People’s Charter for Health provides an overview of PHM’s analyses and objectives: the ‘struggle for health’).
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Neocolonial ISDS, Abused, Biased, Costly, and Grossly Unfair
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Feb 7 2024 (IPS) – Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in international trade and investment agreements – long abused by opportunists with means – are slowly being rejected by cautious governments. Developing country governments need to be much more wary of ISDS and its implications, and should urgently withdraw from existing commitments. They…
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Financialization Hypothesis: A Theoretical and Empirical Critique
Turan Subasat, Stavros Mavroudeas. Financialization Hypothesis: A Theoretical and Empirical Critique. World Review of Political Economy 2023 The financialization hypothesis (FH) is a popular leitmotiv which argues that the financial system conquers the commanding heights of the capitalist economy. It maintains that finance gained independence from productive-capital and began to dominate it. The FH bases…
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A worldof debt: A growing burden to global prosperity
UN GLOBAL CRISIS RESPONSE GROUP, July 2023 Public debt can be vital for development. Governments use it to finance their expenditures, to protect and invest in their people, and to pave their way to a better future. However, it can also be a heavy burden, when public debt grows too much or too fast. This…
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The IMF and the Argentinian Right
C. P. Chandrasekhar, January 25, 2024 On January 10, the IMF announced its decision to release $4.7 billion out of a $57 billion bailout package sanctioned in 2018 to perennially debt-distressed Argentina, then under a right-wing government headed by Mauricio Macrio. That surprised some. Going by the IMF’s stated ‘principles’, the disbursal should not have…
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The Scourge of Unemployment
Prabhat Patnaik The unemployment situation is worse today than it has ever been in post-independence India. There are two distinct elements that have contributed to this situation. One is the fact that the output recovery from the fall caused by the pandemic-linked lockdown has not been accompanied by a comparable employment recovery. In fact, even…
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Inequality Inc.
How corporate power divides our world and the need for a new era of public action Oxfam, 14 January, 2024 Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer. Hardship and hunger are a daily reality for many people…
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AFTINET briefing paper on ISDS
Australian Fair Trade and Investment (AFTINET) updated briefing paper on Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), January 2024 AFTINET has produced an updated briefing paper on ISDS. It provides background and the latest evidence on ISDS cases including Clive Palmer’s three cases against the Australian government, which total nearly $410 billion. It documents other case studies and…
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Neocolonial ISDS, Abused, Biased, Costly, and Grossly Unfair
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram in Inter Press Service, 7 Feb 2024 Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in international trade and investment agreements – long abused by opportunists with means – are slowly being rejected by cautious governments. Jomo Kwame SundaramDeveloping country governments need to be much more wary of ISDS and its implications, and should…
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What the GDP Hides
From Prabhat Patnaik, in People’s Democracy, 4 Feb 2024 THERE are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross domestic product as well as with its measurement. The inclusion of the service sector within GDP is something that Adam Smith would have objected to on the conceptual grounds that those employed in this sector constituted…
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Corporate greed and rich countries cowardice lead WTO to abandon proposed sharing of Covid treatment technologies
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last night, news broke that the World Trade Organization (WTO) is preparing to reject a proposal that would have relaxed pharmaceutical monopolies and supported global sharing of COVID-19 therapeutic and diagnostic technologies. In response, Global Trade Watch director Melinda St. Louis issued the following statement: “In a pandemic, among the most precious…
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