Finance Archives - Corporate Watch https://corporatewatch.org/product-tag/finance/ Sun, 17 Sep 2017 09:23:29 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/cropped-CWLogo1-32x32.png Finance Archives - Corporate Watch https://corporatewatch.org/product-tag/finance/ 32 32 Magazine 54: Meet the Investors https://corporatewatch.org/product/magazine-54-meet-the-investors/ Sun, 17 Sep 2017 09:23:29 +0000 http://cwtemp.mayfirst.org/?post_type=product&p=3580 This issue of the Corporate Watch magazine is about investment and what the much-quoted and feared investors get out of it.

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]]> Speaking at a conference in May, David Cameron said he was “thoroughly relaxed about foreign investors” in the UK and that Britain was “probably one of the most welcoming countries anywhere in the world” for them. The year before, chancellor George Osborne described the government’s decision to slash corporation tax as “an advertisement for investment in Britain”.

It’s a common refrain as governments across the world compete to lure the money of companies, banks, pension funds and other governments with ever more ‘pro-business’ policies. The investors themselves are often explicit about what they want. In Greece earlier this year, eleven aggrieved companies, including Nestle, Philip Morris and Unilever said that they would be happy to spend more in the country if only it was “more friendly to investment”. Their definition of friendship turned out to involve lowering minimum wage, especially to young or currently unemployed people.

The whims and predilections of ‘the market’ are objects of obsession for a variety of financial analysts and politicians. This issue of the Corporate Watch magazine isn’t for them, but it is about investment and what these much-quoted and feared investors get out of it.

Click here to download this magazine for free.

 

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]]> Making Sense of the Crisis https://corporatewatch.org/product/making-sense-of-the-crisis/ Fri, 15 Sep 2017 16:10:46 +0000 http://cwtemp.mayfirst.org/?post_type=product&p=3577 Making sense of the financial crisis may sound like a daunting task. Often the financial system comes across as an impenetrable web of obscure institutions and complicated transactions. Explanations of how these institutions work, what instruments they use and the impact that they have on us often get lost in the technical jargon used to talk about them. Libraries are full of economic theories and analyses used to explain or justify policies and opinions, yet they often assume readers are up to speed with the facts and debates. So is it possible to make sense of the crisis?

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]]> Making sense of the financial crisis may sound like a daunting task. Often the financial system comes across as an impenetrable web of obscure institutions and complicated transactions. Explanations of how these institutions work, what instruments they use and the impact that they have on us often get lost in the technical jargon used to talk about them. Libraries are full of economic theories and analyses used to explain or justify policies and opinions, yet they often assume readers are up to speed with the facts and debates. So is it possible to make sense of the crisis?

We would like to think that it is and so have published the second part to the Corporate Watch Guide to Finance and Banking.

A common trend in mainstream analysis of the financial crisis has been to blame individual institutions or managers for ‘bad investment decisions’ – the good old ‘bad apples’ argument. The first article in this briefing deconstructs this and other myths and shows how the credit crunch came about as an inevitable result of the recent developments in the present arrangements of the economic and financial system, i.e. capitalism.

The second article, Crisis Stories, provides summaries of, and comments on, different interpretations and analyses of the financial crisis (Marxist, Keynesian and so on). Though it was originally written and published online in 2009, the author’s analysis of the credit crunch still holds up and is, in fact, supported by recent developments.

Finally, to complement ‘our’ critical take on the crisis, we have included an interview with a bank trader to give readers a glimpse into how ‘they’ think.

Click here to download this guide for free.

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