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John Weeks: a leading critic of economic orthodoxy who dedicated his life to building a better world

John Weeks: a leading critic of economic orthodoxy who dedicated his life to building a better world

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Economist John Weeks has died aged 79. Progressive Economy Forum

John Weeks, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the School or Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), has died aged 79 from leukaemia.

In the almost 15 years since retiring, he focused on popularising radical economics, achieving it with considerable aplomb, through the (social) media and publishing Economics of the 1% (2014) and The Debt Delusion: Living Within Our Means and Other Fallacies (2020). His journey to this success sheds light both on the challenges facing revolutionaries of his generation, and contemporary capitalist economies, developing as well as developed.

Born in Texas of an accountant father and shop assistant mother, the seeds of radicalism were sewn by virtue of the blacklisting of his father for blowing the whistle on corruption in the state government’s relationship with the powerful oil industry. Such perspectives on the abuse of power (and sleaze) within his immediate locale were reinforced by direct experience of overt racism in the segregated US south. There, Weeks joined campaigns to break colour bars and promote civil rights whilst still an undergraduate at the University of Texas.

Early exposure to racism, and the struggles against it, informed a more general opposition to authority, allowing him never to forget that far from being benign, under capitalism democracy and freedom only extend as far as they are struggled for and for whom. This has been strikingly brought to life recently by the Black Lives Matter Movement, decades after white supremacy had been seen by too many as something mainly confined to the past.

On a different plane, Weeks himself would later come to the attention of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), an American organisation committed to driving left-leaning scholars out of teaching. In 1985 he was placed on the AIA list of “dangerous” academics, making him persona non grata at many US universities.


Read more: Why did Europe lurch right? Because the ‘recovery’ is a farce


Weeks went to graduate school at the University of Michigan to study for a PhD in economics. His greatest wish was to leave Texas and never go back, except for occasional family visits, and his wish came true. At Michigan he became active in the anti-Vietnam war movement, and like many men of his generation joined the US Marine Corps Reserves to avoid the draft. More grist to the mill of radicalism.

For his PhD, he studied the roots of industrialisation in Nigeria, first serving as an associate at the University of Ibadan and then teaching Economics at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, in the Northern region, opening windows onto the African post-colonial condition. After a short interlude at the School of African and Asian Studies, AFRAS, University of Sussex, he joined the Economics Department at Birkbeck College, University of London, in 1972. That is where he began to engage fully with Marxist economics for the first time.

Within a few years, though, he married Liz Dore, and willingly put his career on hold to join her on her fieldwork in Peru, an opportunity to extend his expertise – leading to the publication of his first book The Limits to Capitalist Development: The Industrialization of Peru, 1950-1980.

In 1977, he returned to the US to take a job at the American University (AU), in Washington, DC, in one of few departments specialising in heterodox economics. Here he published his highly influential take on Marxist economics, Capital and Exploitation, emphasising how capitalism is subject to crises precisely because of its strengths and successes rather than because of its failings and weaknesses.


Read more: Coronavirus will drive public debt far higher than expected – but that doesn't mean a return to austerity


Forged out of relations with international students at American University who were involved in anti-colonial and anti-capitalist movements in their home countries, Weeks and Dore were invited to serve as advisers to the Sandinistas, who had come to power in Nicaragua in 1979. This proved a mixed experience. Advice was unwelcome if joined with critical analysis and Weeks shifted institutional affiliations in Nicaragua to find a home with which he was comfortable.

He was then forced to return to his post at AU to resume his duties there as well as care for what were then two three-year-old children. Dore remained for several months longer in Managua. In the meantime, he published The Economies of Central America. From AU, he took a job at Middlebury College, Vermont, where John and Liz struck up an acquaintance with Bernie Sanders.

John Weeks speaks at SOAS.

Ultimately, in 1990, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London invited Weeks to establish a new Department of Development Studies. This was an offspring of the heterodox economics department, one of the few in the UK and remaining one of the leading in the world. From there he retired as Emeritus Professor in 2006, having played leading (and headship) roles in establishing and strengthening political economy in both departments.

The invaluable threads running through all of John’s experiences and contributions have been to situate development globally and not as a national challenge alone; draw upon Marxist political economy for its insights into development and transformation to and within capitalism, not least in light of class analysis; and understand the exercise of power and the power of resistance and how these combine to inform the logic of capitalist development. John exposed and fiercely rejected the fallacies of orthodox economics, and proposed pragmatic, immediately realisable, policy alternatives in support of progressive movements.


Read more: Ending austerity: why public spending is key to building a stable and fair economy


Radicalisation around opposition to the Vietnam war gave birth to a new wave of radical economics, and John Weeks definitely rode that wave, contributing to the founding of Union of Radical Political Economy (URPE) in the late 1960s. Hopes for a better world were dashed by monetarism, releasing the globalised, financialised, neoliberalised world of today, with an ineffectual mainstream economics as its counterpart.

Despite the global financial crisis of 2007-08 and the current pandemic in which the state has made an interventionist comeback of astonishing proportions, mainstream economics has become more dominant and increasingly intolerant of alternatives. For this reason, the lives and works of those who have stood out against the tide of orthodoxy, with Weeks a leading figure, must be respected for their commitments against establishment dismissal but, more importantly, remain invaluable as the basis for constructing alternatives for the future.

John Franklin Weeks, born April 1 1941, died July 26 2020. Survived by wife Elizabeth Dore, children Matthew and Rachel Dore-Weeks, and two grandchildren.

This article was originally published by Open Democracy.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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China’s “National Team” Is Quiet After August ETF Buying Spree

China’s "National Team" Is Quiet After August ETF Buying Spree

By Ye Xie and Amy Li, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategists

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China's "National Team" Is Quiet After August ETF Buying Spree

By Ye Xie and Amy Li, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategists

On Oct. 16, 2007, the Shanghai Composite Index hit a record high of 6,092. Exactly 16 years later, the benchmark closed 50% below that record. On Chinese social media, ridiculing the poor stock-market performance has become a national pastime.

Even the recent arrival of the National Team – state-backed entities such as a sovereign wealth fund and pension funds — did little to shore up sentiment. To be fair, though, their support has been half-hearted, at best.

Despite data showing the economy is stabilizing, the stock market has continued to trade poorly. The announcement that a sovereign wealth fund was buying bank stocks and reports that Beijing is considering a gigantic stabilization fund barely made any difference.

One headwind has been the relentless selling by foreign investors. They are on track to pull out from the northbound stock connect for a third consecutive month, which would mark the longest outflows since the Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock connection debuted in 2016. In August, a record 90 billion yuan ($12 billion) of funds flew out the door.

Coincidentally, August also saw a record inflow of 143 billion yuan into Chinese equity ETFs trading on the mainland. That was quite an unusual splurge, almost double the previous record.

According to Goldman Sachs, the National Team — which collectively owns about 3.5% of the market value of local stocks — was largely behind the ETF purchases. The net inflows to the National Team’s top-five “favorite” ETFs surged by more than 90 billion yuan that month.

If that was the case, they have since become dormant. Investors added 23 billion yuan to ETFs in September, before withdrawing 6.5 billion yuan this month. If sustained, October would be only the second time on record when both ETFs and northbound connect registered net outflows.

It seems to suggest that support from the National Team was rather opportunistic and lukewarm. It steps in only when foreign outflows become sizable.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/16/2023 - 22:55

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MENA Region Faces Another Threat: Water Wars

MENA Region Faces Another Threat: Water Wars

Agricultural water withdrawal way beyond the limit of renewable freshwater resources is most…

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MENA Region Faces Another Threat: Water Wars

Agricultural water withdrawal way beyond the limit of renewable freshwater resources is most common today in countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports that, according to the FAO Aquastat database where the latest available year for the data is 2020, several other nations, with Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Pakistan and India all sticking out for using up a higher share of their freshwater resources in agriculture than their neighbors.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Desert climates like on the Arabian peninsular make countries there overextend their annual water budgets by agriculture alone.

This has led to studies concluding that the United Arab Emirates, for example, could run out of groundwater by 2030. In Pakistan and Iran, between 63 and 70 percent of renewable freshwater resources were dedicated to agriculture in 2020, rising to 68 and 77 percent including all freshwater uses. Extensive and water-intensive agriculture, including cotton crops, is also driving up freshwater use in the semi-arid climates of Central Asia. Here, Uzbekistan used 111 percent of renewable water resources per year, followed by Turkmenistan at 65 percent (106 percent when counting all freshwater use). The only other country extending its freshwater budget only when combining agriculture and other freshwater uses was Jordan.

Agriculture accounts for 72 percent of all freshwater withdrawals globally, including a lot of overuse. According to the FAO, global freshwater resources per person have declined by 20 percent in the past decades, while water availability and quality have also deteriorated. Additional factors playing a role in this are pollution and climate change, stretching the precious resource even thinner.

October 16 marks World Food Day, which this year has the motto: Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/16/2023 - 22:15

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Biden Admin Orders Banks Not To Reject Illegal Immigrants’ Loan Applications

Biden Admin Orders Banks Not To Reject Illegal Immigrants’ Loan Applications

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

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Biden Admin Orders Banks Not To Reject Illegal Immigrants' Loan Applications

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has warned U.S. banks and other financial institutions that they can't reject illegal immigrants' credit applications based solely or predominantly on their immigration status.

Illegal immigrants climb a section of the U.S.–Mexico border fence in Tijuana, Mexico, on April 29, 2018. (David McNew/Getty Images)

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in a recent statement that rejecting illegal immigrants for credit cards and various types of loans just because they are noncitizens is unlawful.

The two agencies stated that they were issuing the warning "because consumers have reported being rejected for credit cards as well as for auto, student, personal and equipment loans because of their immigration status, even when they have strong credit histories and ties to the United States and are otherwise qualified to receive the loans."

Specifically, the agencies cited the provisions of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), which protects credit applicants from discrimination based on such characteristics as race, religion, sexual orientation, and national origin.

The agencies argue that protections afforded by ECOA and other laws extend to alienage, so banks that have blanket policies to deny loans to illegal immigrants may be breaking the law.

Lenders should not deny people the opportunity to take out a loan to buy a home, build their businesses or otherwise pursue their financial goals because of unlawful bias and without regard to their actual ability to repay,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

“Fair access to credit is crucially important for building wealth and strengthening household financial stability,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. “The CFPB will not allow companies to use immigration status as an excuse for illegal discrimination.”

Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, speaks during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing in Washington on June 13, 2023. (Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images)

Bud Cummins, a former U.S. attorney, objected to the agencies' warning to banks and other financial institutions.

"DOJ and CFPB tell banks it might be illegal to refuse to loan money to people [who] broke federal law to reach the bank. You gotta be kidding me. The invasion of illegal immigrants is intentional and must be stopped," he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there were roughly 11.35 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States as of January 2022.

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The agencies said that ECOA protections extend to alienage, although in a joint statement, they acknowledged some gray area, namely that the act "does not expressly prohibit consideration of immigration status."

Some financial institutions have maintained blanket policies denying people credit based on their immigration status, without regard for their ability to repay, interpreting ECOA in a way that they believe shields them from liability, according to the agencies, which added that this is incorrect.

"A creditor may consider an applicant's immigration status when necessary to ascertain the creditor's rights regarding repayment," the agencies said, explaining that Regulation B, a rule that implements ECOA, expressly states that the only conditions under which immigration status may be considered is only to determine creditors' "rights and remedies regarding repayment" of a loan.

If financial institutions consider immigration status for any other reason, the agencies said they're probably breaking the law.

"Creditors should be aware that unnecessary or overbroad reliance on immigration status in the credit decisioning process, including when that reliance is based on bias, may run afoul of ECOA's antidiscrimination provisions and could also violate other laws," the agencies said.

The "other laws" mentioned could refer to the 1866 Civil Rights Act, also known as Section 1981, which the agencies said in their joint statement "has long been construed to prohibit discrimination based on alienage."

They said that courts have found that "ECOA's prohibition of national origin discrimination and Section 1981's prohibitions complement one another and that discrimination that arises from overbroad restrictions on lending to noncitizens may violate either or both statutes."

It's unclear whether any banks or financial institutions intend to challenge the DOJ and CFPB's interpretation of the law regarding the provision of loans to illegal immigrants.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/16/2023 - 21:55

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