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A genuinely democratic debate on the CMU cannot shy away from looking into what securitization really is about: making profit out of people’s debts.

Broadening the debt-led accumulation system means that claims on future income and production are used to solve today’s problems while lessons learnt from past crises are wilfully ignored.

The political project to erect a Capital Markets Union (CMU) could be the dawn of a new era of financial (re)deregulation in Europe.

Profits are reinvested less in productive sectors, where labour can benefit, and more in capital markets.

Governments should not hesitate to visibly and accountably occupy their empty seat in the cockpit of the financial system. In our new research article 'The licence to create money' we explore the alternatives to what is currently at the heart of t...

While inequality is the flipside of the ‘squeezed-out middle’, the trends affecting the middle class and inequality are inextricably bound up with changes in the labour market in Europe.

The middle classes in Europe are struggling to improve their living standards. As this dossier shows, the European middle classes are moving apart and cannot be helped by seeing them as a homogenous group. Some are still moving upwards, but many a...

You can read it in the newspapers every day: national economies are not creating enough jobs and fewer quality jobs in the productive sectors. Globalization, automation and financialization of the economy have been identified as the drivers of cur...

The shift from wages to profits has led to an increase in inequality over the last three decades.

The stagnation in labour demand in the US is linked to the rise of finance. Strategies to encourage long-term employment growth must be found in that direction too.

The report of the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing, launched on 8 August 2014, has missed an important opportunity to accomplish a breakthrough on the pressing questions of development finance. Domin...

Volatile capital flows have maintained, if not exacerbated, the vulnerability of developing and emerging countries and affected domestic productivity and employment.

The central theme of The Broker Day 2014 on 14 April was employment and inequality, and the structural macroeconomic problems underlying them. The main speaker was Minister of Social Affairs and Employment and deputy prime minister Lodewijk Assche...

In many countries the share of labour in national income has declined over the last three decades. As a result, the low and middle-income groups of people who depend the most on wages for their income are crumbling. Meanwhile, the rich elites who...

The rise of BRICS is changing Africa and has helped its rapid growth, but does not challenge the structure of political economy with political authoritarianism.

Will the BRICS Development Bank’s constructive capacities overcome its destructive ones? The world is watching.

To achieve inclusive development the European Union (EU) needs to reframe its economic policy and reconsider politically sensitive issues.

The HLP report does not address the underlying power dynamics that might undermine the effectiveness and outcomes of the proposed new global partnership.

There is a common tendency to view growth and equity as competing goals, including by many of those who have strong concerns about the latter. This is unfortunate since it is likely to lead to bad policy and horrible politics.

How can we create a more inclusive economy and what obstacles lie in the way? This debate seeks answers.

Many trillions of US dollars are needed quickly to finance the investments for a low carbon economy. Where to find the capital and investors, what keeps them away from investing in more sustainable initiatives. Ingrid Holmes (E3G) spoke about that...

For purposes of setting post-2015 goals for development, inequalities should not only involve income and wealth, but also the power to decide on the uses to which resources are, or are not, put.

I recently chaired a forum that discussed whether a new paradigm has emerged in the field of development cooperation, and if so, what does it consist of? A great deal of time at these kinds of debates is spent exploring definitions and their usefu...

Budget support is a relatively new, yet already widely criticized, phenomenon. However, despite a lack of evidence of its impact on poverty reduction, it is too early to write it off. Budget support is likely to have a significant long-term impact...

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Myriam Vander Stichele, a dedicated senior researcher at the Amsterdam-based Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations. She spoke about this week’s WTO Public Forum discussing “Seeking answers...

It is about time to start paying systematic attention to the resource transfers that are flowing from the world's poor to the world's rich, says David Sogge.  

Probably you already have noticed that The Broker started a project called the “Bellagio Initiative: living well in the 21st century”. This is mainly an online debate on a series of questions related to the promotion of human wellbeing in general,...

This blog is about the ‘It’s Down 2 Earth’ conference on agriculture, food security and climate change held in The Hague between 31 October and 5 November 2010.

The blog ‘Current Global Affairs’ provides a window for reflection on news events, topical issues and developments. The blog focuses on the wider implications of current affairs, beyond the immediate impact of events as-they-unfold. Would you like...

This interest coincides with a search for innovative sources of financing to meet development goals and fund global public goods. So why not tax global public bads to fund public goods? Taxing public bads would yield a double dividend. In the firs...

Whatever we think about the US or about the MDGs, a speech by an American president is always worth analyzing. Development, in the end, is about power and power relations. And the US is still the greatest power in the world.On Wednesday, the final...

I am now in a hilarious meeting. It is called the High Level Side-Event about ‘Innovative Financing for the MDGs’. It started by refusing entry to a group of forty people – journalists, NGOs, delegations – for half an hour. Nobody knew why. When w...

A new institutional architecture for global development is sorely needed.

The financial crisis has prompted a discussion on the re-structuring of the world’s financial system. 

The decisions that are made in the autumn of 2009 will shape Europe’s international role in the future.

  In his famous 1955 article in which he hypothesized that national income inequality would increase in the early stages of economic development and subsequently decline as average per capita incomes rose, Simon Kuznets warned that poli...

Editor in Chief Frans Bieckmann will update an editor's blog reflecting on the thought processes behind production of The Broker and highlighting interesting, useful and unusual information that he comes across day to day

The solar industry is growing incredibly fast and technology is developing at high speed. Soon the retail price of solar generated electricity will be competitive with that of electricity generated in conventional power plants. This was inconceiva...

Throughout Africa, China is challenging the West, not only in terms of economic investments, but also through its development aid.