HUGH LANNING says there is no path to peace without dismantling Israel’s control over Palestinian land, lives and resources
Latest editorial
Argentina's dollarisation gambit: what does it mean in practice?
President Javier Milei's push for dollarisation is a class attack on workers, exacerbating the economic crisis. These neofascist measures are quickly revealing the failure of neoliberalism rather than socialism, writes PRABHAT PATNAIK
CJ ATKINS reports on the stand that saw Ayman Odeh and Ofer Cassif hauled out of Israel’s parliament during Donald Trump’s vainglorious address
ROGER McKENZIE argues that Western powers can see the beginning of the end in the rise of the global South — and racist reactions are kicking in
The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY
Taking a brief look at who the US president surrounds himself with reveals a team dedicated to the complete erasure of Palestine, not justice and civil rights for its people, writes TERRY HANSEN
As the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women begins in Beijing, it’s clear that China has fulfilled its commitments set 30 years ago and delivered amazing progress in women's education and equality, writes YU BOKUN
ARGENTINA’S new president Javier Milei proposes to use US dollars as the currency of his country, while abolishing its central bank altogether. What is involved in this proposal is not just maintaining a fixed exchange rate between the dollar and the domestic currency, but an abolition of the domestic currency altogether.
The maintenance of a fixed exchange rate does not preclude the central bank of the country printing more of the domestic currency whenever there is a demand for more domestic currency, while using an array of instruments to ensure that there is no shift to dollars from the domestic currency so that its exchange rate remains fixed; but “dollarisation” means a complete shift to dollars by abolishing both the domestic currency and the central bank that is normally entrusted with the responsibility of printing it.
An example will make the difference clear. Suppose at the given level of the gross domestic product, of prices and the interest rate, the total demand for money happens to be 100 units of domestic currency, while its supply is 90; then the central bank can print 10 units of additional domestic currency with impunity, without any fear of this additional printing upsetting the fixed exchange rate vis-a-vis the dollar; but in the case of a “dollarised” economy where the dollar alone is the currency used, if the demand for dollars at the given level of GDP, of prices and the interest rate, happens to exceed the supply of dollars in the economy, then there is no question of printing any additional dollars since that can only be done by the US central bank and not by the central bank of the country in question, which in any case has been abolished altogether.
Similar stories
Despite the US withdrawal from Ukraine and economic self-harm from sanctions, European centrists maintain their bellicosity to justify military spending and distract from neoliberalism's failures, writes PRABHAT PATNAIK
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
BERT SCHOUWENBURG details how the libertarian, radical-right president’s shock doctrine has pushed millions into poverty while dismantling the state and aligning with US imperialism and Israeli slaughter
