How The West Broke Russia's Economy

Laut Bundesfinanzministerium dient die Schuldenbremse der Sicherung der langfristigen Tragfähigkeit der Haushalte von Bund und Ländern, sowie der Sicherung der finanziellen Handlungsspielräume zur Erfüllung der staatlichen Aufgaben. So ist es im Grundgesetz in Artikel 109 festgeschrieben. Artikel 115 erläutert näher, dass der Bund strukturell, also unabhängig von der konjunkturellen Lage nur Nettokredite im Rahmen von 0,35% des Bruttoinlandproduktes vornehmen darf.

The author identifies three principal economic phenomena, which are explained: long run productivity growth as the central driver of increasing economic activity, short-term and long-term debt cycles. The latter two are explained to some detailed with reference to money creation, central banking and long term crisis tendencies. With regards to the long run debt cycle, which leads into deleveraging and recession, some policy measures which can smoothen the crisis are discussed.

Helge Peukert referiert über die Entwicklung des Finanzsystems in Europa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Dabei erläutert er verschiedene Ursachen der Eurokrise, die Rolle von Schulden bei der Geldschöpfung und die Auswirkungen dessen in Finanzkrisen. Zum Schluss werden Vorschläge zu Reformen des Finanzsystems in der Eurozone (unter anderem Vollgeldreform, Bankenzerschlagung, Schuldentilgung) präsentiert.

In diesem Beitrag diskutiert Ingo Stützle die Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) kritisch aus einer an Marx orientierten Ökonomiekritik. Dabei wird argumentiert, dass die MMT zwar wichtige Fragen aufwirft, aber weder einen adäquaten Begriff von Geld noch von Kapitalismus hat, was mitunter zu Fehlschlüssen führt. Dabei ist der wesentliche Punkt, dass die MMT auf der Basis eines falschen Verständnisses von Geld die notwendige Begrenztheit staatlicher Verfügungs- und Gestaltungsmacht im Kapitalismus nicht versteht.

This article examines the spread of financialization in Germany before the financial crisis. It provides an up-to date overview on the literature on financialization and reviews which of the phenomena typically associated with financialization have emerged in Germany. In particular, the article aims to clarify how the prevailing institutional structure and its changes had contributed to or had countervailed the spread of financialization and how it had shaped the specific German variant of financialization. For this end, it combines the rich literature on Germany's institutional structure with the more macroeconomic oriented literature on financializaton. With the combination of those different perspectives the article sheds light on the reasons for the spread of financialization and the specific forms it has taken in Germany.

This article provides a contextual framework for understanding the gendered dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic and its health, social, and economic outcomes. The pandemic has generated massive losses in lives, impacted people’s health, disrupted markets and livelihoods, and created profound reverberations in the home. In 112 countries that reported sex-disaggregated data on COVID-19 cases, men showed an overall higher infection rate than women, and an even higher mortality rate. However, women’s relatively high representation in sectors hardest hit by lockdown orders has translated into larger declines in employment for women than men in numerous countries. Evidence also indicates that stay-at-home orders have increased unpaid care workloads, which have fallen disproportionately to women. Further, domestic violence has increased in frequency and severity across countries. The article concludes that policy response strategies to the crisis by women leaders have contributed to more favorable outcomes compared to outcomes in countries led by men.