Muslim clerics have advised the hundreds of thousands of Syrians trapped in refugee camps and besieged cities that they can eat cats and dogs – which are normally haram, or forbidden – to ward off starvation. The fatwa was issued from mosques in rebel-held parts of Damascus as aid agencies stepped up their warnings about …
No country likes to look poverty full in the face, but in America there is a special reluctance to do do. Since the Puritans, Americans have associated wealth with blessing and poverty with curse. According to capitalist ideology, poverty is less a social problem than a series of individual failures. A prosperous middle class showed, …
Any normal person or business gets a quotation, or estimate, for work needing to be done. There is a definite contract, however informal, between supplier and customer, often allowing some flexibility in the final price. But the customer knows roughly what he will have to pay. Governments, however, seem to sign open-ended contracts, so open-ended …
Continue reading ‘Whatever happened to fixed price contracts?’ »
Privatization has proved a boon to rich contractors who are also donors to right-wing political parties, both in the United States and Britain. As a result, a small group of contractors and privatised monopolies have profited at the expense of the taxpayer, and have regularly proved to be incompetent. Now we witness another scandal – …
Lord Stern, professor at the London School of Economics, warns that the world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars. The so-called “carbon bubble” is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held …
