Michael Hudson has posted the article High Finance & Investment Colonialism that includes the Geopolitical Economy Hour.

Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson explain how imperialism is a product not only of the struggle between classes but also nations, and how the framework of geopolitical economy helps us understand the international relations of the capitalist world system.

It is not until the wrap-up phase that they make the necessary point that a mixed economy is the one that works best.

Rahdika Desai kept pressing the point that planning was important to make any economy work. She never talked about the harm that too much centralized planning can cause.

I believe that the emphasis on central planning is what eventually limited the communist system of the Soviet Union.

Of the two major communist powers, I think that China was the first to understand the need for some capitalist competition to complement the central planning part of socialism. Only later, with the breakup of the Soviet Union and its brief castastrophic dalliance with USA style privatization that Russia too learned the lesson that China had learned.

Iran’s presstv.ir has the article Iran’s induction into BRICS group a masterstroke of diplomacy: Expert.

Pepe Escobar, speaking to the Press TV website, said Iran has been increasingly working in sync with the Russia-China strategic partnership, as evidenced by its inclusion in the Shanghai Security Organization (SCO), and this strategic relationship helped prepare the ground for its BRICS membership.
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“For Iran, this is a masterstroke. This was done thanks to excellent diplomatic work by the Iranian foreign ministry,” he noted in conversation with the Press TV website.

The Institute For New Economic Thinking has published the article The Scourge of Corporate Financialization: Income Inequity, Employment Instability, Productive Fragility.

My just-published book, Investing in Innovation: Confronting Predatory Value Extraction in the U.S. Corporation (currently available for free pdf download)

There is a good explanation of how Intel lost its technical world leadership in semiconductors.

Pepe Escobar has published the article Welcome to the BRICS 11 in The Cradle.

In the end, History was made. Surpassing even the greatest of expectations, the BRICS nations performed a giant step for multipolarity by expanding the group to BRICS 11.

I don’t claim that this is an even handed report, but it is Pepe Escobar’s view of events.