Politik, Legislatif, Dasar dan Tadbir Urus

No. 1: Have an Emergency Fund If you have plenty of cash lying around in a high-interest, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)-insured account, not only will your money retain its full value in times of market turmoil, it will also be extremely liquid , giving you easy access to funds if you lose your job or are forced to take a pay cut. Also, if you have your own cash, it won't be an issue if other sources of backup funds dry up, such as a home equity line of credit . (For related reading, see Are Your Bank Deposits Insured? and Bank Failure: Will Your Assets Be Protected? ) No. 2: Always Live Within Your Means If you make it a habit to live within your means each and every day, you are less likely to go into consumer debt when gas or food prices go up and more likely to adjust your spending in other areas to compensate. Debt begets more debt when you can't pay it off right away - if you think gas prices are high, wait until you're paying 29.99% annual percentag...

The finance crisis is now spreading into a full-blown economic crisis all over the globe. The US, the EU and Japan are all in recession, while economic growth is rapidly slowing down in the rest of the world. Worse hit are the poorest countries and the poorest sections of society. The bungy-jumping of the stock markets continues, as does the banking crisis. The Bank of England estimates global bank losses so far at 2,800 billion US dollars. Thousands of billions of dollars in different ”rescue packages” have stopped bank bankruptcies, but not the credit crunch. Everyone with debts – from households to companies and states – are facing worsening conditions. At the same time, the financial crisis has 'shed its skin' growing into an economic crisis for world capitalism. Jobs and living standards are threatened for hundreds of millions, as are the economies of entire states. According to Oxfam, 200 million people have dropped below the poverty line this year. Global recession The U...

The Bush Administration has announced that a rescue package of almost US$700 billion is required to save some of the prominent banks from following the footsteps of Lehman Brothers two weeks ago. JP Morgan, Merril Lynch and a host of investment banks in New York and other cities are already crying foul. Some of us already know that the world’s economy is worth US$60.2 trillion and the American economy about US$12.5 trillion. Just imagine about 6.5 percent of the total American economy is now being used to save the ailing investment banks including one of the world’s largest insurers, AIG, which itself needs about US$85 billion to be resuscitated from receivership. Money has four uses: used as a standard, used as a saving, used as an exchange for buying and selling and used for speculation. Investment is speculation. Almost US$100 billion is traded everyday in the European money market. Some currencies go up and some currencies go down. Some currencies are not even accepted for tra...

THE ATTRACTIVE POWER of socialist ideas, for reasons outlined, has undoubtedly been weakened in recent years. But this will be the transitory effect of a passing conjuncture. Consciousness, especially of the newer generation of workers and youth, will be determined by current conditions and the events which will unfold. As struggles develop, the more active workers and youth will be impelled to search for an anti-capitalist programme -which can only be formulated in socialist terms. Paradoxically, today there is a level of social tension, political protest, and youth rebellion unprecedented in the post-war period. The fragmented character of the movements to which this gives rise is primarily due to the political bankruptcy of the traditional mass organisations. But the struggles of different layers of workers, together with the phenomena of 'new social movements', are a response to the various symptoms of capitalist decline. It is impossible to defend living standards and demo...

By : James Chin Isn't life strange? In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, wrote "The End of History?", published in the national Interest. In this famous essay, Fukuyama argues that the march of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and thus, liberal democracy (American's kind) has won against the ideas of Karl Marx. He wrote: "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." Now, nearly 20 years later, we are seeing the most serious crisis facing capitalism, or to be exact, the credit crunch caused by unregulated, free, cowboy capitalism that the Americans have been promoting around the world.Now suddenly, people are asking -- maybe we were too soon to judge th...