In Print

Climate crisis offers way out of monetary orthodoxy

July 12, 2021

On July 8th the European Central Bank announced the results of the Monetary Policy Strategy Review initiated by its president, Christine Lagarde, in January 2020. Delayed by the pandemic, its deliberations had been kept tight. But, with striking haste, Lagarde shepherded the ECB’s General Council into unanimous agreement on a terse statement about the bank’s policy regime. The review’s conclusions are technical but have wide implications. The ECB is Europe’s most powerful federal institution. At moments of financial stress it holds Europe’s fate in its hands. In normal times, interest rates are a key parameter for decision-making of all kinds. The results of the review, modest though they may seem, are highly revealing not just about the ECB but the broader politics of eurozone. It is 18 years since the bank last conducted a strategic review and there has been plenty in the interim to digest. What is more

Can Elites Start the Climate Revolution?

June 3, 2021

Financial capital and the courts are quietly creating the conditions to stop global warming—if politics does its part, too. Will the spring of 2021 prove to be a pivotal moment in the climate crisis? Last week, the management of both Exxon Mobil and Chevron lost battles with green activist shareholders. A third oil major, Shell, was ordered by a Dutch court to dramatically step up its climate effort. This followed a damning judgment in April by the German supreme court on Berlin’s plan for decarbonization. The International Energy Agency (IEA), formerly a bastion of the fossil fuel industry, laid out a demanding path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. And to cap it all off, Ford launched its F-150 electric truck. It is hard to exaggerate the symbolic significance of these events. The F-150 is the most widely used vehicle in the United States. Eight percent

Learning to Live with Debt

May 18, 2021

At the time of writing, the pandemic is continuing to take a heavy toll on the European economy, and even though an economic collapse has been prevented, Europe’s growth prospects are far from encouraging. Policy-makers across Europe have supported firms, workers and families through furlough schemes, income support and loans – often with remarkable pragmatism – and are continuing to provide new forms of aid. The European recovery fund offers

Green mortgages: Homes need to catch up to climate change

May 13, 2021

When we think of tackling the problem of climate change we might think of smoke-belching power plants, or gas-guzzling trucks, or the guilty pleasure of a last-minute flight to Cancun. But a huge part of the climate problem is generated by us, simply living our daily lives, at home or at work. Twenty percent of total emissions in the U.S. originate in energy consumption in the home. No doubt, we could do

Adam has contributed articles to the above publications. Click on a logo to see his articles in situ.

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Auf Deutsch

Britain

Central Banking

China

Climate Political Economy

COVID

Critical theory

Debt Politics

Democracy

Europe

Europe’s Political Economy

Germany

Global Political Economy

History

USA

Archive

America’s race to net zero

April 21, 2021

Does Joe Biden’s climate plan go far enough? On 22-23 April the Biden administration is hosting a global climate summit to mark Earth Day, named after the largest ever environmental demonstration, staged in the United

The Gatekeeper

April 16, 2021

Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics and the Fight for a Better Future by Paul Krugman. Norton, 444 pp., £13.99, February, 978 0 393 54132 8 Paul Krugman’s latest collection of essays, Arguing with Zombies, first appeared in January 2020. Not only

Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi Have One Last Job

April 2, 2021

The U.S. treasury secretary and the Italian prime minister have spent decades shaping this economy. But can they control what comes next? In recent years, the world has been regaled with stories about the crisis

The Fragility of Europe’s China Strategy

March 30, 2021

In its dealings with Beijing, the United States has turned to classic grand strategy with the aim of safeguarding its primacy. In contrast, the EU has been pursuing a less consistent, but much more suitable

The Green New Deal’s time has come – but what’s happened to Labour’s radicalism?

March 11, 2021

The party risks a dead end with its ‘Little Britain’ thinking, in marked contrast to the bolder path taken by Joe Biden What a difference power makes. The past 18 months saw political defeats for

Biden’s Stimulus Is the Dawn of a New Economic Era

March 5, 2021

The United States’ massive relief package is more than a technocratic policy. It’s a democratic triumph. There is a lot of debate right now about the meaning of U.S. democratic leadership on the world stage.

The Rise and Fall and Rise (and Fall) of the U.S. Financial Empire

January 15, 2021

The dollar is dead. Long live the dollar. If 2020 confirmed one thing, it was the centrality of the dollar to the global economy. U.S. hegemony may already have passed us in a political and strategic sense,

Talk of a global economic reset must not ignore grim realities

December 20, 2020

Scientists may have provided us with a miraculous fix for Covid, but history shows that any path to recovery will be long. Read the full article at the Financial Times

After Escape: The New Climate Power Politics

December 11, 2020

The vista painted for us by Bruno Latour, Eva Lin, and Martin Guinard in their concept for the Taipei Biennial 2020 is alarming: “We are witnessing a massive extension of conflicts and an extreme brutalization

Light in the tunnel or oncoming train?

November 30, 2020

In the final weeks of 2020 an optimist might see light at the end of the tunnel. Europe was hit hard by the second wave of Covid-19. But it is being brought under control. Several

Global Inequality and the Corona Shock

November 27, 2020

In the first half of 2020, as the world economy shut down, hundreds of millions of people across the world lost their jobs. Following India’s lockdown on March 24, 10s of millions of displaced migrant

Biden will have the presidency. But Republicans still have the power

November 24, 2020

With a slim majority in Congress, the president-elect lacks a solid base. The past teaches us what may happen. President Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcome of the 3 November election, which appear to be

The West’s Constitutional Crises Threaten the Economy’s Last Best Hope

November 21, 2020

Central banks have kept their economies afloat this year—but political dysfunction is pushing them past the breaking point. In the looking-glass moment of November 2020 we should perhaps no longer be surprised to see the

The Limits of Victory

November 9, 2020

Joe Biden may have won the election, but the U.S. is still divided and the Republicans are ready to block his every move, even as the country faces grave crises. On Sat., Nov. 7, 2020,