Geopolitical Economy Hour

Geopolitical Economy Hour

di Radhika Desai

Commenti di notizie Politica

The Cockroach Party That's Cracking Modi's BJP | Varghese George & Radhika Desai

Is India's youth revolt a passing meme, or the moment its party system began to visibly crack? Varghese K. George, resident editor in New Delhi for The Hindu, joins me to trace how a Supreme Court judge's slur, calling India's youth cockroaches and parasites, became the seed of the Cockroach Janta Party, a movement with no leaders, no ideology, and millions of members. Varghese explains how this leaderless surge has punctured the BJP's invincibility and Modi's own aura of near-divine leadership, both of which looked unshakeable just two months ago. We trace this rupture back to Modi's hostile takeover of the BJP, a party system crumbling across India's political spectrum, and an employment crisis so severe that 87 million young Indians are now without work, education, or training. Whether this movement can convert its viral power into lasting change, or simply exposes a void no one yet knows how to fill, is the question left hanging over Indian politics.

Michael Hudson: This Is How The Dollar System Will Actually Break | GEH w/ Radhika Desai

Donald Trump called it an economic D-Day for Iran, but the sanctions threat reveals that the US has already lost the military war and is now waging a financial one it cannot win either. Professor Michael Hudson joins me for our fortnightly conversation to trace how Bessent's push to expel countries from the dollar system is accelerating the very flight it was meant to prevent, driving oil and grain trade onto China's alternative clearing system even as foreign demand for US Treasuries keeps declining and the "everything bubble" inflates on borrowed money rather than production. The dollar's end, we conclude, won't come as a crash but as a long inflationary whimper unless the world rebuilds a financial system around production instead of speculation.

Fidel Castro: The Man Who Defeated The US Empire | Francisco Dominguez and Carlos Martinez

On what would have been Fidel Castro's 100th birthday, Cuba is under its most severe siege since 1959. A six-month US naval blockade has cut off oil, worsened by the collapse of Venezuelan supply after Washington's January attack. I am joined by Francisco Dominguez, founding member of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, and Carlos Martinez, author and co-editor of the Friends of Socialist China website, to trace Fidel's revolutionary audacity from the Moncada Barracks assault through his personal command of the Bay of Pigs victory, where a CIA-trained invasion was crushed in 72 hours, to the internationalism that sent hundreds of thousands of Cuban troops to defeat apartheid South Africa at Cuito Cuanavale. We discuss what his refusal to capitulate when the Soviet Union collapsed, and China, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico's coordinated support today, tell us about whether this revolution can survive Washington once again.

Reading Capital With Radhika Desai 7: The Production Of Absolute Surplus Value

Reading Capital With Radhika Desai 7: The Production Of Absolute Surplus Value

Richard Murphy: Capitalism Destroys Everything It Touches, Then Calls It Profit

Would the entire global economy collapse if we told the truth about its books? Richard Murphy, chartered accountant and professor of political economy, joins me to expose the accounting trick sitting underneath GDP: the total absence of any concept of capital maintenance. Richard shows how modern accounting distinguishes profit earned through honest enterprise from profit as pure extraction, a distinction erased in law and economics alike, and how GDP rewards this extraction by counting oil spills, divorce settlements, and financial speculation as growth while ignoring the depletion of soil, skills, and the planet itself. We discuss how this same blindness let Ireland's economy be inflated by multinational tax flows into the 'leprechaun economy,' and how Keynes's defeated proposal for Bancor might have spared the world today's dollar-dependent order.

Michael Hudson: Trump Is Desperate To Save The Dollar Ponzi Scheme | GEH W/ Radhika Desai

Is Washington's rescue of the yen an act of friendship, or a sign that the dollar system itself is beginning to crack? I am joined by economist Michael Hudson to unpack the US intervention to save a collapsing yen and why the official story of "solidarity" masks a far more desperate calculation. Michael explains how the yen's weakness threatens the carry trade and capital inflows the dollar system depends on, why the US chose to sell euros rather than dollars to defend it, and how even long-time dollar bulls like Barry Eichengreen now admit the intervention exposes Washington's growing reluctance to let foreign central banks touch their own reserves. We examine the mounting evidence of dollar fatigue, from the ECB now holding more gold than dollars, to the flood of new Treasury issuance the market must somehow absorb, to a Federal Reserve whose credibility is increasingly in question. Michael argues this is not simply a story about Trump's erratic instincts, but about a financial order that is running out of options.

China Expert: Has Beijing Betrayed Palestine? Why The Left Is Asking The Wrong Question | Carlos Martinez & Radhika Desai

Is China betraying the world's oppressed nations, or is it playing a longer, harder game than its critics understand? Carlos Martinez, author of The East is Still Red and co-editor of Friends of Socialist China, joins me to confront the charge, common even on parts of the left, that Beijing does far too little for Palestine, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. Martinez traces China's foreign policy from the internationalism of Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement, through its rapprochement with Washington and entry into the world economy, to its present balancing act between principled solidarity and hard-nosed realism. We examine why China rejects unilateral sanctions even against Israel, why its UN vetoes on Gaza are strategy rather than betrayal, and why the more urgent question isn't what China should be doing, but what the rest of us should.

Ivana Hughes: Capitalism Is Driving Us Toward Climate Collapse & Nuclear War | GEH W/ Radhika Desai

Are nuclear war and climate catastrophe two separate crises, or one civilizational threat with two faces? I'm joined by Ivana Nikolić Hughes to discuss why both dangers have faded into public apathy even as they grow more acute. Ivana walks through the isotope evidence that traces rising CO2 directly to fossil fuels, and the physics of nuclear winter, where soot from even a regional nuclear war could block sunlight and collapse global food production for years. We connect both threats to the same underlying driver: capitalism's demand for endless growth, invoking the idea of the "Capitalocene" as a more honest name than the Anthropocene. We close by contrasting the West's refusal to rein in its capitalist class with China's state-led investment in renewable energy, as a sign these crises are still solvable.

America's AI Boom Is Science Fiction Funding Financial Fiction | Warwick Powell & Radhika Desai

Is the AI boom just the latest chapter in a stock market story that was already fiction? I'm joined by Warwick Powell to trace the line from China's Kimi and DeepSeek shock through what I've called America's "sci-fi/fin-fi" model — science fiction promises like AGI dressed up to justify financial fiction, a bubble with roots in the dot-com crash and Reagan's fabricated Star Wars program. Warwick explains how venture capital functions as a closed, rule-bound game for insiders, how Silicon Valley Bank behaved more like a members' club than a bank, and how decades of buybacks and privatised monopolies have concentrated stock ownership until 93% of market value sits with just 10% of Americans. We contrast this with China's state-driven finance system and its decades-long investment in literacy and human capital.

Mohammad Marandi: Trump Folds & Iran Strikes Gulf | W/ Radhika Desai

Is Trump's Iran war a bluff, or has the empire simply run out of moves? Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Iranian political analyst, joins me to explain why each retreat only strengthens Iran, whose indigenous defense doctrine and Axis of Resistance have outmatched a US military still fighting last century's wars, leaving Gulf assets battered and the initiative, per the Financial Times, now with Tehran. Professor Marandi dismantles the myth of Western superiority, upheld only by imperial elites as Western publics turn against these wars, and traces how Washington's own aggression has pushed Iran, Russia, and China closer together.

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