Despite arguments regarding the role of 'fundamentals' in generating the recent price rises in oil and in other commodities especially food, the sheer volatility in these prices over the recent past indicates the clear role of speculative forces in commodity markets which have grown stronger in the wake of the financial crisis in the US and have been looking for options to make profit elsewhere.

Discussions about economic growth and how to generate it are back in fashion among economists, unfortunately in a period of impending stagflation. However, interesting is the fact how growth prescriptions, even from mainstream quarters, seem to acknowledge the failure of the conservative policies.

The collapse of the talks of the Doha Round on 29th July, 2008 is no big deal since along the long route of the Doha round, periodic failure of negotiations is inevitable. This is not a disaster for advocates of trade liberalisation either because, in most countries, actual levels of protection are much lower than the bound levels WTO talks about. The point to note is that the so-called progress in trade liberalisation notwithstanding, the fundamental asymmetry of the world trading system remains.

The Indo-US nuclear deal is not an isolated issue, but a part of a larger process of attempts at changing the character of the Indian State to a neo-liberal State integrated with US imperialism. Given the objective economic conditions leading to further shrinkage of the already miniscule political constituency in favour of "reforms", such a change in the character of the Indian State can be effected only through a coup d'etat as was witnessed on July 22.

The straightforward explanations based on real demand and supply are simply not useful in understanding the current oil price hike. Rather, the price for this very physical commodity, this universal intermediate, is now determined in the virtual world. In other words, speculative forces, operating especially through the commodity futures markets, are driving the current oil price surge.

Texts related to the Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) in the ongoing Doha Round of WTO negotiations, right from the time of its inception, have been biased against the developing country members. This article traces the development in the various NAMA texts and tries to bring out the factors that have come to form the core of the contention between the developed and the developing countries.

Discussions of GDP growth at both national and international levels often get carried away by relatively recent trends, but it is important to situate recent income growth in the longer term context. In this article the authors examine the evidence on GDP global and regional growth in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.