The Morning Star argue that government funding of new council homes, with a return to restriction of the right to buy, could make a real dent in homelessness and help to hold down runaway inflation in the housing market after the current slump.

Jean Shaoul describes the increasingly serious impact the financial crisis is having on the British economy and the living conditions of working people.

The balloon of irresponsible debt on which globalisation floated started to burst in August 2007. A year on from "debtonation day", Ann Pettifor surveys the wreckage, pinpoints the culprits, and outlines the solutions.

The Morning Star reports on the soaring rate of house repossessions as struggling mortage payers are faced with ever-rising repayments and considers the role the government has played in suppressing public needs for the sake of the market.

Jean Shaoul considers the new report by the parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, into the failed insurance and pension society, Equitable Life. The report states that more than a million policyholders left with lower-than-expected retirement income were the victims of “a decade of regulatory failure” by government departments and regulatory authorities.

_Rob Ray_ reports on how corporate tax evasion costs the exchequer billions of pounds a year, at a time when taxpayer's money is being used to plug the gap in private pension funds.

As those with no savings sink further into debt, the collapse in the number of housing transactions has implications not just for the property industry but the whole economy argues _Barry Mason_.

As reverberations from the stricken mortgage market reach the real economy, _Robin Blackburn_ reveals the origins of the crunch in the shadowy realms of financialization. Precedents from the bubbles and crash of the 1920s, warnings from pioneers and venture capitalists, and proposals for how to turn the crisis to socially redistributive effect.