Capitalism

Retrospectives Of The Financial Crisis Are Leaving Out The Most Important Part—Its Victims

September 17, 2018 David Dayen, Inthesetimes.com Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, Finance, Revisionism

Because I’m a masochist, I’ve read as many retrospectives as I could about the 10th anniversary of the fateful failure of Lehman Brothers, the emblematic event of the financial crisis. And I can’t help but notice a gaping hole in the narratives. I’ve heard from Lew Ranieri, the Salomon Brothers trader who invented the mortgage bond in the 1980s, and now regrets it. I’ve heard bailout architects Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and Tim Geithner justify their beliefs in doing whatever it took to save the banks. I’ve endured you-are-there narratives about bankers and policymakers racing to rescue the financial system. Wonks, pundits, and reporters have all offered thoughts on the crisis’ origins, the response, and its ultimate meaning. It seems the only people not consulted for their perspective were those most powerfully affected by the crisis’ impact...

The Crisis Of Global Capitalism Never Really Ended

September 16, 2018 Jerome Roos, Roar Magazine. Educate! Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, New Economy, Occupy

This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the once-mighty US investment bank whose dramatic bankruptcy on September 15, 2008 unleashed the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. At this point, it is still far too early to tell whether this emerging anti-capitalist politics of the twenty-first century will be able to succeed in the face of a powerful nationalist backlash. But if the dramatic events since 2016 are anything to go by, the political fallout of the global financial crisis is only just getting started. The real confrontation, it seems, is yet to come.

Under Trump, The Next Financial Catastrophe Is Cooking

September 15, 2018 By Lynn Parramore, Ineteconomics.org Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, Trump

At summer’s end, the U.S. economy looks to be sizzling. Unemployment is low. Growth is higher than expected. Consumer confidence is soaring and Wall Street just set a record bull run. “We are crushing it,” Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow recently boasted. The euphoria feels a bit like… just before the crash of 2007-8. Does that worry you? It should. Hold onto your 401(k)s, because the Wall Street casino that nearly tanked the global economy ten years ago is up and running amok again. But what about the much-touted safeguards in place today? It’s true that in 2010, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed to ensure that taxpayers would never again be on the hook to bailout of big financial institutions.

States Allow For-Profit Pipeline Companies To Seize Private Property

September 13, 2018 Mike Ludwig, Truthout.org Educate! Capitalism, Pipelines, Property

According to Misha Mitchell, an attorney for a conservation group in Louisiana’s ecologically sensitive Atchafalaya Basin, Energy Transfer Partners and other private oil interests broke the law when they began building a section of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline on a parcel of private land in the iconic river swamp without permission from the landowners. Mitchell filed a lawsuit against the pipeline project on behalf of landowner Peter Aaslestad and his family after construction began on their property in late July, but work continued on the property until Monday, when Energy Transfer Partners struck a deal in a local court with the plaintiffs to temporarily halt construction. The company must now wait until at least November to finish, when a court will decide whether Energy Transfer Partners has the legal right to “expropriate” the property under state law.

Conjuring Up The Next Depression

September 11, 2018 By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, New Economy

During the financial crisis of 2008, the world’s central banks, including the Federal Reserve, injected trillions of dollars of fabricated money into the global financial system. This fabricated money has created a worldwide debt of $325 trillion, more than three times global GDP. The fabricated money was hoarded by banks and corporations, loaned by banks at predatory interest rates, used to service interest on unpayable debt or spent buying back stock, providing millions in compensation for elites. The fabricated money was not invested in the real economy. Products were not manufactured and sold. Workers were not reinstated into the middle class with sustainable incomes, benefits and pensions. Infrastructure projects were not undertaken.

No, Capitalism Will Not Save The Climate

September 11, 2018 By Karin Nansen, Commondreams.org Strategize! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Climate Change

At its heart sits an unsustainable economic system, the sole aim of which is endless growth and profit. This system concentrates wealth, power, and obscene privilege with the few. Corporations and national elites are empowered by that very system to exploit people and their livelihoods with impunity. We must tackle climate change and the associated social and environmental crises by taking rapid and bold action to address the common root causes; privatization, financialization and commodification of nature and societies, and unsustainable production and consumption systems. The magnitude of the crises we face demands system change. That system change will result in the creation of sustainable societies and new relations between human beings, and between human beings and nature, based on equality and reciprocity.

So, You Want To End Capitalism? Here’s How.

September 10, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG Radio. Podcast Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Solidarity Economy

There is a rising awareness that capitalism is at the root of many of the crises that we face, from the economy to the environment and climate change to the absence of democracy. We need to end capitalism to solve these crises. We speak with Emily Kawano, coordinator of the United States Solidarity Economy Network, about how we are changing the economy right now, what the end of capitalism (as a dominant part of the economy) would look like and how to answer those who worry that it can't or shouldn't be done. Plus, we cover current news.

The Long March To Post-Capitalist Transition: Pan-Africanist Perspectives

September 5, 2018 Ameth LO, Dissidentvoice.org Strategize! Black Nationalism, Capitalism, Haiti, History

The centenary of the October 1917 Russian revolution, a world-shaking historic event, was an occasion for celebration throughout the world. Many diverse interpretations are advanced as to its success in achieving a radical transformation of society, both in terms of its history and its overall impact. Nonetheless, there is no denying that this event altered forever the course of history. For Black peoples, this revolution arrived just over a century after the victory in Haiti in 1804. That event was the first massive and successful revolt of Black slaves, and an important step toward the long-overdue abolition of slavery worldwide. The establishment of the first Black republic in the Northern Hemisphere emerged from an extended process of resistance to oppression, marked by massive slave revolts on the plantations of Jamaica, Brazil, and elsewhere.

Capitalism Is Beyond Saving, And America Is Living Proof

September 5, 2018 By Jacob Bacharach, Truthdig.com Educate! Capitalism, Inequality, US Imperialism

Policies that fail in the same way over and over are not failing. Someone is lying about their intent. The drug war didn’t fail to stem the flow of banned narcotics and to stop epidemic abuse and addiction; it succeeded at building a vast carceral and surveillance apparatus targeted at people of color as a successor to Jim Crow. The war in Iraq didn’t fail to bring democracy to the Middle East; it smashed an intransigent sometimes-ally in the region, and deliberately weakened and destabilized a group of countries whose control of, and access to, immense oil reserves was of strategic American interest. The “end of welfare as we know it” didn’t fail to instill in the nation’s poor a middle-class sense of responsibility; it entrenched a draconian regime of means-testing and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy for access to even meager social benefits for a rapidly shrinking middle class.

Capitalism Is Not The “Market System”

September 5, 2018 Richard D. Wolff, Truthout.org Educate! Capitalism, Democratic Socialism, New Economy

With the Democratic Socialists of America now counting 48,000 people within its membership and socialist candidates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushing for free universities and Medicare for All, Americans are once again discussing capitalism versus socialism. Fortunately, they are not doing so in the old Cold War manner of uncritically celebrating one while demonizing the other. Rather, it’s a debate over the choice Americans must make now between keeping capitalism or changing the system to some form of socialism. As debates often do, this debate awakens us to problems and differences in how we understand its basic terms. For clarity and to make progress in this important debate, we need to stop conflating “capitalism” with the market. This is done far too often and on all sides of the debate.

What Just Happened? $30 Trillion To The Richest White Americans Since 2008

September 4, 2018 Paul Buchheit, Nationofchange.org Educate! Capitalism, Inequality, Ruling Class

The conclusion that $30 trillion went to white households is based on various reliable sources. The Washington Post references Federal Reserve data that estimates combined Black/Hispanic households as about 7% of all millionaire households (about 2% of 40 million Hispanic and Black households), and thus accruing about $2.5 trillion of that total $33 trillion decade-long gain. Statista, on the other hand, estimates that Black/Hispanic households make up 15% of all millionaires, which would represent a $5 trillion gain since the recession. Asian-Americans, with just 7 million households, are millionaires at about the same rate as white Americans. By the best estimates, the ten-year gains by White/Asian households is close to $30 trillion.

As Washington Vacillates, Asia’s Alliances Are Shifting

September 1, 2018 By Conn Hallinan, Fpif.org Educate! Asia, Capitalism, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry

“Boxing the compass” is an old nautical term for locating the points on a magnetic compass in order to set a course. With the erratic winds blowing out of Washington these days, countries all over Asia and the Middle East are boxing the compass and re-evaluating traditional foes and old alliances. India and Pakistan have fought three wars in the past half-century, and both have nuclear weapons on a hair trigger. But the two countries are now part of a security and trade organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), along with China, Russia, and most of the countries of Central Asia. Following the recent elections in Pakistan, Islamabad’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, has called for an “uninterrupted continued dialogue” with New Delhi to resolve conflicts and establish “peace and stability” in Afghanistan.

The Manufactured McCain: Lifting Up A Bloodstained, Lying, Venal Servant Of Capitalist Empire

September 1, 2018 By Bruce A. Dixon, Blackagendareport.com Educate! Capitalism, John McCain, US Imperialism

There’s a real John Sidney McCain III and there’s a fake one, manufactured for the public relations of US empire. Imperial PR needs to justify, even sanctify the ecocidal and genocidal rule of the rich by portraying its servants not as the venal and bloodthirsty thieves they are, but as the brightest, the best, the most noble and deserving among us. The Manufactured McCain whom the corporate media will spend another week on top of the previous one lifting up to the heavens bears only passing resemblance to the real John McCain. The real McCain was no hero. He was a lying, bribe taking, neo-nazi sympathizing politician and war criminal, who served the US empire and himself for all of his long life. By 1904 the US had coveted Panama, the northernmost province of Colombia for some time. US global ambitions dictated the need for a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The Evidence Is In, And Austerity Is Declared A Loser

August 21, 2018 Jacob Sugarman, Truthdig.com Educate! Austerity, Capitalism, Europe, New Economy

In 2014, Portugal stood on the brink. Its economy had collapsed amid Europe’s debt crisis, and unemployment had doubled. As part of a bailout program with the International Monetary Fund, which had lent the country 78 billion euros ($90 billion) in 2011, its government imposed drastic cuts to wages, pensions and social security. But then something remarkable happened. Rather than bow to the demands of its European debtors, the Portuguese government elected to reinvest in its public sector, restoring salaries and benefits to their pre-crisis levels. Four years later, the results speak for themselves. “The government’s U-turn, and willingness to spend, had a powerful effect,” writes The New York Times’ Liz Alderman. “Creditors railed against the move, but the gloom that had gripped the nation through years of belt-tightening began to lift. Business confidence rebounded. Production and exports began to take off.”

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