Finance and the Economy

Attacks On Student Loan Forgiveness Threaten Millions In The US

June 3, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Educate! Debt, Finance and the Economy, Higher Education, Student Loans

US Senators from the Republican and Democrat parties pushed to quickly approve the bipartisan debt ceiling deal on Thursday night, June 1. Republicans, led by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, successfully negotiated severe cuts on government spending in a way that will hurt workers the most out of any class: by kicking millions off of food and health benefits, cutting the IRS making it easier for the wealthy to evade taxes, and officially putting an end date to the current freeze on student loan payments. Senate leaders pushed this bill through to ostensibly to avoid a government default.

Debt Deal Gives Fossil Fuel Lobby A Legal Shield

June 1, 2023 Rebecca Burns, Julia Rock and Andrew Perez, The Lever. Educate! Corporatism, Debt Ceiling, Finance and the Economy, Mountain Valley Pipeline, Oil and Gas

The House of Representatives voted 314 - 117 last night to approve a debt deal that includes provisions expediting construction of a controversial fossil fuel pipeline — and attempting to block courts from hearing challenges to its legality. The language nestled into the agreement reached by the Biden administration and congressional Republicans last weekend came amid a flood of campaign cash from executives at NextEra Energy, one of the companies spearheading the pipeline, to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ind.-Ariz.) and two other Democratic senators whose votes could be needed to pass the agreement.

Another Look At The Financial Transactions Tax

June 1, 2023 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Finance and the Economy, Financial Transaction Tax, wealth inequality

The debt ceiling crisis has again brought into focus the perennial gap between what the government spends and what it accumulates in taxes, and the virtual impossibility of closing that gap by increasing taxes or negotiating cuts in the budget. In a 2023 book titled A Tale of Two Economies: A New Financial Operating System for the American Economy, Wall Street veteran Scott Smith shows that we would need to tax everyone at a rate of 40%, without deductions, to balance the budgets of our federal and local governments – an obvious nonstarter. The problem, he argues, is that we are taxing the wrong things – income and physical sales. In fact, we have two economies – the material economy in which goods and services are bought and sold, and the monetary economy involving the trading of financial assets (stocks, bonds, currencies, etc.) – basically “money making money” without producing new goods or services.

Biden-McCarthy Deal: Neoliberal Fiscal Policy Continues

May 31, 2023 Jack Rasmus, LA Progressive. Educate! Debt Ceiling, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Kevin McCarthy, Neoliberalism, Social Programs

Over the weekend, US House of Representatives speaker McCarthy and president Biden announced a tentative agreement on raising the debt ceiling. The deal—almost certain to pass Congress later this week—represents a typical Neoliberal fiscal policy deal. Ever since neoliberal capitalism policies were introduced under president Carter in the late 1970s, and subsequently expanded dramatically under Reagan, Neoliberal fiscal policy has been characterized by accelerating Pentagon and war spending; simultaneous cutting of business-investor taxes; acceptance of consequent escalating budget deficits—and in turn US national debt levels; and the use deficit/debt to cap and reduce social program spending.

The Post Office Can Bring People-Centered Banking To Every ZIP Code

May 28, 2023 Annie Norman and Aditi Sen, Inequality.org. Create! Finance and the Economy, Postal Banking, Public Banking, Unbanked

The need for a public banking option is urgent. Nearly 10 million households, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color, are unbanked in the United States. Unbanked or underbanked households must pay expensive fees for non-bank financial services to access their own money for paying bills, cashing checks, remittances, rent, and ATM withdrawals — costing upwards of $2,400 annually. The widely trusted U.S. Postal Service has a long history of postal banking and is physically located in every community, making it the sensible option to provide a public banking solution. But this requires a good faith effort, done well.

Biden’s Debt Ceiling Betrayal Is A Democratic Party Tradition

May 26, 2023 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Debt Ceiling, Democratic Party, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden

When Joe Biden was first elected president his propagandists and their friends in corporate media told us that he was “the most progressive president since FDR” and that he would “cut child poverty in half.” Yet the temporary covid relief programs have all gone, from the Child Tax Credit, to emergency SNAP nutrition benefits, to automatic medicaid enrollment, and all with little fightback from the democrats. Now Biden is continuing the democratic presidents’ tradition of using sleight of hand to sell out the millions of people who have already lost what little help they had. The republican bogeymen and women have returned just when Biden needed them to make the case for his plan to further eviscerate the social safety net and continue the race to the bottom which results in precarity for the people.

Argentina Adopting US Dollar To Fight Inflation Would Be ‘Insane’

May 26, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Educate! Argentina, Brazil, China, De-dollarization, Finance and the Economy, IMF, Latin America, Neocolonialism, US Dollar

The South American nation sometimes suffers from a current account deficit, and relies heavily on imports of oil, technology, and medical equipment. Low revenue from its mostly agricultural exports means that Argentina faces a chronic shortage of foreign currency – and most of the dollars it gets end up flowing out of the country to paying interest on the unsustainable external debt, draining the country’s foreign-exchange reserves and making it difficult to stabilize the national currency, the peso. National elections are approaching in October, and among the presidential hopefuls is far-right politician Javier Milei.

The Two Decades That Created World’s First Mass Middle Class

May 26, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Strategize! Finance and the Economy, History, Middle Class, wealth inequality

Amazing things can happen when societies realize they don’t need an awesomely affluent. What sort of amazing things? Take what happened in the United States between 1940 and 1960, as economists William Collins and Gregory Niemesh do in a just-published research paper on America’s mid-century home ownership boom. Over a mere 20-year span, the United States essentially birthed a “new middle class.” The share of U.S. households owning their own homes, Collins and Niemesh note, jumped an “unprecedented” 20 percentage points. By 1960, most American families resided in housing they owned “for the first time since at least 1870” — for the first time, in effect, since before the Industrial Revolution.

Seeds Of Economic Recovery Are Already Sprouting Roots In The Bronx

May 25, 2023 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Create! Credit Union, Finance and the Economy, Small Business, The Bronx

The Bronx - New York City, New York- It’s not common for bank CEOs to walk around a neighborhood in the South Bronx, knocking on doors of local businesses to say hello and start getting to know them and their owners or employees. But what if it was? That’s what Rachel Macarthy is looking forward to doing later this spring and over the summer. Born and raised in the South Bronx, with a business degree in finance from Howard University, she’s the CEO of New Covenant Dominion Credit Union. At 1185 Boston Road, the Black and Hispanic-serving credit union sits at a busy crossroads in the heart of the borough.

The Inflation Reality And The Attack On Wages

May 23, 2023 Arthur MacEwan, Dollars & Sense. Educate! Employment, Federal Reserve, Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Interest Rates, Wages

Inflation was slow throughout the second half of 2022. Yet you wouldn’t know this from newspaper headlines, statements from “experts,” or the statements and actions of the Federal Reserve. It was only in January of 2023, when the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December 2022 was released showing an actual (very small) decline in prices for the month, that there began to be a general recognition that the relatively high rate of inflation of late 2021 and the first half of 2022 had abated. The December 2022 decline of one-tenth of 1% was later revised upward to an increase of one-tenth of 1%, but this tiny increase still brought attention to the easing of inflation.

US Empire Of Debt Headed For Collapse

May 21, 2023 Pepe Escobar, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Debt, Economic collapse, Finance and the Economy, History

Prof. Michael Hudson’s new book, The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point” is a seminal event in this Year of Living Dangerously when, to paraphrase Gramsci, the old geopolitical and geoeconomic order is dying and the new one is being born at breakneck speed. Prof. Hudson’s main thesis is absolutely devastating: he sets out to prove that economic/financial practices in Ancient Greece and Rome – the pillars of Western Civilization – set the stage for what is happening today right in front of our eyes: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.

The Left Case For The Trillion Dollar Coin

May 21, 2023 Maurice BP-Weeks, In These Times. Strategize! Debt Ceiling, Finance and the Economy, Treasury, Trillion Dollar Coin

Kevin McCarthy won the gavel for Speaker of the House through a desperate and power-hungry agreement to manufacture the debt ceiling crisis. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told reporters that in order to earn the vote of the Freedom Caucus, it was “non-negotiable” that McCarthy promise he would “shut down the government rather than raise the debt ceiling.” Now they’re holding McCarthy to his word. In a recent article for In These Times, Max Sawicky laid out a compelling case for why the Biden administration needs to hold firm against the GOP. The programs Republicans are attempting to cut are popular, and it’s important to protect them as worthwhile in their own right.

Squeezed By The Shorts: Time To Ban Short Selling?

May 18, 2023 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Fraud, Public Banks, Short Selling

Short sellers have made a killing in the recent banking crisis, scalping $14.3 billion from bank stock owners just in March of this year. Short sellers “borrow” stock they don’t own and immediately sell it, driving the price down. Then they buy it back at the lower price, return the stock, and pocket the difference. Bankers say the practice is threatening the stability of the banking system and are calling for a ban on short sales of bank stock. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to decline but is investigating whether the practice constitutes illegal market manipulation intended to deceive investors.

Creating Trust Through Money

May 15, 2023 Tiziana Penna and Anna Rispoli, Resilience. Create! Community, Community Wallet, Finance and the Economy, Money, Solidarity

In January 2018, a group of artists and cultural workers based in Brussels—including us, Tiziana Penna and Anna Rispoli—committed to living from the same bank account. All income we receive through wages, unemployment, and other benefits is wired into this shared account. From there, we don’t withdraw the same amount we wired in, but whatever amount each one of us feels we need to live our life, including money for mortgage payments, rent, utilities, childcare, monthly savings, groceries, and clothes, but also for holidays, hobbies, going out, and all the unnecessary consumerism one is drawn to.

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