Finance and the Economy

Four-Fifths Of Board Members At Top Six US Banks Are Climate Conflicted

May 14, 2023 Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. Educate! Big Banks, climate crisis, Environment, Finance and the Economy

Four in five bank directors at the six largest banks in the U.S. have ties to polluting companies and organizations, including major fossil fuel companies, according to a new DeSmog analysis. The research raises fresh concerns about the extent of anti-environmental influence inside some of the nation’s most powerful boardrooms at a time when campaigners are pushing the banks to enact stronger environmental policies at their annual shareholder meetings. It reveals that 82 percent of board members at these six banks currently hold or have held positions with climate-conflicted organizations.

NY Times Is Wrong On Dedollarization

May 12, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report De-dollarization, Finance and the Economy, Media, New York Times (NYT)

oday we’re going to be talking about de-dollarization. Michael and Radhika just did a series on the decline in the US dollar system and the move by countries around the world to seek alternatives to the dominance of the US dollar. Specifically, I wanted to bring on Michael today to respond to articles that were published in the New York Times by the economist Paul Krugman, arguing against de-dollarization, arguing in defense of the US dollar system. We’re going to look at two articles that Krugman wrote, one in April and the other in May. Michael, I’m going to start with the article that Paul Krugman published in April, called “International Money Madness Strikes Again“.

Government Employees Union Sues Over ‘Unconstitutional’ Debt Limit Law

May 12, 2023 Zach Schonfeld, The Hill. Resist! Congress, Debt Ceiling, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden

The National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) filed a lawsuit to block enforcement of a law that sets the nation’s debt limit, arguing it is unconstitutional as a political divide over raising the borrowing cap comes to a head. The lawsuit contends that, if the debt limit is reached, President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen would be forced to decide which payments to prioritize, violating the separation of powers by taking over Congress’s spending authority. “The Debt Limit Statute is unconstitutional because it puts the President in a quandary to exercise discretion to continue borrowing to pay for the programs which Congress has heretofore duly authorized.

The Poverty Trap

May 11, 2023 Jeffrey D. Sachs, Consortium News. Educate! Class Struggle, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Poverty

The key to economic development and ending poverty is investment. Nations achieve prosperity by investing in four priorities. Most important is investing in people, through quality education and health care. The next is infrastructure, such as electricity, safe water, digital networks and public transport. The third is natural capital, protecting nature. The fourth is business investment. The key is finance: mobilizing the funds to invest at the scale and speed required. In principle, the world should operate as an interconnected system. The rich countries, with high levels of education, healthcare, infrastructure, and business capital, should supply ample finance to the poor countries, which must urgently build up their human, infrastructure, natural and business capital.

The Debt Ceiling Debate Is A Massive Deception Against The Public

May 11, 2023 Richard D. Wolff, Popular Resistance. Educate! Congress, Debt Ceiling, Federal Reserve, Finance and the Economy, Taxes

Future historians will likely look back at the debt ceiling rituals being reenacted these days with a frustrated shaking of their heads. That otherwise reasonable people would be so readily deceived raises the question that will provoke those historians: How could this happen? The U.S. Congress has imposed successive ceilings on the national debt, each one higher than the last. Ceilings were intended to limit the amount of federal borrowing. But the same U.S. Congress so managed its taxing and spending that it created ever more excesses of spending over tax revenues (deficits). Those excesses required borrowing to cover them. The borrowings accumulated to hit successive ceilings.

New Documents Undermine Supreme Court Student Debt Case

May 9, 2023 Julia Rock, The Lever. Educate! Education, Finance and the Economy, Student Debt, US Supreme Court

Newly unearthed documents show a major student loan servicer is projecting revenue increases even under President Joe Biden’s debt cancellation plan — directly undermining the argument Republican officials are making in their lawsuit to block the measure. But conservative justices on the Supreme Court appear prepared to strike down the debt relief program anyways, disregarding the evidence and their own legal theories to fulfill the wishes of the dark money network that helped build their Supreme Court supermajority. At issue is the concept of “standing” — a legal term for who is allowed to bring a case to the judiciary. For years, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has consistently shut down cases they don’t like by insisting that plaintiffs are unharmed and therefore do not have standing to be in court.

First Republic Bank: The Second Largest Crash In US History

May 4, 2023 People's Dispatch. Educate! Bailout, Banking Crisis, Finance and the Economy, First Republic Bank

On International Workers’ Day, the First Republic Bank became the second largest bank to fail in US history. The USD 233 billion institution was seized by the government and sold to banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase. First Republic is the third bank to fail in the US since March, surpassing the spectacular failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10. SVB’s depositors were bailed out by the US government to the tune of USD 151 billion. Up until May 1, SVB had been the second largest bank failure in the history of the country. Capitalists in the United States did not predict that this title would be usurped less than two months later.

Current Bank Crashes Demonstrate Why We Need Public Banking

April 29, 2023 Trinity Tran, LA Progressive. Create! Banking Crisis, cryptocurrency, Finance and the Economy, Public Bank

The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank — the second and third largest bank failures in U.S. history respectively — has laid bare the vulnerability of the private banking sector. With over 563 federally insured banks toppling between 2001 and 2023, it’s impossible to ignore: The status quo is unsustainable. Amid this financial turbulence, the need for public banking has never been more pressing. It’s high time we seriously consider public banking as a stable, transparent, and accountable alternative that would firmly anchor public interest at the heart of the financial system. After all, banking should be a public utility that benefits everyone, not a high-risk game played by bankers trying to score big profits.

Economic Growth Is Fuelling Climate Change

March 30, 2023 Timothée Parrique, Resilience. Create! Book Review, climate crisis, Communism, Degrowth, Finance and the Economy

I’m often told that degrowth, the planned downscaling of production and consumption to reduce the pressure on Earth’s ecosystems, is a tough sell. But a 36-year-old associate professor at Tokyo University has made a name for himself arguing that “degrowth communism” could halt the escalating climate emergency. Kohei Saito, the bestselling author of Capital in the Anthropocene, is back with a new book: Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism. The book is dense, especially for those not fluent in Marxist jargon who, I suspect, care little about whether or not Karl Marx started worrying about nature in his later years.

America’s Fossil Fuel Economy Is Heading For Collapse

March 29, 2023 Nafeez Ahmed, Resilience. Strategize! Big Oil, collapse, Energy, Finance and the Economy, Oil and Gas

US oil production is about to peak, but the world is unprepared for the tremendous economic and political consequences. The only path through is energy and economic transformation. The global economy is currently teetering on the edge of a banking crisis. The IPCC has just released its final major report warning that global carbon emissions need to peak and decline immediately if we are to avoid plunging into dangerous global warming by breaching the 1.5C ‘safe limit’. And in recent weeks and months, industry leaders have announced that the US shale oil and gas revolution is over. Yet few if anyone is talking about why these things are happening at the same time, and what they really mean.

Banking Crisis 3.0: Time To Change The Rules Of The Game

March 24, 2023 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Banking Crisis, Finance and the Economy, Nationalization, Silicon Valley Bank

So what caused this crisis, and what can be done to remedy it? In the midst of the 2008 economic crisis, former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan conceded that there was a flaw in his perception of the financial operating system. For 40 years, he had believed that banks could “self regulate” responsibly, a presumption that had proven to be flawed. In the case of SVB, however, the bank was not engaged in the sort of risky lending seen in the subprime crisis, and increased “stress testing” wouldn’t have saved it. It had put its deposits largely in federal securities, purported to be the safest assets available – so safe that they carry a “zero risk weighting” requiring no extra capital buffer.

Immigrant Women Workers Fighting To Close Disney’s Gender Pay Gap

March 24, 2023 Derek Seidman, Truthout. Organize! Disney, Finance and the Economy, Gender Disparities, Immigration, Patriarchy, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Workers with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 631 say a major pay gap exists at Disney World that leaves workers in traditionally feminized jobs, such as costume-making, earning significantly less than workers in traditionally masculinized jobs with comparable skills levels, such as stagehand labor. The union — which represents the skilled crafts people who work behind the scenes in Disney World entertainment, from costume workers to cosmetologists to stage technicians — is demanding in bargaining that Disney close this gender pay gap by raising wages in traditionally feminized jobs to bring them in alignment with comparatively skilled but traditionally male-dominated jobs.

Today’s Banking Crisis: Deep Origins And Future Directions

March 23, 2023 Jack Rasmus, LA Progressive. Educate! Banking Crisis, European Union (EU), Finance and the Economy, Silicon Valley Bank

It’s been a week since the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the US at the time of its collapse and reportedly a source of funding for half of all the tech start ups in the US. It’s now become clear the more general banking crisis that has emerged is not due simply to a rogue, mismanaged bank that over-extended itself during the recent tech boom and then somehow mysteriously imploded in just 72 hours, March 7-9, until seized by the FDIC on the morning of March 10, 2023. Deeper, more systemic forces are at play—in the case of both the SVB collapse and the now spreading contagion to US regional banks as well as to European banks.

What Will It Take To End The Billionaire Bailout Society?

March 18, 2023 Les Leopold, Common Dreams. Educate! Banking Crisis, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy

In case we need any more proof, the bailout of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is yet another overt sign that we are operating within a new version of capitalism. The wealthiest among us have little fear of losing money from their most important financial investments. They know they will be bailed out, and the rest of us will pick up the tab. The crisis at SVB has made a mockery of bank deposit insurance and private banking. In the US, bank deposits are insured up to $250,000. If the bank fails, those with accounts below that amount are fully protected. But deposits over that amount are not. The reason is straightforward.

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