Finance and the Economy

Economist Richard Wolff: Sanctions Against Russia, Inflation

September 14, 2022 Lowkey, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Russia, Sanctions

European countries, as well as the United States, continue to be imperiled by an economic crisis following the imposition of sanctions on Russia. The policy has backfired spectacularly and has had worse economic ramifications on those levying the sanctions, than those being sanctioned. In this week’s episode, Lowkey speaks to respected U.S. economist Dr. Richard Wolff, discussing the links between the war in Ukraine, inflation, and the class war at home. Before exploring the people’s definition of inflation, Dr. Wolff contextualizes the economic crisis currently unfolding across the West. In the conversation, Lowkey and Dr. Richard Wolff expose ways economic policy can be a code term for class war. They delve into the way the cost of enmity towards Russia is being placed on the shoulders of the working class in the West, which recently experienced one of the worst crashes of capitalism in its history.

AAR Report: Nationwide Rail Shutdown Could Cost $2 Billion Per Day

September 12, 2022 Carolina Worrell, Railway Age. Resist! Finance and the Economy, Railroads, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

According to the report, if negotiations between the remaining rail unions and the National Carrier Conference Committee (NCCC), which represents most Class I railroads and many smaller ones, remain unsettled by Friday, Sept. 16 at 12:01 a.m., “Congress must act to prevent a service interruption that would immediately harm every economic sector served by rail.” Failure to act, AAR says, could idle more than 7,000 trains daily and trigger retail product shortages, widespread manufacturing shutdowns, job losses and disruptions to hundreds of thousands of passenger rail customers. Specifically, the report updates a 1992 Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) econometric study to quantify the potential impacts of a national rail shutdown on employment and economic output in today’s dollars.

Michael Hudson On Debt Relief, Inflation, Ukraine And More

September 11, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. Resistance Report China, Energy, Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Ukraine

This is Ben Norton of Multipolarista. I’m joined by one of my favorite guests today, the brilliant economist Michael Hudson. And there are a lot of things that we plan on talking about today. We’re going to address the partial student debt relief in the United States, and the problem of debt, which is something that Professor Hudson has written a lot about. We’re going to talk about the inflation crisis, and some of the history of responses to the inflation that we’ve seen in the US. For instance, I’m going to pick Professor Hudson’s brain about Richard Nixon’s response. Nixon imposed price controls and froze wages for the first time since World War Two. We’re also going to talk about the history of the Volcker shock, when Paul Volcker, who was the head of the Fed, raised interest rates to a level never seen before.

Good News In The Financial Arena In Nicaragua

September 9, 2022 Nan McCurdy and Katherine Hoyt, Alliance For Global Justice. Create! Environment, Finance and the Economy, Nicaragua, Poverty

The international main-stream media rarely focuses on good news from Nicaragua, on its achievements in reducing poverty, and maternal and infant mortality, or on its expansion of health care, education, electrification, water and sewerage, renewable energy, and roadways. However, a recent article published on the web page of the Center for Strategic and International Studies conceded that Nicaragua had made major advances economically and, in spite of US sanctions, had “rebounded relatively well from Covid-19” and had ensured that Nicaraguans could feed themselves. The article noted that the Nicaraguan economy grew by 10.1% in 2021 and foreign investment increased by 39% from 2020 to 2021 with particular strength in energy and mining.

We’ve Effectively Taken A Pay Cut’: How Inflation Is Impacting Retail Workers

September 6, 2022 Anna Hensel, Modern Retail. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Retail, Worker Rights and Jobs

At the beginning of the year, a West Coast Target-based worker was excited to hear they would be getting a raise. The worker — – who uses they/them pronouns — has worked in retail for about five years, and couldn’t recall getting a raise at any of the other companies they’ve worked at. Their excitement evaporated, however, when they learned the raise was only $0.15. Thanks to decades-high inflation, the worker is finding it harder and harder to get by on Target wages, even with a small raise. But they are no longer able to afford all of their groceries on EBT, as they previously were able to. Inflation is crushing workers across all industries.

How To Green Our Parched Farmlands And Finance Critical Infrastructure

September 3, 2022 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Banking, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Infrastructure

Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs in infrastructure funding remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, per the ASCE, continued underinvestment at current rates will cost $10 trillion in cumulative lost GDP, more than 3 million jobs in that year, and $2.24 trillion in exports over the next 20 years.

Biden’s Student Loan Scam

September 2, 2022 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Debt, Education, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Student Loans

The Biden administration announcement of so-called student loan debt relief does little to alleviate the problem it claims to solve. Forgiving $20,000 for Pell grant holders and $10,000 for all who earn less than $125,000 is questionable for a variety of reasons. It is a midterm election bait and switch that pleases gullible democrats, helps only a minority of borrowers, and is nothing like what candidate Biden proposed during the 2020 campaign. Americans owe $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. This crisis did not occur by happenstance. Universities did not escape the neoliberal onslaught and are fund raising machines charging astronomical amounts of money for tuition and room and board.

Report: The Union Advantage For Young Workers

September 2, 2022 Hayley Brown, CEPR. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Youth

Though originally designed to neutralize the potency of May Day, Labor Day in 2022 comes at an inflection point for US workers in general and for younger US workers in particular. Amid an upswell in union enthusiasm and increased attention to union organizing in the popular press, the trajectory of the labor movement going forward has especially significant ramifications for adult workers under the age of 35. These younger workers have now endured multiple economic shocks during formative stages in their lives. Unions have the potential to both mitigate some of the damage done by recent economic crises and to provide a mechanism for building worker power to create lasting structural change.

3.8 Million Tenants In The US Could Be Evicted In The Next Two Months

September 1, 2022 People's Dispatch. Educate! Class Struggle, Eviction, Finance and the Economy, Housing, Rent

The 3.8 million facing eviction is the tip of the iceberg. The Census Bureau also estimated that 8.5 million tenants are behind on their rent as the month of August comes to a close. Millions of people are behind on rent and facing eviction in part because of the soaring rent prices. In June of this year, median rents in the US topped a staggering $2,000 per month—the highest ever recorded. Renters across the country have seen rent increase by almost 25% since before the pandemic, with an increase of 15% in just the past 12 months, according to real estate marketplace company Zillow. Nearly half of renters have been hit with rent hikes. Rents have increased dramatically due to high inflation, which the people of the US cite as their top concern by a wide margin.

Organizers Have Fought For Debt Cancellation For Over A Decade

August 30, 2022 Sara Herschander, Waging Nonviolence. Resist! Education, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Student Debt

Following over a decade of activism against the United States’ massive student debt crisis, President Biden announced a plan on Wednesday to cancel a significant amount of student loan debt for tens of millions of low and middle-income Americans. Many organizers, whose work made the announcement possible, have viewed the news as a major victory for their movement. However, they also see it as just a small first step in a country where many borrowers — especially Black and Brown borrowers — are saddled with far deeper debts, and the root causes of educational inequity remain largely unaddressed. “This $10,000 further marginalizes the already most-marginalized,” said Dr. Richelle Brooks, a member of the Debt Collective and founder of ReTHINK It, who currently owes $240,000 in student loan debt.

If Biden Can Cancel Some Student Debt, He Can Cancel All Student Debt In The US

August 30, 2022 Frederick Bell Jr., Truthout. Educate! Education, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Student Debt

“I cosigned for 70K in loans to put my disabled grandchild through a private college that would meet his specific needs,” said a 70-year-old debtor I met during the Debt Collective’s virtual older debtors’ assembly in mid-August. “I don’t think I’ll be able to pay off these loans in my lifetime,” another debtor told me. As I listened to these stories in a Zoom breakout room, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the conclusion that debt controls the lives of millions of people in the U.S., especially our most vulnerable. The Debt Collective, the nation’s first debtors’ union, is known for opening and facilitating powerful forums for conversation that enable folks to release the burden of shame and talk about how debt has impacted their lives. I’ve been organizing with Debt Collective for a year and I have come away with the same conclusion each time I leave an assembly: Americans desperately need full cancellation, and they need it now.

Biden Urged To Get Rid Of DeJoy As He Plows Ahead With Job Cuts

August 28, 2022 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. Resist! Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Louis DeJoy, Worker Rights and Jobs

More than a year and a half into President Joe Biden's first term, Louis DeJoy—a megadonor to former President Donald Trump and a villain in the eyes of progressives and many Democratic lawmakers—is still running the U.S. Postal Service. DeJoy's staying power in the face of widespread outrage over his sabotage of postal operations and his ethics scandals, one of which spurred an FBI probe, can largely be attributed to the loyalty of the USPS Board of Governors, a majority of which has remained supportive of the postmaster general amid repeated calls for his ouster over the past two years. While Biden lacks the authority to fire DeJoy directly, he does have the ability to alter the composition of the postal board, which can replace the postmaster general with a simple-majority vote.

How Rural America’s Assets Have Been Systematically Stripped Away

August 28, 2022 Olivia Weeks, Daily Yonder. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Rural

Since the 1980s, financial capital has developed imaginative new ways to strip and seize the assets present in rural zones, whether these be mutually-owned banks, industries, cooperatively-owned grain elevators, local newspapers, hospitals, people’s homes, or stores located in towns and malls.” In the wake of the fiscal austerity agenda enacted by financial and political elites in the late 20th century, the vast majority of the wealth created in America’s countryside “has accrued to shareholders in corporations and financial institutions headquartered in a handful of distant, economically dynamic urban centers.” The financialization of the American economy, especially in those places furthest from economic hubs, can be extremely opaque. But its repercussions – many of which are often seen as causes and effects of backwardness and small-town decline – are all around us.

Repurposing Prisons Can Revitalize Rural America

August 24, 2022 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Criminal Justice and Prisons, Finance and the Economy, Jobs

The economic fortunes of rural communities across the United States are often deeply intertwined with the prison industrial complex. This poses a real challenge to the project of ending mass incarceration. How can organizers build political opposition to prisons in areas where prisons are the lifeblood of a community? And what should be done with former prisons once they are closed? The question of repurposing prisons in particular is too often neglected by state governments. A new report from the Sentencing Project finds that while 21 states have closed prisons since 2000, many of these sites have simply become other types of correctional facilities in the absence of clear transition plans. Nicole Porter from the Sentencing Project joins Rattling the Bars to discuss this new report.

The Economy Should Serve People – Not Vice Versa

August 23, 2022 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Educate! Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality

The economy’s job is to work for people. It is not the job of people to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the economy. The subconscious feeling drummed into all of us that we should feel some sense of collective pride for being ground into dust in service of economic growth is a sick bit of indoctrination that is stubbornly hard to escape. The simple step of asking what the economy is doing for us — rather than what our lives are contributing to the economy — can go a long way toward reframing how we all think about this. They say that behind every fortune is a crime; likewise, behind every mainstream economic analysis is a set of poisonous assumptions that exist to tranquilize us. Consider the problem of inflation. It’s rising around the world. The growing consensus in the financial world is that the era of low inflation is gone for good, because the era of globalization that enabled it is coming to an end.

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