Finance and the Economy

PM Resigns, President Flees: It’s All Happening In Sri Lanka

July 11, 2022 People's Dispatch. Resist! Finance and the Economy, Mass Action, Resignation, Sri Lanka

Massive protests rocked Sri Lanka on Saturday, July 9, leading to a collapse of government. In the morning, tens of thousands of protesters marched to the residence of the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who reportedly fled shortly before. By Saturday evening, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe resigned to make way for the formation of an all-party government. Reports also said the president had agreed to resign. An all-party meeting called by the Speaker of parliament also saw calls for the resignation of the president. On Saturday evening, protesters also gathered before the residence of the prime minister. Some of the protesters, including media personnel, were assaulted by security forces.

A ‘Blue Commons’ Agenda To Stop The Plunder Of Our Oceans

July 10, 2022 David Bollier. Create! climate crisis, Finance and the Economy, Oceans, The Commons

Even though the oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface and provide half the oxygen we breathe, they tend to be "out of sight, out of mind," especially in landlocked nations or regions. It's therefore important to recognize that the market/state system is hard at work ravaging this sector of the natural world, too. Industrial-style fish trawlers are overexploiting fisheries, pushing many to the brink of collapse, and mining companies are chewing up the ocean floor in search of oil, gas, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and rare-earth minerals.

How New Federal Antimerger Guidelines Can Restore Competition

July 10, 2022 Stacy Mitchell and Ron Knox, Institute For Local Self-Reliance. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Legal System, Mergers, Monopolies

When the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice announced plans to revise their merger guidelines earlier this year, it marked a dramatic shift from business as usual. Their announcements set the stage for a new era in antitrust regulation where mergers are not seen as inherent benefits to the market to be encouraged but rather as inherent threats of which to be skeptical. In “Rolling Back Corporate Concentration: How New Federal Antimerger Guidelines Can Restore Competition and Build Local Power,” the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) provides context illuminating why the departments’ new stance on merger activity is both enormously consequential for today’s economy and also entirely consistent with what Congress intended when creating antimerger law in the mid-20th century.

Inflation And Your Next Union Contract

July 10, 2022 Samir Sonti, Select. Organize! Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

We can’t predict what is to come, but the evidence from the past year hasn’t been good for workers. The Consumer Price Index rose by more than 8 percent, its fastest pace in 40 years. Essential expenses like housing, food, and gas have climbed especially fast. Despite all the talk of labor shortages and a tight job market, wages have not kept pace with the cost of living. Since April 2021, inflation-adjusted hourly earnings have fallen by more than 2 percent. Any stimulus savings that people had accrued have largely dried up by now, and there is currently no plan for federal relief for working people facing the affordability crisis posed by historic inflation rates.

Corporate Billionaires Are Wrecking The Supply Chain

July 8, 2022 Mel Buer, The Real News Network. Educate! Biilionaires, Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Supply Chain

Before these past two years, if you were polling passersby on the street, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone ready to admit that they were seriously concerned about the supply chain. You’d be hard pressed, for that matter, to find many who could describe what the supply chain actually is (present company included). That is certainly not the case today. From shortages—and correspondingly high costs—of groceries and consumer goods like baby formula and sunflower oil to medical devices, “supply chain issues” have become a pronounced source of anxiety and frustration for consumers, workers, businesses, and politicians alike.

There Are Hungry People There Are Hungry People

July 1, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Children, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Human Rights

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reports that, every minute, a child is pushed into hunger in fifteen countries most ravaged by the global food crisis. Twelve of these fifteen countries are in Africa (from Burkina Faso to Sudan), one is in the Caribbean (Haiti), and two are in Asia (Afghanistan and Yemen). Wars without end have degraded the ability of the state institutions in these countries to manage cascading crises of debt and unemployment, inflation and poverty. Joining the two Asian countries are the states that make up the Sahel region of Africa (especially Mali and Niger), where the levels of hunger are now almost out of control. As if the situation were not sufficiently dire, an earthquake struck Afghanistan last week, killing over a thousand people – yet another devastating blow to a society where 93% of the population has slipped into hunger.

Economist Michael Hudson On Inflation And Fed Plan To Cut Wages

July 1, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. Resistance Report Class Struggle, Depression, Finance and the Economy, Inflation

Hey, everyone, this is Ben Norton, and you are watching or listening to the Multipolarista podcast. I am always privileged to be joined by one of my favorite guests, Michael Hudson, one of the greatest economists living today. We’re going to be talking about the inflation crisis. This is a crisis around the world, but especially in the United States, where inflation has been at over 8%. And it has caused a lot of political problems. It’s very likely going to cause the defeat, among other factors, of the Democrats in the mid-term elections in November. And we’ve seen that the response of the US government and top economists in the United States is basically to blame inflation on wages, on low levels of unemployment and on working people.

Seventy Five Years Later, Toll Of Taft-Hartley Weighs Heavily On Labor

June 29, 2022 Jonathan Kissam, UE Union. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Labor Movement, Taft-Hartley Act, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Taft-Hartley Act was the centerpiece of big business’s counterattack against a labor and people’s movement that had, over the previous decade, won major improvements for working people on factory floors and in the halls of Congress. From 1936 through World War II, the new industrial unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) — UE, the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, and dozens of smaller unions — had successfully organized the mass-production industries that dominated U.S. economy at the time. Like Amazon today, the huge corporations that dominated these industries — General Electric and Westinghouse in electrical manufacturing, the “Big Three” auto companies, and U.S. Steel — were engines of economic inequality. They exploited massive workforces to generate massive profits for a tiny corporate elite.

Is Universal Basic Income Part Of A Just Transition?

June 29, 2022 John Feffer, Foreign Policy In Focus. Create! Finance and the Economy, Universal Basic Income

In the remote rural village of Dauphin, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, economists tried out an unusual experiment. In the 1970s, they persuaded the provincial government to give cash payments to poorer families to see if a guaranteed basic income could improve their outcomes. During the years of this “Mincome” experiment, families received a basic income of 16,000 Canadian dollars (or a top up to that amount). With 10,000 inhabitants, Dauphin was just big enough to be a good data set but not too big as to bankrupt the government. The results were startling, including a significant drop in hospitalizations and an improvement in high school graduation rates. After four years, however, money for the experiment dried up, and this early example of universal basic income (UBI) was nearly forgotten.

We Are The Economy

June 28, 2022 Amanda Janoo, Post Growth Institute. Create! Finance and the Economy, popular power, Transformation

I recently moved back to the United States after over a decade abroad. It’s been an interesting re-acclimation which I believe some people call ‘reverse culture shock’. There is so much about this country, my home, that is comfortable and familiar. A shared language, sense of humor, and customs allow me to flow through this society with ease. However, the thing that has stood out more than anything is that nearly everyone I meet seems to be struggling with some form of anxiety or depression. What’s even more jarring is that they all seem to feel like it’s their fault — telling themselves they just need to work harder, meditate, or exercise more to emerge from this crushing darkness. But if everyone is feeling this way, then clearly there must be something bigger at play.

Deciphering The Chinese Economic Miracle

June 24, 2022 Friends of Socialist China. Create! China, Finance and the Economy, Global South

The “Chinese miracle” has become a widely used term in development studies, inspiring developing countries to achieve high levels of prosperity, living standards, and stability over the last decade. The popularity of this term can be explained in large part by the fact that China has enjoyed unprecedented economic success in world history (Zakaria, 2011; Gürcan 2021a), despite enormous historical, demographic, geographical, and geopolitical adversities. China was one of the world’s poorest countries before the socialist revolution in 1949. In the early revolutionary era, China struggled much to overcome its crippling semi-colonial legacy characterized by the medieval conditions of an agricultural economy and the weakness of its industrial base. History aside, China is the largest country by population size, which currently accounts for 22% of the world’s population.

Can We Ever Retire To Greater Equality?

June 22, 2022 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Create! Finance and the Economy, Retirement, Tax the rich, Worker Rights and Jobs

Do you have a good pension? Do you have any pension at all? Back in 1975, most Americans who worked for established employers could say that they do indeed have a decent pension. Back then, what the experts call “defined-benefit” pension plans set the standard. If you worked for a company with one of these plans, you could look forward to receiving — for every month of your retired life — a pension check based on your salary and years of service. These defined-benefit plans gave employers the responsibility for funding their employee retirements. Employers contributed into retirement funds and used the investment returns these funds generated to keep pension checks flowing. If those returns came up short, employers had to fill the shortfall.

100 Million People In The US Are Saddled With Health Care Debt

June 16, 2022 Noam N. Levey, Scheer Post. Educate! Debt, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Medical Debt

Elizabeth Woodruff drained her retirement account and took on three jobs after she and her husband were sued for nearly $10,000 by the New York hospital where his infected leg was amputated. Ariane Buck, a young father in Arizona who sells health insurance, couldn’t make an appointment with his doctor for a dangerous intestinal infection because the office said he had outstanding bills. Allyson Ward and her husband loaded up credit cards, borrowed from relatives, and delayed repaying student loans after the premature birth of their twins left them with $80,000 in debt. Ward, a nurse practitioner, took on extra nursing shifts, working days and nights. “I wanted to be a mom,” she said. “But we had to have the money.”

Three Anti-Inflation Alternatives To Raising Interest Rates

June 16, 2022 Richard D. Wolff, In These Times. Create! Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Socialization

A deafening silence defines “debates” among U.S. leaders about stopping or slowing today’s inflation. Alternatives to the Federal Reserve’s raising of interest rates and curtailing money supply growth are ignored. It’s as if there were no other ways to rein in price increases except to add more interest costs to the already excess debts of workers and small and medium businesses. Were the last two and a half years of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, plus the economic crash of 2020, not sufficient enough burdens on Americans without piling on the additional burden of inflation that has been imposed by U.S. capitalism? As usual, the profit-driven concerns of big business and their result — a remarkably selective historical amnesia — fuel the silence about alternative anti-inflation policies.

Prices For Workers Rise By More Than 9%

June 13, 2022 Masao Suzuki, Fight Back News. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

San José, California - On Friday, June 10, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that prices for workers’ families, the so-called Consumer Price Index-Wage or CPI-W rose by 9.3% as compared to prices a year ago. This rate of inflation is near a 40-year high, only exceeded by the 9.4% increase in March. The last time that prices rose so quickly was in November of 1981. The headline number that the corporate media reported was a smaller 8.6%. This was the number for the CPI-Urban or CPI-U that includes households with managers and professionals as well as wage workers. The CPI-W inflation is higher than the CPI-U because the CPI-W puts more weight on the prices of food and transportation that have been bedeviling working families. Food prices are up more than 10% over the past year while gasoline is up almost 50%.

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