Finance and the Economy

Shipping Chaos Is The Latest Sign That Capitalism Is Eating Itself

June 7, 2022 Grace Blakeley, Tribune Magazine. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Globalization, Supply Chain

Larry Fink, the CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, recently wrote in his letter to shareholders that globalization as we know it is over. The war in Ukraine, he argues, marks a turning point in the world economy—though the momentum of globalization had been slowing for many years. Fink’s pronouncement caused a stir among the international capitalist class. The Financial Times featured an editorial opining that ‘global capital has, for the past 40 years or so, flown too far ahead of national economies, creating stresses and inequalities within many nations.’ FT journalists, of course, have been some of the greatest cheerleaders of this process, which made the conclusion all the more striking. But before we decide whether globalization is over, it’s worth considering what it actually amounts to. I

Three Examples Of Large Tech Co-ops

June 6, 2022 Leo Sammallahti, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Big Tech, Cooperatives, Ecommerce, Finance and the Economy

The most valuable companies in the stock market today can be found in the technology sector. The first publicly traded company in history to reach a $1 trillion valuation was Apple in 2018. While it took the company more than 40 years to reach that milestone, less than four years later its valuation has increased by a further two trillion, reaching another record breaking $3 trillion. The “trillion dollar club” has also since expanded to include three more companies - all of them in the technology sector. However, the markets appear to be falling out of love with the big tech . Earlier in 2022 Facebook lost $230bn in value in the biggest one-day stock plunge in history. It has since been overshadowed by several similar collapses that have (as of today) erased more than $2.6 trillion from the value of the five largest tech companies since the start of the year.

The Case For Taxing The Rich Gets An Unexpected Boost

June 1, 2022 Sam Pizzigati, Counter Punch. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Taxes, wealth inequality, Wealth Tax

We’ve had quite a show up in the Alps this week, the first in-person gathering of the world’s mega rich since Covid hit. The occasion? The annual World Economic Forum at the Swiss resort of Davos, an ever-so-sober gathering that has an assortment of global deep thinkers sharing their wisdom with deep pockets ever eager for policy ideas that don’t involve sharing their wealth. Also on hand, in person and remotely: a collection of the world’s most stalwart egalitarians, advocates ranging from activists with the Patriotic Millionaires to analysts at the anti-poverty powerhouse Oxfam. These analysts, on the eve of Davos, released gripping new data on how billionaires in food and energy have been swelling their fortunes — at consumer expense.

US Federal Reserve Says Its Goal Is ‘To Get Wages Down’

May 26, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. Educate! Federal Reserve, Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Worker Rights and Jobs

The chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said his goal is “to get wages down.” In a press conference on May 4, Powell announced that the Fed would be raising interest rates by half a percentage and implementing policies aimed at reducing inflation in the United States, which is at its highest level in 40 years. According to a transcript of the presser published by the Wall Street Journal, Powell blamed this inflation crisis, which is global, not on the proxy war in Ukraine and Western sanctions on Russia, but rather on US workers supposedly making too much money. “Employers are having difficulties filling job openings, and wages are rising at the fastest pace in many years,” Powell complained. The Fed’s proposed solution: bring down wages.

The Ongoing Economic War

May 22, 2022 Michael Hudson, The Unz Review. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Global Economy, Ukraine

The current war is dividing the world into two parts. There’s going to be a US dollar area of the US, Europe and its satellites. And there’ll be a multipolarity; there’ll be a group of Russia, China together and basically they will be making their proposal of a different way of organising the world economic affairs to Africa, Latin America and other Asian countries. And other Asian countries, Latin America and the global south will see that it can get a better deal with Russia and China than it can get with the United States. PS: On the flip side of that coin, one could argue that the existing situation, world order, has only been cemented by this war. You see NATO more aligned than ever, you see Europe more aligned than ever. You see Finland and Sweden on the brink, perhaps, of joining NATO.

If Degrowth Is Coming, What Does It Propose For Workers?

May 21, 2022 Hannah Hubbard, On Labor. Create! climate crisis, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Green New Deal

In 2015, countries participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change rallied around preventing the rise in average global temperatures beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. With an average rise of 1.5–2.0 degrees, scientists predict 70–90% loss of coral reefs globally, an explosion of natural disaster–related deaths, and displacement of up to 1.2 billion people by 2050. We already stand at an increase in average global temperatures of 1.2 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution and, according to the World Meteorological Organization, there is now a 40% chance that the world will see average global temperatures increase to 1.5 degrees in the next five years. As the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded last year, the world missed its opportunity to prevent many of these devastating impacts and can only hope to prevent the “most harrowing” possibilities — but we need to take decisive action, and we need to do it now.

How Europe Was Pushed Towards Economic Suicide

May 19, 2022 Moon of Alabama. Educate! Europe, Finance and the Economy, Russia, Ukraine, US Imperialism

As Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, wrote in early February, before Russia's intervention in Ukraine: America no longer has the monetary power and seemingly chronic trade and balance-of-payments surplus that enabled it to draw up the world’s trade and investment rules in 1944-45. The threat to U.S. dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States The most glaring example is the U.S. drive to block Germany from authorizing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to obtain Russian gas for the coming cold weather. Angela Merkel agreed with Donald Trump to spend $1 billion building a new LNG port to become more dependent on highly priced U.S. LNG. (The plan was cancelled after the U.S. and German elections changed both leaders.)

Only A People’s Monetary Reset Can Prevent A Feudalistic Technocracy

May 18, 2022 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Central Bank, Finance and the Economy, Money

Fortunately for the United States, our national debt is in U.S. dollars. As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once observed, “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.” Paying government debt by just printing the money was the innovative solution of the cash-strapped American colonial governments. The problem was that it tended to be inflationary. The paper scrip they issued was considered an advance against future taxes, but it was easier to issue the money than to tax it back, and over-issuing devalued the currency. The colony of Pennsylvania fixed that problem by forming a government-owned “land bank.”

The Energy/Food Crisis Is Far Worse Than Most Americans Realize

May 17, 2022 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Educate! Energy, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Inflation, Oil and Gas

Everyone who owns a gasoline-burning car has noticed that fuel prices have shot up in recent weeks. And most of us have read headlines about high energy prices driving inflation. But very few Americans have any inkling just how profound the current energy crisis already is, and is about to become. This lack of awareness is partly due to economists, and those who depend on economists’ readings of the tea leaves of daily data (a group that, sadly, includes nearly all politicians and news purveyors). Recently I heard an NPR staff commentator confidently state: “The only way to get gasoline prices under control is to get inflation under control.” Anyone who understands recent events and how economies work will immediately realize that the statement is ass backwards.

Economic Disobedience: What Is It And How Does It Work?

May 17, 2022 Jacqui Germain, Teen Vogue. Strategize! boycott, Civil Disobedience, Debt, Finance and the Economy

As the COVID-19 pandemic brought the global economy to a standstill in March 2020, a peculiar trend popped up in multiple cities: People started hanging white sheets out of their windows. With April rent coming due alongside record unemployment numbers, the white flags became a protest symbol for struggling tenants on the verge of a rent strike. The symbol spread online and eventually showed up in Chicago, Brooklyn, and New Orleans, according to reporting from CNN. The rent crisis also led to a rise in tenant unions, with tenants-turned-housing-activists in Oakland and San Francisco successfully organizing multi-month rent strikes that resulted in impressive wins. Despite the threat of eviction and potential economic and legal fallout, ordinary people, acting out of necessity, engaged in a collective act of defiance.

Power, Wages, And Inequality

May 15, 2022 Arthur MacEwan, Dollars And Sense. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Power, wealth inequality, Worker Rights and Jobs

On March 7, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a report titled, “The State of Labor Market Competition.” It is not what one might expect from the U.S. government. It is apparent that something is unusual when the first chapter is “Theories of Labor Market Power,” and the word “power” appears 15 times in the executive summary, 12 times in the introduction, and too many times to count in the body of the report. Power, after all, is generally absent from mainstream myths of how labor markets work. The basic message of the report is that: “...The American labor market is characterized by high levels of employer power.” And: ...A careful review of credible academic studies places the decrease in wages at roughly 20% relative to the level in a fully competitive market.

Rand Paul Blocks Senate Vote On $40 Billion Ukraine Aid

May 13, 2022 Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Rand Paul, Russia, Ukraine, Wars and Militarism

On Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blocked an effort in the Senate to hold a quick vote on the nearly $40 billion aid package for Ukraine that passed in the House on Tuesday. “My oath of office is to the US constitution not to any foreign nation and no matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America,” Paul said on the Senate floor before blocking the vote. “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.” Paul blocked the vote because he wanted to include text in the bill that would create a special inspector general for oversight of the billions being sent to Ukraine. He initially offered to include the oversight as an amendment, which would have been voted on separately, but he ultimately wanted to change the legislation.

What Is Happening In The Global Currency Market?

May 9, 2022 People's Dispatch. Resistance Report Finance and the Economy, Global Economy

Ukraine has been an issue in the news but behind the scenes what has really been of interest to a lot of people is what is happening in the global currency market. The ruble fell very dramatically. It has now come up and has reached almost parity with the dollar, or where it was before the Ukraine war started. But more than that, the fact $300 billion of Russian reserves were seized, essentially frozen, the Russian Central Bank is under sanctions, what does it mean for countries which maintain a currency surplus in other currencies, whether it is dollars, euros or whatever denomination, what happens to them? Does it mean the basis of international trade, which assumes that even if I’m holding money in your bank it’s really my money and that is what the basis of trade is, is at risk if this thing happens?

High-Deductible Health Plans Make Income Inequality Worse

May 9, 2022 Mark Kreidler, Capital and Main. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Health Insurance

Anyone holding a high-deductible health plan understands the dynamic: When it costs more for people to access health care, they’re going to think twice before using it. It’s a system designed to hold down costs by discouraging service. But there’s something even more insidious about such plans. For lower income California families already living paycheck to paycheck, a single medical need can sink them deeper into financial peril. This type of health care keeps poor people poor. That is precisely what worries Malissa Sanchez, whose employer in Los Angeles essentially forced a high deductible health plan (HDHP) on her in April when it eliminated a direct-payment system that previously allowed her to buy her own coverage. “The new plan just isn’t as good,” said Sanchez, 30.

Lula Proposes Latin American Currency To ‘Be Freed Of US Dollar’ Dependency

May 6, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. Create! Brazil, De-dollarization, Finance and the Economy, Latin America

Brazil’s left-wing leader Lula da Silva has proposed creating a pan-Latin American currency, in order to “be freed of the dollar.” A founder of Brazil’s Workers’ Party, Lula served as president for two terms, from 2003 to 2011. He is now the leading candidate as Brazil’s October 2022 presidential elections approach. If he returns to the presidency, “We are going to create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar,” Lula said in a speech at a rally on May 2. He revealed that the currency would be called the Sur, which means “South” in Spanish. Lula explained that countries in Latin America could still keep their sovereign domestic currency, but they could use the Sur to do bilateral trade with each other, instead of having to exchange for US dollars.

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