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Finance and the Economy

Pizza Goeth Before A Fall?

June 6, 2025 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
While economists, politicians and pundits sift daily through a mountain of data—from unemployment rates to gross domestic product, inflation to bank lending rates—one overlooked economic indicator points unambiguously to a deep and imminent economic downturn: Pizza. In its February 24th earnings call with the financial press, Domino’s Pizza CEO Russell Weiner reported a 3.2 percent spike in carryout orders during the previous quarter, combined with a 1.4 percent decrease in deliveries. Weiner attributed this change in consumer behavior to “macro and competitive pressures,” or, in layman’s terms, households in the U.S. increasingly can’t afford delivery fees and driver gratuities that can easily add $10 to the price of a pizza.

What GNDI Leaves Out Of Pacific Economies

June 5, 2025 Arnie Saiki, Onibaba. , , ,
The recent presentation of the 2025 Pacific Update at the University of South Pacific hosted by Australia National University on Gross National Disposable Income (GNDI), introduced a revised approach to economic measurement for the Pacific Island Countries (PICs). Delivered by Professor Stephen Howes, in collaboration with Dr. Rubiat Chowdhury, the presentation argued that GNDI is a more accurate measure of income for the region than the widely used Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The failure of GDP as a national accounting metric is evident, and we should all agree that GDP has been a failure for Developing Countries and regions, particularly Pasifika.

The Economic ‘Protracted War’ Between The US And China

June 5, 2025 John Ross, Geopolitical Economy. , , , ,
China and the U.S. have come to a 90-day trade agreement. This was a clear victory in the first battle of the “trade war” for China — as was admitted even in the U.S. media. As Bloomberg, a fiercely anti-China source, summarised the analysis of the overwhelming majority of Western media: “Xi Jinping’s decision to stand his ground against Donald Trump could hardly have gone any better for the Chinese leader.” But it would be an error to mistake this decisive victory for China in the first battle with a belief that the U.S. will abandon the economic struggle against China – it will not. This is in economic terms a “protracted war”, not a single battle.

Wage Stagnation Has Made ‘Minimal Quality Of Life’ Out Of Reach For Most

May 20, 2025 Sharon Zhang, Truthout. , , ,
The ability to afford basic needs and wants in line with living a “dignified life” in the U.S. is increasingly out of reach, new research finds, naming wage stagnation and soaring prices as factors driving unaffordability. According to an analysis released by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) last week, a “minimal quality of life” is out of reach for the bottom 60 percent of American households, or those with incomes of about $100,000 a year or less. Researchers pinpoint stagnating wages and decreases in workers’ spending power as well as increases in costs as reasons for growing unaffordability. According to the researchers, the minimal quality of life has doubled since 2001, with 2023 seeing the largest single-year increase.

President Trump’s Proposal To Eliminate Income Taxes: Can It Be Done?

May 9, 2025 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. , , , ,
In February, President Trump said that tariffs would generate so much income that Americans would no longer need to pay income taxes. The latest plan, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, is to abolish income taxes for people who earn less than $150,000 yearly. That move would affect roughly 75% of workers, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. On its face, this could narrow the wealth gap by boosting disposable income for low- and middle-income households without raising taxes on the wealthy — a politically clever alternative to progressive tax hikes.

Bonds Away!

April 24, 2025 Les Leopold, Scheer Post. , , ,
I recently wrote about a somewhat mysterious group of financial traders known as the bond vigilantes. Their actions caused Donald Trump to abort many of his Liberation Day tariffs, but that does not make them the good-guy defenders of democracy. In fact, they are quite the opposite. Many understood that point, thankfully, but others wondered about the government bond market, how it worked, and why the value of something fully backed by the faith of the U.S. government might be mutable in value. Readers had questions and the answers will help us understand why Trump flinched when the bond vigilantes drove up the interest rates on government bonds.

Trump’s Tariffs Hurt The United States Much More Than China

April 22, 2025 Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , ,
Why has US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on countries all around the world? And in particular, why is Trump waging a trade war on China? What are his real goals? Well, to try to answer these questions, I spoke with the economist Michael Hudson, who is the author of many books, and who just published the new report “Return of the robber barons: Trump’s distorted view of US tariff history“. Michael Hudson outlined the history of the use of tariffs in the United States and in other countries, and he explained how Trump is using tariffs as a weapon of class war, to benefit the rich at the expense of the vast majority of the population, and also how Trump is trying to reshape the global financial system, in order to benefit the United States at the expense of everyone else.

Why Trump And Musk Ignore The Largest Money Laundering Scheme In Human History

April 14, 2025 Lee Camp, Scheer Post. , , ,
President Trump and Elon Musk will tell you they’re saving money for the US government and thereby the US taxpayer. The DOGE team have claimed that they have already cut out $65 billion of waste and fraud – equaling savings for the American people. Incredible! (I’m going to invest my cut of that money in an up-and-coming fad called “fidget spinners”.) Oh, I forgot to mention – Everything Musk has said is utterly false. “…some of the biggest errors in savings [announced by DOGE] are, as CBS first reported, a USAID contract for $650 million that was listed three times, as The Intercept first reported, a Social Security contract listed as $232 million, instead of $560,000, and an ICE contract that DOGE listed as $8 billion, when, in reality, it was $8 million.”

Will Trump’s Tariffs Trigger A Second Great Depression?

April 12, 2025 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
That the Trump administration’s trade war will trigger a steep economic downturn in the U.S. is almost a foregone conclusion a week after the president announced sweeping new tariffs on imports. Last week, JP Morgan, the nation’s largest bank, estimated that there is a 60 percent chance of an imminent recession. That was followed by an announcement from Goldman Sachs, America’s second-largest investment bank, that its economists had raised the odds of a recession to 45 percent, representing the second time in a week that it has increased its forecast.

Chris Hedges Report: The Economics Of A Dying Empire

April 10, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , ,
“These are levels of craziness that are part of the decline I suspect of all empires when they consume themselves,” Professor Richard Wolff says of America’s current situation in the outset of Donald Trump’s second term. He joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the history and rationale behind the decisions made by Trump and how it relates to the decline of the US empire. From tariffs to deregulation, Wolff says it is all erratic, uncoordinated and unpredictable, which are tangible signs of America’s decay. “You cannot tell people what a tariff will do.

China Retaliates With 84% Tariff As Trump’s Trade War Escalates

April 10, 2025 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
On Wednesday, April 9, Trump announced that he is raising the tariffs on China to 125%. Earlier that day, China raised its tariff on all American imports to 84% in response to the US raising the total tariffs on Chinese exports to 104% on Monday. The new rates will be effective from Thursday, the Chinese state council said in a brief statement. China also issued a white paper on Wednesday about its trade relations with the US. Published on the same day that Donald Trump’s so-called “reciprocal tariffs” regime went into effect, the white paper refutes his claims of a massive trade deficit with China.

Militarizing The Ledger, Colonizing The Future

April 7, 2025 Arnie Saiki, Onibaba. , , , , , ,
When we begin to examine U.S. hegemony, the Military-Industrial Complex often serves as the shorthand for understanding the entangled relationship between investment capital, militarism, neocolonial extraction, and unipolar power. But to truly unravel this system, we must look deeper into how the Military-Debt Nexus is legitimized—not only through ideological alignment or geopolitical pressure, but through institutional mechanisms such as trade agreements, national accounting rules, and debt-financed militarization. The intersection between military expenditure and global trade is not incidental; it forms the core infrastructure of compliance and control, shaping everything from resource acquisition to sanctions enforcement, all under the veil of economic normalcy.

McKinley Or Lincoln? Tariffs Vs. Greenbacks

April 7, 2025 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
President Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Republican President William McKinley, highlighting his use of tariffs as a model for economic policy. But as critics note, Trump’s tariffs, which are intended to protect U.S. interests, have instead fueled a stock market nosedive, provoked tit-for-tat tariffs from key partners, risk a broader trade withdrawal, and  could increase the federal debt by reducing GDP and tax income.  The federal debt has reached $36.2 trillion, the annual interest on it is $1.2 trillion, and the projected 2025 budget deficit is $1.9 trillion – meaning $1.9 trillion will be added to the debt this year. It’s an unsustainable debt bubble doomed to pop on its present trajectory.

Republican Agenda’s ‘Triple Threat’ To Low- And Moderate-Income Families

April 7, 2025 Brendan Duke and Gbenga Ajilore, Portside. , , , ,
The Trump Administration and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are advancing a policy agenda that deeply threatens millions of families’ ability to afford the basics by making it harder for them to secure health coverage, buy groceries, or afford everyday goods — all while pursuing expensive tax cuts that are skewed toward the wealthy. The centerpiece of that agenda is far-reaching tax and budget legislation intended to be passed through the fast-track budget “reconciliation” process. But that legislation works hand-in-hand with other Administration policies, both accelerating and deepening the damage to families with modest incomes.

I Saw Firsthand How Excessive CEO Pay Harms Workers And Customers

March 6, 2025 Kieran Cuadras, Inequality.org. , , , ,
"Remember the 2016 “phony accounts” scandal at Wells Fargo? Executives relentlessly pressured employees to meet extreme sales quotas, leading them to create millions of fraudulent accounts without clients’ consent. As these fake accounts grew, the CEO of Wells Fargo at the time, John Stumpf, raked in bigger and bigger bonuses. After the scandal blew up, regulators hit Stumpf with fines totalling $20 million — only a small dent in the estimated $130 million he walked away with in compensation when he resigned. This is just one of countless stories of CEOs taking reckless actions to pump up their own paychecks while putting their employees and the general public at risk.
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