Finance and the Economy

Longshore Workers Get Blamed For Delays, As Contract Fight Looms

December 28, 2021 Saurav Sarkar, Labor Notes. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Ports, Supply Chain, Worker Rights and Jobs

If you ordered a teddy bear or a designer picture frame as a holiday gift, you know that it likely took a lot longer to get here than in past years. There have been problems getting things from point A to point B since the pandemic started. At one point in October, 77 percent of the world’s ports were experiencing long delays. More than most Americans, Longshore Union (ILWU) members grasp what supply chain problems are and how they come about. Many come from multigenerational families of port workers who understand both their militant union’s storied history and its role in the global economy today. ILWU members handle the containers that go into and out of the United States through nine West Coast ports.

Are Nonbank Mortgage Lenders Good For Minority Borrowers?

December 28, 2021 Jessica Goodheart, Capital and Main. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Housing, Mortgages, Racism

A loan officer at a mortgage company questions a Black loan applicant about household debts, but subsequently invites a less creditworthy white borrower to fill out an application with “no inquiry about credit standing or debts.” He then offers to walk the same white homebuyer through the loan application and preapproval process and follows up with personal emails. The Black borrower receives neither offers of extra help nor emails from the lender. This unequal treatment played out in Seattle, Washington, and was part of a study in which testers with white and Black-sounding names and similar credit and asset profiles called a random sample of mortgage companies, including Movement Mortgage, seeking loans, according to a complaint filed in October by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based fair housing organization

What’s Really Causing Inflation And How We Should Deal With It

December 26, 2021 Paddy Quick, The Indypendent. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Wages, Worker Rights

While times have been getting harder for workers, it is clear that capitalists (or “big business”) have been doing very well. It would seem as though everyone is against inflation. But the real problem is not that prices have been increasing but that wages have not kept up with this. It is important to look not only at why inflation has increased but at the very different question of why wages have not kept up with it.

Why America’s ‘Shipping Crisis’ Will Not End

December 23, 2021 Ryan Johnson, Medium. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Ports, Supply Chain, Transportation

I have a simple question for every ‘expert’ who thinks they understand the root causes of the shipping crisis: Why is there only one crane for every 50–100 trucks at every port in America? No ‘expert’ will answer this question. I’m a Class A truck driver with experience in nearly every aspect of freight. My experience in the trucking industry of 20 years tells me that nothing is going to change in the shipping industry. Let’s start with understanding some things about ports. Outside of dedicated port trucking companies, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers. There is a reason for that. Think of going to the port as going to WalMart on Black Friday, but imagine only ONE cashier for thousands of customers.

Next Phase In US Economic And Political Crisis Begins

December 21, 2021 Jack Rasmus, Counter Punch. Educate! COVID-19, Democrats, Finance and the Economy, Infrastructure Bill

Months ago this writer predicted that Senator Manchin would never support Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ Bill and was simply engaging in ‘bad faith bargaining’ to string the Democrats along. Manchin’s goal was to get the Democrat leadership–Biden, Pelosi, Durbin, Shumer et. al.–to reduce their proposals, which they conveniently did, on repeated occasions. But Manchin’s real objective has always been to shit can the bill, in order to prevent the necessity of raising taxes on corporations and investors in order to pay for it. To borrow a phrase: “It’s the Tax Cuts, Stupid!”. The taxes involved in the Build Back Better bill were just a small part of Trump’s $4.5 trillion 2018 tax cuts. The Build Back Better bill’s funding involved partially raising Trump’s corporate taxes.

A Critique Of Obscene Wealth

December 19, 2021 Richard D. Wolff, Counterpunch. Educate! Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality

Wherever and whenever obscenely rich people existed, they always protected their wealth and the privileges that come with it from the majority of non-wealthy people working for them and around them. Emperors, kings, czars as well as masters of huge slave plantations, lords of big feudal manors, and major shareholders and top executives of capitalist megacorporations did so partly by the use of brute force, or through the exercise of power, and bribery. All of them also used ideological persuasion, but none more so than capitalists today. And while “the weapon of criticism can never replace the criticism of weapons,” according to Karl Marx, a critique of capitalism’s obscene wealth today and its ideological justifications is arguably much needed.

Rising Food Prices Could Spark Famine, War, And Revolution In 2022

December 18, 2021 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Food Insecurity, Hunger

Washington – Already dealing with the economic fallout from a protracted pandemic, the rapidly rising prices of food and other key commodities have many fearing that unprecedented political and social instability could be just around the corner next year. With the clock ticking on student loan and rent debts, the price of a standard cart of food has jumped 6.4% in the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the cost of eating out in a restaurant similarly spiking, by 5.8% since November 2020. The most notable change has been in the price of meat, with beef costing 26.2% more than it did last year, pork 19.2% more and chicken 14.8% more. Bacon prices have reached historic levels, and are now 36% higher than in 1980, even after adjusting for inflation.

Most American Homeowners Are ‘House Poor’

December 16, 2021 Jason Lalljee, Business Insider. Educate! Debt, Finance and the Economy, Housing, Pandemic

In a recent survey, 40% of homeowners with mortgages said they work second, full-time jobs to afford housing expenses. A majority of the 1,002 people surveyed by Consumer Affairs feel like they can't afford their housing expenses, and did not anticipate the extra costs of upkeep when they bought their homes. The report comes amid record surges in US home prices, also finding that more than a third of respondents are incurring extra credit card debt to pay their bills. Despite these challenges, homeowners ultimately prefer owning a home to renting one. The survey found that although 40% of people rely on second, full-time jobs to ease the costs of homeownership, nearly 100% of "house poor" homeowners have taken on side gigs to offset home costs.

Wage Inequality Continued To Increase In 2020

December 16, 2021 Lawrence Mishel And Jori Kandra, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Wages, wealth inequality, Worker Rights

Newly available wage data from the Social Security Administration allow us to analyze wage trends for the top 1.0% and other very high earners as well as for the bottom 90% during 2020. The upward distribution of wages from the bottom 90% to the top 1.0% that was evident over the period from 1979 to 2019 was especially strong in the 2020 pandemic year, yielding historically high wage levels and shares of all wages for the top 1.0% and 0.1%. Correspondingly, the share of wages earned by the bottom 95% fell in 2020. Two features of the pandemic economy distorted wage patterns in 2020 and led to faster wage growth, especially at the top. One feature was that inflation grew at a subdued 1.2% rate, boosting the average real wage (but not affecting distribution).

In Tree Plantations In Paraguay, Public Money Is Driving Private Profit

December 9, 2021 Megan Morrissey, German Climate Finance. Educate! climate crisis, Finance and the Economy, Paraguay, Tree Plantations

When researchers from a Paraguayan NGO called Heñoi went to find out what life was like around the industrial tree plantations that have been cropping up all over the countryside, one of the first signs that there was something off came when they pulled over, turned off their car, and were met with total silence. Instead of the hum of insects, birds, and other creatures, there was only quiet in the areas that had been consumed by eucalyptus plantations, with their straight rows of exotic species and daily applications of weed- and pest-killing chemicals. Instead of the raucous buzz of biodiversity, the researchers were surrounded by a sepulchral uniformity. As one local explained, “There is nothing, not even birds come down … not even a little bug. In other places where our native trees are, birds fly around happily; but not here: total silence.”

IPCC Warns That Capitalism Is Unsustainable

December 1, 2021 Juan Bordera, The Wire. Educate! Capitalism, climate crisis, Finance and the Economy, IPCC

A leaked draft of the third part of the upcoming IPCC report establishes that we must move away from the current capitalist model to avoid exceeding planetary limits. It also confirms that, as stated in the article published by CTXT on August 7, “Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must peak in at most four years”. The document also acknowledges that there is little chance of further economic growth. The signatories of this article, scientists and journalists, have analysed a new part of the Sixth Report, leaked by the scientists’ collective Scientist Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion Spain. The leak clearly shows the vast discrepancies between the scientific community’s understanding of what is needed to achieve an effective and just transition, and the reality of how little has been achieved.

Why Do Walmart, Amazon, Target And IKEA Have Such High Emissions?

November 30, 2021 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Educate! Amazon, climate crisis, Finance and the Economy, Supply Chain

As a congestion crisis continues to stall polluting container ships in ports around the world, there is a growing awareness of the role that international shipping plays in both the climate crisis and the public-health impacts of air pollution. Released on Cyber Monday, a new report from Ship It Zero coalition members Stand.earth and Pacific Environment details the relationship between four major retailers that ship goods to the U.S. — Walmart, Amazon, Target and IKEA — and the fossil-fueled carrier companies that make that shipping possible. “Major retail companies and cargo carriers are flush with cash from pandemic-driven record breaking profits and are tightening their already close relationships,” Stand.earth shipping campaigns director Kendra Ulrich said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch.

Fighting The Inflation Profiteers

November 30, 2021 David Dayen, The American Prospect. Educate! Empire Economy, Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Joe Biden

In a time of high inflation, you hear a lot about companies “passing costs” on to customers. In order for companies to maintain their God-given right to earn a profit, they must raise prices to offset the cost of producing goods and getting them into peoples’ hands. And thanks mostly to the hidden risk, exposed by the pandemic, of neoliberal gospels like just-in-time logistics, deregulation, and offshoring, prices really are going up. But there’s something else mixed in with this latest bout of inflation. Companies aren’t just passing costs onto us. With corporations using inflation as a cover for raising their prices, you and I are passing profits onto companies. “Executives are seizing a once in a generation opportunity to raise prices,” reads a Wall Street Journal story explaining that around two-thirds of the largest publicly traded companies are showing profit margins higher today than they did in 2019, before the pandemic.

Jorge Arreaza On Venezuela Recovering From Sanctions

November 26, 2021 Mnar Adley, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Finance and the Economy, Oil and Gas Industry, US Sanctions, Venezuela

UN Special Rapporteurs estimate that 100,000 people have died in Venezuela in the last decade because of the lack of medicine brought on by U.S. sanctions. Nearly 60% of those deaths took place under the Trump administration after Washington escalated its economic warfare on the Bolivarian state. During the Trump era, Jorge Arreaza served as Venezuela’s foreign minister and spent years building diplomatic ties with other nations amid Washington’s aggressive hybrid war. “After 22 years of revolution, we have had to deal with President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, President Trump, and President Biden. And there are no major differences between them because it is not a matter of who is in the Oval Office; it is a matter of who really controls the decisions in the United States,” Arreaza told MintPress.

What Would Have Worked Better Than Building Back Anything

November 22, 2021 David Swanson, Let's Try Democracy. Educate! Biden administration, Democrats, Finance and the Economy, Infrastructure Bill

The BBB bill, as originally conceived, was a minimal sort of social needs proposal, pathetically far behind the norm on the planet, originally costing about a third of U.S. military spending (across all departments and agencies of military spending, and treating both BBB and military spending in terms of annual cost, rather than multiplying only the former by 10 as is the custom). BBB has now been cut to (depending on how you count it) a sixth of military spending and with — wait for it — no, it’s really worth the wait — wait for it — tax cuts for the mega-wealthy thrown in during the process of paring the bill down because of — you guessed it — costs.

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