Finance and the Economy

Jobs Report Coverage Lacked Context, Worker Perspective

May 17, 2021 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Jobs, Media, Workers

In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the editorial board of the Financial Times (4/20/20), perhaps the most important newspaper of capital in the English-speaking world, fretted about how the pandemic could upend labor relations. After the Black Death of the 1300s, the paper noted, the population decline meant surviving peasants had the leverage to demand higher pay. The editors assured their readers that nothing so radical was coming due to Covid-19: “A thankfully much lower mortality rate means such a transformation is unlikely,” the editors said. A year later, things aren’t going as planned. News outlets trumpeted what they often called “disappointing” job growth numbers in the United States (Yahoo! Finance, 5/7/21; CNN, 5/7/21; Reuters, 5/7/21; BBC, 5/7/21; Time, 5/8/21). The New York Post (5/7/21) ran...

Economics Of The New Cold War And US ‘Super Imperialism’

May 13, 2021 Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone. Resistance Report Biden administration, Finance and the Economy, New Cold War, US Imperialism

Hello everyone, I’m Ben Norton. You’re watching Moderate Rebels. And there will be a podcast version of this after, for people who want to listen. We are joined today by the economist Michael Hudson, one of the most important economists in the world, honestly, in my view. I don’t think he needs introduction. He has written many books, and has been an economic adviser for multiple governments, and has a long history on Wall Street and academia. And you can find his work at Michael-Hudson.com. Today, we’re going to talk about an issue that Michael Hudson has been writing about for decades, and something that you’re never really going to hear from other economists, especially mainstream neoliberal economists, and that’s what he calls super imperialism.

This Mother’s Day, Recognize Care Work Powers Our Economy

May 9, 2021 Heidi Shierholz, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Mothers Day, Nonmarket Economy, Workers

Mother’s Day is, at its core, about care. When we select Hallmark cards and order flower deliveries, we’re honoring the care provided by moms and other maternal figures. This Mother’s Day, though, marks more than a year into a pandemic that threw the disparities in our care system into stark relief. Women left the workforce in staggering numbers to attend to COVID-related caregiving responsibilities at home. This was disruptive for individual families and the economy at large. So this year, while of course we should celebrate our mothers, there’s much more to be done. Honoring our caregivers goes beyond individual gestures; it calls for a sweeping investment in care workers and services. Care isn’t a burden for women and families to shoulder alone. It’s the foundation of our economy, and it deserves to be treated as such.

Workers’ Wages Rebound From Pandemics But Not For Blacks

May 8, 2021 Sarafina Wright, The Washington Informer. Educate! Economic crisis, Finance and the Economy, Jobs, Racial disparities

While wages for many Americans have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, earnings for Black workers declined in the first quarter of 2021, growing the wage gap to its highest level since before the pandemic, according to a new analysis. In a report of earnings data by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) real median earnings have increased by 1 percent for the first quarter of 2021, driven in large part by a 1.6 percent increase in real earnings by Hispanic workers, while real earnings for white workers remained virtually unchanged. Wages for white earners have fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels and are currently 0.3 percent higher in real terms than in December 2019.

US First Quarter GDP: Recovery Or Just Another Rebound?

May 8, 2021 Jack Rasmus, Counterpunch. Educate! Economic crisis, Finance and the Economy, Gross Domestic Product, Pandemic

This past week the US Commerce Department released its early estimates for US GDP for the 1st Quarter 2021, January through March. If we are to believe the numbers, the US economy grew a respectable 6.4% during the period. But did it really? And does it represent a strong recovery underway? Or just a rebound, as the economy reopens in the services sector; and once the reopening concludes, will the economy flatten out again—as it did with last summer’s 2020 partial reopening that collapsed in late 2020? The first thing for readers to understand is the 6.4% is not really 6.4% for the first three months of 2021. The US is one of the few countries that reports its GDP figures in an ‘Annual Rate’ (AR) percentage. Most other advanced economies do not.

How The Federal Reserve Is Increasing Wealth Inequality

April 28, 2021 Allan Sloan and Cezary Podkul, ProPublica. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Pandemic, Stock Market, wealth inequality

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Federal Reserve has gotten plenty of kudos for moves that have helped stabilize the economy, kept house prices from tanking and supported the stock market. But those successes have obscured another effect: the inadvertent impact the Fed’s ultra-low interest rates and bond-buying sprees are having on economic inequality. Longstanding inequality in the U.S. has been exacerbated by the Fed’s role in touching off a multi-trillion-dollar boom in stock markets — and stock ownership is heavily skewed toward the wealthiest Americans. In contrast, soaring stock prices don’t help people like Wina Tan. Tan, 59, is one of the millions of Americans nearing retirement age whose greatest source of wealth isn’t stocks or equity in a home.

Increasing Desperation As The US Capitalist System Declines

April 24, 2021 Richard D. Wolff, Counterpunch. Educate! Capitalism, Economic crisis, Failed State, Finance and the Economy

Like all previous economic systems in recorded history, capitalism is on track to repeat the same three-step trip: birth, evolution, and death. The timing and other specifics of each system’s trip differ. Births and evolutions are commonly experienced as positive, celebrated for their progress and promise. The declines and deaths, however, are often denied and usually feel difficult and depressing. Notwithstanding endlessly glib political speeches about bright futures, U.S. capitalism has reached and passed its peak. Like the British Empire after World War I, the trip now is painful. Signs of decline accumulate. The last 40 years of slow economic growth have seen the top 10 percent take nearly all of it. The other 90 percent suffered constricted real wage growth that drove them to borrow massively (for homes, cars, credit cards, and college expenses).

Love Letter For Our Afflicted Earth

April 22, 2021 Intemerate Earth. Create! Biodiversity, Earth, Earth Day, Finance and the Economy

Dear Earth, in this journey that we call our existence, we produce, consume, we eat, drink, breathe and survive because you are the very essence of life. Your voice is clearer than our words, stronger than our laws, and more just than our principles. How do we renew the promises of our Original Trust, and restore the confidence that you gave to past generations? Dear Earth, this Original Trust is an agreement. You have whispered its many names and have warned us of deep contradictions in our understanding of that trust. Now a poison threatens you, us, our home. Its identity might be cloaked but its name is not a mystery. Some have listened, but mostly we have ignored the signs. We have inflicted a deep wound on our own house, and don’t seem to know how or if we will heal. We stand for justice and liberty, but too often brought to our knees by tyranny, alienation and frustration. How do we come to shiver under the hypocrisy of our own principles in practice?

The End Of Development

April 10, 2021 Tim Barker, Dissent Magazine. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Globalization, Jobs, Low Wage Workers

When I was in high school, my economics class read The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. The book is a passionate appeal to help those living in the worst poverty in the world. Sachs writes that we should not worry too much about the people in second-to-last place, such as the poorly paid workers in labor-intensive industries who were then the focus of considerable debate and activism on U.S. college campuses. Sweatshop workers, Sachs conceded, were on the bottom rung of the ladder. But subsistence farmers were not on the ladder at all. Once we helped them get a foothold, they could begin ascending from textiles all the way up to high tech. I internalized Sachs’s argument, sensing it would help me feel better about the world we live in.

Study: Canada Is One Big Pandemic Response Experiment

April 4, 2021 Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee. Educate! COVID-19, Finance and the Economy, health, Pandemic

An extensive French study has surveyed nations’ responses to COVID-19 and concludes that those taking an aggressive “Zero COVID” approach fared better than others by both health and economic measures. The study rests its analysis in part on the experience of Canada, where six large provinces face steeply rising infection rates tied to evolved variants of the virus, while provinces and territories that hewed closer to the Zero COVID approach do not. Zero COVID, also called Go for Zero or elimination, employs a range of tactics designed to drive infection rates to negligible. Such tactics include one hard serious lockdown followed by strategic testing, active surveillance and tight border controls.

The Economics Lesson Taught By The Pandemic

January 26, 2021 Democracy at Work, ROAR Magazine. Resistance Report COVID-19, Finance and the Economy, Private Ownership, Worker Ownership

On this week’s show, Professor Wolff explains that in countries where the government is respected and empowered, such as New Zealand, Taiwan and Cuba, among others, the COVID-19 pandemic has been effectively contained. Alternately, where the government is demonized, disrespected and distrusted, such as in the UK and the US, the pandemic has been devastating. Prof. Wolff argues that a rational economy includes both private businesses (regulated by the government to different degrees) and state-owned and operated enterprises, depending on which performs best to meet the needs of society. Moreover, besides the question who owns certain enterprises, the way in which they are internally organized (hierarchically or horizontally / worker-owned) is equally important.

The US Economy Could Use Some ‘Overheating’

January 16, 2021 Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute. Create! COVID-19, Finance and the Economy, Joe Biden, Recession

Recent proposals for large-scale fiscal relief and recovery from the economic effects of COVID-19 have drawn criticism that they could lead to “overheating” of the U.S. economy. These criticisms should be ignored. Proposals under discussion—including Biden’s economic plan introduced tonight—are highly unlikely to lead to any durable uptick in inflation or interest rates (the normal indicators of “overheating”) and even if they did, these higher interest rates and inflation would be a welcome sign of economic healing, not something to worry about. Warnings about economic “overheating” normally mean that growth in spending by households, businesses, and governments (known as aggregate demand) will outpace growth in the...

War Of The (Financial) Worlds

January 13, 2021 Nomi Prins, Tom Dispatch. Educate! Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Recession, Wall Street

Sometimes things only make sense when seen through a magnifying lens. As it happens, I’m thinking about reality, the very American and global reality clearly repeating itself as 2021 begins. We all know, of course, that we’re living through a once-in-a-century-style pandemic; that millions of people have lost their jobs, a portion of which will never return; that the poorest among us, who can withstand such acute economic hardship the least, have been slammed the hardest; and that the global economy has been kneecapped, thanks to a battery of lockdowns, shutdowns, restrictions of various sorts, and health-related concerns.

Huge Study Of 50 Years Of Tax Cuts For The Wealthy

December 16, 2020 Grace Dean, Business Insider. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Taxes, wealth inequality, Wealth Tax

Large tax cuts for the rich don't lead to economic growth and employment but instead cause higher income inequality, a new study that examined tax cuts over 50 years suggested. A recent paper by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King's College London found that tax cuts for the rich in 18 countries predominantly benefited the wealthy. "Our analysis finds strong evidence that cutting taxes on the rich increases income inequality but has no effect on growth or unemployment" in the short and long term, the researchers wrote. After major tax cuts for the rich were introduced, the top 1% share of pretax national income increased by almost 1 percentage point, they found.

It’s Time For Trade Policies That Benefit Us All

December 6, 2020 Hillary Haden, The Stand. Create! Corproate Trade, Finance and the Economy, Globalization, Joe Biden

Everyone we know is “for” trade. We can’t remember ever meeting anyone who is “against” trade. This simplistic view of globalization — that everyone is either for or against trade — brought grief to millions of workers and families in America. Thomas Friedman wrote several popular books on globalization. He once said that he didn’t need to read CAFTA — the free trade agreement for Central American countries. The title of the document said “Free Trade.” That was all he needed to know. Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz puts the question more productively, “How should we manage globalization?”

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