Finance and the Economy

China’s Future: Economic Decline Or The Next Industrial Revolution?

March 14, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report China, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Japan, Real Estate

China’s economy is what we’re going to talk about today. Where is it at after decades of breakneck growth, after executing the greatest industrial revolution ever? Where is it headed? Trying to understand this is not easy. The disinformation that is fake news and even what I often call fake scholarship that distorts the view that any honest person may be trying to take on China’s economy is simply overwhelming. It’s absolutely wall-to-wall propaganda, no matter which Western publication or website you open.

Gender Wage Gap Persists In 2023

March 11, 2024 Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Gender Disparities, Wages, Women's Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

March 12 is Equal Pay Day, a reminder that there is still a significant pay gap between men and women in our country. The date represents how far into 2024 women would have to work on top of the hours they worked in 2023 simply to match what men were paid in 2023. Women were paid 21.8% less on average than men in 2023, after controlling for race and ethnicity, education, age, and geographic division. There has been little progress in narrowing this gender wage gap over the past three decades. While the pay gap declined between 1979 and 1994—due to men’s stagnant wages, not a tremendous increase in women’s wages—it has remained mostly flat since then.

The Fed Is Behind The Credit Card Merger

March 3, 2024 Matt Stoller, The Lever. Educate! Big Banks, Credit Cards, Federal Reserve, Finance and the Economy

It’s an obvious point, but credit cards in America generate a lot of cash for banks. In 2022, I wrote up how the business works, with the observation that the industry generates close to a quarter trillion dollars a year in revenue. This revenue comes from fees for connecting merchants and banks, as well as fees charged to consumers for access to credit. Every credit card network is also a data sieve, connected to advertising data brokers, anti-fraud features, and analytics firms. In addition, being able to reject someone from the payments system is a core sovereign power, and the stated reason the right is so afraid of a central bank digital currency.

Envisioning A Steady-State Comprehensive Plan

March 3, 2024 Dave Rollo, Resilience. Create! Environment, Finance and the Economy, Steady State, Sustainability

”Economic growth” is commonplace in the daily news. We assume it’s a good thing, that a 2–4 percent increase in GDP is beneficial to all. Likewise, we hear that our communities are growing, and we see a 2–4 percent increase in population as reasonable and benign. Meanwhile, visionary community leaders are busy planning for a steady feed of single-digit annual growth. So we’re in good hands, right? But what the news reports miss is that any steady rate of growth is an exponential function that contains within it a knowable doubling time.

How Private Equity Conquered America

March 2, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Resistance Report Finance and the Economy, Mergers, Private, Private Equity

Private equity firms are buying up the US economy and stripping it for parts. From healthcare to education, utilities, and more, massive firms like Blackstone and the Carlyle Group have acquired vast holdings across critical industries essential to the health and well-being of everyday people. Instead of seeking to make these ventures more profitable, private equity firms are more likely to orchestrate to bleed their assets for short-term gains—even if those assets are universities, hospitals, or nursing homes. Gretchen Morgenson, author of These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America, returns to The Chris Hedges Report.

‘New Economies’ And The Rebuilding Of Democratic Power

March 2, 2024 Jonny Gordon-Farleigh, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Strategize! Democracy, Finance and the Economy, Local Economy, Transformation

In September 2023, I joined the New Economies gathering in Rotterdam, hosted by the international philanthropic fund Partners for a New Economy. Convening 180 ‘changemakers’ from across Europe and the US, it was an opportunity to catch up on the latest developments across a movement to redesign the economy, with sessions on the impact of inequalities between the Global North and South, the consequences of international debt and currency hierarchies, the disruptions of AI technologies, and tensions surrounding the extractive role of private capital in green infrastructure investment.

‘Move The Money’: Detroit Votes For Slashing Bloated Pentagon Budget

February 29, 2024 C. J. Atkins, People's World. Resist! Detroit, Finance and the Economy, Michigan, military spending, Pentagon

Detroit, Michigan - Following in the footsteps of neighboring Hamtramck, Detroit has become the biggest U.S. city so far to pass a “Move the Money” resolution. The measure, approved unanimously by City Council on Tuesday, calls on the U.S. Congress and the president to shift public money away from the military to fund social services. The Michigan Peace Council, a major backer of the campaign to win the resolution, praised the council vote, which came on the same day that nearly 101,000 Michiganders voted “Uncommitted” in the Democratic primary to oppose President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s brutal war against Gaza.

The Reality Of Bidenomics: How Good Was Biden For The Economy?

February 28, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Economics, Finance and the Economy, Geopolitical Economy Hour, Joe Biden, Michael Hudson, Radhika Desai

2024 is being billed as the greatest election year in history. More than 50 countries are going to the polls, that’s 7 out of its 10 most populous countries, with a combined population of 4.2 billion, that is more than half the world’s 8 billion population. Among these, for good or ill, one might add, the US election will be the most consequential, deciding life and death questions such as how much war the world will witness, how well its economy will do. This is not because the US is a force for peace and development. On the contrary, it’s been weighing down on the prospects of peace and development for decades.

Immigrants Are Not Hurting US-Born Workers

February 21, 2024 Daniel Costa, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Immigrants, Immigration, Worker Rights and Jobs

The immigrant share of the labor force reached a record high of 18.6% in 2023, according to our analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.1 Anti-immigration advocates have been out in full force, using this as a talking point for deeply misguided commentary and analysis that roughly translates to “immigrants are taking all our jobs.” The reality is that the economy does not have a fixed number of jobs, and what we see today is a growing economy that is adding jobs for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers. Here are six key facts that show immigrants are not hurting the employment outcomes of U.S.-born workers.

How To Go From Neoliberalism To A Productive, Sustainable Economy

February 10, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Banks, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Neoliberalism

In our last show, which we entitled “The Debt Explosion: How Neoliberalism Fuels Debt Crises“, we promised that our next show would be about what the solution is, what is the solution to the myriad problems that we were describing. And that is indeed what we are going to discuss today. The solution, we feel, in the United States and in all countries that have gone down the road of neoliberalism and financialization involves a root and branch reform of the financial system. And this would be the foundation for the urgent economic transformation. It will be the single largest component of the economic transformation that so many of us realize we also badly need.

How US Government Statistics Are Like The Bible

February 5, 2024 Jack Rasmus, LA Progressive. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Jobs, Media, Statistics, Unemployment, Wages

This week on February 2nd, the US Labor Department released its monthly jobs report for January. One of the Department's two surveys showed +353,000 jobs created in January. But a second report shows a drop in total employment in January of -1,070,000 full time and part-time jobs (and an additional -400,000 jobs if one includes unincorporated independent contractors jobs. So, like the Bible, one can find whatever one wants in the government job stats. So why the discrepancies between the two surveys in the monthly jobs report? One reason is that the two surveys have big differences in their methodologies (and underlying assumptions).

What Constitutes A Living Wage?

February 4, 2024 Elise Gould, Zane Mokhiber and Katherine deCourcey, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Family budgets, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Living Wage

More than 20 years ago, the Economic Policy Institute created the first version of the Family Budget Calculator (FBC). Since then, we have continuously made improvements to the methodology and updated it regularly with the latest data available. This interactive tool estimates the income needed for families of different sizes and compositions to afford basic necessities in different parts of the country. EPI’s family budget tool is frequently used to gauge the adequacy of labor earnings. It has been cited by living-wage advocates, private employers, academics, and policymakers who are looking for comprehensive measures of economic security.

Reporting On California’s Fast-Food Minimum Wage Raise Comes With Fear

January 21, 2024 Conor Smyth, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! California, Fast Food, Finance and the Economy, Minimum Wage

What’s scarier than a shark attack? An increase in the minimum wage. At least that’s what many corporate media outlets seem to want you to believe, given the apocalyptic tone of much of the coverage of California’s recent decision to raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour, starting this April, a bump from the current level of $16. While outlets like the New York Times (10/23/23), the Associated Press (9/28/23), CalMatters (12/21/23, 9/28/23) and the Sacramento Bee (9/29/23, 9/15/23, 9/11/23) have responsibly covered the policy change, highlighting the large positive effects that it will likely have on workers, others are obsessively accentuating the negatives.

Explaining The Commons Economy

January 21, 2024 Dave Darby, Resilience. Create! Commoning, Commons, Finance and the Economy, Local Economy

What Is The Commons Economy? It’s an economy in which the essentials of life – housing, energy, land, food, water, transport, social care, the means of exchange etc. are owned in common, in communities, rather than by absentee landlords, corporations or the state. Commons have 3 parts: a) resources / assets, b) ‘commoners’ – local people who control and use them, and c) a set of rules, written by the commoners, so that they’re not lost, by being sold or used up. We’re not talking about ‘open access’ public goods like the oceans, atmosphere, sunlight or rainfall or ‘anything to do with building community’, but commons based on the principles laid out by Elinor Ostrom in Governing the Commons.

Casino Capitalism And Derivatives Market: Time For A ‘Lehman Moment’?

January 16, 2024 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Educate! Capitalism, Derivatives, Finance and the Economy, Financial Crisis

Reading the tea leaves for the 2024 economy is challenging. On January 5th, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said we have achieved a “soft landing,” with wages rising faster than prices in 2023. But critics are questioning the official figures, and prices are still high. Surveys show that consumers remain apprehensive. There are other concerns. On Dec. 24, 2023, Catherine Herridge, a senior investigative correspondent for CBS News covering national security and intelligence, said on “Face the Nation,” “I just feel a lot of concern that 2024 may be the year of a black swan event. This is a national security event with high impact that’s very hard to predict.”

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