Finance and the Economy

Is America’s Merger Fever Breaking?

August 4, 2023 Stacy Mitchell and Ron Knox, Project Syndicate. Educate! Antitrust, Finance and the Economy, History, Monopolies

In the summer of 1982, the United States government sent corporate America a love letter. President Ronald Reagan’s top antitrust official, William Baxter, who made no secret of his desire to use his position to assist the country’s largest companies, issued the Justice Department’s new merger guidelines, instructing staff how to determine whether a merger violated antitrust laws and should be blocked. Baxter’s new rules made it clear to big business that federal agencies would no longer limit their ability to amass power. An era of nearly unrestricted corporate consolidation followed.

The Forgotten Victims Of America’s Class War

July 31, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Chris Hedges, Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Maine, Wealthy Class

Mechanic Falls, Maine – I am sitting in Eric Heimel’s barbershop in the center of Mechanic Falls. Russ Day, who was the owner for 52 years before he sold it to Eric, cut my hair as a boy. The shop looks the same. The mounted trout on the walls. The worn linoleum floor. The 1956 Emil J. Paidar barber chair. The two American flags on the wall flanking the oval mirror. The plaque that reads: “If a Man is Alone In the Woods, With No Woman to Hear Him, Is He Still Wrong?” Another plaque that reads: “Men have 3 hairstyles parted…unparted…and DEPARTED!” I can almost see my grandfather, with his thick gold masonic ring on his pinky finger smoking an unfiltered Camel cigarette, waiting for Russ to finish.

Credit Unions Are Taking The Lead To Un-Redline The Green New Deal

July 26, 2023 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Create! Credit Unions, Energy, Finance and the Economy, Green New Deal

Terri Mickelsen and about 7,500 of her friends aren’t waiting to jump into the green revolution. They’re members of Clean Energy Credit Union, where Mickelsen is CEO, and since 2017 they’ve already invested around $200 million in clean energy or other green loans for member households across the country, offsetting an estimated 700,000 tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions so far — equivalent to taking 152,000 gas-powered vehicles off the road permanently. Every month, they make another $6-8 million in green loans. “I am kind of a credit union nerd who got together with some clean energy nerds as we were chartering a new credit union,” says Mickelsen.

One-Stop Shops Can Change The Game For City’s Small Business Growth

July 22, 2023 Nia Richardson, Next City. Create! Finance and the Economy, Local Investment, Missouri, Small Businesses

In February, researchers at the Institute for Justice published a study analyzing barriers to starting small businesses. “Too often, entrepreneurs struggle with local regulatory burdens, finding themselves trapped by high fees, long wait times, and complex paperwork,” the report begins. “These burdens amount to a death by a thousand cuts, unless aspiring business owners can successfully navigate them before reaching opening day.” The study analyzed the steps required to open a business in 20 large and mid-sized U.S. cities, and their findings were stunning. Opening a restaurant in Boston involves a staggering 92-step process. In Detroit, it’s 77 steps. In Atlanta, it’s 76.

A Good Year’s Pay For A Good Day’s Work?

July 19, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, CounterPunch.org. Educate! CEOs, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality, Worker Rights and Jobs

The just-released Good Jobs First analysis — Power Outrage: Will Heavily Subsidized Battery Factories Generate Substandard Jobs? — examines a little-known provision in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that may end up costing U.S. taxpayers more than $200 billion over the next decade, a sum above and beyond the $13 billion that state and local governments have promised as battery incentives. Lawmakers see all those billions of tax dollars as a generator of good wages, but nothing in the battery subsidy fine-print mandates — or even incentivizes — decent worker paychecks. Ford Motor, for instance, will be eligible for $6.7 billion in federal subsidies for its new $3.5-billion battery plant in Michigan, and state and local officials have already handed Ford $1.7 billion for that plant.

Chris Hedges: American Poverty Is A Calamity By Design

July 15, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, oligarchy, Poverty

Some 50 million people in the United States live in poverty today—and over 108 million people survive on less than $55,000 a year. Despite having the largest economy on earth, poverty in the US is often grinding and brutal. From millions who live without running water or reliable power, to countless children who experience food insecurity and homelessness. The data on poverty only becomes exacerbated when race is taken into account. In 2019, the median White household had a net worth of $188,200, compared with $24,100 for the median Black household. Matthew Desmond joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his new book, Poverty, by America

The Future Is Now: Rethinking Public Ownership

July 15, 2023 Ursula Huws, Resilience. Create! Finance and the Economy, Housing, Human Rights, Public ownership, United Kingdom (UK)

Something momentous has happened, according to recent opinion polls. After 40 years of reluctantly accepting the Thatcherite mantra that there is no alternative to the market, the British public declared that they had had enough. In August 2022, Survation polling for the campaign group We Own It revealed that 69 per cent were in favour of publicly-owned water, 65 per cent for publicly-owned buses, 67 per cent for rail, 66 per cent for energy, 68 per cent for Royal Mail, and a whopping 78 per cent for the NHS. With public sentiment matching the vigour of an emboldened labour movement, there is a feeling that some of the past socialist ambitions are again political possibilities.

The Federal Debt Trap: Issues And Possible Solutions

July 13, 2023 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Bubble, Debt, Economic crisis, Finance and the Economy, Pentagon Budget, Taxes

“Rather than collecting taxes from the wealthy,” wrote the New York Times Editorial Board in a July 7 opinion piece, “the government is paying the wealthy to borrow their money.” Titled “America Is Living on Borrowed Money,” the editorial observes that over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), annual federal budget deficits will average around $2 trillion per year. By 2029, just the interest on the debt is projected to exceed the national defense budget, which currently eats up over half of the federal discretionary budget. In 2029, net interest on the debt is projected to total $1.07 trillion, while defense spending is projected at $1.04 trillion.

Big Companies Earned Over USD 1 Trillion Of Profit In 2022

July 9, 2023 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Greed, Hunger, International Monetary Fund, Profits, Taxes

A recently published joint study conducted by Oxfam and Action Aid claims that the total windfall profit of the world’s 722 top companies crossed USD 1 trillion for the second consecutive year in 2022. The study notes that this figure, which is higher than the GDP of a majority of countries in the world, reflects an “obscene” and “immoral” quest for higher profits by the rich, who have exploited the global crisis of energy and food price inflation and higher interest rates in the last two years caused by multiple factors including the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Solidarity Economics – A Path Away From Capitalist Exploitation

July 9, 2023 Institute For New Economic Thinking, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Resistance Report Cooperatives, Finance and the Economy, New Economy, Solidarity Economy

Professor Jessica Gordon-Nembhard explores the potential of cooperatives and solidarity economics as pathways towards economic democracy and justice. Drawing on historical examples from the civil rights movement and the Knights of Labor in the 1880s, Nembhard demonstrates how cooperative economics can counteract the exploitation inherent in capitalist systems. She underlines the importance of communal ownership and shared decision-making as mechanisms for wealth redistribution, arguing that such models can liberate communities from economic exploitation.

A New Third World Debt Crisis? The Need For System Change

June 23, 2023 Radhika Desai, Michael Hudson and Anne Pettifor, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Debt, Finance and the Economy, Global South, Inflation, Neoliberalism

Today we are joined by Anne Pettifor to discuss an urgent issue of our time, that of the third world debt crisis. As we record this, this is the topic of the Summit on New Global Financing Pact called by Emmanuel Macron in Paris. And we couldn’t find a more authoritative guest for this show. Anne Pettifor does not really need any introduction, and I’m only going to give one to remind ourselves of the range of her contributions. She’s a prolific writer on issues relating to debt, finance and development, and is also an activist and has intervened in politics to great effect.

Millions Of People In The US Ration Medicine

June 18, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Educate! Big Pharma, Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Health Care

A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published this month reveals that approximately 9.2 million people in the US try to save money by rationing their medication. Most adults between the ages of 18 and 64 take at least one prescription medication, but 8% of them—9.2 million people—ration medicine by skipping doses, taking less than instructed, or delaying a refill. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical giants like Merck are fighting tooth and nail against President Biden’s limited checks on astronomical medication prices. Giving the government power to negotiate medicine prices with companies is “tantamount to extortion,” Merck argues in a recent lawsuit.

Polycrisis, Unraveling, Simplification, Or Collapse

June 18, 2023 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Polycrisis

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the resulting disruption of multiple global supply chains, policy think tanks have increasingly adopted the term polycrisis to signify humanity’s destabilized status quo. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Risk Report uses the newish word 13 times in 90 pages. Scholars from a range of disciplines (including Columbia University historian Adam Tooze) have written about the polycrisis, and both Cascade Institute and Omega Institute have published papers and reports on it. The Cascade Institute notes that “a global polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects.

Debt Ceiling Hypocrisy: US Boosts Military Budget, Restricts Food Stamps

June 3, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Debt Ceiling, Finance and the Economy, Pentagon Budget, SNAP, Welfare

The US government reached its debt limit of $31.4 trillion in early 2023. This unleashed a deluge of debate as to whether or not the Treasury was going to default, and how a deeply divided Congress could come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. The constant chatter in the mainstream corporate media overlooked the real controversy, however. The reality is that practically no one in Washington truly cares about the US national debt. In fact, in a bipartisan deal negotiated in late May to raise the debt ceiling, Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy agreed not to cut but rather to increase the already massive military budget from roughly $800 billion to $886 billion.

For Media, Giving In To Debt Limit Blackmail Was Bipartisanship Triumph

June 3, 2023 Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas, Fairness And Accuracy In Reporting. Educate! Bipartisan, Debt Ceiling, Finance and the Economy, Media

When Congress passed the debt ceiling deal hammered out by President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, centrist media celebrated. If we had anything like a responsible White House press corps, we never would have gotten to this point. Treating the Republican gambit—demanding deeply unpopular policy measures in exchange for allowing the government to pay off debts Congress had already authorized—as anything other than economic hostage-taking gave it the legitimacy the party needed to stick with it without fear of massive political blowback (CounterSpin, 5/5/23). Instead, the press corps we have gave three cheers for bipartisanship.

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