Finance

How Credit Card Wars Lead To Greater Inequality

June 30, 2018 By Stephanie Savell, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Finance, Inequality

In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging “credit-card wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the economic. Massive levels of war-related debt will have lasting repercussions of all sorts. One potentially devastating effect, a new study finds, will be more societal inequality. In other words, the staggering costs of the longest war in American history -- almost 17 years running, since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 -- are being deferred to the future. In the process, the government is contributing to this country’s skyrocketing income inequality.

Warning Signs Point To A New Global Financial Crisis

June 21, 2018 By Martin Khor, Towardfreedom.org Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, Finance, New Economy

(IPS) – There are increasing warnings of an imminent new financial crisis, not only from the billionaire investor George Soros, but also from eminent economists associated with the Bank of International Settlements, the bank of central banks. The warnings come at a moment when there are signs of international capital flowing out of some emerging economies, including Turkey, Argentina and Indonesia. Some economists have been warning that the boom-bust cycle in capital flows to developing countries will cause disruption, when there is a turn from boom to bust. All it needs is a trigger, which may then snowball as investors in herd-like manner head for the exit door. Their behaviour is akin to a self- fulfilling prophecy: if enough speculative investors think this is the time to move back to the global financial capitals, then the exodus will happen, as it did in previous “bust” phases of the cycle.

‘Carbon Bubble’ Could Spark Global Financial Crisis, Study Warns

June 8, 2018 By Fiona Harvey, Theguardian.com Educate! Clean Energy, Crisis, Finance, Fossil Fuels

Investors beware, climate change is upon us. The energy industry is transforming to a new clean energy economy. Your investments in old dirty energy may end up being lost investments, know as stranded assets. This has been discussed in recent years, but now the reality is hitting. Investors should get out of carbon fuels and investment in carbon infrastructure now or their losses could be significant. A cross-party task force in Great Britain published a recommended force that large companies, pension funds and other big investors to report their exposure to climate risks. Reuters reported: “The report said companies should examine and disclose how climate change could impact their businesses in the future, such as increased exposure to extreme weather events for insurance companies and the impact of physical disruptions to supply chains for companies in the agriculture sector.

Rumors Grow That U.S. Fed Is Propping Up Stock Market

February 15, 2018 Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wallstreetonparade.com Educate! Capital, Capitalism, Finance, Stock Market, Wall Street

It’s not every day that three well-credentialed men are willing to put their names and reputations behind the allegation that the U.S. Federal Reserve is rigging the stock market. But that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Paul Craig Roberts, a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under President Ronald Reagan joined with Economist Michael Hudson and Wall Street veteran Dave Kranzler to write that “it appears that in May 2010, August 2015, January/February 2016, and currently in February 2018 the Fed is rigging the stock market by purchasing S&P equity index futures in order to arrest stock market declines.” This is not the first time the Fed has come under such suspicion.

Stock Market Designed To F**k 90% Of Us

February 15, 2018 Lee Camp, Redacted Tonight Resistance Report Capital, Crisis, Finance

As the stock market had its largest one-day drop in decades, what our media won't tell you is that 84% of stock wealth is in the hands of the top 10%. Looking at the stock market to judge the economic health of our country is actually like looking at a dying man and judging his health based on how the leeches look. Most Americans do not benefit from it as the rich play with lives. But that's just half of the story. Redacted Tonight's Lee Camp has the censored side of our volatile economy.

City Of London Financiers Contemplate “Imminent” 2018 US Stock Market Crash Of Up To “50%”

February 14, 2018 Nafeez Ahmed, Medium.com Educate! Finance, London

A new analysis published on the website of a London-based think-tank, funded by the world’s biggest banking and financial services institutions, warns that the US stock market is on the brink of an imminent crash that could trigger another global recession. The document by a senior US economist and former Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England is published on the website of the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (CSFI), which runs around 100 roundtable events a year involving financial services insiders from the UK and beyond. The document forecasts that in 2018, US stock prices are likely to plummet by as much as “forty to fifty percent” — compared to the less than five percent plunge in early February. The document was published weeks before the recent stock market volatility.

Trump’s Financial Arsonists

February 2, 2018 By Nomi Prins, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Finance, New Economy, Trump Administration

There’s been lots of fire and fury around Washington lately, including a brief government shutdown. In Donald Trump’s White House, you can hardly keep up with the ongoing brouhahas from North Korea to Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation, while it already feels like ages since the celebratory mood over the vast corporate tax cuts Congress passed last year. But don’t be fooled: none of that is as important as what’s missing from the picture. Like a disease, in the nation’s capital it’s often what you can’t see that will, in the end, hurt you most. Amid a roaring stock market and a planet of upbeat CEOs, few are even thinking about the havoc that a multi-trillion-dollar financial system gone rogue could inflict upon global stability. But watch out.

Investors Finally Facing Up To Climate Change

December 14, 2017 Frank Jordans, apnews.com Create! Capital, Climate Change, Finance, Investment

Over 200 companies have pledged greater transparency on reporting climate-related risks in their businesses as part of a voluntary program led by U.S. billionaire Michael Bloomberg. The former New York mayor and Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the Financial Stability Board, said Tuesday that the number of companies supporting the program had more than doubled since its recommendations were first published in June. The 237 companies, with a combined value of over $6.3 trillion, include construction firms, energy companies and financial institutions from 29 countries. Carney said the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures plans to report on its efforts when leaders of the Group of 20 leading industrialized and emerging economies meet in Argentina in a year.

Declaration On Climate Finance

December 11, 2017 Staff, notapennymore.info Create! Clean Energy, Divestment, Finance, Fossil Fuels

We the undersigned, call for an immediate end to investments in new fossil fuel production and infrastructure, and encourage a dramatic increase in investments in renewable energy. We are issuing this call to action in the lead up to the climate summit hosted by President Macron in Paris this December. President Macron and other world leaders, have already spoken out about the need for an increase in finance for climate solutions, but they have remained largely silent about the other, dirtier side of the equation: the ongoing finance of new coal, oil and gas production and infrastructure. Ongoing global climate change and environmental destructions are happening at an unprecedented scale, and it will take unprecedented actions to limit the worst consequences of our dependence on oil, coal, and gas. Equally as critical as drastically curbing the carbon intensity of our economic systems is the need for immediate and ambitious actions to stop exploration and expansion of fossil fuel projects and manage the decline of existing production in line with what is necessary to achieve the Paris climate goals.

Financial Industry Split On Speculation Tax

July 10, 2017 Sarah Anderson, www.inequality.org Create! Finance, New Economy, Taxes

By Sarah Anderson for Inequality.org - Wall Street lobbyists have the luxury, at least for now, of largely ignoring calls for a U.S. tax on financial speculation. While Senator Bernie Sanders made such a tax a centerpiece of his presidential bid, the Republicans who now control Washington are focused on delivering tax cuts — not increases — to their banker friends. But in Europe, it’s another story. Ten EU governments have committed to imposing a small tax on stock and derivatives trading as a way to raise massive revenue for urgent needs while also encouraging longer-term sustainable investment. And while the European negotiations over tax design have dragged on for several years, they are now close enough to cutting a deal to make industry opponents genuinely worried. The financial lobby is putting particularly intense pressure on the new French president, Emmanuel Macron. A former banker, Macron is viewed as a potential weak link in the coalition that has been working to develop the tax. To help counter this pressure, 52 senior financial professionals have broken rank with their industry peers and released a joint statement in support of financial transaction taxes (FTT). The signers include Lord Adair Turner, the UK’s former top financial regulator, Rob Johnson, president of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Thinking and the former managing director at Soros Fund Management...

The Financial Aristocracy

September 22, 2016 Staff, www.roarmag.org Educate! Capitalism, Finance

By Staff of ROAR - The history of capitalism is characterized by a fundamental paradox, in which the most abstract and most impersonal expression of value — money — mediates the most concrete and most personal form of power. From Medici popes in renaissance Rome and Rothschild peers in Victorian England to Goldman Sachs’ private army of mercenary technocrats, moneyed elites have long exerted extraordinary influence over politics.

David Graeber: The Power Of Finance, History Of Inequality & Legacy Of OWS

September 18, 2016 David Graeber, www.roarmag.org Educate! Banking, Debt, Finance, Occupy

By David Graeber for ROAR Magazine. So hundreds of thousands suddenly showed up. I mean, we had what — like 800 occupations at peak? Then of course came the evictions and they realize, “oh, I guess we couldn’t after all.” And after that the repression became extremely brutal and the media coverage also shifted to be just completely one-sided. But all that was really just back to normal. So the question is, why was there any sympathetic media coverage at all in those first few months? Why was there this little bubble of democracy? I think in retrospect it’s easy to see: there was a fraction of the establishment, basically the left of the Democratic Party, that thought that we were going to become their version of the Tea Party. That is, a grassroots movement that would make a lot of anti-establishment noises but ultimately play the game of raising money, running candidates again. They tried to infiltrate the media teams, set up tacit leadership structures… But eventually they figured out we were really serious. If our main complaint was that the US political system had turned into a system of legalized bribery, no, we weren’t going to join the system and try to see if we could raise enough bribes ourselves to run candidates and change that from within. Suddenly the curtain went down.

Here’s Why Americans Are Mad As Hell At Wall Street And Washington

September 2, 2016 Pam Martens and Russ Martens, www.wallstreetonparade.com Educate! Finance, Wall Street

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens for Walls Street On Parade - Yesterday we published our 1,007th article here at Wall Street On Parade on the insidiously corrupt financial system in the United States known as Wall Street. It’s a system that now operates as an institutionalized wealth transfer mechanism that is hollowing out the middle class, leaving one of every five children in our nation living in poverty, while funneling the plunder to the top one-tenth of one percent. Tens of millions of Americans clearly understand that an entrenched system of corruption such as this, perpetuated through a revolving door between Wall Street and Washington

Overcharged: The High Cost Of High Finance

September 2, 2016 Gerald Epstein and Juan Antonio Montecino, www.rooseveltinstitute.org Educate! Finance

By Gerald Epstein and Juan Antonio Montecino for Roosevelt Institute - A healthy financial system is one that channels finance to productive investment, helps families save for and finance big expenses such as higher education and retirement, provides products such as insurance to help reduce risk, creates sufficient amounts of useful liquidity, runs an efficient payments mechanism, and generates financial innovations to do all these useful things more cheaply and effectively. All of these functions are crucial to a stable and productive market economy.

Financial Transaction Tax: Make Wall Street Work For Main St.

August 2, 2016 Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair, www.epi.org Create! Finance, Taxes, Wall Street

By Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair for EPI - What this report finds: A well-designed financial transaction tax (FTT)—a small levy placed on the sale of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other investments—would be an efficient and progressive way to generate tax revenues. Gross revenues from a well-designed FTT would likely range from $110 billion to $403 billion. And net revenues (including offsets from reduced income, payroll and capital gains taxes, and increased borrowing costs) would likely be substantially higher than some other recent estimates indicate.

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