Recession

We Can’t Let This Economic Crisis Go To Waste

March 22, 2020 Thomas M. Hanna and Carlos Santos Skandier, Open Democracy. Create! Coronavirus, COVID-19, New Economy, Recession

The rapid spread of COVID-19, or the coronavirus as it is commonly known, has heightened economic fears and anxiety around the world. On Thursday March 12, US stock markets saw their biggest single day losses since Black Monday in 1987 and three days later the Federal Reserve announced that it would be cutting its benchmark interest rate to effectively zero and restarting its Quantitative Easing program. With businesses and whole cities shut down for the foreseeable future, a full-blown financial crisis is not out of the question and many analysts now see a recession later this year as an inevitability. As was the case during the last major financial crisis 12 years ago, the Trump administration appears to be considering and readying a wide range of government interventions to prop up collapsing markets and failing industries.

Coronavirus And The ‘Shock Doctrine’

March 20, 2020 By Sam Pizzigati and Sarah Anderson, Otherwords.org Strategize! Coronavirus COVID-19, Inequality, Pandemic, Recession

In times of crisis like the current coronavirus pandemic, these sorts of calls for cooperation become the drumbeat of our daily lives. Unfortunately, no drumbeat ever gets everybody marching in sync. In deeply unequal societies like our own, a wealthy few can exploit such catastrophes to make themselves even wealthier. Back in 2007, Naomi Klein explored this phenomenon brilliantly in her landmark book The Shock Doctrine.

Some Economic Responses To The Coronavirus Recession

March 17, 2020 Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Create! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Finance and the Economy, Recession

In a normal recession, the proper goal of a policy response is pretty simple: increase output and employment by directly or indirectly increasing aggregate demand. Many proposed responses to this recession have fallen into this typical model. But, strictly speaking, this model does not really make sense for our current situation.

Twenty-First Century Neoliberalism Is Failing – Where Do We Go From Here?

March 16, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast COVID-19, health, Recession, Wall Street

Stock markets around the world have become very volatile over the past few weeks with record losses. We are in a global recession, which could become a depression in the United States. Panic over the coronavirus and falling oil prices triggered the crisis, but economists have predicted this for some time due to high levels of corporate debt and artificial propping up of Wall Street. It was just a question of when. We speak with economist Jack Rasmus, author of "The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump," about the current state of the economy and what we can expect from here. Rasmus posits that twenty-first-century neoliberalism is doomed to be highly unstable with rapid crashes and long recovery times. The system is going to change, but the direction it takes depends on what people do to demand a system that puts people before profits.

Coronavirus, Economic Networks, And Social Fabric

March 15, 2020 Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org. Create! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Local Economy, New Economy, Recession

The COVID-19 pandemic offers intriguing insights into how networked our modern world has become, and how we’ve traded resilience for economic efficiency. Case in point: someone gets sick in China in December of 2019, and by March of 2020 the US shale oil industry is teetering on the brink. What set off this unraveling? It was China’s deliberate—and arguably necessary—pull-back from economic connectivity. This tells us something useful about networked systems: unless there is a lot of redundancy built into them, any one node in the network can affect others. If it’s an important node (China has become the center of world manufacturing), it can disrupt the entire system. What would redundancy actually mean?

Global Financial Asset Deflation Underway: Prelude to Next ‘Great Recession’?

March 13, 2020 Staff, Jackrasmus.com Educate! Coronavirus, Finance and the Economy, Recession

This morning, Monday, March 9, financial asset markets continue to implode: US stocks are further collapsing -6% (Dow down 1650, Nasdaq >500 mid-day). Ditto Asian and Europe stock markets -6%. They were already declining sharply last week due to coronavirus induced supply chain shocks (reducing production) and expanding demand shocks (consumer spending contraction in select industries like travel, hotels, entertainment)...

Global Financial Asset Deflation Underway: Prelude To Next ‘Great Recession’?

March 12, 2020 Jack Rasmus, Informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Finance and the Economy, Recession

March 10, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - Monday, March 9, financial asset markets continue to implode: US stocks are further collapsing -6% (Dow down 1650, Nasdaq >500 mid-day). Ditto Asian and Europe stock markets -6%. They were already declining sharply last week due to coronavirus induced supply chain shocks ...

Coronavirus And Oil War Trigger Economic Collapse

March 9, 2020 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Oil and Gas, Recession

Economist Jack Rasmus reported on Sunday night, 'the economic collapse is underway. ' On top of the impact of the rapidly spreading coronavirus which was already crashing the markets, an oil war began between Russia and Saudi Arabia over the weekend. Crude oil prices plummeted 30 percent with oil prices suffering their biggest plunge since the Gulf War in 1991 over the weekend as the oil war developed. he Dow Jones had its single largest one-day point decline in history, dropping 2,013 points. This is just the beginning -- the oil war has just begun, the coronavirus is still in its early stages

Are Ordinary People In The United States Screwed? My Reply

August 18, 2019 Jack Rasmus on his website. Educate! Debt, Finance and the Economy, New Economy, Recession, wealth inequality

In short, the policies since 2008–both Obama’s and Trump’s–for ten years now have been subsidizing the rich, the elites, the owners of capital incomes like never before in US history. Tax cuts and Fed policies have subsidized (i.e. redistributed) tens of trillions of dollars for the elites from fiscal and monetary policies. The redistribution/subsidization has been so extreme that that fiscal and monetary policies are now effectively ‘dead in the water’ when it comes to try to stimulate the real US economy once it descends into recession–which is less than 12 months away for the US and already happening in Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Fiscal policy in the US is now dead-ended as an effective stimulus policy tool due to the $22 trillion current US national debt levels and annual $1 trillion plus budget deficits.

America Traded One Recession For A Far More Serious One

September 27, 2018 Michael E. Porter, Bostonglobe.com Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, Recession, United States

The headline economic indicators – GDP growth, the unemployment rate, the stock market — all say that the United States is in the midst of a sustained economic expansion that was slow to develop after the Great Recession. But a deeper look at US performance offers far less cause for celebration. America is mired in a social progress recession. Data from the Social Progress Index, the first ever rigorous measurement of social performance across a broad range of indicators and all major countries, reveals that the quality of life and opportunities for many Americans is lagging. The fact is that our country is failing on many of the things we hold most dear. And it’s getting worse. The Social Progress Index focuses exclusively on social outcomes (not spending or inputs), capturing key aspects of quality of life, including health, water and sanitation, personal safety, education, and environmental quality.

Trump’s Tax Cuts, Budget And Deficits: Recession 2019?

February 17, 2018 By Jack Rasmus, Telesurtv.net Educate! Budget Cuts, Recession, Tax cuts for the rich, Tax Reform, Trump Administration

Trump tax cuts and Trump’s budget will exacerbate U.S. budget deficits and debt and cause the central bank to raise interest rates even faster and higher. Lies and misrepresentation of facts have become the hallmark of U.S. politics in recent years more than ever before. Not just lies of commission by U.S. President Donald Trump and his crew, but lies of omission by the mainstream media as well. In Trump’s recent package of tax cuts for corporations, investors and millionaires, the lie is that the total cuts amount to US$1.5 trillion — when the actual amount is more than US$5 trillion and likely even higher. And in his most recent announcement of budget deficits the amounts admitted are barely half of the actual deficits — and consequent rise in U.S. national debt — that will occur. Even his US$1.5 trillion so-called infrastructure spending plan, that Trump promised during his 2016 election campaign, and then throughout 2017, amounts to only US$200 billion.

Amid Warnings Of Financial Crash, Fed Chair Promotes Illusions

August 27, 2017 Nick Beams, www.wsws.org Educate! Federal Reserve, Finance and the Economy, Recession

By Nick Beams for World Socialist Web Site. Wyoming (August 26, 2017) - Yesterday’s speech by Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen to the conclave of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming recalled events at the gathering 12 years ago. At that meeting, the growing signs of the devastating financial crisis that was to strike in 2008 were completely ignored. That was likewise the situation at this year’s meeting, held under conditions where the surge in stock markets is bringing warnings of a major collapse. The 2005 meeting was organised as a celebration of the achievements of the "Maestro,” Fed chief Alan Greenspan, whose policies, it was claimed, had brought a new era of prosperity to the global economy.

Workers Celebrate 20 Years Of Shared Bread And Ownership

January 1, 2017 Misty Dawn Spicer-Sitzes, www.shareable.net Create! Democracy, Recession, Worker Cooperative, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Misty Dawn Spicer-Sitzes for Shareable. Workers in California are taking economic change into their own hands. The Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives is one of the shining examples of how shared ownership empowers workers and builds community. For the past 20 years, the association, comprised of six bakeries, has been innovating the way business is done. What’s its recipe for success? It turns out that it is more than just tasty treats: Each bakery is democratically-owned and governed by its workers. A worker-owned cooperative is a business in which each employee owns one equal part of the company. They share the profits in the good times, and they share the burdens in the hard times. Worker co-ops can have anywhere from three members to thousands, and they have varying pay scales and job structures.

An Inequality Double-Whammy

June 29, 2016 Sam Pizzigati, www.inequality.org Educate! Inequality, Recession

By Sam Pizzigati for Inequality - Inequality doesn’t cause every problem in our world today. Inequality just makes every problem worse. Big problems especially. Like recessions. We’ve known for some time that recessions — and depressions — become much more likely when wealth starts excessively concentrating in the pockets of the already rich. Now we have important new research that adds to this story.

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