Recession

US Capitalism Is In Total Meltdown

July 24, 2020 Sarah Jaffe , The Progressive. Educate! COVID-19, Neoliberalism, Rebellion2020, Recession

In 2005, when the federal, state, and local governments spectacularly failed the residents of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, there was a sense of shock from both inside and outside of the country. The triumphalist narrative that “There Is No Alternative”—that neoliberal capitalism was the best and indeed the only way to do things—got its first cracks there, when we saw people stuck on rooftops and others sheltering without food and water in the convention center and Superdome. Somehow reporters could get in, and private security firms like Blackwater patrolled the streets, but the government could not or would not deliver relief to the mostly Black and poor residents who had been unable to evacuate before the storm.

Capitalism May Not Survive The 2020 Global Crisis

July 24, 2020 Richard D. Wolff, RT. Educate! Capitalism, Economic Recovery, Pandemic, Recession

The current global crisis triggered by Covid-19 is the third capitalist crash in this century. And governments’ incapacity to consider non-capitalist solutions threatens to keep deepening this crisis into capitalism’s worst. The first was in early 2000. Because it was triggered by the absurdly high prices of dot-com stocks, it got named the “dotcom crisis.” In 2008, the trigger was widespread subprime mortgage default in the US and the crash was far more serious, one of the worst in capitalism’s history, second only to the crash of the 1930s. And now, in 2020, the trigger was a viral pandemic, and we have a far deeper crash than in 2008.

Cuba Defeated The Pandemic, Is Preparing To Face The Economic Crisis

July 24, 2020 By Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, Resumen English. Create! Cuba, Pandemic, Recession, Socialism

Possibly no other country in the world has it worse when it comes to facing what Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel has defined as the very challenging global economic scenario, after the impact of a pandemic that in the first six months of the year put almost all economies on hold and is still slowing down the most dynamic productive, financial and commercial processes on a planetary level. But surely no one else, among the small states of this unbalanced and unjust world, is in a better position to attempt another giant leap from uncertainty to risk.

Without Immediate Action, Millions Of People Will Be Evicted In The Coming Months

July 23, 2020 Jannine Jackson, FAIR. Educate! COVID-19, Homelessness, Housing, Recession

From the beginning, we have seen that if the federal government didn’t intervene in a really significant and sustained way, that we would see a wave of evictions and a spike in homelessness. And so these limited federal eviction moratoriums, and these state and local moratoriums that have been put in place, have provided some protections for low-income renters, and have helped prevent that wave from happening. But those moratoriums are rapidly expiring. As of today, there are 29 governors that have allowed their state eviction moratoriums to expire, and the limited federal eviction moratoriums expire next week. We have been tracking emergency rental assistance programs that have been created in response to Covid-19. As of now, there are about 151 emergency rental assistance programs around the country. Their main challenge is lack of resources: The demand for those emergency rental assistance programs far outstripped the resources that are available.

Why The Labor Movement Should Support The ‘Beyond Recovery’ Campaign

July 20, 2020 By Stephanie Luce, Labor Notes. Create! Housing, Recession, Unions, Workers

Even before the pandemic, a large share of Americans cited housing availability and affordability as a major and growing concern. With rising unemployment, housing experts are predicting that 20 percent of all renters will be at risk of eviction by early fall. As with other aspects of the pandemic, Black and Latino people will be hurt the most. As reported in the Washington Post, a recent Census survey found that “about 44 percent and 41 percent of adult Latino and black renters, respectively, said they had no or slight confidence they could pay their rent next month or were likely to defer payment.” Majority Black zip codes already had the highest rates of eviction. The CARES Acts and expanded unemployment benefits have helped some cover their rent or mortgage, but those benefits are scheduled to run out at the end of July. Eviction moratoriums in many cities, meant to provide temporary relief, will eventually expire. Unions and other worker organizations can play a unique role in solving the housing and debt crisis both for union members and for the unorganized.

All Confusion And Contradictions In Trump’s Apocalyptic America

July 19, 2020 Andre Vltchek, Popular Resistance. Educate! COVID-19, Failed State, Recession, Trump, United States

Americans are angry. I suspected they would be, but I got confirmation that they are, all over the place: in Miami, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Minneapolis, New York, and Boston. Basically, everywhere I went, while "taking pulse and temperature" of this country where I used to live, cumulatively, for more than a decade, I felt frustration and bewilderment. "What is your job?" Shouted an African-American lady, right in the middle of the Union Station in the nation's capital. Obviously, it was a rhetorical question, as she almost immediately answered her own query: "There are no jobs!" Mr. Floyd got murdered by perverse, sadistic police officers.

The Post Office Belongs To The Public

July 18, 2020 Mark Dimondstein and Richard Koritz, In These Times. Organize! Congress, Privatization, Recession, USPS

On June 15, Louis DeJoy of Greensboro, N.C., began his new job as Postmaster General of the United States. We are postal worker union activists who also hail from Greensboro (and are now American Postal Workers Union president and solidarity representative, respectively). For decades we have defended the interests of the public Postal Service and postal workers, and we bring a much different perspective than that of multi-millionaire businessman DeJoy. We are concerned that DeJoy, a mega-donor to Republican Party causes and to President Trump, has been tapped to carry out the administration’s agenda.

The Economy: What Lies Ahead

July 17, 2020 Jack Rasmus, Predicting the Global Economic Crisis. Educate! Depression, Evictions, Finance and the Economy, Recession

The US economy at mid-year 2020 is at a critical juncture. What happens in the next three months will likely determine whether the current Great Recession 2.0 continues to follow a W-shape trajectory—or drifts over an economic precipice into an economic depression. With prompt and sufficient fiscal stimulus targeting US households, minimal political instability before the November 2020 elections, and no financial instability event, it may be contained. No worse than a prolonged W-shape recovery will occur. But should the fiscal stimulus be minimal (and poorly composed), should political instability grow significantly worse, and a major financial instability event erupt in the US (or globally), then it is highly likely a descent to a bona fide economic depression will occur.

Chris Hedges: America Faces A Historic Choice — “Ugly Corporate Tyranny” Or Revolution

July 16, 2020 Chauncey Devega, Salon. Educate! Fascism, Recession, Trump, White Supremacy

Time is broken in Donald Trump's America. Minutes feel like hours, hours feel like days. Weeks are months, and months are years. And there is an overwhelming sense of time warped by dread as the country careens towards a dangerous climax on Election Day — whatever the outcome. Disorientation is a feature of life in a failing democracy where fascism is ascendant. In a widely read conversation here at Salon during the first few weeks of the national pandemic lockdown and the implosion of America's economy, journalist and bestselling author Chris Hedges warned that, compared to what may lie ahead, "these were the good times." This was before the coronavirus pandemic continued its deadly march where today more than 136,000 people are dead.

How Big Businesses Got Government Loans Meant For Small Businesses

July 16, 2020 By Paul Kiel and Jack Gillum, ProPublica. Educate! Corporate Bailout, COVID-19, Finanace and the Economy, Recession

The Paycheck Protection Program was launched to rescue the little guy, the millions of small businesses without the deep pockets needed to survive the COVID-19 shock. But among the restaurants, dentists and mom-and-pops was Vibra Healthcare, a chain of hospitals and therapy centers spread across 19 states with over 9,000 employees. The biggest PPP loan was supposed to be $10 million, but Vibra found a way to land as much as $97 million. ProPublica’s findings bring into sharper focus how companies with thousands of employees were able to get assistance, just as some small businesses were reluctant to even apply. So far, the PPP has paid out more than $517 billion to 4.9 million companies — loans that can be forgiven if used to cover payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities. It was among the most generous of programs for businesses in the CARES Act. Loan programs for medium and large businesses spelled out in the bill generally were not forgivable. Appraisals of the PPP by economists and policymakers have been mixed:

Why Workers Need A Voice On The Job Now More Than Ever

July 15, 2020 By Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs, On Labor. Organize! COVID-19, Recession, Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred multiple crises in our country including a public health crisis and an economic one. The need to protect the health of Americans and the need to protect their livelihoods might seem to require disparate approaches. But, as unlikely as it may seem, we believe that rewriting the rules of how workers can act collectively is a key solution to both. Why? COVID-19 poses particular and grave challenges to working people, and, in the context of the pandemic, threats to workers’ health are a threat to public health. As has become painfully obvious, moreover, the costs of the pandemic are being borne disproportionately by low-wage workers, a population made up primarily of workers of color. As they work to keep the economy moving, these workers are being asked to put their lives on the line in ways that are both unacceptable and unnecessary, especially as the country faces the many facets of our nation’s structural racism.

Economic Collapse, Pandemic: There Is No Plan (For You)

July 15, 2020 By Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Educate! COVID-19, Economic collapse, Recession, Unemployment

In the midst of an enormous, unavoidable increase in national unemployment, the $600 per week unemployment benefit increase that has sustained millions is set to run out at the end of this month, and is unlikely to be renewed at its current level, if at all. Eviction moratoriums are expiring, and more than 20 million Americans could be in danger of eviction in the next four months. Many small businesses, their resources exhausted, are closing for good, and bankruptcies of large businesses are accelerating. Millions have already lost their employer-based health insurance, and millions more will. At the same time that schools will be unable to reopen safely, a huge portion of private child care facilities are going out of business. And city and state governments will face plummeting tax revenue at the same time as they face a need for increased crisis spending, leaving the future of mass transit and other public services in doubt.

Looming Evictions May Soon Make 28 Million Homeless

July 15, 2020 Annie Nova, CNBC. Educate! Cancel the Rent, Evictions, Homelessness, Recession

Emily Benfer began her career representing homeless families in Washington, D.C. Her first case involved a family that had been evicted after complaining to their landlord about the holes in their roof. One of the times she met with the family, one of the children, a 4-year-old girl, asked her: “Are you really going to help us?” Benfer struggled with how to answer. “I’d met them too late,” she said. “I couldn’t stop the eviction. They had already been sleeping on the subway, and in other people’s homes. And you could see the effects it was taking on them.” Today, Benfer is a leading expert on evictions. She is the chair of the American Bar Association’s Task Force Committee on Eviction and co-creator of the COVID-19 Housing Policy Scorecard with the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

Here Not Death But The Future Is Frightening

July 10, 2020 Vijay Prashad, The Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! COVID-19, Debt Forgiveness, Finance and the Economy, IMF, Recession

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released its June 2020 update. The prognosis is bleak. Global growth for 2020 is projected at -4.9%, 1.9% below the IMF’s forecast from April. ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has had a more negative impact on activity in the first half of 2020 than anticipated’, acknowledges the IMF. Forecasts for 2021 are somewhat optimistic, sitting at 5.4%, which is higher than the 3.4% the IMF predicted in January 2020. ‘The adverse impact on low-income households is particularly acute’, says the IMF. Poverty reduction is effectively off the agenda. The World Bank’s recent report takes a dim view, with 2020 growth forecast at -5.2%, predicting the deepest global recession in eight decades. The World Bank’s expectation of growth for 2021 is at 4.2%, lower than the IMF’s 5.4% prediction.

Why The Third Quarter US Economic Rebound Will Falter

July 8, 2020 Jack Rasmus, Predicting the Global Economic Crisis. Educate! COVID-19, Economic collapse, Finanace and the Economy, Recession

All Great Recessions with an initial deep economic contraction, are typically followed by brief shallow recoveries, cut short by subsequent double dips or quarters of no growth stagnation. That was true of the Great Recession of 2008-09, which didn’t really end in June 2009 but bounced along the bottom economically for several more years. A similar trajectory will almost certainly follow today’s 2020 Great Recession 2.0 now concluding its Phase One initial deep collapse. The Phase One deep collapse is now giving way to its Phase Two and what will prove a brief and quite modest ‘rebound’. But that’s not a recovery. Further economic relapses are inevitable after ‘short, shallow rebounds’ that characterize all Great Recessions. That trajectory—i.e. short, shallow rebounds followed by relapses also brief and moderate can go on for years. What it means is there will be no V-shape and true recovery in the US economy in the second half of 2020. What there will be is an extended ‘W-shape’ period, the next two years 2020-2022 at minimum.

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