I keep hearing that although Trump is a scoundrel or worse, at least he’s presiding over a great economy. Continue reading
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Category Archives: Economy
Breaking with Wall Street: L.A. takes it to the voters
“Wall Street owns the country.” That was the opening line of a fiery speech by populist leader Mary Ellen Lease in 1890. Franklin Roosevelt said it again in a letter to Colonel House in 1933, and Sen. Dick Durbin was still saying it in 2009. “The banks—hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created—are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,” Durbin said in an interview. “And they frankly own the place.” Continue reading
The three big lessons we didn’t learn from the economic crisis
Ten years ago, after making piles of money gambling with other people’s money, Wall Street nearly imploded, and the outgoing George W. Bush and incoming Obama administrations bailed out the bankers. Continue reading
Central banks have gone rogue, putting us all at risk
Central bankers are now aggressively playing the stock market. To say they are buying up the planet may be an exaggeration, but they could. They can create money at will, and they have declared their “independence” from government. They have become rogue players in a game of their own. Continue reading
More jobs fictions
According to Friday’s payroll jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy created 200,000 new jobs in August. These jobs, assuming that they exist, are reported to be in low paid domestic service jobs such as transporting and selling goods, ambulatory health care services, and waiting tables and mixing drinks. There are none in manufacturing or in the “high tech clean fingernail” jobs that neoliberal economists promised the American work force in exchange for letting the industrial and manufacturing jobs go to Asia. Continue reading
The economy is supposed to be great, so why are workers miserable?
Quantity is on one thing, but quality is what really matters when it comes to jobs
It’s practically unanimous: Nine out of 10 establishment economists agree that America’s solid job growth and the low unemployment rate truly make ours “The Land of Opportunity.” Continue reading
The next crash
September 15 will mark the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and near meltdown of Wall Street, followed by the Great Recession. Continue reading
Our economy is more concentrated than ever
Just four tech superpowers raked in half of this year’s stock price gains by the 500 largest corporations.
America’s political history has been written in the fierce narrative of war. Not our country’s many military clashes with foreign nations, but our own unending war for democracy in the United States. Continue reading
How China’s mobile ecosystems are making banks obsolete
Giant Chinese tech companies have bypassed credit cards and banks to create their own low-cost digital payment systems.
The US credit card system siphons off excessive amounts of money from merchants, who must raise their prices to cover this charge. In a typical $100 credit card purchase, only $97.25 goes to the seller. The rest goes to banks and processors. But who can compete with Visa and MasterCard? Continue reading
How Trump’s war on regulation is trickle-down economics
When Trump’s not blaming foreigners for everything that ails America, he’s blaming regulations. Continue reading
Trump and the art of the no deal
Donald Trump promised to be America’s dealmaker-in-chief, touting his “extraordinary” ability to negotiate. But so far, Trump has shown he can’t make a deal. Continue reading
Americans live in a world of lies
The US government and the presstitutes that serve it continue to lie to us about everything. Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us that the unemployment rate was 3.9%. How can this be when the BLS also reports that the labor force participation rate has declined for a decade throughout the length of the alleged economic recovery and there is no upward pressure on wages from full employment. When jobs are plentiful, people enter the labor force to take advantage of the work opportunities. This raises the labor force participation rate. When employment is full—which is what a 3.9% unemployment rate means—wages are bid up as employers compete for scarce labor. Full employment with no wage pressure and no rise in the labor force participation rate is impossible. Continue reading
Trump takes on the Fed
The president has criticized Federal Reserve policy for undermining his attempts to build the economy. To make the central bank serve the needs of the economy, it needs to be transformed into a public utility. Continue reading
The City of London and Grand Theft Ethiopia
For decades now, going back to when Bob Geldoff handed over millions in cash to Meles Zenawi during “We Are the World” circa 1983-4 supposedly for food aid for the victims of what was then the Great Ethiopian Famine, the City of London has been at the heart of Grand Theft Ethiopia, grand theft Africa really. Continue reading
A public bank for Los Angeles?
City council puts it to the voters
California legislators exploring the public bank option may be breaking not just from Wall Street but from the Federal Reserve. Continue reading
What Big Meat doesn’t want you to know about slaughterhouses
It has happened at slaughterhouses run by Smithfield Foods, Swift and Agriprocessors. Continue reading
When it comes to the economy, Trump keeps two sets of books
The May jobs numbers were good last week—so swell, in fact, that our putative president couldn’t resist hinting about them in an early morning tweet last Friday morning, a major breach of confidentiality and protocol that instantly affected Treasury yields—basically, the interest rate at which the government borrows money. Continue reading
Is Donald Trump a new Herbert Hoover with his policy of isolationism and protectionism?
American president Donald Trump seems intent to isolate the U.S. economy from neighboring economies, and even from the world economy, and thus to break with three quarters of a century of closer economic cooperation between countries, established after World War II. There is a clear danger that the international economic system could become structurally unsettled for years to come, which does not mean that such a system is not in need of reform. Continue reading
Blackstone, BlackRock or a public bank?
California needs over $700 billion in infrastructure during the next decade. Where will this money come from? The $1.5 trillion infrastructure initiative unveiled by President Trump in February 2018 includes only $200 billion in federal funding, and less than that after factoring in the billions in tax cuts in infrastructure-related projects. The rest is to come from cities, states, private investors and public-private partnerships (PPPs) one. And since city and state coffers are depleted, that chiefly means private investors and PPPs, which have a shady history at best. Continue reading
Fox in the hen house: Why interest rates are rising
On March 31, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate for the sixth time in 3 years and signaled its intention to raise rates twice more in 2018, aiming for a fed funds target of 3.5% by 2020. LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate) has risen even faster than the fed funds rate, up to 2.3% from just 0.3% 2–1/2 years ago. LIBOR is set in London by private agreement of the biggest banks, and the interest on $3.5 trillion globally is linked to it, including $1.2 trillion in consumer mortgages. Continue reading
The dangerous deficit in trade understanding
I was chatting with my tobacconist the other day—I have no rabbi, no priest, no minister, no imam, no chiropractor, and no lawyer, but I do have a tobacconist—when it struck me that my trade deficit with him is astronomical. Continue reading
The war on the post office
The US Postal Service, under attack from a manufactured crisis designed to force its privatization, needs a new source of funding to survive. Postal banking could fill that need. Continue reading
Funding infrastructure: Why China Is running circles around America
“One Belt, One Road,” China’s $1 trillion infrastructure initiative, is a massive undertaking of highways, pipelines, transmission lines, ports, power stations, fiber optics, and railroads connecting China to Central Asia, Europe and Africa. According to Dan Slane, a former advisor in President Trump’s transition team, “It is the largest infrastructure project initiated by one nation in the history of the world and is designed to enable China to become the dominant economic power in the world.” In a January 29 article, titled “Trump’s Plan a Recipe for Failure, Former Infrastructure Advisor Says,” he added, “If we don’t get our act together very soon, we should all be brushing up on our Mandarin.” Continue reading
Why we need rise-up economics, not trickle-down
How to build the economy? Not through trickle-down economics. Tax cuts to the rich and big corporations don’t lead to more investment and jobs. Continue reading
How Uncle Sam launders marijuana money
Thirty states and the District of Columbia currently have laws broadly legalizing marijuana in some form. The herb has been shown to have significant therapeutic value for a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, lung disease, anxiety, muscle spasms, hepatitis C, inflammatory bowel disease, and arthritis pain. Continue reading
How one coal baron set an entire administration’s energy agenda
In a political system awash in money, it's Big Coal vs. democracy.
It’s common knowledge that our political system is awash with money. And that money, despite some flimsy legal barriers, comes with strings attached. Continue reading
When your bank fails, don’t walk . . . run!
So. the US economy is just fine. The post-recession 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation has cured all. Banks have lots of cash. Congress is your friend and that certain-to-pass Tax Cut and Jobs bill will finally allow you, your family and America to . . . MAGA. Continue reading
Student debt slavery II: Time to level the playing field
The lending business is heavily stacked against student borrowers. Bigger players can borrow for almost nothing, and if their investments don’t work out, they can put their corporate shells through bankruptcy and walk away. Not so with students. Their loan rates are high and if they cannot pay, their debts are not normally dischargeable in bankruptcy. Rather, the debts compound and can dog them for life, compromising not only their own futures but the economy itself. Continue reading
Student debt slavery: Bankrolling financiers on the backs of the young
Higher education has been financialized, transformed from a public service into a lucrative cash cow for private investors. Continue reading
Why making American corporations more competitive doesn’t help most Americans
Trump and congressional Republicans are engineering the largest corporate tax cut in history in order “to restore our competitive edge,” as Trump says. Continue reading
The economic implications of Trump’s trade & tax policies
Sudden changes in trade and tax policies, the likes of those considered by the Trump administration, could be very disruptive to macroeconomic equilibrium, especially if they result in a sudden burst of inflation and in rapid interest rate hikes. Indeed, raising taxes on imports, repatriating large corporate profits parked overseas and increasing the fiscal deficit, when the economy is running at close to full capacity, can result in both demand-led and supply-led inflation. This could come much faster than most people expect, if all these measures are implemented in the coming years. Continue reading
NAFTA 2.0 is another bad deal
Posted on October 3, 2018 by Stephen Lendman
US free trade deals are profoundly unfair. They facilitate offshoring of jobs to China and other low-wage countries. Continue reading →