China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, opened its one and only 2015 session in Beijing on March 5. The Congress – the NPC – meets for just 10 days a year and, in that short window of time, is supposed to set China’s policy direction for the next 12 months. In theory, the NPC has much greater power than the U.S. Congress, including …
The ECB’s Noose Around Greece: How Central Banks Harness Governments
Remember when the infamous Goldman Sachs delivered a thinly-veiled threat to the Greek Parliament in December, warning them to elect a pro-austerity prime minister or risk having central bank liquidity cut off to their banks? (See January 6th post here.) It seems the European Central Bank (headed by Mario Draghi, former managing director of Goldman Sachs International) has now made good on …
Are Inter-Capitalist Rivalries Intensifying? – Jack Rasmus
Capitalism is by nature based on intense, and often destructive, competition. Not only between capital and labor, but between capitalists themselves. But not all competition is the same. There is competition when the global economic pie is growing; and there is competition when it is stagnating or declining. And in recent months signs are growing that new forms of more intense, aggressive inter-capitalist competition are emerging as the global economy continues to slow in general, and even stagnant and slide into recession in a growing number of countries.
Unjust Public Policies Drive the Massive Racial Wealth Gap in America: Study
The yawning racial wealth gap in the United States is no accident, but rather, driven by unjust public policy decisions—from the re-segregation of education to the redlining of home ownership to poverty wages, according to a new analysis by Brandeis University and the public policy organization Demos. Inequalities are vast, note the researchers. For example, Census data shows that, in 2011, median …
Do Corporations Really Need More Rights? Why Fast-Track for the TPP Is a Bad Idea
The TPP is presented as an agreement to increase U.S. exports and jobs. But what is really at stake is democracy—in the United States as well as in the 11 other Pacific Rim countries that are parties to the TPP. Given past agreements on which the TPP is modeled, including the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), TPP provisions will likely …
The Great Middle Class Extinction: “95% of New Homes Built for Rich or Poor”
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times all over again. “Since 2000, 95 percent of new households in King County have been either rich or poor. A mere 5 percent could be considered middle income.” That is a statistic reportedly true of Seattle – the heart of King County in Washington state – but which …
Real U.S. Unemployment Rate at 23.2%, not 5.5%
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) …
Silicon Valley: Wealth Redistribution, 1 Percent-Style
The Puente de la Costa Sur community center sits at the end of a quiet street in Pescadero, an isolated farming town of about 5,000 nestled amid green hills just inland from California’s Pacific Coast. It’s a beautiful, lively place to be at sunset, right before the kids will be picked up from day care. Rita Mancero is the petite …
Austria is fast becoming Europe’s latest debt nightmare
Ah Austria, land of schnitzel, lederhosen, Mozart, alpine meadows and beer drinking. Less widely appreciated is its special place in the history of catastrophic banking crises. It was the failure of Creditanstalt, a Viennese bank founded in 1855 byAnselm von Rothschild, that arguably sparked the Great Depression, setting off an unstoppable chain reaction of bankruptcies throughout Europe and America. No-one …
Poverty in Germany reaches a record high
“Poverty in Germany has not only reached a new record high, it has also threatened the country with disintegration into disparate regions.” Thus begins the annual poverty report of the German Federation of Welfare Associations. Although the economy has grown slightly and unemployment is relatively low, the poverty rate in Germany has increased; it has been rising almost continuously since …