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Alternative Visions – ‘US Fed Reverses Course on Rate Hikes? + ‘How Big Pharma is Killing Us’ – 09.25.15

Jack reviews briefly the apparent flip-flop by Janet Yellen, chair of the US central bank, in her talk on September 24, as she shifted course from last week’s Fed meeting, and signaled that a US interest rate hike will almost certainly come in December. How the Fed is now caught between its emerging, contradictory role as central bank for the US as well as for the global economy. Jack challenges Yellen’s view that US prices, now at 0.5%, will eventually rise as oil prices reverse and increase again and as the labor market in the US improves—and explains why this is not likely to happen soon. In the second half of the show, big Pharmaceutical companies are the topic. Jack explains how Wall St. and shadow bankers increasingly run Pharma and have turned it into a speculative investing center where drug price manipulation and gouging is increasingly the norm causing astronomically price hikes for life-saving drugs, with the result of killing of countless more Americans denied unaffordable drugs. How Wall St. has turned the industry, from what should be a public good, into a $500 billion speculative profits center with 20% annual rates of return, into a prime source of mergers and acquisitions profits for banks, and into a major tax avoidance (thru global tax ‘inversions’) industry that gets $100 billion in government R&D subsidies. Jack reviews in detail the latest scandal to hit the press this past week, with Turing Corp.’s 5000% increase for a pill to treat toxoplasmosis that prevents infections in pregnancies, cancer, and AIDs patients. Similar price manipulations delivering ‘rentier’ profits by Rodelis Corp., Valeant Corp., Alexion and Gilead Corps are reviewed. How the disease of finance capital is spreading throughout the US economy as bankers and corporate America continue to ‘kill’ Americans in the name of excess profits.

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Alternative Visions – ‘Corporate Cash Piles $15.3 Trillion; US FED Keeps Free Money Flowing’ – 09.18.15

Jack Rasmus discusses the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates near zero and keep free money to banks and speculators flowing. Jack explains how free money from the FED keeps financial asset bubbles in stocks, junk bonds, forex, derivatives and the like going, and feeds ever growing profits from financial assets. Who were the forces and lobbyists behind the FED decision? What did they have to gain? How the FED decision will soon result in central banks in Japan and Europe expanding their own ‘QE’ programs further, intensifying global currency wars and slowing global trade. How global finance capital has become addicted to the free money from the FED and other central banks and is unable to wean themselves off of it. What it means for the coming next recession. In the second half of the show Jack reveals how cash on US, Europe and Japan corporate balance sheets still exceeds $7.3 trillion—after corporations have distributed to shareholders since 2009 more than $8 trillion in stock buybacks, dividend payouts, and private equity firm profit sharing distributions to partners. Jack explains how corporations in the three regions, north America, Europe and Japan, accumulated the $15.3 trillion—i.e. from free money, legislated tax cuts, and cuts to worker’s wages and benefits.

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Nomi Prins – Mexico, Federal Reserve Policy and Danger Ahead for Emerging Markets

On August 27th, I had the opportunity to address the Aspen Institute, UNIFIMEX and PWC in Mexico City during a Q&A with Patricia Armendariz. Subsequenty, on August 28th, I gave the opening talk at the annual IMEF conference. The main issues of concern to local Mexican banks, as well as to Mexico’s central bank, are: 1) How the Federal Reserve’s …

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Dean Baker – A Fed Rate Hike Will Harm the Economy, Why Don’t the Candidates Seem to Care?

There was something for everyone in August’s US jobs report. The headline figure for jobs growth was less than expected, but the last two months were revised up. Wages grew, but the number of people out of the workforce remains worryingly high. What’s a central banker to do? Sadly the answer is exactly what they want to do, and no …

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Nick Beams – The G20 summit: A spectacle of political bankruptcy

The meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers held in Ankara, Turkey over the weekend underscored the inability of the major capitalist powers to initiate any measures to halt the recessionary forces overtaking the world economy. Rather than a proposal for concerted action, the official communique was a public relations exercise aimed at masking the acuteness of the crisis …

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Alasdair Macleod – The danger of eliminating cash

In the early days of central banking, one primary objective of the new system was to take ownership of the public’s gold, so that in a crisis the public would be unable to withdraw it. Gold was to be replaced by fiat cash which could be issued by the central bank at will. This removed from the public the power …

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Dean Baker – The China Syndrome: Bubble Trouble

The financial markets have been through some wild and crazy times over the last two weeks, although it appears that they have finally stabilized. The net effect of all the gyrations is that a serious bubble in China’s market seems to have been at least partially deflated. After hugely over-reacting to this correction, most other markets have largely recovered. Prices …

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Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler – Central Banks Have Become A Corrupting Force

Are we witnessing the corruption of central banks? Are we observing the money-creating powers of central banks being used to drive up prices in the stock market for the benefit of the mega-rich? These questions came to mind when we learned that the central bank of Switzerland, the Swiss National Bank, purchased 3,300,000 shares of Apple stock in the first …

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It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – The Centrality of Central Banks – 08.19.15

“No flow, no go.” That may be the simplest way to describe the critical role of central banks to the flow of credit and money into any monetary system. It was the lack of access to cash and bank liquidity that humbled Greece, Detroit and others. Ellen speaks with Dr. Timothy Canova, one of the foremost experts on our central bank, the Federal Reserve, about why their operation of our cash spigot determines who wins and who loses. Co-host Walt McRee speaks with Gwen Hallsmith about a newly published handbook focusing on new ways to invest in local economies and Matt Stannard reviews the Fed from a visionary point of view – what could be accomplished if the Fed worked for the public interest?

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John Ficene – China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations

When the banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy room to heal. Time is now rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost control and at the same …