Subjects Archives: Financialization

It’s because of decades of public investment that the company, and our national airports system, exist in the first place.

The unthinkable is happening for the second time in five months: Russian gas giant Gazprom writes to German gas companies announcing force majeure effective from June 14, exonerating it from any compensation for shortfalls since then. 

Today the federal minimum wage is $7.25! Let that sad fact sink in. Right now you can barely buy a gallon of gas in some parts of the country with that little cash.

The devastating effects of global warming are being felt by billions of people all around the world. Meanwhile, capitalist fat cats are openly downplaying the risk of entire cities being buried beneath the rising oceans as a trifling inconvenience. Like Emperor Nero before them, the rulers of this destructive system are fiddling–this time–as Rome drowns.

I just read this NYT column by Bryan Stryker, on how Democrats can win back the working class. I have no idea how its proposals poll, but as an economic matter, they will do little to help the working class.

Over the last year, real average weekly earnings fell 3.9% as inflation outpaced pay raises and average weekly hours fell by almost an hour.

In wars like the present one, politics on the home front cannot be permitted to give aid and comfort to the enemy. In the U.S. and NATO campaign, the Russian oligarchs and their businesses are targets and also weapons of the plan for regime change in the Kremlin.

That’s what’s different this time: Stuff blows up because of leverage and cascades through the crypto space because everything’s interconnected.

In this third part of my series on the future of work, I want to deal with the impact of automation, in particular robots and artificial intelligence (AI) on jobs. I have covered this issue of the relationship between human labour and machines before, including robots and AI.  But is there anything new that we can find after the COVID slump?

On July 1 at the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden made a startling disclosure that “the idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term.”

Whether the Fed can succeed in taming inflation and do so without precipitating a recession remains to be seen but is highly unlikely.

To Wall Street and its backers, the solution to any price inflation is to reduce wages and public social spending. The orthodox way to do this is to push the economy into recession in order to reduce hiring. Rising unemployment will oblige labor to compete for jobs that pay less and less as the economy slows.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the rate of inflation rose to 8.6% in May, the latest high in a period of rapid growth in prices following the COVID-19 recession in March 2020. Indeed, inflation is now higher than it has been in the past 40 years.

To calculate the true extent and burden of this debt, the KHN-NPR investigation draws on a nationwide poll conducted by KFF for this project. The poll was designed to capture not just bills patients couldn’t afford, but other borrowing used to pay for health care as well.

ExxonMobil responded to the US President by urging his administration to enact emergency measures.

Senegalese President Macky Sall highlighted the relationship that exists between Russia and African countries, recalling that the Eurasian nation “played a tremendous role in the independence of the African continent and this will never be forgotten”.

The crypto lending platform paused withdrawals as Bitcoin spiraled downwards, sending its own token plummeting. Here’s what happened.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR: U.S.-led sanctions are inadvertently undermining the dollar’s post-Second World War dominance. The growing number of countries threatened by U.S. and allied actions is forcing victims and potential targets to respond pro-actively.

Slip slidin’ away—that is what tends to happen to pro-worker reforms in our economic system. Things are structured so that without constant vigilance and struggle on our part, gains are gradually undone. A case in point: overtime pay.

Inflation continues to run hot—and now, finally, the debate about inflation is heating up.