Economy/Economics

One of the slogans I learned in an earlier, albeit brief, phase of my life was called the 5 Ps: “Prior planning prevents poor performance.”

(Image:  Wikimedia Commons)
The over 1000 point plunge of the stock market on February 27th and broader ruptures of the financial system last week have been yet another wake-up call for those who have been contented so far to “live in the moment” of fast money.

The victories of Bernie Sanders in the early primaries had people talking about socialist revolutions, while Biden’s wins on Super Tuesday (in largely conservatives states) have tempered that enthusiasm.  This is an important reminder of something we all need to remember:  The Capitalists already won.  There may still be a few scattered enclaves of subsistence farmers and indigenous peoples who haven’t been forced to pay to exist, but in the West they won a long time ago.  That victory has been so complete that we don’t even notice anymore.  It’s completely normal to us to rent our lives aw

This week, the markets took a 1000 point hit which was more than a little startling for many investors since the last 1000 point fall only happened three days prior… all in all bringing the financial markets to lows not seen since April 2008, and veering dangerously close to a precipice which has 1929 written all over it.

‘Super Tuesday’ in the 2020 presidential election season is over and Senator Bernie Sanders’s time as the unlikely frontrunner for the Democratic nomination may have stopped just as quick as it began. Despite an unprecedented smear campaign coordinated by the party leadership and corporate media against him, the self-described “democratic socialist” not only managed to single-handedly de-stigmatize the latter as a dirty word in U.S. politics but at one point seemed like he had improbably overtaken former Vice President Joe Biden as the favorite to be the party nominee.

The growing popularity of an American social democratic presidential candidate who calls himself a democratic socialist has revived every anti-humanity distortion of the past, emanating from the tiny minority ruling our country through its servant class of professionals in media and politics.

The economic calculation argument (ECA) has to do with the claim that, in the absence of market prices, a socialist economy would be unable to make rational choices concerning the allocation of resources and that this would make socialism an impracticable proposition. Tracing the historical development of this argument, this article goes on to consider some of its basic assumptions about how the price mechanism actually works in practice; in so doing, it attempts to demonstrate that the argument is based upon fundamentally shaky foundations.

Campaigning for the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump promised that, if he was elected, “American worker[s] will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.”
Has he kept this promise?

The genius of the World Bank was to recognize that it’s not necessary to occupy a country in order to impose tribute, or to take over its industry, agriculture and land. Instead of bullets, it uses financial maneuvering.
— Michael Hudson, 2019

The bestselling Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream is more than a must read, it is a have to immediately read! Glantz covers the beginnings and the rash aftermath of the 2008 Subprime Housing bubble.