Before the gale-force hurricane of Reaganomics swept through the United States in the 1980s, America very briefly entertained the adoption of a deliberate industrial policy. As in South Korea and certain European nations, the U.S. government would pick economic winners and losers and direct funds accordingly. This was no utopian idea. After World War II, a number of European governments …
Plutocrats torched the economy: Our new Gilded Age & the hollowing out of America’s middle class – ELIAS ISQUITH
You may recall how in 2013 — and then again in 2015 — President Obama tried to give his economic vision a snazzy name, something to compete with “trickle-down economics” in terms of memorability and pith. What he came up with, and has stuck with since, is “middle-out economics,” or sometimes “middle-class economics,” which is supposed to communicate his and …
GDP Is An Insufficient Measure Of True Economic Growth By Luis Miranda
Economic growth has bee at zero percent or lower for two or three years in a row in most of the western world. Cooked government numbers say that most so-called western powers have grown at 0.2% and that the recession that began in 2009 is over. In Europe, the Spanish government has been short of organizing a parade, because according …
The Average Age Of A Minimum Wage Worker In America Is 36 – Michael Snyder
Did you know that 89 percent of all minimum wage workers in the United States are not teens? At this point, the average age of a minimum wage worker in this country is 36, and 56 percent of them are women. Millions upon millions of Americans are working as hard as they can (often that means two or three jobs), …
US Economy Collapses Again – JACK RASMUS
Data released last week by the U.S. government showed the U.S. economy came to a near halt in the first three months of 2015, falling to nearly zero – i.e. a mere 0.2 percent annual growth rate for the January-March quarter. The collapse was the fourth time that the U.S. economy in the past four years either came to a …
Enforcing the Ukraine ‘Group Think’ – Robert Parry
It may be fitting that the U.S.-funded Radio Liberty would be the latest media outlet to join in the bashing of an American academic who dares to disagree with U.S. policies on Ukraine, which have included supporting a 2014 coup that ousted the elected president and installing a new regime in which neo-Nazis play a prominent role. After all, Radio …
How Shale Is Becoming The Dot-Com Bubble Of The 21st Century – Leonard Brecken
As I review the financials of one of the largest shale producers in the United States, Whiting Petroleum (WLL), I can’t help but notice the parallels to the .COM era of 1999 which, to some extent, has already returned to the technology and biotech sectors of today. Back then, the faster you burned cash to capture customers regardless of earnings …
Student-Loan Surge Undercuts Millennials’ Place in U.S. Economy – David Wilson
Surging student-loan debt represents a key risk to the economy’s expansion because wage gains are failing to keep up, according to Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. chief economist at Standard & Poor’s. As the attached chart illustrates, the dollar amount of borrowing has increased in each quarter since 2003, when data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York begins. …
The Dwindling US Economy – Paul Craig Roberts
The announcement today (April 29) of a barely positive GDP first quarter 2015 growth rate of 0.2 percent (two-tenths of one percent) is an intentional exaggeration. Today’s GDP report is the “advance estimate.” There will be two revisions, with the first occurring in one month on May 29. Although the “consensus estimate,” which is Wall Street’s estimate, declined dramatically over …
Obama’s Big Trade Failure – DEAN BAKER
The Obama administration is doing its full court press, pulling out all the stops to get Congress to approve the fast-track authority that is almost certainly necessary to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) through Congress. One of the biggest remaining stumbling blocks is that the deal will almost certainly not include provisions on currency. This means that parties to the …