Alternative Visions – US Economic Slowdown Ahead 2018 As US Debt Hits $70 Trillion and Trump Targets China Trade – 03.16.18

Dr. Rasmus identifies weakening retail sales and business inventories as sources of US GDP sharply slowing later this year. Trump’s tariffs as only opening skirmish in US trade war—with China not the rest of the world. Half of US $810 billion trade deficit in goods is with China. Watch next week Trump actions targeting China trade. Why China will not …

Alternative Visions – How Bankers Run the Fed and Donald ‘The Trumpet’ on Jobs – 06.23.17

Dr. Rasmus continues the review of the Federal Reserve Bank, showing how the private banks today control the Fed more than ever in recent decades. How the Fed’s structure permits private banking interests to dominate strategic decisions of the central bank, and how there control of the Fed is about to deepen further under Trump. Jack explains how the expansion …

Michael Snyder – As Predicted, Obamacare Is Absolutely Killing The Middle Class

The critics of Obamacare have been proven right.  The Obama administration promised that health insurance premiums would go down.  Instead, they have absolutely skyrocketed.  The Obama administration promised that Obamacare would not kill jobs.  Instead, firms are hiring fewer workers because of suffocating health care costs.  As you will see below, even the Federal Reserve is admitting this.  The Obama …

Shahien Nasiripour – The Feds Don’t Care If You Dropped Out of College. They Want Their Money Back

When it comes to collecting on student loans, the U.S. Department of Education treats college dropouts the same as Ivy League graduates: They just want the money back. New data show the perils of that approach. Dropouts who took out loans to finance the degrees they ultimately didn’t obtain often end up worse off for attending college. Unlike their peers who …

Linda Pentz Gunter – Radioactive Handouts: the Nuclear Subsidies Buried Inside Obama’s “Clean” Energy Budget

You don’t have to be a math wizard to understand the Obama administration’s just announced $4.15 trillion budget proposal for the 2017 fiscal year, but it helps. It also helps if you like gerunds, since pretty much every header in the administration’s Budget document is about “building,” “investing,” “reflecting,” “partnering” etc. But the most essential talent is being able to …

David Lindorff – What’s Behind the Fed’s Decision to Raise Interest Rates in a Struggling Economy?

Much has been written and broadcast over the past few weeks in the financial media and the business pages of general-interest newspapers debating the wisdom of the decision in December by Fed Chair Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates for the first time in almost a decade. On one side of this debate are people …

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.

Paul Buchheit – Great Embarrassments of an Unequal Society

America has experienced “gush-up” rather than “trickle-down.” The shame is on the adherents of unregulated free-market capitalism, who have assaulted us with the message of “winner-take-all” wealth over the common good. George Will perpetuates the neoliberal myth by quoting one of his idols, John Tamny: “Income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful…it provides the incentive for creative people to …

Wall Street Front Group Pleads for Government Help in New York Times OpEd By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

If you live outside of New York City, you’ve never heard of the Partnership for New York City. Even if you live inside New York City, unless you’re part of the black tie cocktail circuit, you’ve still never heard of the group. So when the New York Times gave a chunk of its opinion pages on Monday to Wylde as …

How the Fed screwed up the bond market – Jeff Cox

Live by central bank liquidity; die by central bank liquidity. That could well become the mantra for a bond market that, after years of support by the Federal Reserve and its global counterparts, now finds itself suffering under the unintended consequences of the trillions in easing distributed to allay the fears of a market in crisis. “Liquidity,” in fact, is the word …