Progressive Radio Network, May 01, 2016 This past week the U.S. government announced the country’s economy rose in the January-March 2016 at a mere 0.5 percent annual growth rate. Since the U.S., unlike other countries, estimates its GDP based on annual rates, that means for the first quarter 2016 the U.S. economy grew by barely 0.1 percent over the previous …
With Impeccable Timing, ‘Economic Miracle’ in Spain Unravels
Since the granddaddy of all housing bubbles popped in Spain between 2008 and 2009, unleashing one of the deepest recessions in living memory, the nation’s public debt has more than doubled, from just over 40% of GDP to almost exactly 100% today. Last year, despite the fact that Spain grew faster than almost any other European economy, the government managed …
Global spending on health is expected to increase to $18.28 trillion worldwide by 2040
Global inequities in health spending are expected to persist and intensify over the next 25 years, according to a new study that estimates total health financing in countries around the world. Published in The Lancet on April 13, 2016 “National spending on health by source for 184 countriesbetween 2013 and 2040” draws from a joint research collaboration between the World Bank Group …
Barry Grey – IMF downgrades growth projections, warns of “synchronized slowdown”
The International Monetary Fund’s “World Economic Outlook” (WEO), released Tuesday in advance of this week’s semiannual meetings in Washington of the IMF and World Bank, gives a gloomy and fraught estimate of the state of the world economy, nearly eight years after the 2008 financial meltdown. The IMF has again downwardly revised its projection for global growth, the fourth straight …
GEOFFREY MCDONALD – The UN’s Happiness Propaganda
How are you today? This stupid question, no matter how well meaning it may be, always presumes that you should be happy. Even when it comes from someone who has to ask it a hundred times a day, people appreciate the concern and answer it, as if they have a personal relation with the cashier. The expectation is that somehow …
Michael Specter – Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, and AIDS
It will take somebody with more psychiatric sophistication than me to figure out how Hillary Clinton could have come to praise Ronald and Nancy Reagan, as she initially did earlier today, for having started the American conversation about AIDS “when, before, nobody talked about it.” President Reagan’s first speech on the subject wasn’t until May 31, 1987. By then, more than twenty-five …
Jomo Kwame Sundaram – Some Real Costs of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Nearly Half a Million Jobs Lost in the US Alone
The Trans-Pacifc Partnership (TPP) Agreement, recently agreed to by twelve Pacifc Rim countries led by the United States,1 promises to ease many restrictions on cross-border transactions and harmonize regulations. Proponents of the agreement have claimed significant economic benefits, citing modest overall net GDP gains, ranging from half of one percent in the United States to 13 percent in Vietnam after fifteen …
Trends This Week – Is the fed stupid, or just playing stupid? – 02.24.16
The Federal Reserve operates the largest printing press on the planet. It seeks to hire the most qualified people to address current economic conditions and design strategies to maximize future market potential. However, when crisis strikes and with global equity markets in turmoil, those hired admit they are out of touch with the present and blindsided by the future. As minutes from their own meetings show, when the Panic of ’08 hit, which the Trends Research Institute forecast and named, the Fed was blindsided. Were they stupid then, or just playing stupid? Today, from China’s economy growing at its slowest pace in a quarter century, Japan sinking back into recession, Europe’s stagnant Gross Domestic Product, Asian economies jolted by plummeting exports, emerging-market economies and currencies crashing, commodity indexes gyrating between 1991-to-1999 lows, etc., the “outlook” is clear: Global Recession. What’s the Fed’s position? Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer recently said Fed officials “simply do not know” what course of action to anticipate since “it is still early to judge the ramifications of the increased market volatility of the first seven weeks of 2016.”
Are they stupid, or playing stupid by not seeing the Panic of 2016
Trends This Week – False faith, not hard data, boosting markets. Can it last? – 02.17.16
Trend forecaster Gerald Celente lays it on the table, dissecting why the bounce back in markets the last few days is bunk. After equity markets worldwide suffered one of the worst starts of a new year in history, stocks suddenly rebounded. For example, the Nikkei closed out last week at its lowest level since October 2014. But what economic fundamentals spiked prices higher this week? Was it the dismal news that Japan’s economy contracted 1.4 percent in the last quarter? No. What boosted stocks prices was the twisted rationale that despite the Bank of Japan firing two rounds of blanks from its “monetary bazooka,” the lousy Gross Domestic Product number was cause to launch yet another round of stimulus. Before Chinese markets opened Monday after being closed for a week, the Shanghai Index had fallen 47 percent since its peak in June. Was it on the rotten news that China’s exports fell 11.2 percent in January and imports plunged 18.8 percent that markets rallied? No. As with Japan, the dismal data was taken as a positive sign that the People’s Bank of China would take bold measures to boost sluggish growth. “Confidence,” trust the effectiveness of the rigged market game, not economic fundamentals, was the rationale for stocks suddenly moving higher. Tuesday’s New York Times headline summed it up: “Global Shares Buoyed by Investor Faith.” Yes, faith in more failed central-bank stimulus and stock and bond buyback sideshows… not faith in true price discovery and robust Gross Domestic product growth.
Ivana Kottasova and Alanna Petroff – Putin prepares Russia for massive privatization drive
Russia’s economic crisis is so bad that President Vladimir Putin is now hoping to sell stakes in some of the nation’s most prized businesses to raise money. Putin discussed the privatization plans with officials on Monday, saying the sales should be made quickly but not at “bargain basement prices,” according to a government statement. Strategically important companies should not be up for …