Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Interest rate”
Dr. Rasmus debunks the media hype about wages now rising, showing how in fact real weekly earnings for non-management workers (both full and part time) over the past year amounts to only 6 cents to 8 cents per hour, based even on government Dept. of Labor data. And the trend is downward, as wage(hourly wage x hours worked) earnings change …
Updates on US working conditions 2017, looming US recession and plans for negative interest rates, schools raise funds by shaming poor school children, and the economics of fascism. Major discussion: why FDR’s New Deal (successful trickle up economics) was not repeated after 2008 (unsuccessful trickle down economics). Consequences of post-1945 destruction of coalition that produced New Deal. Download this episode …
Dr. Rasmus initially comments on the continuing slowdown of prices and the Federal Reserve’s 9 year long phony targeting of 2% inflation. Rasmus reviews his just published article in the European Financial Review, “The Limits of Central Banks’ Emerging Policy Shift” (available on his blog, jackrasmus.com) and what’s next after the Fed’s Jackson Hole gathering in late August. Next a comment …
Dr. Rasmus explains how the global capitalist economy entered a new phase of evolution with the 2008-09 global financial crash and recession, and how central banks have become the primary economic policy institution for the advanced economies. Central banks have been transformed since 2008 from institutions designed to bail out the private banks in periods of crises, into institutions that …
A look at the role of the private financial regime within the Deep State
The US stock markets are recognized by a growing number of analysts as approaching, or already in, bubble territory. Yet stocks have ratcheted up another 15%-20% since Trump won the election. The run-up is sometimes called the ‘Trump Trade’. Investors have been ploughing in even more anticipating another stage of corporate profits subsidization by Trump and Republican fiscal policies—Trump proposed $6.2 trillion in tax cuts, deregulation (Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, EPA, Mergers & Acquisitions encouragement, etc.), shifting hundreds of billions $ from social programs to defense spending, and $1 trillion in Trump proposed infrastructure spending. Jack explains how expectations of the policy shift to fiscal from central bank, monetary policies from 2008-2016, is now the new strategy for subsidizing corporate profits and investor further wealth gains. Central bank monetary policy had run its course and began to develop contradictions. Fiscal policy—tax cuts, deregulation, infrastructure and defense spending—is the new strategy. US stocks surged in anticipation of the new profit opportunities. But signs Trump may not deliver have stopped investors in their tracks this past week. Failure to deliver policy may result in a major stock pullback in 2017. Jack cites various sources that the current stock market bubble has peaked.
The Fed raised interest rates again this past week. Jack explains it has little to do with it having reached its inflation or employment targets, but represents the major policy shift underway by US economic elites. From Fed low interest policy for eight years subsidizing stock, bond and financial assets—and thereby corporate and investor profits and incomes of the wealthiest 1%–the shift now underway is to subsidize profits and incomes of the 1% by cutting taxes, deregulation, and moderate infrastructure spending. Sustained low Fed rates were beginning to cause more instability in financial markets after 8 years. They played their part in boosting profits and incomes; now another policy ‘mix’ is emerging. Jack shows how Fed 2% inflation and job targets are phony justifications for Fed low rate policy continuation; how and why long term rates which the Fed doesn’t control will continue to rise, and what the global responses and effects in Europe, Japan and China will be to the new Fed direction. Will the Fed be used by the US economic elite to check Trump? Possibly.
To stimulate the economy, create new jobs and generate new GDP requires an injection of new money. Borrowing from the bond markets or off-balance-sheet in public/private partnerships won’t do it. If Congress won’t issue money directly, it should borrow from banks, which create money on their books when they make loans. The Trump agenda, it seems, is not set in …
Italy Referendum, Italy-EU Bank Crisis, and Europe Unraveling’
You don’t need a recipe to make fermented or brined pickles, but you do need to keep the correct ratio of salt to water. Brine strength is the weight of salt as a percentage of the weight of the solution. Older recipes suggest that the salt weight be 10 percent of the weight of the solution—or one cup of salt …
