Episodes
Saturday Jan 24, 2015
Alternative Visions - The Bomb, the Fuse and the Dud (Part 1) - 01.24.15
Saturday Jan 24, 2015
Saturday Jan 24, 2015
Jack Rasmus discusses yesterday’s big announcement of a massive $1.5 trillion Quantitative Easing (QE) money injection program by the European Central Bank, and its consequences for the Eurozone and global economy. After nearly $9 trillion in total QEs by US, UK, Japan and now the Eurozone, the global economy continues to slowly drift into recession and deflation. Claims by central banks and politicians that QEs are about growing the economy, lowering unemployment or raising inflation to a stable 2% are debunked as empirically false. QEs are about bailing out financial institutions and the new finance capital elite and then ballooning their balance sheets well beyond bailout as well. Jack explains the several flaws and consequences of QE: it doesn’t result in lending for real investment, leads to financial speculation and bubbles, accelerates incomes of super wealthy (via stock buybacks, dividend payouts, etc.), raises global private debt by business, reduces incomes of middle classes, sets off competitive devaluations and currency wars, leads to real goods deflation and financial asset market inflation (stocks, junk bonds, forex, etc.), and accelerates global income inequality trends. Jack explains the connections between QE and fiscal austerity policies. And represents a growing desperation by financial capital elites and their institutions to ensure growing incomes for themselves by artificial means (free money) and at the direct expense of incomes of the rest of society. The linkage of QE and ‘labor market reforms’ (attacks on wages) are noted.
(Next week’s show: Part 2 ‘the fuse’, the coming elections in Greece and ascendancy of the left party, Syriza. Will it mean the beginning of the end of neoliberalism and a fight back against QE, free money, and austerity?)
Monday Jan 12, 2015
Alternative Visions - Key Trends in the Slowing Global Economy - 01.10.15
Monday Jan 12, 2015
Monday Jan 12, 2015
Jack Rasmus surveys the most critical trends today in the global economy that continue to reveal a fragile condition, reflective in recessions in Europe, Japan, Russia-Ukraine, and a growing number of emerging market economies as of year-end 2014. A short list of trends discussed include a long run slowdown in the rate of growth of ‘real’ investment globally; a drift toward deflation in goods and services prices; a sharp rise in private sector debt—especially corporate debt and in particular corporate junk bond debt; the continued expansion of shadow banks and their ultra high net worth finance capital elite who keep financial asset bubbles brewing worldwide by diverting investment from real goods and services and therefore real jobs, wages, and consumer income growth; a shift toward a greater proportion of part time and temp workers as share of the total work force; wage stagnation and continued rise in income inequality worldwide, as capital incomes continue to accelerate while wages stagnate. Jack also gives a preliminary analysis of the USA’s 3rd quarter 2014 reported 5% GDP rise, explaining how the surge was due to temporary factors that have already begun to disappear in 2015, ensuring the USA’s return to its 5 year long ‘stop-go’ scenario.
Saturday Jan 03, 2015
Alternative Visions - China Chasing Its Shadows - 01.03.15
Saturday Jan 03, 2015
Saturday Jan 03, 2015
Jack Rasmus discusses China’s efforts since 2010 to tame its foreign ‘shadow banks’ that have been playing a central role in creating financial bubbles in its residential housing, local infrastructure, and (Yuan) currency markets in recent years. Jack explains how China--unlike the USA, Europe and Japan—rapidly recovered from the 2008-09 global crash and recession by introducing a 15% of GDP fiscal stimulus focused on direct government investment. China’s GDP quickly surged in the 10-14% range 2010-13, while the USA, Europe and Japan relied primarily on monetary policies plus fiscal austerity and their recoveries lagged. However, China’s 2009 stimulus measures also included massive monetary injections, both by China’s central bank and even more via liquidity in-flows as China opened its doors to western banking, including shadow banks. Shadow bank liquidity in particular flowed in local housing, construction markets and China’s currency markets, creating financial asset bubbles in all three. To check the growing bubbles, and to try to tame the shadow banks, China shifted policies in early 2013 to reduce direct government spending and to have its central bank retract money supply. The result was a slowing of China’s real economy in 2013. China reversed and followed later in 2013 with a mini-fiscal and monetary stimulus to try to restore growth, that did little for real growth but stimulated shadow banks and bubbles further. Similar policies in early 2014 did little to stimulate the real economy, but did tame residential housing and currency bubbles somewhat. China continues today to struggle to tame its shadow banks and bubbles while experiencing slower real growth. Since 2010 shadow banks have pumped more than 20 trillion Yuan--$3.5 trillion--into China. China today experiences the slowest growth in 24 years, a virtually flat manufacturing sector and a probable less than 7% GDP growth in 2015. Jack explains how China’s struggle with shadow banks, its global capitalist speculators, and the financial asset bubbles they create represents a major contraction in global capitalism in the 21st century, and a continuation of other economies’ similar, even less successful, efforts to tame shadow bankers and their financial bubbles in the 1980s, 1990s, in southern Europe since 2010, and currently in Argentina, Venezuela, and Ukraine.