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Hidden Agendas: Beware of the Government’s Push for a Digital Currency
The government wants your money. It will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but it wants your money any way it can get it. The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture, costly […]
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Economic Conditions and Hollow Victories
Among the very few things to look forward to on Labor Day is Jack Rasmus’s annual report on the state of US labor. Rasmus, an accomplished political-economist, riffs on the famous Frederick Engels book with Labor Day 2024: The Condition of the American Working Class Today. It may come as a surprise to some, but […]
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Pandering to the Taxpayers
In every presidential election, office seekers elbow each other to position themselves as favoring tax breaks for the electorate. Kamala Harris raced in quickly with proposals for a tax break for the middle class and a tax deduction of up to $50,000 for new small businesses ─ two debt producing polices. To her credit, the […]
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How Unelected Regulators Unleashed the Derivatives Monster and How It Might Be Tamed
It was not the highly visible acts of Congress but the seemingly mundane and often nontransparent actions of regulatory agencies that empowered the great transformation of the U.S. commercial banks from traditionally conservative deposit-taking and lending businesses into providers of wholesale financial risk management and intermediation services. — Professor Saule Omarova, “The Quiet Metamorphosis, How […]
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Unless You Have Something to “Sell” …
Let us first dispense with a misleading (and superannuated) word: “society.” You and I, mere human beings scrambling to survive, inhabit a marketplace. From the moment we step outside our door, figuratively speaking, contractual and civil laws circumscribe each and every interaction we have with our fellow citizens/consumers. (I’m mindful that, with the absolute governance […]
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Is the Reign of the Dollar Coming to an End?
Jiang Tiefeng (China), Stone Forest, 1979. In early June, a rumour began to circulate – which was widely reported in the Indian press as true – that the government of Saudi Arabia had allowed its petrodollar agreement with the United States to lapse. This agreement, made in 1974, is quite straight-forward and fulfills various needs […]
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Why Does the Government Borrow When It Can Print?
In the first seven months of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, net interest (payments minus income) on the federal debt reached $514 billion, exceeding spending on both national defense ($498 billion) and Medicare ($465 billion). The interest tab also exceeded all the money spent on veterans, education, and transportation combined. Spending on interest is now the second […]
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It’s Time for Citi to Cut Ties with Genocide
The U.S. arms and supports Israel’s genocide and one of its largest banks, Citibank, plays a key role. Our latest visual in partnership with the Banking on Solidarity campaign illustrates how Citi helps arm Israel, finances weapons companies that make the weapons Israel uses in Gaza, and invests in the Israeli financial and tech sectors. […]
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