Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
The failure of the Silicon Valley Bank and its knock-on effects such as the bailout of Credit Suisse has elicited the usual flurry of social-psychologizing in the ‘quality press’. On a recent New York Times podcast, the former Treasury official Morgan Ricks reached new heights of (...)
As discussed by Marxist economist Sam Williams on his Critique of Crisis Theory blog, early in March, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in California, the “favorite bank of the area’s tech companies and associated venture capitalists”, announced it was selling its government bonds to raise cash. Fearful (...)
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in California on March 10 set off a chain reaction as depositors withdrew funds causing it and other small banks to fail or face serious problems, among them Signature Bank in New York, and First Republic Bank in San Francisco. Stock markets worldwide (...)
Portland socialist Shamus Cooke has warned that the ruling class is conjuring up a recession to wipe out recent workers’ gains. Here he writes that we need a national response that combines action from below with steps toward workers’ political independence.
The U.S. labor movement made (...)
Throughout October and November, the media and especially the Left have been reporting what they called a “strike wave.” Is there one?
Today in the United States we have an uneven economic recovery. Employment is improving, theoretically giving workers great leverage. An extraordinary 4.4 (...)
In 1979, when Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker chair of the Federal Reserve, the mandate was clear. Tackle inflation, whatever the cost. And so he did. In late 1980, interest rates reached a record high of 20%, and inflation fell from a peak of 11.6% to 3.7% in 1983. For the capitalist (...)
This article is based on a lecture given for an educational meeting of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America Labor Branch on May 9, 2021.
After defeat of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) organizing drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, the (...)
For some on the left, the economic breakthrough brought on by the pandemic was the general consensus, not least among economists, for an astonishing increase in fiscal spending. Relative to the economy’s size, the stimulus introduced so far in the US is already double (...)
WE LIVE IN an extraordinary moment. One in which many cross currents tussle for sustained dominance. A moment when armed white supremacy groups attempt break-ins to legislative offices in states like Michigan. One in which the science of contagion is in battle with a myopic individualism, (...)
Persistent Inequalities: Wage Disparity Under Capitalist Competition By Howard Botwinick Haymarket Books, 2018, 370 pages, $28 paper.
PERSISTENT INEQUALITIES, BY former union organizer and continuing workplace and political activist turned political economist Howard Botwinick, was first (...)
Suzi Weissman interviews Robert Brenner for her “Beneath the Surface” broadcast on KPFK in Los Angeles.
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Suzi Weissman: Welcome to Jacobin Radio. Today we’re going to talk about the state of the economy. I’ve invited Robert Brenner back for the hour in conversation on politics and (...)
Move over, Mr. Grinch: the executives at General Motors have you beat.
Just after Thanksgiving, GM declared that in 2019 it will close three major assembly and two smaller transmission facilities in North America. The bombshell announcement, which came despite GM’s recent robust profit reports, (...)
Job security has never been a feature of capitalism. As competition drives accumulation from one industry or location to another in search of profits via the ups and downs of periodic crises, it necessarily alters employment patterns and the organization of work. Over the long haul, U.S. (...)
Americans today face a dual crisis: rising rents and increasingly unaffordable housing markets. The housing crisis, far from being over, has metastasized. This new set of problems is confounding economists, who are left to view the situation through the narrow lens of mainstream orthodoxy—one (...)
WALL STREET is still out of control. Seven years ago, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department bailed out the largest financial institutions in this country because they were considered too big to fail. But almost every one is bigger today than it was before the bailout. If any were to (...)
DETROIT — WHERE 85% of the working class once owned homes — has been suffering a waterless hurricane. Predatory mortgage practices that disproportionately targeted African-American homeowners and inflated mortgages resulted in foreclosure on 25% of all residential buildings in the city between (...)
DESPITE HAPPY TALK of Detroit “rebounding” from bankruptcy, the basic problems remain: lack of jobs, deep poverty, the state takeover of the public schools and a 28% decrease in state revenue sharing over the last decade.
If one statistic could sum up the problem, the median Detroit family (...)
INEQUALITY HAS BECOME a heated political issue with the eruption of the Occupy movement, followed by the spread of minimum wage struggles — including the election of socialist candidate Kshama Sawant to Seattle city council — and union organizing efforts and strikes in the fast food industry and (...)
LIKE MOST OF president Obama’s pronouncements, the State of the Union reflected a signature basketball move as well as his governing method: quick head-fake left, then drive to the right. The rhetoric soars, while the poverty of its substance is obscured by the rapturous applause of the (...)
SOME SERIOUS RULING class intervention finally presented John Boehner an instruction he couldn’t refuse: Get the Harry Reid-Mitch McConnell Senate deal to the House floor for a straight vote to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. Tell the Tea Party that you know where they’re coming (...)
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