Monday, August 6, 2018

BERNIE SANDERS AND HILLARY CLINTON' LOOTING BANKSTERS

Bernie Sanders holds rallies to prop up the Democratic Party in Michigan
6 August 2018
Senator Bernie Sanders traveled to Michigan Sunday to campaign for Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic candidate for governor in the state’s August 7 primary. With less than 48 hours before polls open, Sanders was in full “revolutionary mode,” delivering denunciations of the power of the corporate elite to a crowd of 2,000. As Leon Trotsky wrote in 1938, “The reformists have a good smell for what the audience wants.”
From William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” to Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” and Franklin Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights,” the Democrats have postured as “friends of the people” to block the working class from breaking with bourgeois politics, earning the party the apt moniker of “graveyard of social movements.”
Sanders is the latest representative of this tradition. Long gone, however, are the days when American capitalism could provide the economic basis for social reform. Instead, Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign denouncing Hillary Clinton as a tool of Wall Street and calling for “political revolution” ended with his endorsement of Clinton, who had conspired with the Democratic National Committee to subvert his campaign and allow the despised candidate of Wall Street and the CIA to win the nomination.
During the general election, Sanders campaigned as a loyal supporter of the Democratic Party, which is responsible for creating the social inequality he claims to oppose. Under the Barack Obama and Bill Clinton administrations, the Democrats imposed massive cuts in welfare, education, food stamps and other social programs, while they bailed out the banks, cut taxes for the rich and eliminated corporate regulations. In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, the Obama administration oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth in American history from the working class to the rich.
Now, in the midst of the growth of working-class struggles among teachers, UPS workers and other sections of the working class, Sanders is once again tacking to the left.
In his speech on Sunday, Sanders decried the fact that three billionaires own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the American population. One of those billionaires, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, “sees his wealth increase by $275 million every single day, yet he has thousands of workers who are earning wages so low that they have to go on government programs,” Sanders declared.
El-Sayed, whose popular call for “Medicare for all” has brought him within single digits of his main Democratic primary opponent, is also responding to what the focus groups and polls tell him voters want to hear. He spoke of his own personal biography, recounting his story as the child of an immigrant and father of a young, biracial daughter. He echoed the vague slogans of Sanders, saying, in reference to the domination of corporate power, “We’ve got a broken politics.”
None of this cheap talk costs the corporations a dime. While Both Sanders and El-Sayed spoke of the need to expand social programs and provide health care to all, neither addressed the central question: Where will the trillions of dollars required to fund such programs be found?
The funding of social programs, the provision of good jobs, health care, education, food, clean water and infrastructure will require a social revolution to place the productive forces in the hands of the working class, which produces all of society’s wealth.
More notable than what they said is what Sanders and El-Sayed did not say. Neither made reference to the wars of US imperialism, which have cost millions of lives, or to the fact that the military and intelligence apparatus drain the country of hundreds of billions of dollars each year.
Sanders all but passed over Trump’s attack on immigrants and did not mention that more than 500 children remain separated from their parents in detention centers and foster homes across the country. Neither discussed the fact that the police murder over 1,000 people each year, nor that the National Security Agency continues to monitor the communications of the world’s population.
These omissions underscore the fact that Sanders has been deployed by the Democratic Party to block the growth of social opposition and channel it behind the two-party system.
He has spent most of his political life formally outside the Democratic Party, criticizing it as a party of Wall Street and big business. But today, at precisely the moment when tens of millions of Americans are drawing this conclusion, Sanders has made himself the Democrats’ chief spokesperson, urging his supporters to turn their opposition to inequality into campaigns to elect Democrats to office.
The Democratic Party has become the preferred party of Wall Street, big business and the military-intelligence agencies. The right-wing billionaire Koch brothers have announced that they will now fund Democratic initiatives and campaigns. Former FBI Director James Comey tweeted that supporters of the intelligence agencies “must vote for Democrats this fall.”
The Democratic Party has subordinated opposition to Trump’s right-wing attacks on immigrants, his tax cuts for the rich and his efforts to appoint a new right-wing Supreme Court justice to their hysterical and unfounded campaign to blame Russia for all of the social ills that plague America. If the Democrats retake Congress this fall, their cadre of national security and intelligence agents and former combat officers will hold the balance of power (see: “The CIA Democrats”).
While the “progressive” Democratic operatives around the El-Sayed and Sanders treat their differences with Clinton and the Republicans as an “intramural scrimmage”—as Obama called the conflict between Clinton and Trump—they treat opposition from the left as an act of war.
The most significant aspect of the events in Michigan was how representatives of the El-Sayed campaign responded to reporters from the World Socialist Web Site and a team campaigning for Niles Niemuth, the Socialist Equality Party candidate in Michigan’s 12th Congressional District. WSWS reporters were denied press credentials at Cobo Hall in Detroit and at a rally in Ypsilanti, even as the El-Sayed campaign acknowledged that it had granted access to capitalist publications such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
In Detroit, El-Sayed campaign officials said they would not allow the distribution of articles that were “negative” toward the El-Sayed campaign and acceded only when WSWS campaigners explained that the First Amendment also applied to articles critical of El-Sayed. In Ypsilanti, Niemuth and his supporters were blocked from distributing material outside of the venue.
The response by the Democratic Party comes not from a position of strength, but from weakness. The WSWS was widely known among attendees, especially among autoworkers and young people, and many at the rally expressed hostility to the El-Sayed campaign’s act of political censorship. Sanders, El-Sayed and this supposedly left faction of the Democratic Party are concerned above all that those they are attracting through empty promises and fraudulent politics will have access to a genuine socialist and revolutionary perspective.
The growing mood of social opposition must break free of the stranglehold of the two parties and the trade unions and develop into a massive revolutionary movement to abolish the capitalist system and place the world’s productive forces in the hands of the international working class. The Socialist Equality Party is spearheading this fight.
Eric London

THE STAGGERING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY UNDER OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION SERVING THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS.

THE ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL COST OF "CHEAP" MEXICAN LABOR TO THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.

AND IT'S WORKING!

OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11 TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!


Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US

history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.

OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to

the top 1% of the world’s wealthy. 



SEN. BERNIE SANDERS

“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER

YOU THOUGHT OBAMA INVITED OBAMANOMICS and started the assault on the American middle-class?


NOPE!


“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”




Clinton Foundation Put On Watch List Of Suspicious ‘Charities’







OBAMA: SERVANT OF THE 1%



Richest one percent controls nearly half of global wealth



The richest one percent of the world’s population now controls 48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46 percent last year.





The report found that the growth of global inequality has accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the values of financial assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.


Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019

By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.

This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.

Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.

The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.

An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.


In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”

Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.

The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”


DICK MORRIS:

On America’s First Family of Crime….. NO! Not the Bushes again!


Clinton global hucksterism – Selling out America like they sold out the Lincoln Bedroom.




HILLARY CLINTON: CRONY CLASS’  “Hope and Change” huckster’s successor!


“I serve Obama’s cronies first, illegals second and together we will loot the American middle-class to double our figures. It’s called BAILOUTS! Evita Peron Clinton





At this point, Clinton is the choice of most multimillionaires to be the next occupant of the White House. A recent CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53 percent support for Clinton in a contest with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points better than Obama’s showing in the 2012 election with the same group.



Sen. Bernie Sanders – America’s answer to Wall Street’s looting, the war on the American middle-class and jobs for legals!





“At this point, Clinton is the choice of most multimillionaires to be the next occupant of the White House. A recent CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53 percent support for Clinton in a contest with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points better than Obama’s showing in the 2012 election with the same group.”


THE CRONY CLASS:


OBAMACLINTONOMICS was created by BILLARY CLINTON!


Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.





“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”




OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM


The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.


Megan McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's new Mandarin class.







PATRICK BUCHANAN: OBAMA’S ASSAULT  ON AMERICA BEGINS AT OUR BORDERS




WHO REALLY PAYS FOR THE CRIMES OF OBAMA’S CRONY DONORS???


LAST WEEK BARACK OBAMA CELEBRATED FIVE YEARS OF THE LOOTING BY HIS WALL STREET BANKSTERS… now it’s back to cutting social programs to pay for all that rape by the 1% he represents. The following week it will be back to the AMNESTY HOAX to legalize Mexico’s looting of America and make it legal that Mexicans get our jobs first… they already do!

As in previous budget crises under the Obama administration, the events are being stage-managed by the two corporate-controlled parties to give the illusion of partisan gridlock and confrontation over principles—in this case, whether to go forward with the implementation of the Obama health care program—while behind the scenes all factions within the ruling elite agree that massive cuts must be carried through in basic federal social programs.


OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM – A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS



GET THIS BOOK
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies


by Michelle Malkin
In her shocking new book,  Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.


PATRICK BUCHANAN 

After Obama has completely destroyed the American economy, handed millions of jobs to illegals and billions of dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?




OBAMANOMICS: IS IT WORKING???
 Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019
By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.

This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.

Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.

The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.

An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.

In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”

Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.

The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”



POLL: MOST INCOMPETENT AND DISHONEST PRESIDENT SINCE…. Well, isn’t Obama merely Bush’s THIRD and FOURTH TERMS??






OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM

A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS





PATRICK BUCHANAN


After Obama has completely destroyed the American economy, handed millions of jobs to illegals and billions of dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?






INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES

collapse of household income in the US… STILL BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED TO ILLEGALS… they already get our jobs and are voting for more!




INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA… most jobs go to illegals.


AS HIS CRONY BANKSTERS CONTINUE TO LOOT, INCOMES PLUMMET FOR AMERICANS (LEGALS).


GOOD TIME FOR AMNESTY FOR MILLIONS OF LOOTING MEXICANS?


MORE HERE:


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/and-still-democrat-party-wants-millions.html


“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”

  

"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."

HILLARY CLINTON'S BIGGEST DONORS ARE OBAMA'S CRIMINAL CRONY 
BANKSTERS!
"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."

Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy

Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy

By Barry Grey
21 July 2015
The US Federal Reserve Board last week released its semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress, providing an assessment of the state of the American economy and outlining the central bank’s monetary policy going forward. The report, along with Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s testimony before both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as a speech by Yellen the previous week in Cleveland, present a grim picture of the reality behind the official talk of economic “recovery.”
In her prepared remarks to Congress last Wednesday and Thursday, Yellen said, “Looking forward, prospects are favorable for further improvement in the US labor market and the economy more broadly.”

She reiterated her assurances that while the Fed would likely begin to raise its benchmark federal funds interest rate later this year from the 0.0 to 0.25 percent level it has maintained since shortly after the 2008 financial crash, it would do so only slowly and gradually, keeping short-term rates well below historically normal levels for an indefinite period.
This was an expected, but nevertheless welcome, signal to the American financial elite, which has enjoyed a spectacular rise in corporate profits, stock values and personal wealth since 2009 thanks to the flood of virtually free money provided by the Fed.

"But as Yellen’s remarks and the Fed report indicate, the explosion of asset values and wealth accumulation at the very top of the economic ladder has occurred alongside an intractable and continuing slump in the real economy."
In her prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen noted the following features of the performance of the US economy over the first six months of 2015:
* A sharp decline in the rate of economic growth as compared to 2014, including an actual contraction in the first quarter of the year.
* A substantial slackening (19 percent) in average monthly job-creation, from 260,000 last year to 210,000 thus far in 2015.
* Declines in domestic spending and industrial production.
In her July 10 speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Yellen cited an even longer list of negative indices, including:
* Growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) since the official beginning of the recovery in June, 2009 has averaged a mere 2.25 percent per year, a full one percentage point less than the average rate over the 25 years preceding what Yellen called the “Great Recession.”
* While manufacturing employment nationwide has increased by about 850,000 since the end of 2009, there are still almost 1.5 million fewer manufacturing jobs than just before the recession.
* Real GDP and industrial production both declined in the first quarter of this year. Industrial production continued to fall in April and May.
* Residential construction (despite extremely low mortgage rates by historical standards) has remained “quote soft.”
* Productivity growth has been “weak,” largely because “Business owners and managers… have not substantially increased their capital expenditures,” and “Businesses are holding large amounts of cash on their balance sheets.”
* Reflecting the general stagnation and even slump in the real economy, core inflation rose by only 1.2 percent over the past 12 months.
The Monetary Policy Report issued by the Fed includes facts that are, if anything, even more alarming, including:
* “Labor productivity in the business sector is reported to have declined in both the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.”
* “Exports fell markedly in the first quarter, held back by lackluster growth abroad.”
* “Overall construction activity remains well below its pre-recession levels.”
* “Since the recession began, the gains in… nominal compensation [workers’ wages and benefits] have fallen well short of their pre-recession averages, and growth of real compensation has fallen short of productivity growth over much of this period.”
* “Overall business investment has turned down as investment in the energy sector has plunged. Business investment fell at an annual rate of 2 percent in first quarter… Business outlays for structures outside of the energy sector also declined in the first quarter…”

The report incorporates the Fed’s projections for US economic growth, published following the June meeting of the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. They include a downward revision of the projection for 2015 to 1.8 percent-2.0 percent from the March projection of 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent.

That the US economy continues to stagnate and even contract is indicated by two surveys released last week while Yellen was testifying before Congress. The Fed reported that factory production failed to increase in June for the second straight month and output in the auto sector fell 3.7 percent. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales unexpectedly fell in June, declining by 0.3 percent.
These statistics follow the employment report for June, which showed that the share of the US working-age population either employed or actively looking for work, known as the labor force participation rate, fell to 62.6 percent, its lowest level in 38 years.
 During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job.

The disastrous figures on business investment are perhaps the most telling indicators of the underlying crisis of the capitalist system. The Fed report attributes the sharp decline so far this year primarily to the dramatic fall in oil prices and resulting contraction in investment and construction in the energy sector. But the plunge in oil prices is itself a symptom of a general slowdown in the world economy.
Moreover, a dramatic decline in productive investment is common to all of the major industrialized economies of Europe and North America. In its World Economic Outlook of last April, the International Monetary Fund for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis acknowledged that there was no prospect for an early return to pre-recession levels of economic growth, linking this bleak prognosis to a general and pronounced decline in productive investment.
The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process.
The economic crisis in the US and internationally is not simply a conjunctural downturn. It is a systemic crisis of global capitalism, centered in the US. 
A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself.

While the economy is starved of productive investment, entirely parasitic and socially destructive activities such as stock buybacks, dividend hikes and mergers and acquisitions return to pre-crash levels and head for new heights. US corporations have spent more on stock buybacks so far this year than on factories and equipment.
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009.

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