Trump revokes security clearance for former CIA chief Brennan: Ruling class warfare intensifies
17 August 2018
As the conflict within the US state apparatus intensifies, the character of the divisions—pitting against each other two deeply reactionary factions of the capitalist ruling elite and its state—becomes all the clearer.
The warfare reached a new stage Wednesday with the move by US President Donald Trump to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, citing his “erratic conduct and behavior,” “frenzied commentary” in the media and on Twitter, and “wild outbursts on the internet and television.”
The action against Brennan provoked widespread opposition within the military-intelligence apparatus and from the Democratic Party and the corporate media. Most congressional Democrats and some Republicans criticized Trump’s action, while former intelligence and security officials issued public protests.
The New York Times, the main media mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, immediately opened its editorial pages to Brennan to respond to Trump’s action. In a comment published Thursday, Brennan focused entirely on promoting the myth of Russian intervention in the US elections, denouncing Russian denials as “hogwash,” and portraying Trump as a conscious and witting collaborator with “our primary global adversary”—in other words, a traitor.
The White House first hinted at revoking Brennan’s security clearance last month, and the statement announcing the action initially carried the date July 26, indicating that the move had been decided on three weeks ago, but was not made public until Trump felt it would help distract public attention from the mounting crisis within his administration.
It appears that the announcement was made because Trump felt under increasing pressure from the campaign generated by his former aide, Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who has released a series of tape recordings of conversations—with Trump, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, campaign aide Katrina Pierson and daughter-in-law Lara Trump.
Manigault-Newman also declared that she had heard a tape recording, in someone else’s possession, of Trump voicing the worst racial slur against African-Americans during his days as host of the reality show “The Apprentice.” This charge was effectively confirmed by Trump’s series of increasingly offensive tweets, culminating in his reference to the former aide as “that dog.” One of the tapes involved a discussion among Trump aides over what to do if a recording of Trump using the racial slur was released to the public.
Such is the character of American politics, which has descended, on all sides, into filth and criminality.
On the one hand is Trump, the personification of the cultural and moral degradation of the ruling class. That his vocabulary would include the language of the KKK is entirely in line not only with the man, but the social forces for which he speaks—a faction of the financial aristocracy that is seeking to cultivate a fascistic movement to direct at social and political opposition from the working class.
Amidst the warfare in Washington, the Trump administration is intensifying its persecution of immigrant workers—now almost entirely dropped by the media—which has included the erection of modern-day concentration camps for detainees.
On the other hand, Brennan has emerged naturally as the chief spokesman of Trump’s ruling class critics. He is the former head of drone warfare for the Obama administration and the former chief executive of the organization of official assassins, thugs and professional liars known as the Central Intelligence Agency. As CIA director, he sought to block the Senate Intelligence Committee report released in 2014 documenting CIA torture during the Bush administration.
Brennan has a three-decade career with the CIA, where he served, among other places, as station chief in Saudi Arabia, before spending most of the past 20 years at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia or in the Obama White House.
Since leaving the CIA in January 2017, Brennan has cashed in on his intelligence career with a lucrative post as an “analyst” and commentator for NBC News. He has played a leading role in the campaign by sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, backed by the media and the Democratic Party, to attack Trump as "soft" on Russia. The aim is not only to impose a shift in the foreign policy of the Trump administration, but to create the framework for criminalizing domestic opposition and censoring the Internet.
As the Socialist Equality Party declared in the main resolution adopted by its Fifth National Congress, last month, both sides in the conflict, Trump and his opponents, are enemies of the working class:
"The break with democratic forms of rule is accompanied by ferocious conflicts within the state apparatus. Each day the president spews his verbal tirades, while the Democrats expound their neo-McCarthyite fantasies of Russians “sowing discord” in America. There is nothing remotely progressive, let alone dignified, in the opposition to Trump mounted by the Democratic Party and sections of the media. They represent another reactionary faction of the ruling class. They oppose Trump mainly on the grounds that his foreign policy—particularly in relation to Russia—is undermining longstanding strategic interests of American imperialism."
It is notable that Brennan’s column in the New York Times, written in McCarthyite language, presents democratic forms themselves as the main weakness in a global struggle with Russia. Brennan writes: “Electoral politics in Western democracies presents an especially inviting target, as a variety of politicians, political parties, media outlets, think tanks and influencers are readily manipulated, wittingly and unwittingly, or even bought outright by Russian intelligence operatives. The very freedoms and liberties that liberal Western democracies cherish and that autocracies fear have been exploited by Russian intelligence services …”
Alongside of and separate from the palace coup intrigues and political warfare within the state, an altogether different social force is emerging, in the form of a series of strikes that have begun to break free of the pro-corporate trade unions and growing opposition and unrest among all sections of workers. Recent polls have confirmed a collapse of support for capitalism among young people and widespread support for socialism.
While entirely ignored by the capitalist media, there is frenzied activity behind the scenes involving package delivery company UPS and the Teamsters union, along with the state, to find a way to suppress mass opposition to a sellout contract to be voted on within the next few weeks. The ruling class is terrified that any eruption of class struggle can trigger a social explosion.
This opposition must find a conscious political expression. Whatever faction of the ruling class is in power, the trajectory is towards increasingly authoritarian and dictatorial forms of rule. The urgent task is to build a socialist leadership in the working class, the Socialist Equality Party, to unite the different forms of class struggle and social protest into a revolutionary movement to overturn the entire state apparatus and the capitalist profit system that it upholds.
Patrick Martin
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!
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.”
*
“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
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.”
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.”
*
“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
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.
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?
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.”
OBAMA-CLINTONomics: the
never end war on the American middle-class. But we still get the tax bills for
the looting of their Wall Street cronies and their bailouts and billions for
Mexico’s welfare state in our borders.
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.
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.
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.”
"During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job." EVEN AS JEB BUSH, HILLARY CLINTON and BERNIE SANDERS PREACH AMNESTY! AMNESTY! AMNESTY!
"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,
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.
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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