THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Thursday, October 17, 2019
THE REAL ECONOMY - U.S. FACTORY PRODUCTION PLUMMETS - "The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for global growth this year to its lowest level since the global financial crisis and recession of 2008-2009 and warned that deepening trade conflicts make the outlook “precarious.”
U.S. manufacturing production fell in September, driven down by the strike at General Motors, falling energy prices, and sluggish global demand.
Manufacturing output fell 0.5 percent in September from the prior month, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
Overall industrial production, which includes manufacturing, mines, and utilities, declined by 0.4 percent. Compared with a year ago, production declined 0.1 percent.
The production numbers largely confirmed the contraction in the manufacturing sector signaled by surveys such as the Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index and regional Fed surveys.
Somewhat softening the blow, the weaker September numbers followed a strong report for August. Both the overall production and the manufacturing figures were revised up in August, indicating that some of the production expected in September had already occurred.
Motor vehicle production fell 4.2 percent compared with a month earlier, highlighting the drag from the General Motors strike. Mining fell a steep 1.3 percent, a decline that probably also weighed on factory production because mining operations require factory-made equipment.
Perhaps more troubling for the broader economy is the decline in business equipment production, down 0.7 percent for the month and 0.8 percent on the year. Sluggish business investment has been one of the major factors giving rise to fears that the economy could slip into recession next year or the year after that.
IMF cuts growth forecast and points to rising financial risks
The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for global growth this year to its lowest level since the global financial crisis and recession of 2008-2009 and warned that deepening trade conflicts make the outlook “precarious.”
Apart from the headline numbers in the World Economic Outlook report issued on Tuesday, the most significant aspect of the IMF’s update on the state of the world economy was its forecast on continuing low growth in four key sectors.
It found that the global “big four”—the US, China, Japan and the eurozone—would not see any improvement in their growth rates over the next five years.
The IMF predicted the world economy would grow by only 3 percent this year, down from 3.6 percent in 2018 and 0.3 percent below the forecast at its April meeting.
The Global Financial Stability Report issued on Wednesday added to the darkening outlook. It warned that continuing low interest rates were leading investors to take greater risks in an effort to maintain their returns on capital, and that could have an adverse impact on the broader economy.
“The search for yield among institutional investors—such as insurance companies, asset managers and pension funds—has led them to take on riskier and less-liquid securities,” Tobias Adrian, the IMF’s financial counsellor said. “These exposures may act as an amplifier of shocks.”
The low-interest rate regime was supporting the economy at present, but was putting growth at risk in the medium term.
The IMF’s WEO report said global growth was expected to rise to 3.4 percent in 2020—a downward revision of 0.2 percentage points from its forecast last April. But it warned that even this limited projected upturn, unlike the “synchronised slowdown,” was “not broad based and is precarious.”
Growth for the advanced economies is projected to slow to 1.7 percent in 2019 and 2020. If a global pickup does take place, it will be as a result of expansion in emerging market economies. More than half of this would be driven by “recoveries or shallower recessions in stressed emerging markets, such as Turkey, Argentina and Iran.” In other words, the projected recovery rests on very shaky foundations, given the ongoing slowdown in the major economies.
The report itself acknowledged that the risks to its baseline outlook were “significant.” It warned that “should stress fail to dissipate in a few key emerging market and developing economies that are currently under performing or experiencing severe strains, global growth in 2020 would fall well short of the baseline.”
Further escalation of trade tensions and policy uncertainty could further weaken growth. Financial market sentiment could also deteriorate, resulting in tighter financial conditions that would impact heavily on vulnerable economies.
“Possible triggers for such an episode include worsening trade and geopolitical tensions, a no-deal Brexit withdrawal … and persistently weak economic data pointing to a protracted slowdown in global growth,” it stated.
For the US, the IMF expects the economy to slow from 2.4 percent growth this year to 2.1 percent in the election year of 2020—well below the Trump administration’s target of growth of 3 percent or more.
Largely as a result of the weakness in the German economy, economic growth in the eurozone is expected be only 1.2 percent this year, rising to 1.4 percent in 2020.
The growth rate of the Chinese economy is also forecast to slow. The IMF predicts that it will fall from 6.1 percent in 2019 to 5.5 percent in 2024, with the forecast for this year 0.2 percent lower than the prediction in April.
In her foreword to the WEO report, IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath began by noting that the fall in expected growth to just 3 percent was a “serious climb down” from 2017 when it was 3.8 percent. She cited rising trade barriers and uncertainties surrounding geopolitics as key factors.
The IMF has estimated that the US-China trade tensions have reduced the expected level of global GDP by 0.8 percent for 2020.
Gopinath pointed out that a “noticeable feature” of the sluggish growth for 2019 was the “sharp and geographically broad-based slowdown in manufacturing and global trade.” Higher tariffs and prolonged uncertainty were denting investment and demand for capital goods.
This has led to a virtual standstill in global trade volume growth, which rose by only 1 percent in the first half of 2019—its lowest level since 2012. In the years of economic expansion, prior to the crisis of 2008, trade growth rates consistently exceeded those for an economy as a whole. Now they consistently lag behind.
Gopinath said that in contrast to weak manufacturing and trade, the services sector across much of the world continued to hold up. But this may not continue for much longer.
“The divergence between manufacturing and services has persisted for an atypically long duration, which raises concerns of whether and when weakness in manufacturing may spill over into the services sector,” she said, noting that leading service sector indicators in the US, Germany and Japan had shown some signs of softening.
The chief economist said that as far as policy priorities go “undoing the trade barriers put in place with durable agreements and reining in geopolitical tensions top the list.” She suggested that would boost confidence and rejuvenate investment.
Yet there is no more a chance of such measures being implemented following this report than when similar calls were made last year and the year before that. Even as the consequences of existing actions, and the future dangers they raise, become more pronounced, so the trade conflicts intensify rather than lessen.
The same trend can be seen with regard to the call for governments to take more action on the fiscal front to stimulate their economies. With interest rates around the world at historically low levels—in some cases at zero or even below—the ability of central banks to supply economic stimulus is very limited. According to the IMF report, even easier financial conditions “could also contribute to a further build-up of financial vulnerabilities.”
In line with this assessment, Gopinath called for more government action. “Monetary policy cannot be the only game in town and should be coupled with fiscal support if available and where fiscal policy it not already too expansionary.” She cited Germany as a country that should take advantage of negative borrowing rates to invest in infrastructure projects.
But in the ten tears and more since the global financial crisis, government policy in every country, expressing the most basic interests of the financial oligarchy, has gone in the opposite direction in the form of increased attacks on public facilities and social services. The only significant fiscal action has been taken in the United States where the budget deficit has been increased to provide billions of dollars in tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
In conditions where, as the latest IMF report shows, the 2008-2009 crisis ushered in a period of ongoing stagnation and where the policies followed over the past decade have created the possibility of renewed financial turmoil, government policies are not going to be turned around.
Customers shop at Sears store in Chicago, on May 3, 2018. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Sears is slated to close at least 121 Sears and Kmart stores by January of 2020 across the United States, it was reported.
Business Insider compiled a list of the stores that are closing, saying the report was compiled based on company filings and statements to local media outlets.
The news outlet said that employees at several stores confirmed the Sears is closing down.
Following the latest round of closures, there could be fewer than 300 Kmart and Sears locations around the country.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that about a fourth of the 425 Sears and Kmart stores that were brought out of bankruptcy by financier Edward Lampert have closed or are set to close. The Journal cited sources close to the situation.
In announcing closures in August, Sears said more closings are a possibility.
A dismantled sign sits leaning outside a Sears department store one day after it closed as part of multiple store closures by Sears Holdings Corp in Nanuet, New York, on Jan. 7, 2019. (Mike Segar/Reuters)
“Following these steps, we will continue to evaluate our network of Sears and Kmart stores and cannot rule out additional store closures in the near term,” the company said at the time, USA Today reported. “Our goal remains to return the company to profitability and preserve as many jobs as possible in the communities we serve.”
Lampert bought 223 Sears stores and 202 Kmart locations in February, along with the Kenmore and DieHard brands for about $5.2 billion under an entity known as Transform Holdco LLC or Transformco.
The WSJ noted that the firm is still struggling after it was bought out of bankruptcy.
The firm hasn’t commented on the two reports, but it issued a statement to CNN on Tuesday.
“Our new real estate term loan provides us with a far more cost effective and flexible capital structure that will allow us to continue to invest in the growth of Sears, Kmart, our leading service offerings and the Shop Your Way rewards program,” said a statement from the hedge fund that owns Sears. “Our ability to secure financing on these terms demonstrates the confidence of our financial partners and helps position us for future success.”
A Kmart store in a file photo. (AFP/Getty Images)
At the time it came out of bankruptcy, more than 400 Kmart and Sears stores existed, which was down from about 1,000 in 2018.
Lampert, Sears’s majority owner, gave up his CEO title during the bankruptcy filing.
Other Bankruptcies
Several U.S. retailers have filed for bankruptcy over the past two years, including Forever 21 and Toys ‘R’ Us.
Forever 21
The fast-fashion retailer filed late on Sunday to restructure its business and requested approval to close up to 178 U.S. stores. Forever 21 listed both assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion, according to the court filing.
Payless Shoes
The U.S. discount retailer in February filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time, along with its North American subsidiaries. The retailer had said it would close about 2,500 stores in North America and wind down its e-commerce operations.
Toys ‘R’ Us
The toy retailer filed for Chapter 11 in September, hoping to restructure some $5 billion in debt, much of which stemmed from a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout by private equity firms in 2005. It liquidated in 2018, a blow to hundreds of toy makers that sold products to the chain, including Barbie maker Mattel Inc and rival Hasbro Inc.
Radio Shack
The U.S. electronics chain filed for bankruptcy in March for the second time in a little over two years, faced with a challenging retail environment and an unsatisfying partnership with wireless provider Sprint Corp.
Fred’s Inc.
In September, the pharmacy and discount retailer said it filed for Chapter 11, months after the company began shuttering hundreds of unprofitable stores in the United States.
Gymboree
The children’s clothing retailer filed for bankruptcy protection in January, the second in almost two years, and said it would close more than 800 Gymboree and Crazy 8 stores.
HhGregg
The appliances and electronics retailer and its Gregg Appliances Inc unit filed for bankruptcy protection in March, as they continue struggling with declining sales for about the past four years.
Workers Slam Target When Hours Were Cut After Pay Raise
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Workers for retailer Target are criticizing their employer for finding their hours cut, leaving them struggling, even after they received a big pay raise.
In 2017, the department store chain announced that it would raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour, a welcome change for many lower-wage employees. But now that the pay scale has been implemented in most areas, some employees have found a pay cut instead of a raise because they have lost hours in the wake of the new wage increases.
CNN Business interviewed two dozen current and former Target employees including stockers, cashiers, and department managers.
One employee identified as “Heather” said she was given a dollar an hour pay raise, but lost $200 a month after her hours were cut. Heather went from working 40 hours a week to only 20 after the pay raise.
Another employee, Caren Morales, told CNN that she was getting good hours and adequate pay for months after hiring on, but just before her healthcare benefits kicked in, her hours were decimated. Morales said she went from between 30 to 45 hours a week to less than 20.
Morales said she was forced to quit because the job did not even cover the cost of daycare for her daughter.
CNN spoke to others and found similar stories.
A spokesman for Target said that employees are working “approximately the same number of hours as they were last year.” The company also claimed that employees are working more hours than three years ago.
Target did note that some employees are finding their jobs affected by “modernization” as duties evolve in the new era of retailing, especially cashiers who found hours cut after the company introduced an expanded self-checkout section in many locations.
The company also insisted that its workforce has been consistent over the past few years and that the number of employees eligible for healthcare is also holding steady, But the company did not provide any specific statistics to CNN.
The wealthiest Americans are paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans, groundbreaking analysis from a pair of economists reveals.
For the first time on record, the wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax rate than all of the income groups in the United States, research highlighted by the New York Times from University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman finds.
The analysis concludes that the country’s top economic elite are paying lower federal, state, and local tax rates than the nation’s working and middle class. Overall, these top 400 wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which the Times‘ op-ed columnist David Leonhardt notes is a combined tax payment of “less than one-quarter of their total income.”
This 23 percent tax rate for the rich means their rate has been slashed by 47 percentage points since 1950 when their tax rate was 70 percent.
(Screenshot via the New York Times)
The analysis finds that the 23 percent tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is less than every other income group in the U.S. — including those earning working and middle-class incomes, as a Times graphic shows.
Leonhardt writes:
For middle-class and poor families, the picture is different. Federal income taxes have also declined modestly for these families, but they haven’t benefited much if at all from the decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And they now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than in the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat. [Emphasis added]
The report comes as Americans increasingly see a growing divide between the rich and working class, as the Pew Research Center has found.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the leading economic nationalist in the Senate, has warned against the Left-Right coalition’s consensus on open trade, open markets, and open borders, a plan that he has called an economy that works solely for the elite.
“The same consensus says that we need to pursue and embrace economic globalization and economic integration at all costs — open markets, open borders, open trade, open everything no matter whether it’s actually good for American national security or for American workers or for American families or for American principles … this is the elite consensus that has governed our politics for too long and what it has produced is a politics of elite ambition,” Hawley said in an August speech in the Senate.
That increasing worry of rapid income inequality is only further justified by economic research showing a rise in servant-class jobs, strong economic recovery for elite zip codes but not for working-class regions, and skyrocketing wage growth for the billionaire class at 15 times the rate of other Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Census Says U.S. Income Inequality Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
(Bloomberg) -- Income inequality in America widened “significantly” last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published Thursday.
A measure of inequality known as the Gini index rose to 0.485 from 0.482 in 2017, according to the bureau’s survey of household finances. The measure compares incomes at the top and bottom of the distribution, and a score of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the first to incorporate the impact of President Donald Trump’s end-2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many economists to be skewed in favor of the wealthy.
But the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has been worsening for decades, making America the most unequal country in the developed world. The trend, which has persisted through recessions and recoveries, and under administrations of both parties, has put inequality at the center of U.S. politics.
Leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, including senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are promising to rectify the tilt toward the rich with measures such as taxes on wealth or financial transactions.
Just five states -- California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana and New York, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico -- had Gini indexes higher than the national level, while the reading was lower in 36 states.
Economists:
America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans
The
wealthiest Americans are paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans,
groundbreaking analysis from a pair of economists reveals.
For
the first time on record, the wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax
rate than all of the income groups in the United States, research highlighted by
the New York Times from
University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel
Zucman finds.
The
analysis concludes that the country’s top economic elite are paying lower
federal, state, and local tax rates than the nation’s working and middle class.
Overall, these top 400 wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which
the Times‘ op-ed
columnist David Leonhardt notes is a combined tax payment of “less than
one-quarter of their total income.”
This
23 percent tax rate for the rich means their rate has been slashed by 47
percentage points since 1950 when their tax rate was 70 percent.
(Screenshot via the New York Times)
The
analysis finds that the 23 percent tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is
less than every other income group in the U.S. — including those earning
working and middle-class incomes, as a Times graphic
shows.
Leonhardt
writes:
For
middle-class and poor families, the picture is different. Federal
income taxes have also declined modestly for these families, but they haven’t
benefited much if at all from the decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And
they now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social
Security) than in the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat.
[Emphasis added]
The
report comes as Americans increasingly see a growing divide between the rich
and working class, as the Pew Research Center has found.
Sen.
Josh Hawley (R-MO), the leading economic nationalist in the Senate, has warned
against the Left-Right coalition’s consensus on open trade, open markets, and
open borders, a plan that he has called an economy that works solely for the
elite.
“The
same consensus says that we need to pursue and embrace economic globalization
and economic integration at all costs — open markets, open borders, open trade,
open everything no matter whether it’s actually good for American national
security or for American workers or for American families or for American
principles … this is the elite consensus that has governed our politics
for too long and what it has produced is a politics of elite ambition,”
Hawley said in an
August speech in the Senate.
That
increasing worry of rapid income inequality is only further justified by
economic research showing a rise
in servant-class jobs, strong economic recovery for elite zip codes but
not for working-class regions, and skyrocketing wage growth for the billionaire
class at 15 times the rate of
other Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on
Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Census Says U.S. Income Inequality Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
(Bloomberg) -- Income inequality in America widened
“significantly” last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published
Thursday.
A measure of inequality known as the Gini index rose to 0.485
from 0.482 in 2017, according to the bureau’s survey of household finances. The
measure compares incomes at the top and bottom of the distribution, and a score
of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the first to incorporate the impact of
President Donald Trump’s end-2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the wealthy.
But the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has been
worsening for decades, making America the most unequal country in the developed
world. The trend, which has persisted through recessions and recoveries, and
under administrations of both parties, has put inequality at the center of U.S.
politics.
Leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential
nomination, including senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are
promising to rectify the tilt toward the rich with measures such as taxes on
wealth or financial transactions.
Just five states -- California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana
and New York, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico -- had Gini indexes
higher than the national level, while the reading was lower in 36 states.
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