Bank of America Earnings PLUNGE 50%. Accounts are being liquidated.
JOE BIDEN'S CRONIES:
The report begins by noting that since 2020 the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes, at the rate of $14 million per hour, from $405 billion to $869 billion, while almost 5 billion people, over half the world’s population, have been made poorer.
Oxfam report: A devastating indictment of monopoly power and inequality
As the gathering of the global elites at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland gets underway, the international aid agency Oxfam has published a devastating report on the escalation of inequality.
It shows how the enormous growth of corporate power and wealth is reshaping the world, producing social devastation for billions and the accumulation of fabulous wealth for a handful of oligarchs.
The report begins by noting that since 2020 the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes, at the rate of $14 million per hour, from $405 billion to $869 billion, while almost 5 billion people, over half the world’s population, have been made poorer.
Speaking on the report, Oxfam interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar said: “We are witnessing the beginnings of a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation and war, while billionaires’ fortunes boom.”
“This inequality,” he continued, “is no accident; the billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else.”
Importantly, he also pointed to a trend which was emphasised in the New Year perspective statement of the World Socialist Web Site—the role of corporate power and concentration, not just the growth of individual wealth, in undermining all democratic structures and paving the way for extreme right-wing and fascist regimes.
“Runaway corporate and monopoly power,” he said, “is an inequality-generating machine: through squeezing workers, dodging tax, privatizing the state, and spurring climate breakdown, corporations are funneling endless wealth to their ultra-rich owners.
“But they’re also funneling power, undermining democracies and our rights.”
The opening chapter of the report, headlined “A new gilded age of division” highlighted the enormous growth of corporate concentration and profit in contrast to the “brutal world” for billions of people confronted with the “grinding reality” of the rising cost of food and other essentials.
It noted that 4.8 billion people are today worse off than they were in 2019, prices outpacing pay the world over, “with hundreds of millions of people seeing their wages buy less each month and their prospects for a better future disappear.”
This has meant that in the past two years some 800 million workers have lost $1.5 trillion because their wages have fallen behind inflation, equivalent to near a month (25 days) for each worker. Of the 1,600 largest corporations worldwide, only 0.4 percent of them have committed to paying workers a living wage and supporting a living wage in their value chains.
For billions of people in lower-income countries, a new era of colonialism has arrived. The exploitation of the masses, which used to be carried out by direct control, has been replaced by the seamless, and even more efficient, operations of the global financial system.
In the words of the report, as governments find it impossible to stay afloat: “Low- and lower-middle-income countries are set to pay nearly half a billion US dollars a day in interest and debt payments between now and 2029, and they are having to make severe cuts to spending to pay their creditors.”
It details the vast increase in corporate profits at the top end, finding that the world’s largest corporations had an 89 percent jump in profits for the years 2021 and 2022 compared to the period 2017-2020, as data covering the first six months of last year indicates it is “set to shatter all records as the most profitable year yet for big corporations.”
Some of the numbers are: a 278 percent increase in 2023 for the profits of 14 oil and gas companies; the profits of two luxury brands up by 120 percent from the average in 2018-21; an increase in profits of 32 percent for 22 financial companies in 2023 compared to the average for 2018-21; an increase of 32 percent in the profits of 11 pharmaceutical companies in 2022 compared to 2018-21.
But even more significant than the profit increases themselves is the concentration of corporate power to an extent never before seen in history.
The report notes that the largest 0.001 percent of firms earn roughly one-third of all corporate profits.
The chapter on monopoly power was introduced with an image of the hand of a puppet master controlling the strings to point to the effect of corporate control of governments and their legislative agenda, ranging from taxation policy to corporate concentration, social spending and climate change.
“We are living through a new area of monopoly power,” according to the report. “A small number of ever-swelling corporations wield extraordinary influence over economies and government with ... largely unbridled power to price gouge consumers; suppress wages and abuse workers; limit access to critical goods and services; thwart innovation and entrepreneurship; and privatize public services and utilities for private profit.”
In his introductory remarks on the report, Behar said the world had not forgotten “how pharma monopolies deprived millions of people of COVID vaccines, creating a racist vaccine apartheid, while minting a new club of billionaires.”
Monopoly power goes across the board. Would be reformers of the capitalist system, including Oxfam itself, often point to increased taxation on corporations and the wealthy as a means of ameliorating, at least to some effect, social inequality. But such proposals fly in the face of the historical record, as detailed in the report.
It says that since 1980, corporations have waged a “sustained and highly effective war” on taxation, with the result that the statutory rate has more than halved, falling from 48 percent to 23.1 percent. But this is only part of the picture, because major corporations with their lawyers and tax accountants can exploit the loopholes in the legislation, write-offs and the like, deliberately put in place to enable avoidance, and end up paying tax far below the statutory rate, or in some cases no tax at all.
On top of this there is the use of tax havens. It is estimated that about $1 trillion in profits, 35 percent of foreign profits, were shifted to tax havens in 2022.
Another reform proposal often advanced is the break-up of monopoly power by government regulation. But as the report itself makes clear, the historical trend is in the opposite direction and that “far from being accidental, this power has been handed to monopolies by our governments.”
The degree of concentration is captured in some significant data. Ten giant “big pharma” firms have emerged from 60 over the past two decades; two global companies control over 40 percent of the global seed market, compared to ten 25 years ago; four firms control 62 percent of the world’s pesticide markets; three quarters of global online advertising is done through Meta (the owner of Facebook) and Alphabet (the owner of Google); and four companies control 74 percent of the global accounting market.
On the vital issue of global warming, the report notes that “corporate power is driving climate breakdown, in turn causing great suffering and exacerbating inequalities.”
The report continues:
Many of the world’s billionaires own, control, shape and financially profit from processes that emit greenhouse gases, and benefit when corporations seek to block progress on a fast and just transition, deny and spin the truth about climate change, and crush those who oppose fossil fuel extraction.
As with all of Oxfam’s previous reports, the conclusions it draws from the facts and figures it lays out, as well as the pronounced trends and processes it details, going back decades, stand in stark contrast to the completely empty “solutions” it advances.
In this case, where the focus is on the growth of corporate monopoly power, it advances the call to “revitalize the state.”
This is based on a fundamentally wrong conception—the notion that the state somehow stands above social classes, a kind of neutral instrument which through pressure can be made to act in the interests of society.
That conception was refuted long ago by the historical analysis of the Marxist movement going back to Marx’s remark that every capitalist government is but the executive committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie.
That analysis is underscored by the Oxfam report itself. The conclusion which must be drawn by the working class is that it must seek not to reform the capitalist state or try to pressure it—that is impossible—but to take political power in its own hands and establish a workers’ state as the first step in reconstructing society on socialist foundations.
BEING THE WORST PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY WILL NOT DISSUADE THE SUPER RICH. THE BILLARY CLINTON DEMS ARE THE PARTY OF THE RICH! THE LARGEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE RICH IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY OCCURRED DURING THE BANKSTER REGIME OF BARACK OBAMA, ERIC HOLDER AND 'CREDIT CARD' JOE BIDEN!
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S BILLIONAIRES’ GLOBALIST EMPIRE requires someone as ruthlessly dishonest as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be puppet dictators.
http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-rigged-it-so-illegals-would-vote.html
Globalism: Google VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”
Hillary Clinton’s Democratic party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.
Immigration: Maintaining liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the most.
This seems illegal BUT WHAT DOES THAT
MEAN TO A GAMER LAWYER?!?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKMZFO-2ZeI
The main objective of “political animals” like Obama and the Clintons is to get elected; it’s not to fix a broken America, nor to protect her. There are people who govern and there are people who campaign; Obama and the Clintons are the latter. Just look at the huge Republican electoral gains under Obama and the Clintons. It’s amazing that Democrats who still care about their party still support the very people who have brought it down.
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) (WHAT ABOUT THE CHINA BIDEN PENN CENTER?) and the Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family (FOUR GAMER LAWYERS - JOE, HUNTER, JAMES, FRANK - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS AND LARRY FINK OF BLACKROCK) corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS (WANTS TO BE OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER, OWNED BY LARRY FINK OF BLACKROCK WHO OWNS A BIG PIECE OF THE ‘BIG GUY’ JOE, AND GEORGE SOROS’ RENT BOY (GAMER LAWYER) TONY BLINKEN, AS WELL AS CON MAN (GAMER LAWYER) ADAM SHIFF) AND HIS CORRUPTNESS (GAMER LAWYER) BOB MENENDEZ STILL EVADING PRISON.
BRIAN C JOONDEPH
Biden-Harris Campaign Claims 2024 War Chest Is Largest of Any Democratic Candidate in History
The Biden-Harris reelection effort is not running out of cash anytime soon. That was the claim Monday when party organizers boasted they had $117 million on hand, making it the largest sum for any Democratic candidate in history at this point in the race.
The Hill reports the president and vice president’s 2024 campaign team said it raised more than $97 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. The total includes fundraising efforts by the campaign, joint fundraising committees and the Democratic National Committee. The report sets out:
In the third quarter of 2023, the Biden-Harris campaign announced it raised more than $71 million and had nearly $91 million cash on hand.
The team raised more than $72 million in the second quarter of last year, with $77 million cash.
The campaign stressed grassroots fundraising efforts in the fourth quarter contributed to the haul and applauded the historic achievement, the report continues.
“This historic haul — proudly powered by strong and growing grassroots enthusiasm—sends a clear message: the Team Biden-Harris coalition knows the stakes of this election and is ready to win this November,” Julie Chávez RodrÃguez, Biden-Harris campaign manager, said in a statement announcing the numbers as seen by The Hill.
“Across our coalition, we are seeing early, sustained support that is helping us scale our growing operation across the country and take our message to the communities that will determine this election,” Chavez added.
The amount represents the sum total of four entities: Biden’s campaign, his two joint fundraising committees and the Democratic National Committee.
The Biden-Harris campaign said 97 percent of donations in the fourth quarter were less than $200, for an average of $41.88.
Since the campaign’s launch, aides said, almost one million supporters have made contributions, for more than 2.3 million total contributions, The Hill report concluded.
Former President Donald Trump, Biden’s increasingly likely rival in the race for president, is yet to announce how much he raised throughout the last quarter.
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com
Bidenomics: New York Manufacturing Unexpectedly Collapses
Factory activity in New York suffered an unexpected collapse in January, a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicated Tuesday.
The NY Fed’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey showed business activity contracted sharply in January. The index of business conditions went into free fall, plunging 29.2 points in January to a reading of negative 43.7.
Economists had forecast an improvement in business conditions, predicting the index would rise to a negative 4.7 from the December reading of negative 14.5.
Readings below zero indicate worsening conditions.
The business conditions index has dropped 58.2 points over the past two months, the worst two-month decline in the history of the index.
The gauge of new orders dropped more than 38 points to minus 49.4, the worst reading since April 2020, when the economy was cratering from the pandemic lockdowns.
Even more troublingly, the index of prices paid by manufacturers climbed in January, suggesting mounting inflationary pressures. The index of what manufacturers charge dipped slightly.
Manufacturers indicated that they expect some improvement in the months ahead but the NY Fed said “optimism remained subdued.” The measure of future business conditions, which looks six months ahead, rose seven points to 18.8. The capital spending index climbed ten points to 13.7, which the NY Fed said indicates “some improvement” in investment plans.
Bidenomics after 35 Months: Six Charts the Media Don’t Want You to See
Liberal media are declaring Bidenomics a success – but, after nearly three years, hard numbers tell a much different story, regardless of whether the measure is how much Americans are paying, earning or saving.
Gas prices:
While gas prices held steady under Pres. Donald Trump (down four cents a gallon), they’ve surged 35% in the first 35 months of Pres. Joe Biden’s term. From January 2021 to December of 2023, the average price of a gallon of gas (all grades) has increased from $2.42 to $3.26, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Real Wages:
After accounting for inflation, real wages earned by Americans have declined under Biden. In the first quarter of 2021, median weekly real earnings averaged $373. But, by the third quarter of this 2023, average real earnings had fallen to $365.
Under Trump, however, real wages rose from $352 on January 1, 2017, to $373 on January 1. 2021.
Real wages are calculated using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) median usual weekly earnings for full-time employees at least 16 years old and are represented in terms of quarterly 1982-84 Consumer Price Index (CPI) seasonally-adjusted dollars.
Consumer Price Index:
Consumer prices rose 7.6% in the 48 months of the Trump Administration, from a CPI of 243.618 in January 2021 to one of 262.035 in December 2020.
In contrast, prices have already risen more than twice as much, 17.6%, in just 35 months under Biden. Slightly more than two-thirds of the way through his term, the CPI has risen from 262.650 in January of 2021 to 308.850 last month (December 2023), putting it on pace to increase three times as much as it did during Trump's full, four-year term. On a monthly basis, inflation averaged 1.9% under Trump, compared to 5.7% under Biden, thus far.
Mortgage Rates:
It’s also costing far more to finance a home purchase under the Biden Administration.
Mortgage rates today are more than twice the average rate home buyers paid when Trump left office, Freddie Mac data reveal. Under Biden’s predecessor, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell by a third, from 4.09% to 2.77%. But, by January 4, 2024, mortgage rates had more than doubled, to 6.62%.
Savings Rates:
With Americans having to spend more than their earnings increased, their average savings rate has declined under Biden.
From February 1, 2017 to February 1, 2021, the average personal savings rate increased 86%, from 7.2% to 13.4%. But, by November 1 of 2023, it had plunged to 4.1% - less than a third of its pre-Biden level – according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) calculations, incorporating BLS data.
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