Sunday, June 19, 2016

AMERICAN PENSIONS COLLAPSE - WILL IT FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS? - A report issued by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) is warning that unless reforms are made to private, multi-employer pension plans, many of them could become insolvent by 2025. Washington Examiner:   The problem is s...


THE “HOPE & CHANGE” HUCKSTER WHO REALLY WAS GEORGE BUSH’S THIRD AND FOURTH TERMS ON STEROIDS!

“The long-term reversal of the social gains made by the working class has

only accelerated in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. President Obama

has overseen one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the working class

to the rich in world history.”



 



June 19, 2016

Report: Private pension plans in danger of becoming insolvent in less than a decade

A report issued by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) is warning that unless reforms are made to private, multi-employer pension plans, many of them could become insolvent by 2025.
Washington Examiner:

The problem is simple: Too many of the plans have not been adequately funded. "While multi-employer plans are typically less well funded than single-employer plans, most multi-employer plans are projected to remain solvent over the next 20 years. However, a core group of plans appears unable to raise contributions sufficiently to avoid insolvency," the report said.
An estimated 14,000 multi-employer plans cover 10 million people in the U.S. The multi-employer pension system is funded at only 41 percent, which translates to an estimated $610 billion in unfunded liabilities, according to the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said the report "put in stark detail" the risks to both workers and taxpayers.
"Today is a reminder of the urgent need to enact additional reforms to strengthen multi-employer pensions, reforms that would modernize the system for workers and provide PBGC additional resources to meet its obligations. There have never been any easy answers, and it's time for those who oppose recent reforms to be honest about these challenges and put forward responsible solutions," Kline said.
Multi-employer plans involve several companies and unions jointly managing a pension fund for all their workers. The plans are favored by unions because they remain with workers even if they switch jobs. However, they are risky for businesses because if one employer goes bankrupt, the others are legally obligated to cover its contribution. Reports of the financial woes of some plans have prompted many companies to try to get out of the system. In 2006, the United Parcel Service paid $6.1 billion to pull out of the drastically underfunded Teamsters' Central States plan.
Pension obligations for companies have been soaring due to rising health insurance costs and shrinking workforce. But unfunded liabilities of more than $600 billion not only threatens retirees, but also the taxpayer. In addition to private pension shortfalls, there are also hundreds of public pensions being threatened by insolvency. Taken together, the bill that could be presented in the future to taxpayers could top $1 trillion.
The time to deal with these threats is now while fixing the problems can be done with little pain. If we wait until the crisis is fully upon us, the resulting bailouts could add trillions to the deficit and severely effect the economy.
A report issued by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) is warning that unless reforms are made to private, multi-employer pension plans, many of them could become insolvent by 2025.
Washington Examiner:

The problem is simple: Too many of the plans have not been adequately funded. "While multi-employer plans are typically less well funded than single-employer plans, most multi-employer plans are projected to remain solvent over the next 20 years. However, a core group of plans appears unable to raise contributions sufficiently to avoid insolvency," the report said.
An estimated 14,000 multi-employer plans cover 10 million people in the U.S. The multi-employer pension system is funded at only 41 percent, which translates to an estimated $610 billion in unfunded liabilities, according to the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said the report "put in stark detail" the risks to both workers and taxpayers.
"Today is a reminder of the urgent need to enact additional reforms to strengthen multi-employer pensions, reforms that would modernize the system for workers and provide PBGC additional resources to meet its obligations. There have never been any easy answers, and it's time for those who oppose recent reforms to be honest about these challenges and put forward responsible solutions," Kline said.
Multi-employer plans involve several companies and unions jointly managing a pension fund for all their workers. The plans are favored by unions because they remain with workers even if they switch jobs. However, they are risky for businesses because if one employer goes bankrupt, the others are legally obligated to cover its contribution. Reports of the financial woes of some plans have prompted many companies to try to get out of the system. In 2006, the United Parcel Service paid $6.1 billion to pull out of the drastically underfunded Teamsters' Central States plan.
Pension obligations for companies have been soaring due to rising health insurance costs and shrinking workforce. But unfunded liabilities of more than $600 billion not only threatens retirees, but also the taxpayer. In addition to private pension shortfalls, there are also hundreds of public pensions being threatened by insolvency. Taken together, the bill that could be presented in the future to taxpayers could top $1 trillion.
The time to deal with these threats is now while fixing the problems can be done with little pain. If we wait until the crisis is fully upon us, the resulting bailouts could add trillions to the deficit and severely effect the economy.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/06/report_private_pension_plans_in_danger_of_becoming_insolvent_in_less_than_a_decade.html#ixzz4C2RJzvYM





OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: The rich get much richer, cronies stay out of prison and illegals get millions of jobs and billions in welfare…..



Poverty has become more concentrated under Obama

By Nancy Hanover






Under the Obama administration, more Americans have
found themselves consigned to economic ghettos, living in
neighborhoods where more than 40 percent subsist below
the poverty level. Millions more now live in “high poverty” districts of 20-40
percent poverty, according to recently released report by the Brookings Institution.





OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: The final death

of the American Middle Class and the

staggering expansion of the LA RAZA

Mexican welfare state



THE “HOPE & CHANGE” HUCKSTER

WHO REALLY WAS GEORGE BUSH’S

THIRD AND FOURTH TERMS ON

STEROIDS!

“The long-term reversal of the social gains made by the working class has

only accelerated in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. President Obama

has overseen one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the working class

to the rich in world history.”


HILLARIA’S PROMISE TO ILLEGALS: 49 MORE MEXIFORNIAS 

THEY INVADE BY INVITATION OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY, THEN

MURDER, RAPE, LOOT AND VOTE DEM FOR EVEN MORE.

THE LA RAZA MEXICAN WELFARE STATE ON THE LEGALS’ BACKS…. Not one of us voting to be Mexico’s trillion dollar welfare office!


(THE TRAGEDY FOR LEGALS LIVIING IN MEX-OCCUPIED CA IS THAT THERE ARE NEARLY 15 MILLION LOOTING MEXICANS AND THEY’RE BREEDING LIKE CATHOLIC BUNNIES. NOW DO THE MATH!)

LA RAZA-OCCUPATION and LOOTING in MEXIFORNIA…. shocking!

Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of an illegal alien population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population is $25.3 billion. That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a household headed by a U.S. citizen.


THE ENTIRE REASON FOR THE AMNESTY HOAX TO LEGALIZE MEXICO’S LOOTING IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED!


 Hillary Clinton: Dedicated Servant of the Suer Rich, Obama’s Crony Banksters and the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA


"The country is now at the edge of an abyss following years of obfuscation, unaccountability, subterfuge, and law evasion by the Obama administration that have numbed much of its citizenry into a kind of base “group think acceptance” of government corruption and abuse of power. Resetting Americans’ trust in government needs to start with holding people in high office, like Hillary Clinton, accountable."

SEN. SANDERS SURRENDERS TO HER CORRUPTNESS… Will he serve her Wall Street Paymasters also?






SO MUCH FOR BERNIE’S POPULIST CRAP!







Hillary & Billary….. Operating like third world dictators sucking in the bribes from every criminal and sleaze bag they know and they know all of them!
















Hillary Clinton Signals LA RAZA SUPREMACIST Cecilia Munoz will make a great Vice President. Munoz is endorsed by Mexico.

CECILIA MUNOZ, A LA RAZA SUPREMACIST FASCIST, IS FUNDED WITH AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS AND WORKS FOR LA RAZA OUT OF THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE (google it).


NEW YORK TIMES (MEX-OWNED MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA PROPAGANDA)

Cecilia Munoz - Formerly of the 'Tan Klan'

Now works in Intra-government Affairs for the White House

Radical Mexican Reconquista zealot Munoz speaking at a soiree thrown by the miserable ADL.

From the New York Times - October 22, 2000

Despite the fact that the majority of documented Hispanics oppose illegal immigration, as do the majority of Americans, Aztlan and La Raza race hate groups have become the self-appointed voice for a separatist movement that threatens a violent overthrow of the Constitutional system and a barbaric program of ethnic cleansing. This is held up by the media as 'diversity' and to vociferously oppose it is scorned as racism. Aztlan and Mecha groups advocate killing all whites and blacks and driving them out of the southern states by means of brutal ethnic cleansing.








Islamism is the great evil of our age….



Instead, with the aid of our media and Internet, we greet each new act of

Islamic murder with a show of lies and anger. The Left is in charge of the lies. They tell us, in Hillary Clinton’s absurd words, that “Muslims . . . have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”




The second comes from “Shep” on a Disqus comment at Scott Adams’s blog.  It is particularly poignant today, in the wake of Hillary calling out the Saudis for funding radical Islam, and posing as a friend of gays:

BARACK OBAMA'S BIGGEST CRONY BANKSTERS, JAMIE DIMON SAYS FUCK THE UNITED KINGDOM! I'LL TAKE MY LOOTING BANKTERS TO THE CONTINENT!



A Victory for the American People Against the Export-Import Bank
Sen. Mike Lee / @SenMikeLee / June 14, 2016
http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/160614_Shelby_RK-1250x650.png
The victory came in the form of preventing the ascension of Mark McWatters to the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, whose nomination Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala, has successfully bottled up in the Senate Banking Committee. (Photo: Department of Defense/Sipa USA/Newscom)
commentary By
Portrait of Sen. Mike Lee
Mike Lee is a Republican senator from Utah.
It’s not every day that the American people score a victory over the global elite, but that’s exactly what happened last week.
The victory came in the form of preventing the ascension of Mark McWatters to the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, whose nomination Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has successfully bottled up in the Senate Banking Committee.
Created by executive order during the height of the Great Depression, the Ex-Im Bank has been used as a tool to reward politically connected elites, both in the United States and abroad, for decades.
Here’s how it works: a large corporation pays money to lobbyists and politicians so that Ex-Im will leverage the full faith and credit of American taxpayers to guarantee loans used to finance global transactions.
Because these loans are backed by you, the United States taxpayer, these politically favored global corporations are able to secure below-market interest rates. The difference between the market interest rate the global corporations would have paid to finance their transactions and the below-market interest rate made available by Ex-Im’s guarantees acts as a giant taxpayer subsidy for these global corporations.
The lobbyists and politicians supporting these global corporations will tell you that Ex-Im’s loan guarantees are cost-free programs that support American middle-class jobs.
Not quite.
First of all, as any economist will tell you, there is no such thing as a free lunch. As the Congressional Research Service has explained, “Subsidized export financing merely shifts production among sectors within the economy, rather than adding to the overall level of economic activity, and subsidizes foreign consumption at the expense of domestic consumption.”
Secondly, if these global corporations are so concerned about American middle-class jobs, then why do they spend millions of dollars lobbying foreign governments to create and maintain their own version of our Export-Import Bank? These corporations aren’t concerned as much about American jobs as they are about maximizing the number of foreign governments that subsidize their business.
And who exactly is on the other end of all these Ex-Im financed deals? China mostly.
China is by far the biggest beneficiary of Ex-Im guaranteed loans. And since most of that financing benefits state-owned firms, the Ex-Im Bank is one of the largest subsidizers of Chinese communist officials in the world.
For instance, in 2013, the Export-Import Bank financed a $63 million deal to help build a semiconductor manufacturing plant in China. How exactly does subsidizing Chinese semiconductor manufactures help save American jobs?
It doesn’t.
But it does help line the pockets of the governing elite both here and in China. That is what the Export-Import Bank is all about.
By blocking the nomination of McWatters to the Export-Import Bank’s board of directors, Shelby has denied Ex-Im the quorum it needs to authorize loan guarantees over $10 million. Between 2007 and 2014, 84 percent of the bank’s subsidy and loan-guarantee deals exceeded $10 million, and the vast majority were given to the wealthiest, most well-connected businesses that should have no problem acquiring financing on the open market.
The American people have not succeeded in shutting down this spigot of cash to the world’s global elite yet, but we are gaining votes in the House and Senate every year.
We will win eventually.

THE “HOPE & CHANGE” HUCKSTER WHO REALLY WAS GEORGE BUSH’S
THIRD AND FOURTH TERMS ON STEROIDS!

“The long-term reversal of the social gains made by the working class has

only accelerated in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. President Obama

has overseen one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the working class

to the rich in world history.”





THE AMERICAN PEOPLE STOOD

PASSIVELY WHILE THE BANKSTERS

LOADED THE POCKETS OF THE

DEMOCRAT PARTY AND WENT TO

LOOTING A TRILLION DOLLARS OUT OF

THE HOME VALUES OF AMERICA.

EVEN BEFORE HE TOOK OFFICE, THE

PSYCOPATH HUCKSTER FROM

CHICAGO, BARACK OBAMA, HAD

ALREADY FILLED HIS POCKETS WITH

MORE BANKSTER BRIBES THAN ANY

PRESIDENT IN HISTORY.

WHAT DID THESE BANKSTERS KNOW

THAT THE REST OF US DIDN'T ABOUT

THE "HOPE & CHANGE" HUCKSTER?

OBAMA KEPT HIS PROMISE HANDING HIS

CRONIES BILLIONS IN NO STRINGS, NO

INTEREST LOANS AND MADE SURE HIS

BANKSTER-OWNED AG HOLDER WOULD

KEEP THEM OUT OF PRISON! OBOMB'S

SECOND AG, LORETTA LYNCH WAS ALL

BUT HAND PICKED BY OBAMA'S

BANKSTERS AND CAME FROM THE

BANKSTER SECTOR. SHE CONTINUES TO

PROTECT AND SERVE OBAMA'S

BANKSTERS!


AND THEIR LOOTING ONLY CONTINUES......!


http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-bankers-could-suffer-fallout-from-vote-to-leave-eu-1466333181

Working-Class Britons Unsympathetic to Banker Brexit Woes

Some Britons see ‘Brexit’ effect as comeuppance for perceived greed of London’s financial sector

The U.K.’s financial sector, largely centered in London, could face turmoil if the country elects to leave the European Union. HSBC Holdings PLC has said that up to 1,000 staff could be moved in the aftermath of a ‘Brexit.’

The U.K.’s financial sector, largely centered in London, could face turmoil if the country elects to leave the European Union. HSBC Holdings PLC has said that up to 1,000 staff could be moved in the aftermath of a ‘Brexit.’ Photo: Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By

Sara Schaefer Muñoz and

Giles Turner
The Wall Street Journal

June 19, 2016 6:46 a.m. ET


LONDON—Politicians and bankers have warned that a U.K. exit

from the European Union will cripple London’s financial sector.

But that argument gets the short shrift from East London

construction worker Steve McIlhagga.

From the blue-collar neighborhood of Poplar in East London, Mr.

McIlhagga, 53 years old, sees an independent U.K. as better for

working-class Britons—and said he wouldn’t be bothered by a

few bankers losing jobs.

“They were the ones who drove this country into recession, and

are still getting millions in bonuses!” said Mr. McIlhagga, clad

in a dusty hard hat on his way home one recent afternoon. “They

want to stay in the EU because they are making money. But

where I live, there’s a lot of unemployment. I can’t afford things.

Everything’s gotten worse.”

With recent polls showing a several percentage point lead for the

“Leave” camp ahead of the June 23 vote, U.K. Prime Minister

David Cameron and the country’s business leaders have

continued to argue that Britain should stay in the EU, in large part

because its financial hub is on the line and firms might be forced

to relocate bankers out of the U.K.

But, in a country still scarred by the 2008 financial crisis, saving

the bankers is a difficult rallying cry.

“If you said bankers might leave, some people might cheer,” said

Mark Boleat, chairman of the City of London Policy and

Resources Committee.

Nevertheless, Mr. Boleat and others have continued to warn that

loss of access to the single European market in the case of a

British exit, or “Brexit,” would be a dire blow to London as a

regional business hub.

Leaving the EU ”would no doubt destroy a huge amount of jobs,

not just here in London but also in the financial services centers

we have in the country,” the prime minister said in a speech at a

World Economic Forum event last month, adding that “100,000

jobs could go in the City of London alone.”

Banks have been increasingly vocal on the potential

consequences of a vote to exit the EU. In a visit to the U.K.

earlier this month, J.P. Morgan Chase JPM 0.10 % & Co. chief

James Dimon said the bank may need to move some of its 16,000

U.K staff to the Continent. HSBC Holdings HSBC 2.10 % PLC

has also said up to 1,000 staff could be moved.

“We would face attempts to lure businesses from London to Paris,

Frankfurt, and Dublin,” said Lucy Thomas, deputy director of the

Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, in a report.

But such arguments haven’t moved Joanna Harrison, a 28-year-

old London gallery assistant, who sees the vote as “a symbolic

thing about whether we leave Europe.”

“There are a lot bigger things than worrying

about bankers and their jobs,” she said.

To reach skeptics such as Mr. McIlhagga, members of the

campaign to stay in the European market have tried to drive home

the point that a blow to Britain’s financial sector could cause job

losses in areas such as food services, hotels and property

development. The financial-services industry accounts for just

3.4% of the U.K.’s total jobs, but 8% of GDP, contributing

£129.9 billion ($186.41 billion) to the U.K. economy in 2014,

according to government data.

The U.K. financial sector also contributed around 11.5% of U.K.

tax receipts in 2014, according to a report from consulting firm

PricewaterhouseCoopers and the City of London Corp., the

governing body of London’s financial sector.

Statistics such as this can ring hollow in London’s more deprived

districts. Residents often feel far removed from the shiny towers,

bustling exchanges and money making power of the U.K.

capital’s financial core.

“You don’t really see much of an effect here” of London’s

financial center, said construction worker Andrew Wards, 29,

who of an industrial neighborhood near the Olympic Park. He

plans to vote to leave the EU.

One impact Mr. McIlhagga has seen is that of well-paid City

workers spilling over into East London’s more desirable areas and

driving up housing costs, he said.

“A one-bedroom flat in my neighborhood is £250,000 [about

$360,000] and that’s more than double what it was 10 years ago.

It’s bloody ridiculous,” said Mr. McIlhagga, who earns £360, or

around $520, a week.

It appears those who support staying in the EU may have

underestimated just how much ordinary citizens dislike bankers.

In 2013, a survey of more than 11,000 individuals by YouGov

and Cambridge University found 83% of respondents thought

bankers were “greedy and get paid too much,” while 80% thought

banks weren’t doing enough to “get us out of this economic crisis

which they helped cause.”

Institutions such as the Royal Bank of Scotland

RBS 5.02 % PLC and other banks had to be

bailed out by taxpayers during the

financial crisis, to the tune of more than £100


 billion. Many chief  executives still receive big


bonuses and their high-end lifestyles are splashed

across the front of U.K. tabloids.

A 2014 headline in popular U.K. tabloid the Daily Mirror blasted

“fat cat bankers” for receiving a total of £80 billion in payouts,

“while millions of families are still suffering.”

Campaigners for a vote to remain point out that not all bank

employees are considered wealthy and that financial services

companies are big employers of people from a range of

backgrounds and across many different business areas.

Mr. Cameron’s and other politicians’ ardent support for the

financial sector ahead of the vote backfired with Kieran Walsh, an

East Londoner who owns a food-delivery business.

While unloading a delivery truck, Mr. Walsh said he isn’t

convinced the campaign to remain in the EU has ordinary

Britons’ best interests at heart.

“David Cameron went to Eton, now didn’t he? And that’s where

all the bankers went to school,” said the 54-year-old Mr. Walsh,

referring to the elite school near Windsor Castle. “They’re all in

each other’s pockets! They probably stand to make a lot of money

off [remaining in the EU.]”

“We should get out of the EU, and put the money we save into

developing industry and the north of England again,” he said, to

benefit struggling citizens. “Banking jobs will always just be for


those in the old boys’ club.” ASK THE OBOMB
ABOUT HIS CRONY BANKSTERS!




OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: The rich get much richer, cronies stay out of prison and illegals get millions of jobs and billions in welfare…..



Poverty has become more concentrated under Obama


By Nancy Hanover








2 May 2016

Under the Obama administration, more Americans have
found themselves consigned to economic ghettos, living in
neighborhoods where more than 40 percent subsist below
the poverty level. Millions more now live in “high poverty” districts of 20-40
percent poverty, according to recently released report by the Brookings Institution.




OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: The final death

of the American Middle Class and the

staggering expansion of the LA RAZA

Mexican welfare state



THE “HOPE & CHANGE” HUCKSTER

WHO REALLY WAS GEORGE BUSH’S

THIRD AND FOURTH TERMS ON

STEROIDS!

“The long-term reversal of the social gains made by the working class has

only accelerated in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. President Obama

has overseen one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the working class

to the rich in world history.”




The return of “secular stagnation”

The return of “secular stagnation”

17 June 2016
Since the official end of the US recession in 2009, following the global financial crisis, the conventional wisdom from the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, has been that various “headwinds” are responsible for the failure of the American economy to return to anything resembling its previous growth path.
The underlying assumption has been that the financial crisis of 2008–2009 did not represent any kind of fundamental breakdown in the capitalist economy, but was merely a downturn in the business cycle, albeit a very severe one, from which there would be a return at some point to a “normal” pattern of economic expansion.
However, the press conference of Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen on Wednesday, following the decision by the Federal Open Market Committee not to lift interest rates, saw a marked shift. While her prepared remarks stuck by and large to the official script that the prevailing “headwinds” would ease over time, a rather different assessment emerged during Yellen’s question and answer session with reporters.
In view of the fact that the Fed’s outlook for interest rates had been revised sharply down, even though its projections for gross domestic product growth had not, Yellen was asked whether there had been “a dramatic change in the Committee’s view on the relationship of GDP to [interest] rates.”
Her answer indicated there had, or at least that behind the façade of official pronouncements the view is developing that a fundamental shift is underway.
She noted that the so-called “neutral rate”—that is, the interest rate needed to keep the economy growing at near full employment—was “quite depressed by historical standards” and that “many estimates would put it in real or inflation adjusted terms at near zero.”
Yellen referred, according to the usual script, to “headwinds” and what she called the “lingering effects of the financial crisis,” which were expected to “ease” over time. “But there are also more long lasting or persistent factors that may be at work that are holding down the longer run neutral rates,” she added.
Chief among those factors was “slow productivity growth, which is not just a US phenomenon, but a global phenomenon.” There was considerable uncertainty, but “productivity growth could stay low for a prolonged time” and we have “aging societies in many parts of the world that could depress this neutral rate. … The sense that maybe more of what’s causing this neutral rate to be so low are factors that are not going to be rapidly disappearing but will be part of the new normal.”
Yellen’s comments followed the warning by the Conference Board, a major US economic think tank, that productivity growth could go negative this year for the first time in more than three decades.
While she did not use the term herself, 

Yellen’s remarks point to the emergence of 

what former Treasury Secretary Lawrence 

Summers and others have referred to as 

“secular stagnation.” This term was first by 

coined by economist Alvin Hansen in 1938 to 

describe a structural condition in the 

capitalist economy where, no matter how low 

interest rates go, there is no growth because 

the level of demand, particularly investment, 

is not in a cyclical downturn but permanently

insufficient to ensure economic expansion.
Yellen’s reference to “aging societies” as an explanation for what she clearly recognises as a shift in the global economy, recalls nothing so much as the explanation of the classical bourgeois economist of the early nineteenth century, David Ricardo, who, when confronted with the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, ascribed it to the declining fertility of land and the fall in productivity in agriculture. As Marx pithily remarked, horrified by this prospect which called into question the historical viability of the capitalist economy, Ricardo took flight to the sphere of organic chemistry. Likewise Yellen, when confronted with persistent economic trends, seeks refuge in demographics.
In opposition to Ricardo, Marx explained that the real barrier to expanded capitalist production was not a product of nature, but of capital itself—private ownership of the means of production and the profit system.
Economic trends and tendencies reaching back over the past quarter century underscore the point made by Marx. Following the end of the post-war boom and the downturn in profit rates at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, global capitalism experienced a series of crises, exemplified above all by the persistence of what was known as “stagflation”—low growth and recession combined with high inflation rates.
This crisis was temporarily overcome through an onslaught against the social position of the working class—the mass sacking of air traffic controllers in the US by Reagan in 1981 and the forcible state-suppression of the 1984–85 miners’ strike by the Thatcher government in Britain were key turning points—and the exploitation of new areas of cheap labour through the globalisation of production.
But the limited upturn in the rate of profit this produced did not bring about a return to the conditions of relative economic stability which marked the post-war boom. On the contrary, from the time of the October 1987 US stock market crash, world capitalism has been marked by increasing financial turmoil.
It became increasingly dependent on the injections of cheap money from the Fed and other central banks to quell ever-more severe financial storms—from the Mexican financial crisis of the early 1990s, the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 and the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, the collapse of the dot.com bubble in 2000–2001, leading to the financial crisis of 2008 set off by the bursting of the sub-prime mortgage bubble.
The Fed and other central banks responded to that crisis as they did in the past, with massive injections of cheap money. But despite the spending of trillions of dollars in the purchase of financial assets and the lowering of interest rates to zero and even below, there has been no revival in the real economy. The only effect of these measures has been to boost financial speculation to unprecedented heights, while producing ever-widening social inequality and worsening wages and social conditions for the world’s working class.
Economic history does not repeat itself. But the capitalist economy does have laws of motion, producing discernible trends and tendencies which find their expression not only in the economy but in politics.
The year 1914 is forever etched in history as the year of the outbreak of World War I. But it was economically significant as well. It marked a downturn in profit and growth rates that, despite all efforts to overcome it, continued through the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in the Great Depression.
These underlying processes produced a contraction in the world economy which led inexorably to the outbreak of World War II as the major capitalist powers engaged in an intensifying struggle for contracting markets and profits, first by use of economic nationalist methods—increased tariffs and the formation of currency blocs—and then by military means.
Today’s world is marked by the return of these conditions: the stagnation of the world economy, glutted markets in a series of commodities and industrial products, persistently low levels of investment, the driving force of economic growth, currency conflicts and intensifying financial crisis, to name but a few examples.
And they are inevitably leading in the same direction as in earlier decades: a world war for the division and re-division of the world economy, with potential nuclear consequences and the destruction of civilisation itself.
The fact that the objective contradictions of capitalism have now managed, at least partially, to have drummed their way into the heads of the overseers of global capitalism, such as Yellen, is an indication of the advanced state of the economic crisis.
It must be a signal to the international working class that the urgent issue before it is the struggle for an international socialist program for the overthrow of the reactionary and outmoded capitalist nation-state and profit system and the building of the world party of socialist revolution, the International Committee of the Fourth International, to lead it.
Nick Beams

HILLARIA’S PROMISE TO ILLEGALS: 49 MORE MEXIFORNIAS 

THEY INVADE BY INVITATION OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY, THEN

MURDER, RAPE, LOOT AND VOTE DEM FOR EVEN MORE.

THE LA RAZA MEXICAN WELFARE STATE ON THE LEGALS’ BACKS…. Not one of us voting to be Mexico’s trillion dollar welfare office!


(THE TRAGEDY FOR LEGALS LIVIING IN MEX-OCCUPIED CA IS THAT THERE ARE NEARLY 15 MILLION LOOTING MEXICANS AND THEY’RE BREEDING LIKE CATHOLIC BUNNIES. NOW DO THE MATH!)

LA RAZA-OCCUPATION and LOOTING in MEXIFORNIA…. shocking!

Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of an illegal alien population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population is $25.3 billion. That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a household headed by a U.S. citizen.


THE ENTIRE REASON FOR THE AMNESTY HOAX TO LEGALIZE MEXICO’S LOOTING IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED!


 Hillary Clinton: Dedicated Servant of the Suer Rich, Obama’s Crony Banksters and the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA


"The country is now at the edge of an abyss following years of obfuscation, unaccountability, subterfuge, and law evasion by the Obama administration that have numbed much of its citizenry into a kind of base “group think acceptance” of government corruption and abuse of power. Resetting Americans’ trust in government needs to start with holding people in high office, like Hillary Clinton, accountable."