Richard Wolff & the precarious state of the US economy

Professor Wolff joins Chris Hedges show On Contact again to discuss "the precarious state of the US economy and its consequences". This discussion is highly correlated to the post I made yesterday of Hedges article --- Democrats, the More Effective Evil. I may add my own comments and conjecture below the video as I watch the discussion again, being I remember a point or more where thoughts came to mind.

For those new/ish to the group, professor Wolff is primarily a socialist economist who I have use widely in the group that primarily educates our society on the differences of socialism. He post much of his work on the site ---- Democracy At Work hosting a show called Economic Update. [democracyatwork.info] He often appears on the various news shows of RT America also. If you're newish to the structure of socialism I highly suggest you look for his talk on ---The 3 basic types of socialism. [democracyatwork.info] When come to understand these 3 basic types of socialism you can see a remarkable resemblance of how the US is essentially a communist country. A corporate--state run structure. The US is no where near being a democracy or the republic that is falsely voiced by those who support the capitalist system.

While I'm posting the video from Youtube, the RT site provides a longer introduction, provided below.

A bipartisan group of senators are crafting legislation to impose sweeping sanctions on Russia if it engages in what they consider hostile action of any kind against the Ukraine. New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, calls the legislation “the mother of all sanctions bill.” The bill led in the House by Gregory Meeks of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, like Menendez a Democrat, demands that the administration “not cede to the demands of the Russian Federation regarding NATO membership or expansion.” This cuts off the ability to discuss Moscow’s core demands, including a ban on future NATO membership for Ukraine. The proposed sanctions target Russian banks, state-owned enterprises, government debt, energy firms, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, as well as many individual members of the government and military. They are the most extensive economic sanctions the US has attempted to deploy since the post-Cold War global economy was constructed. The sanctions, if enacted, would remove Russia from SWIFT, the international financial transaction system that uses the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The proposal to cut Russia off from SWIFT, while it will certainly hurt the Russian economy, will also further push Russia, along with China and other countries, especially those such as Cuba and Iran that are also targeted by the United States, to create their own global monetary exchange system. If the US dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, it will seriously erode the already precarious health of the US economy, not only because the dollar would significantly decline in value, but because the treasury bonds sold to fund the huge US deficits would no longer be attractive investments. The US is already reeling under the ascent of the People’s Republic of China, whose economy will be larger in terms of its footprint in the global economy than the US by the end of this decade. The desperate financial tricks, flooding the global market with new dollars, and lowering interest rates, which staved off a major depression after the 2000 dotcom crash and 9/11, were accelerated after the 2008 global financial meltdown. Easy access to money at unprecedentedly low interest rates incentivized every corporation in the country to borrow massively from the Federal Reserve, often to paper over shortfalls and bad investments. The result is that US businesses are deeper in debt than at any time in history. Added to this morass is rising inflation, caused by businesses that have increased prices in a desperate effort to make up for lost revenue from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. This inflation has forced the Fed to curtail the growth of the money supply and raise interest rates, which then pushes corporations to further raise prices. No matter which way you look, serious financial dislocation in the United States seems inevitable. Chris is joined by Richard Wolff, visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School in New York, who has also taught economics at Yale University and the Sorbonne. He can be found at Democracy at work.

What Wolff is explaining in regards to corporations, funding the relief bills, repo loans, bailouts, etc, are of course the actions of printing money with nothing to back it up. In regards to the market, corporations buying back their own stock to manipulate a false stock value using these funds and tax breaks. Then he goes into buying more solid things which is correlated to the Abby Martin discussion with sociologist Perter Phillips and his book --- Giants---Who Really Rules the world. That discussion can be found on a pinned page at the top of the message board. As the ruling class seek more ways to support their failing system, privatization spreads by buying up public land, roadways, etc. Housing has been a large aspect in this regard since 2008.

The Chinese syndrome. As you listen to Wolff on this aspect, those who belittle my ideology better be hoping it's correct about now. Because if all hell breaks loose as our representation fear mongers with, it will be the Chinese who will have our best interest at hand. It sure as hell won't be the ruling class in the US he's talking about. They'll be moving their asses to Europe or some other beautiful placement to escape what they created.

As Wolff goes on you should be getting a sense of how misdirected all relief funding went. As all the campaign talk went, all those aspects Wolff mentions were erased from policy address. Just as 2008 citizens were abandoned, so were they in 2020 and after the election with the ruling class hoarding the vast amount of money printed. That isn't a coincidence. It's simply how the system works. And if you were putting your time in the right sources, it was fairly opinionated to become a reality. How many slaps across the face does it take? As the warnings have been for several years now. We have all the makings of fascism moving in. That slap will be to late for so many.