socialist-economics

The fed borrows from our only socialist bank :) To Keep the Economy Afloat, the Fed Turns to North Dakota https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2020/04/29/coronavirus-economy-public-banking Bankers generally don't like surprises. But as CEO at the  Bank of North Dakota , the only state-owned bank in the country, Eric Hardmeyer was pleasantly surprised to see the Federal Reserve taking a page out of his institution's playbook to help deal with the unprecedented economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic. "The Fed seems to be thinking of everything we were thinking about two or three weeks ago," Hardmeyer said. To help small business stay afloat through the pandemic, banks and credit unions have been already tasked with putting out more federally backed loans to small businesses in a few weeks than they typically do in a year. The Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program was part of Congress' bailout bill provided $349 billion in forgivable ...

Hippie socialism HAS its appeal, and doing good work in California. The Rescue Operation Bridging a Food Access Gap in California https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2020/04/29/coronavirus-food-access-california By 11 a.m. on a Wednesday in Antioch, California, hundreds of cars are lined up at the Palabra de Dios Community Church. The cars fill the church's ample parking lot and snake up the neighboring service street, spilling into the intersection at the head of the block, past the next traffic light, and the next. Some of the drivers wear face masks while kids sitting in the back seat play idly on cellphones. Some have made the trip from as far as San Mateo and San Carlos, more than an hour's drive away on the opposite side of San Francisco Bay. All of them are waiting for food. Most weekdays since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a box truck delivers groceries here: bags of fresh kale, lettuce, and radishes; boxes of apples, limes, and tomatoes; canned beans, past...

The Price of Meat Posted on   April 30, 2020   by  Yves Smith Meatpacking plants have become the new front where workers are fighting management over Covid-19 risk. But unlike medical professionals, who in theory can be hazmat suited up so as to greatly reduce exposure to contagion but aren't due to the lack of PPE, you can rest assured that level of safety precaution will never happen in slaughterhouses because the pricing and margins of meat production won't allow for its. The stakes for meat are high not simply due to the concentration of production, that that loss of not all that many plants has crippled on pork and beef supplies, with pork down by 1/4 and beef off by over 10%. It also results from the fact that the number of cases in these plants is so high that they've made their communities into hot spots. So even if the plants were kept open, people in the area would be put at even more health risk. That's why, three weeks ago, Governor Kristi Noem pressed Smith...

The self-sufficiency, nationalist strategies will fail:  ...find the trade High Road will require MORE internationalism, not less. Enhancing Trade Supply Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/30/04/2020/enhancing-trade-supply-responses-covid-19-pandemic Bernard Hoekman, Matteo Fiorini, and Aydin Yildirim look at some of the counterproductive trade policy responses to COVID-19 pandemic and suggest ways to expand production of essential supplies. As part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic governments are greatly increasing their procurement of medical supplies and personal protective equipment (1). The global spike in demand far outstrips existing emergency stocks and short-term supply capacity. In early January 2020, China, the world's largest producer of surgical masks and respirators, reserved supply for domestic use and greatly increased imports from foreign suppliers. Following the spread of the virus internationally, other countries f...

DeLong's team is full of innovative ideas, on addressing the depression recovery strategy and tactics. Be interesting to see where Biden is going with these challenges. Brad DeLong: Worthy reads on equitable growth, April 19–25, 2020 https://equitablegrowth.org/brad-delong-worthy-reads-on-equitable-growth-april-19-25-2020/ This is, I think, not a call for a Works Progress Administration as such, but rather a call for a very large-scale Public Health Tracking Administration. Read Heather Boushey, " A Modern-Day Works Progress Administration Could Prevent a Coronavirus Depression in the United States ," in which she writes: "To be effective in containing the virus in the United States, track and trace must be implemented in a coordinated way and done so across the nation. Experts at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health estimate that just to start an effective national track and trace system will require hiri...