socialist-economics

The Strong Dollar Is Wreaking Havoc Globally — And It's Just Getting Started https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-28/how-a-strong-usd-dxy-is-pushing-the-global-economy-to-recession?sref=woWS9Szx ByRuth Carson and Cormac Mullen July 27, 2022 at 8:00 PM EDT George Boubouras was at his home in east Melbourne, taking in a cricket match, when his phone suddenly blew up. It was late on July 13, about 10:45 p.m., and there was an urgency to the texts and calls that came flooding in. The euro had just crashed through parity against the dollar, a level once almost unthinkable, and everyone — clients, fund managers, traders — wanted to know what Boubouras, the head of research at K2 Asset Management, recommend they do. His response was simple: "Don't fight the dollar right now." Just over an hour later, another jolt came. The Bank of Canada, struggling like the European Central Bank and other central banks to keep its currency steady against the dollar, delivered a f...

r The financialization of tech China is racing ahead in semiconductors and drones while we're building better ways to separate retail investors from their savings. Noah Smith Jul 27 Fifteen years ago, if you wanted to make it in America — if you wanted to get in on the ground floor of that smooth upward escalator — you went into the finance industry. Lots of people were upset about this. Our best and brightest, they said, were dedicating their effort and their intelligence to finding new ways to sell each other complex financial products instead of building the technologies of tomorrow. When the financial house of cards collapsed in 2008, everyone who complained naturally felt vindicated. In the decade that followed that crash, it seemed like the problem was fixing itself. Wall Street crashed, and the Dodd-Frank legislation tamed the high-flying sector. Talent streamed out of investment banking and headed west, to Silicon Valley and the burgeoning tech industry. Google and Amazon a...

  This is   Grasping Reality—The SubStack , by Brad DeLong. READING: Harry Jaffa (1959): Lincoln in the Mid-1800s Wresting America from Its Then-Probable Future of Herrenvolk Democracy Why Harry Jaffa would puke if he saw those in Claremont, CA, who pretend to revere his name; from "Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates" Brad DeLong Jul 26 Subscribe now Harry Jaffa  (1959):  Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates: XX. The End of Manifest Destiny : ‘…Lincoln knew that the vast acquisitions of the Mexican War were only a foretaste of what Douglas himself believed to be in store if he ever gained control of the nation s foreign policy. Only a national commitment to confine slavery, Lincoln believed, would put an end to the drive for foreign conquest and domination... [given] the dynamism in the coincidence of the ambitions of Douglas and the slave power. It was this coincidence that repealed ...

  The Washington Post Says the Economy Is Terrible: Falling Gas Price Edition Dean Baker via Patreon After the constant hyping of higher gas prices by the media, you might think that falling gas prices would also be big news. After all, everyone has to buy gas and it is a price that is in their face every time they are on the highway. Of course, the Washington Post is not ignoring the drop in gas prices. Yesterday they warned readers, “Gas prices may surge again ahead of midterm elections.” The gist of the story is that as stronger sanctions on Russian oil go into effect in December, it could mean that more Russian oil is pulled off world markets. The piece tells us: “An internal U.S. Treasury analysis projects that could send the price of oil soaring 50 percent above where it is today. Some market analysts are warning of potentially steeper climbs, which could push gas prices beyond $6 a gallon.” Okay, that would be bad news if it happens, but as the piece itself points out, the s...

Germany's Union Head Warns of Collapse of Entire Industries by Alexander Kell Top German industries could face collapse because of cuts in the supplies of Russian natural gas, the country's top union official warned before crisis talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz starting Monday. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-03/germany-s-union-head-warns-of-collapse-of-entire-industries?sref=woWS9Szx Top German industries could face collapse because of cuts in the supplies of Russian natural gas, the country's top union official warned before crisis talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz starting Monday.  "Because of the gas bottlenecks, entire industries are in danger of permanently collapsing: aluminum, glass, the chemical industry," said Yasmin Fahimi, the head of the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB), in an interview with the newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and jobs in Germany." Th...

Germany Risks a Cascade of Utility Failures, Economy Chief Says by Alexander Kell Germany should prepare for deeper cuts in Russian gas supplies because President Vladimir Putin is pursuing a conscious strategy of driving up prices to undermine European unity, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-02/germany-risks-a-cascade-of-utility-failures-economy-chief-says?sref=woWS9Szx Top German industries could face collapse because of cuts in the supplies of Russian natural gas, the country's top union official warned before crisis talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz starting Monday.  "Because of the gas bottlenecks, entire industries are in danger of permanently collapsing: aluminum, glass, the chemical industry," said Yasmin Fahimi, the head of the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB), in an interview with the newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and jobs in Germa...