Investment

What’s the Point of Bailing out Hurting CEOs if they Just use Funds to Buy Back Stock & Feather their Nests?

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Occasionally President Trump likes to play defender of the common man. The frequent attacks on NAFTA and the promise to replace it with a better trade deal are one instance. Recently the effort to build a bipartisan stimulus response to the deepening economic losses occasioned by the […]

Development

The Coronavirus has sent Stocks Plummeting – Could a Recession be Next?

The Conversation

By Michael Walden | – Fears are growing that the new coronavirus will infect the U.S. economy. U.S stocks are headed for their worst week since the 2008 financial crisis; companies including Apple and Walmart have been warning of potential sales losses from COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans to […]

Banking

Bernie Sanders and the Poor Little Rich Boys: Why Billionaire Financiers are Bullying the Democratic Party

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Quiet concerns about a possible Sanders victory became a loud and agitated freakout after the Senator’s resounding victory in Nevada. The anguish came from the financial hub of the centrist Democratic establishment. In an incoherent rant, for which he later apologized, Chris Matthews drew a confused and […]

Fossil Fuels

Fueling Global Heating: Our Tax System Rewards the Biggest Carbon Criminals

OtherWords

By Charlie Simmons | – ( Otherwords.org) – Last year, the biggest fossil fuel companies paid zero dollars in taxes — and actually received billions in rebates. By Charlie Simmons | October 16, 2019 Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who sparked student protests across the globe, had this to tell the UN General […]

Climate Change

Could Climate Crisis’ Extreme Weather Threaten American Prosperity?

The Conversation

By Gary W. Yohe | – Scientists say climate change is causing powerful hurricanes like Dorian to increasingly stall over coastal areas, which leads to heavy flooding. Officials in the Bahamas feared “unprecedented” devastation after Dorian hovered over the islands for two days, pummeling it with rain. But beyond more intense and slow-moving hurricanes, the […]

Investment

Trump’s Economic Sanctions: War by Another Name

H. Patricia Hynes

(Informed Comment) – In early 2019, the White House threatened to invade Venezuela, take down the government and replace it with their choice of president and political party. Though no missiles have been fired and no bombs dropped on the country, our government is waging a war by other means, namely criminal economic sanctions, to […]

China

China: How the Republican Imperial Presidency Led to Trump’s Trade National Socialism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump has put US companies on alert that he might force them to withdraw from China, where they have $256 billion invested. He says he is given this power by the 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. The Republican Party has spent over a century […]

Banking

‘Slowbalization’: Is the Slowing Global Economy a Boon or Bane?

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – Some economists worry the world has passed “peak globalization.” But that could be good for the planet. By John Feffer, August 14, 2019. Print South Korea is now a rule-abiding participant in the global economy. If North Korea traded its nuclear weapons program for a peace treaty, security guarantees, […]

European Union

Europe’s big Plans for Iran Trade announce Independence from Trump’s Washington

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Despite the significant economic problems Iran faces, and despite the real problems in unequal income distribution, Iran’s economy is seeing bright spots that the Western press rarely admits. In the year after international sanctions were lifted on the signing of the nuclear accord, spring 2016-spring 2017, […]