Finance Archives - Page 2 of 2

Economy

Why We Need to Forgive Pandemic Debt

In a “Force Majeure Global Catastrophe,” we need to take extraordinary steps

October 22, 2020 • by David McClean

The way economies have weathered the pandemic, so far, has been through very muscular interventions by the world’s central banks. To address the economic damage done by COVID-19, governments have borrowed, in the aggregate, trillions of dollars from central banks, using the money to do everything from prop up falling asset ...

Capitalism

Can We Trust Monopolies to Play Fair?

Current debates on Big Tech and antitrust law lack a clear definition of “competition”

October 19, 2020 • by Sandeep Vaheesan

----- For the anti-monopoly movement, the past three months have been exciting but sobering. In late July, the House Antitrust Subcommittee held a landmark hearing at which members of Congress forced the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to admit to business practices they would rather have stayed private. Amazon ...

Capitalism

As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Higher taxes are necessary, but who will have the political courage to make it happen?

October 1, 2020 • by Kim Phillips-Fein

Early in September, more than 160 executives from companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, the white-shoe corporate law firm Skadden Arps, and a host of real estate developers and financial firms sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. They expressed their fear that “deteriorating conditions” in the city might slow ...

As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Capitalism

Big Tech May Be Closer to Home Than You Know

How digital behemoths create economically vulnerable communities — and then prey on them

October 1, 2020 • by Pat Garofalo

----- In May, 2020, the city of Gallatin, Tennessee, voted to provide nearly $20 million in tax breaks to an entity called “Project Woolhawk” that proposed building a data center in the area. Local economic development officials refused to confirm who or what was behind that name, only that it was ...

Big Tech May Be Closer to Home Than You Know

Climate & Ecology

Let’s Make Sure We Get the Green New Deal Right

Covid-19 will force us to rethink many of the assumptions underlying existing GND proposals

July 2, 2020 • by Marshall Auerback

Advocates of the Green New Deal (GND) are looking to change the way we handle a range of problems facing society, especially in the wake of environmental challenges occasioned by climate change. In response, policymakers have suggested a variety of programs designed to deal with these challenges. Should any of ...

Let’s Make Sure We Get the Green New Deal Right

Finance

#Unis4all: An Open Letter to the U.S. Higher Education Community

Universities can immediately bypass feckless state and federal legislatures and finance themselves directly with “Unis” supported by the Federal Reserve.

May 22, 2020 • by Scott Ferguson, William Saas, Maxximilian Seijo and Benjamin Wilson

In truth, however, the collapse of the American university is far from inevitable. As the present health emergency suggests, moreover, it will take more than business-as-usual to remediate its long-standing structural inequalities and injustices, according to an emerging minority of educators, staff, and students. In our capacity as a 501(c)(3) dedicated to bringing accurate and ...

#Unis4all: An Open Letter to the U.S. Higher Education Community

Corporations

Is the Covid-19 Small Business Loan Program a Boondoggle?

Yes…and no

April 28, 2020 • by Pat Garofalo

Some of the criticisms are totally legit. Others, though, are a bit overblown or end up misplacing the true blame for what went wrong. I’m going to try to untangle it all in seven points below: 1. What are we talking about? The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), as the major small business ...

Is the Covid-19 Small Business Loan Program a Boondoggle?

Economy

The COVID-19 Crisis Demands Bold, Progressive Economic Ideas

A Call for Papers

April 2, 2020 • by Teresa Ghilarducci, Richard McGahey and Paulo L. dos Santos

This pandemic poses a series of unprecedented economic challenges. It compromises our ability to engage in productive and commercial activities that require close contact between groups of people. Because fighting the disease requires non-essential workers to stay at home, it threatens to trigger a catastrophic recession, if not depression, as entire ...

The COVID-19 Crisis Demands Bold, Progressive Economic Ideas

Capitalism

COVID-19 Hits the Dual Economy

Incomes Destroyed at the Bottom, Profits Supported at the Top

March 30, 2020 • by Lance Taylor

This note presents broad brush illustrations from a simple accounting model of the impacts of the coronavirus epidemic on macroeconomic balance, with emphasis on fiscal interventions. The premise is that supporting effective demand is essential for sustaining economic activity. The COVID-19 epidemic created mass unemployment by shutting activity down. The ...

Democracy

There’s No “Trade-Off” Between Saving Lives and Saving the Economy

A humane society doesn’t trade some lives for others

March 28, 2020 • by Peter Dreier

Nonsense. In February, when he had a chance to take decisive action to get ahead of the virus, Trump told his advisors not to “do or say anything that would further spook the markets.” Trump’s weeks of downplaying the crisis, and his failure to prepare for the looming pandemic, deepened the problem. But having finally acknowledged the ...

There’s No “Trade-Off” Between Saving Lives and Saving the Economy

Finance

Pandemics and Your Retirement Accounts

What You Should and Should Not Do

March 24, 2020 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

First, pause with gratitude if you have a retirement account. Only 41 percent of older workers have any type of retirement plan at work, whether it is a traditional pension or a 401(k) TIAA- type plan. The rate of non-coverage is even higher for younger workers. And the rate of ...

Finance

Sovereignty, Financial Power, and Central Banks

Why bad critiques of finance spur right wing populism

December 25, 2019 • by Joseph Vogl, Dennis Ohm and Jochen Schmon

With sentences like this, Joseph Vogl became one of the most rigorous German critics of the austerity politics enforced by the so-called Troika in the aftermath of the European Debt Crisis. In his latest work The Ascendancy of Finance (2017) he deals with the political power of central banks. In this interview, ...