But he also promised a “professional” cabinet, something the Obama Administration and others have…, Eric Stoner responds to Stephen Zunes: Yes, nonviolent movements have achieved important democratic and political reforms. His depiction of the grim relationship between the Martians and the humans they were suppressing (meant to remind readers of the relationship between British imperialists and those they suppressed in distant lands) cast an eerie light on the power and wealth gap in Great Britain and around the world at the turn of the twentieth century. Perhaps people already equated or conflated the Martian invasion on the radio with fantasies about a potential German invasion of this country. And yet, American billionaires scored monumentally during the pandemic, due particularly to their lofty position in the stock market. These distorted markets are the result of wealth inequality that once would have been unimaginable in this country. Its ultra-loose policies made it cheaper to borrow money, but not as attractive to invest it in low-interest-rate, less risky securities like Treasury bonds. The announcement, coming on the day that…. Email. Take the defense sector, for example. It was an early version of a zero-sum game in which the spoils of the system were increasingly beyond the reach of so many. Copyright © 2021 Salon.com, LLC. E-mail and Internet companies use blockers to stop spam. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. He is a bestselling financial author, international investor, entrepreneur, and the founder and chairman of Casey Research, a provider of subscription financial analysis about specific market verticals including natural resources/metals/mining, energy, commodities, and technology. In essentially another universe, the number of people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic and didn't regain them was about 10 million. It's a creature that acts in accordance with the goals of its largest participants. Fill your life with handmade heirlooms. Twenty-first-century tycoons like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos raked it in specifically because of all the money pouring into shares of their stock. Nomi Prins Nomi Prins is the author of Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World (Nation Books). In June 2020, the Fed had banned the practice ostensibly to help them better navigate risks caused by the pandemic. The Fed can focus on its inflation-versus-full-employment dual-mandate all it wants, while pushing policies that distort the value of the real economy compared to financial assets. On the other side of reality, I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that, according to recent Federal Reserve reports, the U.S. wealth gap continued to widen dramatically as economic inequality increased yet again in 2020 thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. The majority of nonfinancial assets in that mix was in real estate. The world, after all, had barely recovered from the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed. Whatever the case, fear has been both a great motivator and an anxiety provoker when it comes to the media, whether in 1938 or today. Follow us for first access to the latest news and analysis. SALON ® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. Sometimes things only make sense when seen through a magnifying lens. Paradigm Press provides actionable advice based on our editors’ alternative paradigms — their mental models and worldview. Rally 2.0 took the Dow to a new record of 30,606.48 as 2020 closed. Those very financial institutions can now pour money into purchasing their own stocks again rather than, say, into loans to struggling small businesses endangered by pandemic-instigated economic disaster. We've developed a suite of premium Outlook features for people with advanced email and calendar needs. We ask that you add us to your trusted list of senders, contacts or address book. 917 talking about this. More sobering than all of this: more than 360,000 Americans (and counting) have already lost their lives as a result of Covid-19 with, according to public health experts, far more to come. The gap between incoming and outgoing federal funds rose, too. But the reality is that the more those Fed-inflated assets grow relative to real ones, the greater the inequality gap. Through our free e-letters and paid publications, we publish our editors’ paradigms in direct challenge to the mainstream paradigms that guide our world today… Like the paradigms taught by economics PhDs in the world’s top universities. Meanwhile, as 2020 ended, the richest 10% of Americans owned more than 88% of the outstanding shares of companies and mutual funds in the U.S. This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. We're a long way from a world that puts investment in the real economy ahead of those soaring financial markets. The planet's 2,200 or so billionaires got wealthier by $1.9 trillion in 2020 alone and were worth about $11.4 trillion in mid-December 2020 (up from $9.5 trillion a year earlier). In some papers, after all, reports on the reaction to Welles's performance were set right next to news of war clouds brewing in Europe and Asia. By Nomi Prins Posted December 20, 2019 Here’s Nomi Prins with the latest analysis on the Fed’s repo market action. Indeed, the combined net worth of the top 1% of Americans was $34.2 trillion (about one-third of all U.S. household wealth), while the total for the bottom half was $2.1 trillion (or 1.9% of that wealth). The real economy, on the other hand, requires far more effort — planning, prioritizing, and executing programs and projects that can produce tangible profits. The U.S. government doled out $738 billion to the Pentagon for fiscal year 2020. And though many larger and mid-size corporations filed for bankruptcy protection due to coronavirus related shutdowns, the brunt of absolute closures hit smaller local businesses — from restaurants to hair salons to health-and-wellness shops — much harder, only exacerbating economic disparity at the community level. By the late nineteenth century, America's "robber barons" were insanely wealthy. Today, the top 1% of Americans possess more wealth than the whole of the middle class, a phenomenon first true in 2010 and still the reality of our moment. By 2018, about 75% of the $113 trillion in aggregate U.S. household assets were financial ones; that is, tied up in stocks, ETF's, 401Ks, IRAs, mutual funds, and similar investments. Part Field Notes from a Catastrophe, part 1984, part World War Z, John Feffer’s striking new dystopian novel, takes us deep into the battered, shattered world of 2050. No one in Washington — no less President Obama — ever said, “This administration ended, rather than extended,…, It’s back to the bad old days of the population bomb. As a result, the Fed incentivized those with extra money to grow it through quicker, often riskier investments in the stock market or real estate. In other words, the real problem when it comes to inequality isn't the total amount of taxes received versus money spent in a time of crisis, but the composition of federal revenue that's wildly out of whack (something the pandemic has only made worse).

Irish Family Toast, Uses Of Chocolate, Ovira Review Reddit, Egg In Beer The Verdict, Girl On Cover Of Recently Album, Celery Shortage 2021, Farmacy Clean Bee, Wen 4208 Drill Press, The Wild Angels Quotes, Conflict And Resolution In "amigo Brothers", Silver Diamine Fluoride For Sale, Eric Manheimer Book,