Bust follows boom under capitalism

San José, CA – The New Year is starting off much the way 2018 ended: with U.S. stocks being hammered again. On Thursday, January 3, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell more than 600 points, the technology heavy NASDAQ fell more than 200, and the broad S&P 500 fell more than 60 points. All the averages fell more than 2% to put the year into the red.

Capitalism’s cycle of boom and bust continues

San José, CA – Casting a shadow on the stock market are the growing number of economic statistics that point to a recession in 2019. Almost all mainstream economic forecasters expect economic growth to slow down in 2019 as the impact of the 2018 tax cuts wear off; the forecast is for 2.4% growth, about the same as in 2017. But few predict a recession.

An interview with Masao Suzuki

Masao Suzuki is a leading member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) who follows the economy. Fight Back! interviewed him on March 1, after another drop in U.S. stock market.

Another step toward first U.S. debt crisis in history

San José, CA – Today, Oct. 15, right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives stopped the House Republican leadership from trying to pass a compromise measure to re-open the federal government and raise its debt ceiling. This marks another step towards the first U.S. debt crisis in history.

San José, CA – Four years after the Great Recession of 2007-2009 officially ended, millions of working people are being left behind by the expansion of the economy. While the stock market and corporate profits reached new highs, there are still millions of fewer jobs than before the recession began, and the official unemployment rate is closer to its recession high than the low before the recession. Things are bad.

On June 1, the Labor Department reported that only 69,000 net new jobs were created in May, less than half of what economists had expected and less than a third of the relatively strong job growth of the December through February period. Immediately the Republicans and the Romney campaign blamed President Obama and his policies, especially the health care reform act. The Democrats and the Obama administration quickly fired back, blaming the Republicans for blocking their economic stimulus proposals in Congress.

On Sept. 30, the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) publicly stated that the United States economy was tipping into a new recession. This adds to the growing evidence of a serious slowdown in the U.S. economy, including the zero job growth and falling personal income in August as well as falling prices and sales of homes in August.

_Working people need to fight back against austerity _

The U.S. economy continues to stagnate with almost no economic growth or job creation more than three years after the great financial crisis of 2008 and more than two years after the recession officially ended in 2009. The official unemployment rate is still over 9% nationally, and millions of workers who have stopped looking for work are not included in this count. Even worse, the Obama administration projects unemployment to stay above 8% for all of 2012, which would be four years of near double-digit unemployment.

San José, CA – In a sign that the economy is on the edge of another downturn, the Labor Department reported on Sept. 2 that there was no gain in jobs in August. Not counting last summer when there were large layoffs of temporary Census workers, this is the worst jobs report since February of 2010. The Labor Department also revised down the job gains for June and July, so that average job gain over the last three months was only 35,000 net new jobs per month. This is far below the 200,000 or so jobs that a normal recovery would be generating at this stage of an economic expansion.

San José, CA – On August 5, Standard and Poors, commonly known as S&P, downgraded U.S. government bonds from the highest rating AAA to the second-highest AA+. At the same time the S&P called for even more austerity, saying that $4 trillion in cuts in U.S. government spending were needed, not the $2 trillion agreed upon earlier in the week. S&P criticized the U.S. government for not making cuts in Social Security and Medicare. In addition, S&P said that the federal government spending cuts needed to come sooner, increasing the chances of a new downturn in the economy, or the feared ‘double-dip’ recession.