San José, CA – On Thursday, July 11, the Department of Labor released the most popular measure of consumer prices, showing inflation continues to decline. The overall Consumer Price Index or CPI actually declined by 0.1% in June as compared to May. The year-over-year rise, from June 2023 to June 2024 was 3%. This was the lowest inflation rate in more than three years.

San Francisco, CA – On November 11, close to 900 people gathered at San Francisco State University for a counter-summit against the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit later that week.

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum will be meeting in San Francisco and progressives need to be there on Saturday, November 11 and Sunday, November 12.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization opposes APEC as a tool of imperialist exploitation, and stands in solidarity with those planning to protest this meeting, such as the People's Counter-Summit being organized by the No to APEC Coalition.

Interview with Professor of Economics Masao Suzuki

In 2023, there have been many announcements of layoffs by technology firms. This is a result of what the media calls post-COVID normalization. But this “normalization” has also shown that many technology companies that boomed during the pandemic were in fact overproducing and building new capacity too quickly, forcing them now to scale back. In the past ten days this slowdown in the technology industry spilled over into the banking system, triggered by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, based in Santa Clara, California. Soon after the failure of SVB on Friday, March 10, regulators shut Signature Bank in New York. First Republic bank, headquartered in San Francisco, had to borrow $30 billion from other banks, under the direction of the Federal Reserve. The crisis even spilled overseas, as the troubled Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse was forced to sell itself to the even larger Swiss bank UBS. Fight Back! News sat down with Professor Suzuki to ask him about this crisis. Fight Back!: How is the failure of Silicon Valley Bank related the crisis unfolding in the technology industry?

San José, CA – After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, headquartered in the city of Santa Clara, just north of San José, the local news was full of interviews with technology entrepreneurs talking about the “importance to the community” to have all of the uninsured depositors get their money back. With the closing of Signature Bank in New York, which had large numbers of crypto-investment related depositors, over the weekend, federal regulators tried and failed to find buyers for the two banks. This made these two banks the biggest ever – with about $200 and $100 billion in deposits, respectively – to have to shut down.

Gross Domestic Product weaker than expected

San José, CA – The broadest measure of unemployment insurance, which includes the regular state unemployment insurance or UI, the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or PUA, the federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation or PEUC, as well as the state Extended Benefits or EB rose in the first week of January by 2.3 million people to a total of 18.3 million people. While down from its peak in April, it is still nine times as high as it was a year ago before the recession began, according to the weekly report by the U.S. Department of Labor released on Thursday, January 28.

Retail sales fall for third month in row

San José, CA – The U.S. economy showed more signs of weakness as the COVID-19 pandemic rages and Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine rollout crashes and burns amid finger-pointing, lies and incompetence. New claims for regular state unemployment rose by more than 20% in the week ending January 9, the biggest gain since the dark days of March when the economy hit a brick wall.

Tallahassee, FL – If you are like me, you have probably checked your bank account dozens of times throughout the day waiting for the recent round of $600 stimulus checks.

San José, CA – On Friday, December 4, the U.S. Department of Labor released its report on the jobs market in November. Their monthly survey of businesses reported a gain of only 245,000 new jobs, about half of what economists expected and less than half of October’s job gain of 600,000 jobs. For the first time since the beginning of the recession, job losses have spread from the government, which lost almost 100,000 jobs, to retail, which lost almost 35,000 jobs. Job growth in other areas slowed from October, with the exception of transportation and warehousing, showing the continuing growth of online shopping. November’s gain barely put a small dent in the almost 10 million jobs still missing from the plunge in March and April.

San José, CA – On Friday, December 4, the U.S. Department of Labor released its report on the jobs market in November. Their monthly survey of businesses reported a gain of only 245,000 new jobs, about half of what economists expected and less than half of October’s job gain of 600,000 jobs. For the first time since the beginning of the recession, job losses have spread from the government, which lost almost 100,000 jobs, to retail, which lost almost 35,000 jobs. Job growth in other areas slowed from October, with the exception of transportation and warehousing, showing the continuing growth of online shopping. November’s gain barely put a small dent in the almost 10 million jobs still missing from the plunge in March and April.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization stands with working people on the West Coast who are threatened by the massive wildfires that have taken scores of lives. Dozens more are missing and feared dead and thousands of homes were destroyed. We encourage FRSO members in California, Oregon and Washington to assist in whatever way possible in efforts that ensure the safety of your neighbors and contribute to pro-people recovery efforts. It is important to combat the fear mongering around the fires that is happening in the service of a cynical right-wing political agenda.

Countdown to end of extra unemployment insurance continues

San José, CA – For the second week in a row, new applications for state unemployment insurance or UI did not drop by much, despite economists’ expectations. New claims for the week ending June 20 were 1.48 million, down only 28,000 from last week’s initial estimate. New applications for the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA, fell by 42,000 to 728,000 last week. Together the PUA and state unemployment insurance applications topped 2.2 million, only slightly lower than the 2.27 million total for the week before.

San José, CA – U.S. stocks plunged sharply right after the opening bell and ended more than 7% lower as the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 2000 points, March 9. So swift was the fall that within minutes so-called circuit breakers developed after the 1987 stock market crash kicked in, halting trading for 15 minutes. Stocks tried to bounce back but ended the day lower.

San José, CA – On Friday, April 26, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) issued its first report on economic growth in 2019. The country’s Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, which measures the total production of goods and services, grew at a 3.2% annual rate during the first three months of the year (January to March). This was stronger than most economists expected.

San José, CA – On Sept. 17, President Trump announced that tariffs of 10% will be slapped on $200 billion of Chinese goods starting Sept. 24. These tariffs will rise to 25% at the beginning of 2019. Trump also said that he would put tariffs on another $267 billion dollars of imports from China if China responds to his tariffs. Along with the tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports already in place, this would mean steep tariffs on virtually all of the $500 billion in goods that the United States buys from China.

New York, NY – On June 5, fashion designer Kate Spade died via suicide. Three days later, chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain also committed suicide. Along with his TV show, Bourdain was a supporter of Palestine and the #MeToo movement, as well as openly criticizing Henry Kissinger for his foreign policy.

Washington DC – A June 16 article in Rodong Sinmun, the leading daily newspaper in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) stated, “capitalism is a gloomy society as it has no future.”

Editor’s note: Fight Back! will be running a number of articles to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx.

Houston, TX – During the last elections, Hillary Clinton, who used a sort of bourgeois ‘feminism’ to sell reactionary ideas to the public. Since then, there have been a number of films, such as Wonder Woman, that use images of powerful women to promote a pro-war capitalist agenda. Atomic Blonde is the latest of this genre, which stars Charlize Theron as a kind of female James Bond, who fights communist leaders in the German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany to help the British Intelligence and the CIA stage their famous 1989 coup d’état.

San José, CA – On May 24, Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury and former Wall Street investment banker for Goldman Sachs, urged Congress to raise the federal debt limit before they go on break July 28. The U.S. Treasury first bumped up against the maximum that the U.S. government can borrow back in March, and has been continuing to borrow by using accounting measures.