Month: March 2020

The Relief Package Ushers In Trump’s Planned Economy (Wired)

Our success in combating the pandemic and restarting the economy will depend on this administration’s choices—and political pressure from citizens.

LAST WEEK THE Senate voted 96 to 0 on a bill that fundamentally reorients American politics. The relief package includes direct cash payouts to families that run into the hundreds of billions, and corporate bailouts for casinos, aerospace companies, airlines, hotel chains, and Wall Street firms that White House adviser Larry Kudlow argues will total $6 trillion. There are loans and grants to small businesses, as well as money for hospitals, states and cities, real estate interests, and obscure guarantees of risky bank debt.

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Unspeakable with John Vasiliades (Podcast)

Matt Stoller, former analyst on the Senate Budget Committee, current Research Director at American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The 100 Year War Between Monopoly and Democracy, talks about politics of the past — how it informs the present, and what’s at stake for our future.Start RadioSave to your Liked SongsAdd to QueueAdd to PlaylistCopy Song Link

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A civil rights lawsuit highlights how Comcast’s monopoly crushes media divers (The American Prospect)

In October, hip-hop artist Curtis James Jackson III, better known as 50 Cent, went after a rival mogul on Instagram. His target wasn’t a fellow artist, but Brian Roberts, the billionaire CEO of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company. Comcast had just announced it was kicking 50 Cent’s show Power off the cable giant’s system. “This is the guy fu**ing up (Power) over at @Comcast,” 50 Cent wrote, showing a picture of a grinning Roberts wearing a wrinkled golf shirt.

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The Crisis in Financial Markets Began Before COVID-19 (The American Prospect)

The Federal Reserve has been committing hundreds of billions to short-term lending markets for months. It’s time to make that power work for more than just Wall Street. Written by Graham Steele and Matt Stoller.

Last week, the Federal Reserve staged a large-scale intervention in short-term money markets, announcing that it would make $1.5 trillion in loans available in the coming days. It followed with a big rate cut. And this week, the Federal Reserve is going to start lending to any big corporation that needs it, an emergency measure it last took during the 2008 financial crisis. It will be lending essentially unlimited sums to hedge funds, banks, and brokerages.

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How Jack Welch’s Success Wrecked the Idea of the American Company

The recently deceased business icon pioneered mergers and acquisitions, stock buybacks, and offshoring (The Marker)

In early February of 1981, President Ronald Reagan picked his antitrust chief, William Baxter, whose arrival signified the reconstitution of monopoly power in America. Baxter restructured antitrust and merger law to prioritize economic efficiency and supercharged a merger trend already underway.

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