ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger interviews law professor Lev Menand about his new book critiquing the role of the Federal Reserve.
Profits are booming and corporations are raising prices, but instead of regulating corporations, the Federal Reserve is using its powers to create a recession and raise unemployment. Workers will suffer.
The Fed knows inflation is a problem born of insufficient supply that only governments can tackle. But that doesn’t look like stopping it from pushing the US economy, and everyone else’s, into recession.
The costs of recession are not simply limited to those workers who lose a job— they're incredibly widespread across the workforce.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell plans to address sky-high inflation by hiking interest rates — acknowledging that doing so will suppress wages and worker power. It's a response that will force workers to bear the brunt of the inflation crisis.
Starbucks, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Amazon – all protect profits by making customers pay more. We need the political courage to say they can and should cover rising costs themselves
There is no compelling reason to raise interest rates, now or later.
"A large across-the-board increase in interest rates is a cure worse than the disease," says economist Joseph Stiglitz. "That might dampen inflation if it is taken far enough, but it will also ruin people's lives."
No private, unelected entity should have the power over the economy that BlackRock has, without a legally enforceable fiduciary duty to wield it in the public interest.
The repo market is a fragile house of cards waiting for a strong wind to blow it down, propped up by misguided monetary policies that have forced central banks to underwrite its highly risky ventures.
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