Today’s show discusses this week’s Fed rate hike and why it won’t have any effect on inflation. Why monetary policy no longer affects the economy—either inflation reduction or economic growth stimulation—due to long term financialization, globalization and now Trump policies as well. Why the US Treasury market is approaching crisis and needs higher interest rates by the Fed. Why sales of Treasuries to fund the US budget deficit may not occur. Result is deeper US economic crisis and inability to finance rising deficit spending.
September 19, 2026
This past week the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark short term interest (Federal Funds) rate a minimal quarter point, .25, from 3.75% to 4.00%. Expectations are strong for yet another .25 hike before the end of 2026.
Goods and services inflation in the US has recently begun to accelerate and the conventional wisdom in the mainstream media is that the Fed is raising rates in order to dampen inflation.
But is that the case? Or is there something else behind the rate hikes?
As the argument goes, Interest rate hikes dampen Consumer and Business demand for loans and thus consumption and investment in turn. Higher rates mean less spending by consumers on mortgages and big ticket items like cars; higher rates dampen business borrowing demand, so the theory goes.
It’s Supply Stupid
But the current inflation surge is not due to excess Demand. It’s a Supply problem. The Fed has little influence over supply, especially if it involves the global economy. And that’s exactly what’s driving up prices: the escalation of global oil and energy prices which translate into higher costs of gasoline for consumers, diesel for truckers and railroads, aviation fuel for airlines and much of electricity and natural gas services throughout the economy. And those prices eventually bleed into higher food prices with a lag.
To repeat: the higher energy prices driving US domestic inflation are a consequence of rising global energy prices—and those global prices in turn are the result of Trump war policies in the now spreading Middle East wars, Trump sanctions policy and tariff wars.
The Fed raising rates to dampen Demand has no effect on rising energy prices due to Supply and US war and related policies.
Current rising US inflation is a Supply problem that the Fed can do little about by raising rates and targeting Demand. Demand driving inflation are actually receding for months in the US, as real wages for households decline and unemployment rises in the Tech and now other industries. US job growth in 2026 has all but collapsed. In addition, as costs of borrowing rise—and in turn interest on credit cards, auto loans, student loans, mortgages, etc.—household Demand has slowed further.
Interest on that $18.5 trillion household debt load is a drag on household consumption. So too is the $23.7 trillion corporate and non-corporate business debt on investment. And that’s not counting the additional $43.8 total government debt, federal and state and local or the additional Federal Reserve balance sheet debt of $6.8 trillion. That’s a total combined debt of $106.2 trillion.
All that is money paid to wealthy capitalist investors that otherwise might be spent or invested on goods and services, to create jobs, and generate income for the many instead of the few. Assuming an average interest rate from all sources, that’s $7 trillion a year accruing to investors from interest alone. Interest payment on the Federal national debt alone is now more than $1.2 trillion a year.
Summing up: the problem of rising prices in the US today therefore is not excess Demand. And Fed price hikes, targeting Demand, will have no effect on inflation driven by Supply of global energy and other commodities caused largely by Trump policies.
On the other hand, the higher rates will have an added negative economic impact—as interest rates in general suck up and divert money capital from consumers, government and even some businesses to the super-wealthy investor class minority.
Fed Rates vs. Capitalism’s Financial & Global Restructuring
There’s more. Even if one assumes Fed higher interest rates will dampen consumer-business demand and thereby slow inflation, changes in the US and global economy the past quarter century show that Fed rate hikes have had a declining impact on dampening inflation. Conversely as well, Fed rate cuts have declining impact on stimulating consumption and business investment.
In economists’ parlance: interest rates have become increasingly inelastic stimulating as well as slowing the economy. Why is this so?
The ultimate causes for interest rate (i.e. monetary policy) growing relative ineffectiveness have to do with the growing financialization and globalization of the US and international economies since the 1990s. This phenomenon is addressed in more detail in my just released book, ‘The Twilight of American Imperialism’, Clarity Press, September 2026.
But to summarize in brief: lowering interest rates have been having a declining effect on stimulating economic growth because most of the rate cuts get redirected to investing in the expanding financial asset markets in 21st century capitalism in the US and general Empire abroad. It is more profitable for businesses and investors to borrow money from the Fed’s affiliated banks (at lower rates) and reinvest that borrowed money in financial asset markets (in US and globally), rather than to invest in real assets in the US that produce goods and services (and in turn jobs and incomes). There are of course exceptions to the rule. But the exceptions represent a declining share of the real economy. Capitalism is changing and monetary policy has been declining in effectiveness as a result. Fed rate hikes (or cuts) have had less effect in stabilizing the US economy.
For example: the Fed reduced interest rates to 0.11 to 0.40% from 2009 through 2016 and additionally injected $4 trillion in Federal Reserve bond buying into the economy. What happened to US GDP real growth? Annual growth rates averaged 1.43% from 2008 through 2016. One cannot argue therefore than lowering rates stimulated the real economy. They didn’t. But they subsidized a lot of investors with low cost money and made them richer.
The same applies vice-versa: the historical record in the US since 2016 shows raising rates do little to dampen inflation. What that record does show, however, is that when Federal Reserve long term bond rates hit 5.5%-6% they provoke a financial crash. That happened in 2000 just before the dotcom bust, in 2007 before the subprime mortgage-derivatives crash, in 2019 when the Repo market threaten to implode, and in 2023 when the regional banks in the US began to go belly up. Those long term US bond rates are now about 5.4% and rising!
Rising rates make the rich richer and destabilize the financial system, while doing little to nothing to dampen global supply side inflation driven by US policies.
Fed Rates vs. Trump’s War, Trade & Sanctions
Today in 2026 another global development is rendering Fed interest rate policy ineffective: Trump’s Middle East wars, sanctions and trade policies, and the consequent decline of the US dollar, are all responsible for driving up global energy and commodity prices. It has nothing to do with domestic Demand.
While the US domestic economy is essentially self sufficient in oil and energy, the global economy is not. That’s especially true for Europe and northeast Asia (Japan, South Korea).
Trump’s war in Iran, now spreading throughout the Middle East region, has resulted in a serious shortage of energy (oil and natural gas) In Europe in particular. The US initially exported large quantities of US (and Venezuela) oil and gas to Europe when the Iran war began. Much of the US release of its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was exported to Europe. However, now the SPR reserve release is running low and Europe oil supply from US exports is in trouble. Global oil and gas prices have therefore begun accelerating again, and US prices in turn as US oil companies price their sales on global prices not domestic supply.
US sanctions policy—in particular on Russia and Iran—is also driving up global energy prices. So is Trump’s tariff wars raising import prices. And the devaluation of the US dollar which is doing the same.
But if the Federal Reserve’s raising rates has no effect on US and global energy supply and thus no effect on US domestic inflation, why is the Fed raising rates nonetheless?
US Inflation & US Treasury Market Crisis
The US Treasury and its agent selling Treasury bonds, the Federal Reserve, need to raise interest rates. Why? To offer higher returns to buyers of US Treasuries and thereby provide an incentive to buy more US Treasuries.
So why does the Fed and US Treasury have to sell more bonds and securities?
Because the sale of Treasuries to buyers domestic (2/3s) and foreign (1/3) are the primary means by which the US covers its annual budget deficit. This year the 2026 deficit will exceed $2 trillion. It has done so since 2020. Total US defense and war spending is the largest cost element in the annual US budget deficit. Pentagon spending is already over $1 trillion and Trump has requested $1.5 trillion in 2027 to cover the continuing cost of wars, replenishing exhausted US weapons supplies, and to fund new weapons systems like drones, hypersonic missiles, autonomous weapons, etc. Interest rates on past Treasury sales now costs the US more than $1.2 trillion a year and rising as the US national debt escalates past $40 trillion.
In short, the US must now sell even more Treasuries in order to cover the rising budget deficit driven by ever higher defense and war spending. (Either that or Congress must raise taxes on the rich which it won’t do).
But in order to sell more Treasuries, the Fed needs to raise interest rates it pays borrowers (buyers) of the Treasury securities.
One may argue that the Federal Reserve knows it must raise rates not so much to dampen inflation (which higher rates won’t do), but to sell more Treasuries to pay for US war driven escalating budget deficits and accelerating interest payments on the national debt.
There’s yet another twist to the Federal Reserve’s rate dilemma: Not only must it sell more Treasuries to cover the rising budget deficit and debt, but it faces a growing challenge to even maintain current levels of Treasury sales.
Forces are developing which indicate that key groups of foreign buyers of Treasuries (1/3 of all buyers) are retreating from purchasing US Treasuries.
The Fed must raise rates not only to cover a rising budget deficit. It must raise rates to attract more domestic US buyers of Treasuries as foreign buyers of Treasuries retreat.
The retreat from holding Treasuries has been underway for some time by China. Once having held $1.2 trillion in US securities just a decade ago, latest data show China holds only $.63 trillion. It continues to steadily divest itself of Treasuries, not buying new and allowing old to mature and roll off. Other economies of the global south are beginning to do the same. Blame US sanctions and trade war policies for much of this development. They are replacing Treasuries with gold, and soon digital currencies as well.
For example, recent events in Japan indicate Japan, once a stalwart purchaser of US Treasuries, may be about to join China and reduce its Treasury holdings. A constant holder of more than $1 trillion, the largest foreign buyer, of Treasuries, Japan began to slow its purchasing in 2026. The reason? Japan’s own government bond rates are rising for the first time in more than a decade. Japan’s currency value was formerly zero. Its investors, and global investors, used to buy Japan Yen cheap and use it to buy US dollars and in turn US Treasuries. That was called the carrying trade. That is ending. Japan’s bonds are rising above 3%. Its Yen is also rising. With the government bond rate differential between Japan and US Treasuries narrowing, global investors are now buying Japan bonds instead of US Treasuries. That is why US Treasury Secretary Bessent last month entered the Yen market to buy Yen (with Euros by the way, saving US dollars for other purchases). He did that to prop up the Yen, keep Japan bonds from rising further, and ensure foreign investors continue buying US Treasuries.
However, events in September thus far show Bessent has failed. Japan may therefore buy fewer Treasuries—i.e. at a time that China is buying less and the US needs to sell even more Treasuries to cover its accelerating annual budget deficit!
There’s a third reason why foreign Treasury sales may be entering a crisis. In recent years, as China reduced its buying and Japan didn’t increase its, Europe stepped in to fill the gap, accelerate its buying of US Treasuries, and to help the US cover its US budget deficits as US war spending accelerated after 2021.
European countries in many cases more than doubled their purchases of US Treasuries from 2021 through 2026: Britain increased its holdings of Treasuries from $412 billion in 2020 to $865 billion in 2025; Belgium from $135 billion to $466 billion. Luxembourg from $197 to $431 billion; France from $49 billion to $376 billion and so forth.
One may argue Europe did so in exchange for continuing US military support for NATO in Europe and for Europe-NATO’s war in Ukraine. But with Trump’s decline of support for NATO funding and Ukraine war spending, Europe now has to fund the Ukraine war itself. To that end it has thus far raised or committed $176 billion in Euro bonds. Will it—indeed can it—continue to buy US Treasuries at the same rate as before? Not likely for several reasons.
First, it’s less likely given that Trump and Europe are feuding over Greenland; Trump is attacking Europe with tariffs; And Trump is angry with Europe’s lack of support for his war in Iran. Europe has a number of incentives therefore to reduce its prior level of purchases of US Treasuries.
Evidence is beginning to appear Europe plans not to continue purchasing US Treasuries at past rates. France, Belgium, Britain and other European countries in recent weeks have begun moving their physical gold stocks from the US back to Europe. That likely means it plans to substitute gold in lieu of buying US Treasuries. More outright shifts are also occurring. The huge Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund has reportedly begun selling its Treasuries.
A countervailing force, however, is that Europe has nowhere to go for oil and natural gas other than the US. Oil and energy from the Middle East to Europe continues to decline. The US has backfilled much of Europe’s oil needs in the first half of 2026 with SPR exports. With SPR now running low, that export may slow. In turn, Europe energy prices have begun to escalate still further.
In parallel to Europe, Canada has begun orienting toward Europe as result of a deep trade dispute with Trump. It has become an associate member of the EU. Like Europe, Canada previously increased is buying of US Treasuries from $69 billion in 2020 to $475 billion in 2025. And like Europe, it is unlikely it will continue to do so as the trade dispute between Canada and Trump further deteriorates.
The point of this preceding analysis is that a crisis in the US Treasury market is brewing. Foreign purchases of Treasuries are likely to slow across the board—at a time when the US needs to sell even more to foreign buyers to cover its further escalating war cost driven budget deficits.
That means the US Treasury needs to sell even more to US domestic buyers of Treasuries. For that it needs to raise the rates it pays buyers of US bonds and other securities, to entice them to buy even more and not just at prior rates.
The Treasury Market and Accelerating Decline of Empire
This is where financial instability in the massive Treasury market comes in. The US has to sell more Treasuries to domestic buyers in particular. But who are those buyers? In recent years they have been the increasingly unstable US financial institutions like hedge funds and other so-called and unregulated ‘shadow banks’.
Should the US real economy slow—or worse the AI investment bubble go bust—hedge funds and their ilk may begin to retreat from the Treasury market. The result could be the eruption of a major crisis in the Treasury market, which would reverberate across all financial markets rapidly. One may argue that’s perhaps why Bessent also recently began to provide an extra $8 billion a week to Treasury investors.
A crisis in the Treasury markets would drive Fed rates even higher—perhaps beyond that 6% long bond rate that history shows since 2000 is a tipping point for precipitating a general financial crash. Should that occur, a deep contraction of the US real economy would be certain. That contraction would then exacerbates even further the ability of the US empire to fund its projected war spending.
The Empire would have to accelerate its geopolitical retreat, already underway, as its funding collapses. Empires and their military cannot sustain themselves without sufficient funding. Slowing US Treasury sales and a contracting real economy and deep recession ensure the US Empire would have to retreat and consolidate—to the western hemisphere and central Pacific at minimum.
About the Author
Dr. Jack Rasmus is the author of several books on the United States and the global economy, including The Twilight of American Imperialism, Clarity Press, 2026; The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press 2020, and Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy, Clarity Press, (2016). He is a host for the radio show Alternative Visions on the Progressive Radio Network, a journalist, a playwright, and a former professor of economics at St. Mary’s College (retired).
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged carrying-trade, Europe, Federal Reserve, financialization, inflation, Japan, rate-hikes, treasury-market, US economy, us-empire | 1 Comment »
Trump brags how great the economy is doing and that American workers never had it so good, in terms of both jobs and pay. But the US government’s own data shows that since 2007 both jobs and wages for the working class have barely grown, forcing millions to leave the labor force altogether. The picture has worsened under Trump 2025-26. Job growth has slowed to a crawl and pay stagnated on average, while declining for millions at the median and below. The article then explains how this dire situation is about to get much worse, as next generation Agentic AI in 2026 is slashing millions of jobs this year and more the next.
Dr. Jack Rasmus
Copyright 2026
The Trump administration brags almost daily how great the US economy is and how well American workers are now doing. But the facts dramatically state otherwise. Here’s the facts about the current state of jobs and wages for the working class in America as of Labor Day 2026—and why the next two years both jobs and wages will get significantly worse. (All data is from the US government’s Federal Reserve and Labor Department databases or the Wall St. Journal).
There is nothing more important to a worker than having a job. Next important is a job that pays decently to allow a reasonable standard of living for his/her family. Third, a job with some promise of permanency—i.e. job security.
On all counts the state of the US working class this Labor Day 2026 is dire.
The Corporate Profits Picture
In contrast, corporate America the economy is booming. It’s never had it so good. In 2008, corporate profits as part of US national income amounted to $943 billion. By 2012 it had more than doubled to $2.2 trillion. Just prior to the Covid crash of 2020-21, in 2019 profits were $2.43 trillion. They then blew through the Covid recession and rose to $3.5 trillion in 2020-21. Big business did quite well during the Covid crash.
It didn’t stop there. Under Biden, profits continued to rise to $4.12 trillion by the time he left office in late 2024. And under Trump, rose to $4.53 trillion at year end 2025. Based on the first half of 2026, profits are on track to top $6trillion by the end of 2026. That’s almost a tripling since 2019!
With the massive near tripling of corporate profits since 2019, one would think job creation and wage gains followed suite. Maybe not a tripling. Of even a doubling. But at least an increase in low double digits. But they didn’t. Not even close. Not since 2008; nor since 2019; nor during the past 20 months 2025-26 under Trump.
The Long Term Jobs & Wage Picture: 2007-2026
(JOBS)
Let’s look at how the working class has fared in terms of jobs. Let’s start with the year 2007. That’s a peak year in employment, well before the crash of 2008-09 and the collapse and loss of tens of millions of jobs those years.
In 2007 the total size of the US Civilian Labor Force—i.e. all those employed and jobless but looking for work (in the US you can be out of work but not looking for work in which case you aren’t considered technically ‘unemployed’ and don’t show up in the unemployment rate statistics)—was 153.9 million.
According to the latest US jobs report for August 2026, there were 169.7 million in the Civilian Labor Force.
That means over the past 18.67 years, from 2007 through August 2026, the US created 15.8 million jobs. That’s roughly 850,000 jobs a year. Divided by months, it’s only 73,800 jobs a month.
Economists generally assume on average 125,000 new entrants enter the labor force monthly. These are students entering the labor market, former retirees having to return to work because they can’t make it financially, youths entering for the first time, and other categories of returnees.
In other words, since 2007 the US can’t sufficiently find jobs for citizens who want to enter the labor force and work.
So where did they go? They mostly dropped out of the civilian labor force altogether. The US government has a statistic for that. It’s called the Labor Force Participation Rate. It estimated 66% of the working age population in 2007 was in the labor force. It’s now 61.6%. That’s 4.5% fewer today. That’s 4.5% of a roughly 170 million today. Or about 7.6 million who’ve dropped out of the labor force altogether since 2007. By the way, they are without jobs but aren’t considered unemployed according to the way the US government calculates unemployment rates. Which means the current unemployment rate of 4.1% in August 2026 should be double that 4.1% at least.
Another labor department measure reveals the scope of the problem that the US is increasingly unable to find jobs for all its citizens who want to work.
It is called the Employment-Population Ratio. Given the rise in the US population, it estimates the percent of the population able to find work. Like the Labor Force Participation, that measure too is falling long term. As the US population rose from 303 million in 2007 to 343 million today, that ratio has fallen as well—from 62.7 to 59.1.
In other words, The US can’t create jobs to keep its population employed as it used to. More and more who can’t find work simply drop out—and are not counted in the unemployment rolls.
This is not about losing jobs due to recessions. That’s another separate cause. This is structural. It’s about an economy that can’t provide sufficient jobs long term for workers entering the labor force and wanting to work.
The past four and a half decades also shows a pattern of collaboration by politicians and corporations to consistently undermine full time job creation. In the 1980s millions of involuntary part time jobs were legally permitted for the first time in lieu of full time jobs. Their wages were less and few benefits were the norm. In the 1990s, millions more temp jobs were created with little or no benefits and no job security. Both part time and temp were legally excluded from the union contracts, where they existed. Free trade agreements after 1989 exported millions more full time jobs offshore. The advent of gig work after 2000 threw workers off regular company payrolls and adrift to find work as independent contractors—often contracted back by the same companies that fired them. Massive business tax cutting after 2001 further encouraged companies to replace millions of their workers with capital equipment. The government eventually reimbursing businesses for the full cost of the equipment that laid off the workers.
Tens of millions of US full time workers lost their jobs since 1980 to these various forces, or else were reduced to part time-temp-gig work at lower pay with few if any benefits and no semblance of job security whatsoever.
All these developments are examples of what’s called structural unemployment. They are apart and in addition to job losses due to recessions and business cycles, i.e. cyclical unemployment. Overlaid on the chronic, long term weakness in job creation, tens of millions lost work in the great crashes of 2008-09 and 2020-21, not to mention smaller recessions and periods of economic stagnation.
This weak long term, and growing weaker, US economy job creation record is about to get worse, much worse. It already is, in fact. The cause is the Artificial Intelligence technology revolution which began to have an impact in 2022-23 and now in 2026 is accelerating in its negative impact on jobs and wages of the US working class. More on which shortly below.
(WAGES)
The US Working Class has not fared any better since 2007 in terms of real wages.
If we’re talking about the working class, one should not include the salary and compensation gains for managers, CEOs and incorporated self employed like doctors, lawyers, small business, etc. The mainstream media likes to throw in their wages and compensation to make the overall wage numbers look better than they are.
The closes statistic of relevance for the working class is wages for what’s called Production and Non-Supervisory workers (PNSW), a subset of about 110 million workers who comprise roughly 81% of the US total private nonfarm workforce.
Real hourly wages for PSNW in 1983 was $8.03 (when adjusted for inflation using the government’s own base year of 1982-84, the most frequently cited statistic for adjusting for inflation). By August 2026 this had risen to $9.94.
That’s a real wage increase of about 4.4 cents/hr. raise a year since 1983!
That’s also likely an over-estimate for several reasons. First, it’s an average. Of the 110 million PNSW workers, those at the median were getting less than the top 10% and those well below the median even less. Second, there’s the question of the inflation index used, the Consumer Price Index, to get the real wage after adjusting for inflation. This author’s estimates conclude the CPI under-estimates actual inflation by at least another 1% a year. Third, even if not an average and if properly adjusted for inflation, it still does not mean the worker has $9.94 to spend. Take home pay after rising taxes and other deductions reduces the $1.14 gain even further. All this means real wages have not even risen the paltry 4.4 cents an hour per the government figures.
Real Weekly Earnings are another measure of pay. Weekly earnings are determined by the number of hours worked per week multiplied by the hourly wage and thereafter adjusted for inflation by the Consumer Price Index.
The results are similar to the hourly wage. The average weekly earnings for PNSW in 1983 was $272 a week. By August 2026 it was $336. That’s an increase of about $1.49 per year in weekly earnings.
The Short Term Under Trump: 2025-2026
Defining short term as the past 20 months of the Trump administration, January 2025 through August 2026, the data show both job creation and wages have slowed still further.
(JOBS)
Private Nonfarm Employment from January 2025 through August 2026 rose from 131.9 million to 132.7 million. That’s 800,000, or an average of 40,000 jobs a month, i.e. about half the monthly average of 74,000 over the longer term since 2007. In other words, nonfarm non-government jobs are being created at half the rate under Trump compared to the longer term since 2007. And don’t forget, that longer term since 2007 includes two massive periods of job loss in 2008-09 and 2020-21.
Government sector jobs not only did not grow at half the monthly rate under Trump but declined. Government employment in all sectors—federal, state, local—declined from 23.5 million in January 2025 to 23.3 million in August 2026, a 200,000 decline.
Both the Labor Force Participation Rate and the Employment-Population Ratio have also continued to fall under Trump—the former from 62.5% to 61.6% and the latter from 59.9 to 59.1. More workers thus continued to leave the labor force, or did not bother to enter, or else failed to find jobs and gave up. However, none of their numbers show up in the official US government unemployment figures. They are simply considered ‘missing’ by the government and never included in the calculation of the unemployment rate. Which is one reason why the unemployment rate hardly changes at all year to year now, despite the increasingly weak job creation picture.
Breaking down the aggregate Private Nonfarm Employment numbers by industry since 2025 shows little or no net job growth, or actual decline. Manufacturing jobs fell from 12.6 million to 12.4 million. Professional and Business and Retail Trade, two very large areas of employment, were both stagnant since January 2025 with no job growth: the former at 22.5 million and the latter at 15.4 million today as well as 20 months ago. Only the general services sector, where many unskilled and entry level jobs dominate, showed any gain—from 136.5 to 137.4 million. This is important to note since the current escalating impact of AI on jobs has begun to impact this sector of employment first and hardest.
For a number of reasons due to methodologies and data collection, the US monthly job reports tend to grossly overstate the number of jobs created. Those reports (based on two surveys called the Current Population Survey and the Current Establishment Survey) are later adjusted the following year by considering new data from the States’ unemployment insurance data.
In the last two years of the Biden administration, for example, the monthly job reports over-stated the actual number of jobs created by 598,000 and 898,000 jobs, respectively, according to the US Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW).
In 2025 the total growth in jobs was estimated at 584,000 by the monthly jobs reports. That was adjusted down by -403,000 jobs for an actual total of only 181,000 jobs created the entire year 2025.
In the summer of 2025, even according to the monthly job reports, the US economy created only 35,000 jobs a month over three months. Big losses were recorded in key sectors like manufacturing, professional & business services, and government. In August 2025 Trump freaked out and declared the Bureau of Labor Statistics management was faking the numbers to make him look bad and he fired the director, McEntarfar.
In the summer 2026 job creation collapsed again, resulting in less than 30,000 new jobs in both June and July, although August numbers rose again to 162,000. However, the composition of the 162,000 is questionable—given that more than 100,000 of that number are attributable to bars & restaurants workers (59,000 gain) and teachers (42,000). Some economists note that the 59,000 was due to the one time surge to accommodate the world cup soccer events in the summer. Another 42,000 was attributed to education. One wonders how teachers returning to work in August is not considered a seasonality adjustment. Did K-12 education really grow that fast in one month?
It remains to be seen what the QCEW downward adjusted job numbers for 2026 will be when released in February 2027. Will Trump’s politics play a role? Or will the downward trend in job creation adjustment continue?
(WAGES)
The picture for short term wages under Trump since January 2025 is more certain.
There have been no gain the past 20 months under Trump in inflation adjusted hourly wages or weekly earnings for Production & Non-Supervisory Workers in the US.
The inflation adjusted average hourly wage was $9.93 in December 2024 and $9.94 in August 2026. Ditto for average weekly earnings: $335 in December 2024 and $336 today.
That means since 2007 the real hourly wage for PNSW workers was only 2.6 cents and hour. Compared to the 4.4 cents per hour average over the longer period, 1983-2026, the period 2007 to 2026 shows an even slower rate of real wage gain at 2.6 cents. As paltry as the amount is, the gains are declining over time.
And under Trump 2025-26, the gains have totally stagnated for both real hourly and real weekly earnings—in other words no gains whatsoever. And if inflation were more accurately estimated, or the median instead of the average considered, the real hourly and weekly pay would indicate a decline under Trump. Take home pay would fare even worse.
If the job creation and real wage picture for the Working Class is dire in 2025-26, what about the intermediate and longer term, 2027 through 2030?
As bad as it is today 2026 for the working class, it’s about to get worse—and quickly. The current trends in Artificial Intelligence are destined to accelerate the crisis in jobs and wages for the American Working Class. Here’s why.
The Agentic AI Jobs Armageddon
The AI Revolution is occurring in stages. The first stage emerged around late 2022 with the introduction of the AI model called ChatGPT. This was simple AI. Someone programmed the model to do a task. Gave it a result to achieve. Identified tools for it to get and use. Where to go for the data. Then set it in motion with a human user prompt. The user defined the parameters and ChatGPT performed the task faster than any human. And as it performed more, it got more accurate with fewer errors. Moreover, it worked 24/7. No breaks. Holidays. Vacations. No benefits. Faster and cheaper meant more productivity. That meant reduced unit costs and that translated into more profits. Not just from productivity but because it also resulted in significant layoffs of real workers. AI is about making money by reducing labor costs and boosting productivity.
ChatGPT and its competitors targeted the replacement of simply decision making jobs formerly done by humans. Jobs that required little skill. Where the decision process was clearly defined, unambiguous and repetitive. This meant a lot of entry level service as well as manufacturing jobs.
Research sources like Goldman Sachs bank and McKinsey Consulting issued early predictions of the potential job loss due to AI. Goldman predicted 300 million worldwide. Dozens of other sources have since issued forecasts and predictions of job loss. Nearly all talk of hundreds of millions lost plus more jobs de-skilled and downgraded (and therefore lower paid).
Occupations like data entry clerks, telemarketers, customer service reps, cashiers, medical transcribers, translators, copy and content writers, insurance underwriters, paralegals, basic software coding and many others were the initial jobs impacted by first generation AI ChatGPT 3-4 and its clones. By 2026 these occupations have already been decimated by millions with more job destruction in progress.
The second generation AI appeared in 2026. Its job impact will prove much greater than first generation ChatGPT. It’s called ‘Agentic AI’. And its target is jobs involved in the entire workflow of companies in general. Not just certain industries. Agentic AI is not industry specific. Agentic AI doesn’t depend on repetitive prompts from a human user, like ChatGPT. Agentic AI operates autonomously. Give it a final objective, it seeks out tools and databases wherever it needs them to complete its objective.
Agentic AI is about AI managing AI. It is AI scaled manyfold. Its scalability is potentially unlimited. It is AI that eliminates jobs involving not just simple decision making jobs but what’s sometimes called knowledge workers. It is AI moving up the skilled and complex decision making chain.
Agentic AI hit the economy in early 2026 with a force and a rapidity experienced by no other technology. It is just nine months old and its effect is intensifying. The lure of significant cost reduction and profits expansion has resulted in management rushing its implementation regardless of unknown disruptive consequences.
Agentic AI means an ‘orchestrator’ AI agent directs and manages the tasks of countless other agents under its direction. Emphasize ‘countless’. It is applicable to workflow management throughout all industries and companies. Job functions like project managers, product managers, marketing managers and middle to upper management in general are becoming, or soon will become, superfluous. Much of human resource functions, marketing, accounting, legal and other ‘back office’ work become redundant. Research analyst jobs of all kinds, including stock market analysts market research analysts, systems analysts, etc are all on the Agentic AI block. Traditional quality control jobs are destined to disappear. Agentic AI manages its own quality control tasks. If it makes an error it self corrects its code.
These are not entry-level or simple decision making jobs. They are jobs critical for managing the overall flow of work within virtually every company in every industry.
Most creative work within businesses is also subject to displacement by Agentic AI. Recent surveys showed, for example, that 40% of all song creation in the first half of 2026 had some element of AI in its production, and 20% of all songs were totally AI generated. TV and movie script writing is being similarly impacted right now as well.
Wherever an activity report is issued to or by management in a company—that activity and report can be potentially done by AI.
Earlier this spring 2026, META’s CEO, Zuckerberg, attempted to take the lead by implementing agentic AI throughout the company. His ‘Project OT’ (OT=Organization Transformation) planned to gut most middle layers of the company—including middle managers, project team leaders, software developers, etc.—and have agentic AI replace their tasks. Reports were up to 60% of META jobs would be eliminated or announced cut by November 2026. The META workforce heard of the plan and threatened to leave or demonstrate or even unionize. Zuckerberg backed off and reduced the 20% scheduled spring job cuts to 10% and cancelled planned November layoffs. META couldn’t afford an employee revolt, given its need to secure investor commitments and borrowing to fund its massive AI investing plans.
In recent interviews, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s Eric Schmidt, made predictions about the impact of this latest stage of Agentic AI on employment in general.
Gates noted the unprecedented rapid pace of AI development with Agentic AI and warned 50% of all entry level jobs will be gone in two years. That’s tens of millions of US jobs. The unemployment rate, now stuck at around 4% in recent years, will range between 10%-20%.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, has publicly declared people “have no idea what’s coming in 2027.” Only 10% of the impacts of AI are now known, according to Schmidt. There will be an unlimited number of AI agents in two years, he warned. Already, Anthropic Corp’s ‘Claude’ leading edge Agentic AI is doing 80% of all software coding, he added.
Whereas first AI generation ChatGPT eliminated simple service decision making, Agentic AI targets the huge Business & Professional Services sector of the US economy with its 22.5 million jobs. (jobs already not growing in recent years per earlier data). The target is also the 20 million current US middle-upper management jobs. Both sectors are especially vulnerable to next generation AI replacement.
Agentic AI has also begun to transform ground transportation and manufacturing sectors, and by 2030 will begin to displace the 4 million K-12 public school teachers as well.
AI is already impacting the 2.2 million long haul truck driving industry. 18 wheeler trucks are already traveling across Texas without drivers in the cab. There’s another 1.3 million short haul truckers’ jobs also eventually at risk as well. Uber has 1 million ride-sharing drivers. UPS 100,000 drivers. 134,000 deliver for Amazon. 250,000 drive trucks for the US post office. With Agentic AI, each self-driving vehicle becomes an AI agent with an ‘orchestrator’ AI agent located at company headquarters directing them, planning and changing to the most efficient routes on the fly, avoiding congested traffic flows—all tracked simultaneously via a company’s access to dedicated low orbit satellites.
As knowledge workers, K-12 teachers are well adaptable to displacement by Agentic AI. One can easily imagine State governments defining centralized lesson plans for most academic subjects in K-12 public schools and delivering teaching services by various multi-media devices in the classrooms. Skilled teachers today replaced by lower paid, less skilled humans in the classroom operating the machines and monitoring classroom behaviors. Teachers become babysitters and classroom machine operators. Those that remain in the less skilled roles will consequently be paid less.
Then there’s what’s called ‘Physical AI’, i.e. robots. One has only to view the videos of the current level of AI development in China to understand the rapid pace of development of ‘physical’ AI now underway. And it’s only beginning. The use of human-like AI engineered robots is accelerating exponentially. Already humanoid robots are directing traffic in crowded inner-cities in China.
Not least, the use of Agentic AI in the military is unlimited. It too will negatively impact jobs. Agentic AI is perfectly adaptable to battlefield management. Hundreds and thousands of airborne drones today already engage daily in the war in Ukraine. Swarms of underwater and land-based drones are being prepared. Battlefield management by Agentic AI of individual AI agent military vehicles, weapons systems and robots is on the drawing boards by all major military powers—China, Russia, the US in particular. Fewer human recruits to the military in the US will be required within five years. Today’s 1.3 million active US military force will be reduced by tens and hundreds of thousands of human recruits. The US military recruited 163,000 in 2025. That level will no longer be needed and will be reduced by tens of thousands annually. Those rejected will be forced to enter the labor force instead, at a time of massive structural unemployment due to accelerating next generation AI.
How do all these impacts current and imminent result in job destruction due to Agentic AI and whatever comes next, 3rd generation?
If Gates is accurate in predicting the unemployment rate will surge to 10%-20%, that means the current 7 million unemployed full time workers today in the US (i.e. the 4.1%) will total 25 million unemployed—assuming just a 15% unemployment rate. And if Schmidt is right, that’s potentially within the next two years, by the time of the next US general election in 2028.
And that 25 million will not count any unemployment driven by a business cycle contraction and next recession that this writer predicts will occur before 2028. But that’s another story.
Dr. Jack Rasmus
September 7, 2026
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged agentic-ai, artificial-intelligence, economics, jobs, trump, US economy, Wages | 2 Comments »
What is the state of the US working class in terms of jobs, wages, etc. as of Labor Day 2026? The picture per latest US jobs report for August 2026. Wages. What’s the emerging impact of AI on the American Working Class? Not just in terms of job loss but in conditions of work. What is ‘Agentic AI” now doing to the work force? Show continues with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s last week interventions in the global currency and US bond markets, the chaos results in the recent G20 finance ministers meeting and latest claim the US will ‘grow’ out of its current $40 trillion debt crisis. What’s the actual record of US GDP growth long term?
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Today’s show takes up the topic of the American Empire in decline. It’s the first summary preview of my forthcoming book, available in early September, “The Twilight of American Imperialism“, Clarity Press, 2026. What does it mean to say ‘decline’? What are the indicators? They’re not just geopolitical—i.e. rise of BRICS, lost US wars, disputes with allies, fracturing military alliances, etc. All empires run on money and the American is running out of enough to fund the accelerating costs of empire. It is now experiencing an accelerating financial crisis as costs of Empire accelerate faster than revenues to fund it. As a result, the empire’s Practices have begun to fail and its Institutions under-perform. The book covers the period 1992 through 2026, focusing in large part on Trump 2025-26 and policies now accelerating the decline. Today’s show concludes by revisiting the crisis in the US Treasury market—the main means for debt financing of the Empire–emerging in recent weeks and explains how it is related to the main theme of the book.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
The Yen, US Treasury & the Financial Crisis of Empire
By Dr. Jack Rasmus
August 30, 2026
What do the collapse of the Japanese currency and carry trade—and the interventions by US Treasury Secretary Bessent in the currency and bond markets in recent weeks—have to do with the emerging financial crisis of the American Empire?
In August the US Treasury Secretary Bessent intervened in global currency markets to buy Yen to keep it from falling. Moreover it did so by buying Yen with Euros instead of US dollars. Bessent quickly followed that currency intervention with an accelerated buying back of US Treasury bonds, doubling buyback from $4 billion to now $8 billion a week.
What do these two seemingly separate actions by Bessent and the US Treasury have to do with today’s emerging financial crisis of the American Empire?
The Yen, the Dollar and US Treasuries
The Yen had been declining in relation to the US dollar. That meant Japan import prices, and in turn general inflation, had begun to rise in Japan. With inflation the price of Japan government bonds had begun to fall. Since the price and yield (i.e. interest rate) on bonds are always inversely relation, the interest rate on Japan government bonds began to rise in turn. From a level of virtually zero for years, the 10 year Japan government bond rose to nearly 3%.
Now that the yield on Japan bonds began to rise, Japan investors began investing in Japan bonds. When for years Japan bonds provided no yield, investors bought US Treasury bonds. A lot of them. More than $1 trillion.
But with Japan bond rates up and investors starting to buy Japan government bonds, money capital now threatened to turn from buying US Treasury bonds—yielding now around 4% and thus roughly the same as Japan’s bonds—to buying Japan bonds instead. In other words, demand for US Treasuries threatened to decline as investors turned from US to Japan government bond purchases.
Why is this important?
Because Japan had become by 2021 the largest purchaser of US Treasury securities among foreign holders, eclipsing China. Launched by Trump in 2018, the US trade war, sanctions, tariffs, etc. against China led to China in 2021 to start sharply reducing its holdings of Treasuries. Once holding $1.26 trillion in 2020, by 2026 China has reduced its holdings by half to $633 billion, allowing its Treasuries to ‘roll off’ after they matured and not purchasing new in any quantity. Japan had replaced China as the single largest country holding US Treasury securities.
Japan kept its holdings of US securities at more than $1.1 trillion throughout the period. Should it begin to buy fewer Treasuries—or worse start selling off its Treasuries—that would blow a second hole in US Treasury sales by foreign investors joining China.
Foreign investors (governments, central banks, private banks, corporations, etc.) hold about a third of all Treasuries outstanding today. They held approximately $9.2 trillion or 32% of all Treasuries outstanding at year end 2025, up from $6.8 trillion at start of 2020. Purchasings of US securities are critical for the US economy. New Treasury sales are the most important source for financing (paying for) the US annual budget deficit—and foreign purchasers constitute a significant one third.
Since 2020 the US budget deficit has ballooned, driven mostly by even faster acceleration of defense spending while Congress has massively cut tax revenues—i.e. the other potential source of budget financing which has been declining.
Pentagon spending has risen from $914 billion in 2021 to $1.15 trillion in 2025. US wars by year end 2026 will raise that to $1.4 trillion. Trump has asked for another $500 billion for defense in 2027. And that’s only Pentagon spending. Total US defense/war spending was $2.2 trillion in fiscal year 2025, when other defense related spending for veterans benefits, CIA, military aid, nuclear weapons development and other categories are included.
Given that tax revenues were cut $5 trillion by Trump in 2025 and thus a lid put on tax revenues as a source of funding the accelerating US defense spending and US budget deficit, sales of Treasury securities are increasingly important to fund the rising costs of Empire and exploding US budget deficits.
The US has continued to run massive budget deficits averaging more than $2 trillion a year since 2020. In past decades before 2000, the US used to cover its deficits with economic growth and tax revenues. But growth has slowed sharply since 2020, on average barely 2% per year and tax cuts for corporations and investors have accelerated. So Sales of US Treasuries have been key to ‘financing’ the annual $2 trillion plus US budget deficit.
Should foreign buyers of Treasuries continue to buy fewer Treasuries, like China has been doing, or worse, start selling off their Treasuries—how will the US finance its annual $2 trillion and rising budget deficit?
The US will have to either cut spending, raise taxes, or sell more Treasuries to domestic US buyers. But to sell more domestically, it will have to entice US domestic buyers to do so. How? By increasing the interest rate on the Treasuries it will pay them if they buy more.
Which brings us back to the recent events regarding Japan, its Yen, and its increasingly competitive Japan government bond rates that offer interest rates to buyers nearly equivalent to US Treasury bond rates.
Japan is about to sharply reduce its purchases of US Treasuries. That means less global demand for US Treasuries. At the same time, Japan has started selling off some of its $1.1 trillion hoard of Treasuries. That increases the supply of Treasuries globally. Lower demand and higher supply both mean falling prices for US Treasuries and, in turn, rising long term US bond interest rates.
Why is Japan selling its US Treasuries? In order to intervene to prop up the Yen, Japan’s central bank since July 2026 has begun selling off part of its $1.1 trillion stock of US securities. In fact, since July 2026 Japan’s central bank has dumped(sold off) more than $90 billion of Treasuries. It’s done so in order to raise cash with which to buy its own Yen in global markets to keep the Yen from falling.
In short, the falling Yen and rising Japan bond rates is threatening to sharply reduce the sale of US Treasuries and is throwing excess supply of US Treasury securities onto the market—both actions destabilizing the $31 trillion US Treasury market.
Bessent’s Yen Intervention with Euros
To assist Japan—and discourage it from selling even more US Treasuries—US Treasury Secretary Bessent last month intervened in global currency markets and started buying Yen to assist Japan trying to prop up the value (price) of its Yen. But that’s just the appearance. The real Bessent objective is to assist Japan to prevent it from selling off even more US Treasuries.
In an interesting twist, Bessent didn’t enter the global currency market to buy Yen with dollars. He used the US Treasury’s stock of Euros currency to buy Yen. That may have temporarily helped Japan, but it undermined the value of the Euro and European economies. That did not make the Europeans too happy.
On August 30, 2026 Bessent bragged the US action had stabilized the Yen. But evidence suggests otherwise. The Yen is likely to continue to fall below the benchmark Yen-Dollar exchange of 160 to the $1. When it does, Japan will likely dump (sell) more of its US Treasury holdings in order to buy more of its currency to prop it up. That means Japan, like China, will reduce its holdings of US securities well below the $90 billion it already expended since July. If it’s selling Treasuries it’s certainly not going to buy more. So both Japan’s demand and supply of Treasuries will push up US long term Treasury bond interest rates. US long bond rates are already at 5.3%! They’ll likely go higher now.
That will pull up US mortgage rates. So US consumers can forget about US housing affordability before the US November elections. It’ll get worse, not better. It’s already happening.
To sum up: the Japan Yen instability—and the joint interventions by the bank of Japan and the US Treasury to stabilize it—will likely lead to Japan, like China, selling off existing stock of US Treasuries and buying fewer of the same.
If both China and Japan are buying fewer and dumping more, who will pick up the slack in Treasury security sales—the key source for financing the US budget deficit, now at $2 trillion and projected to rise even more?
Since 2020 it has been the Europeans who have offset China’s sell off of Treasuries to enable the continued financing of the US deficit gap. Surprised by that? It’s true.
The question, however, is whether the Europeans will now buy even more Treasuries to offset the China, and soon Japan, decline in Treasuries?
Here’s what the Europeans did from 2020 through 2025:
The UK increased its holdings of Treasuries from $412 billion in 2020 to $865 billion in 2025. Belgium (the location of the EU clearing house bank) increased from $135 billion to $466 billion. Luxembourg from $197 to $431 billion. France from $49 billion to $376 billion. In other words, the Europeans more than offset the loss of China purchases of US Treasury securities. They offset China and bought more to enable the US to finance its chronic $2 trillion deficit since 2020.
Perhaps the US paid for most of the cost of the Ukraine war through 2024 with the understanding the Europeans would in turn buy more US Treasuries?
The question is will Europe continue? The US Trump administration relationship with Europe is not the best and is getting worse. The US has pulled back (financially) from support of the Ukraine war, turning over the cost of financing it to the Europeans. The latter in turn have had to raise $90 billion in Euro bonds to fund Ukraine, with talk of another $70 billion coming. If they have to raise $160 billion for their ‘Project Ukraine’ war, will they also continue buying Treasuries at the pace they had 2020-2025? Can they even do so? And if Trump intensifies the dispute with them over Greenland, will they want to?
In short, for both economic and political reasons it is unlikely the Europeans will continue to fill the gap in declining Treasury purchases by China and now potentially by Japan as the latter continues to sell off its Treasuries in order to support its currency?
Which brings us to the second recent US Treasury market event: Bessent’s injecting of another $4 billion a week into the US economy by doubling the rate of Treasury buybacks of US bonds already held by investors.
Bessent’s $8 Billion Weekly Buybacks
What does Bessent’s buyback scheme mean for the US deficit, rising US interest rates and the emerging financial crisis of Empire as well?
Bessent bought Japanese Yen with Euros because he was obviously saving his US dollars to buy back US bonds held by US investors.
Buying back US bonds results in dollars injected into the hands of investors who previously held the Treasuries. Less supply of bonds in the market means a higher price and thus in turn a lower yield or interest rate on long term Treasury bonds.
But the effect of Bessent’s action will prove negligible. $4 billion more a week, even over ten weeks ($40 billion), won’t budge the roughly $31 trillion US Treasury market. He surely knows that. So why did he do it?
Here’s where the current US Artificial Intelligence investment bubble enters the picture. The AI boom is devouring available money capital in the US. The big 9 tech company, so-called ‘hyperscalers’, are gobbling up investment capital borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to fund their current massive AI investment. In 2025 the big 9 tech corps spent an estimated $500 billion on AI investment (in data centers, apps, chips, etc). This year 2026 the estimate is $1 to $1.5 trillion. Next year, another $1 trillion. And that’s only the big 9. The rest of corporate America is running pell mell off the cliff into AI investing as well. (Many will go bust when the AI bubble crashes in the next 12-18 months, I predict, but that’s another story).
That massive AI investment is being financed out of various sources. The hyperscalers are committing their former massive hoard of cash. They are in addition issuing more equity (stock) to raise cash. They are signing long term huge leasing deals and commitments. And they are raising debt—i.e. borrowing. The debt component of the total spending is estimated at over $200 billion this year alone. In other words, they are sucking up most of the available investment capital to finance their AI plans.
In the process they are crowding out US investment in general, driving up interest rates. They are also potentially crowding out US investors’ purchases of US Treasury securities—at a time of foreign holders of Treasuries reducing theirs as well!
So Bessent is injecting $40-$80 billion or more in 2026 in extra liquidity into the US economy—in part to assist the massive AI lending by banks but in part as well to provide sufficient dollars for US investors to purchase US Treasuries by investors.
The connection between the Japan Yen intervention and the US bond buybacks is that they are both actions intended in the end to enable the continued purchasing of US Treasury securities—as the US Empire’s defense costs continue to accelerate and the US needs to sell even more Treasury securities in order to finance its accelerating defense spending and budget deficits.
SUMMARY
The takeaways from all this are:
- Japan’s Yen will continue to weaken. Both its central bank and US interventions will not succeed even intermediate term. The Yen will continue to fall below 160 and Japan will have to continue to sell Treasuries in order to prop up its currency
- The combination of China, Japan (and likely Europe) slowing of Treasury purchases will mean demand for Treasuries will slow, prices decline and therefore long term US bond rates rise
- Federal Reserve chair Warsh will follow the market-driven long term bond rate rise by raising Fed short term rates eventually as well
- The US economy, already slowing (except for AI investment) will slow even more as rates increase. US job creation, already flat, will decline further in turn
- Big Tech will chase the AI investment bubble into 2027, absorbing money capital, crowding out other investment and driving up US interest rates further until the market side of the bubble busts in late 2027-28
- Aggregate US Treasury sales by foreign buyers will slow, as US budget deficits rise even further as US defense spending continues to accelerate (Pentagon $1.5 trillion; total defense spending all sources $2.5 trillIon).
- A crisis in the Empire’s financing of rising deficits and debt from Treasury sales will force the Empire to choose one or more of the following: to reduce war spending, raise taxes, or (most likely) intensify austerity by cutting social programs even further.[1]
Dr. Jack Rasmus
August 30 2026
[1] All the data references are from the author’ forthcoming book, ‘Twilight of American Imperialism’, Clarity Press, September 2026, which are in turn all from US Federal Reserve and Commerce Department data bases.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
What’s the connection between US recent bailout of Japan’s currency, collapse of the Yen carry trade, US $2T annual budget deficits, $40 trillion national debt, and approaching failure of US Treasury sales to finance the US deficit and interest on the national debt? Listen to my interview of August 22, 2026 with RT-TV explaining why Treasury yields are surging and why US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Donald Trump, won’t be able to halt the emerging US fiscal train wreck.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Following recent weeks crisis in the Yen carry trade and Japan and US governments’ intervention, this past week US 30 yr. Government bond rates surged past 5% to rates just before the 2007 crash. What’s behind it? After the AI stock bubble, legacy software companies’ implosion, private credit market and gold, silver, crypto price crashes, is the 30 Yr. Bond another reflection of increasing US and global financial markets’ instability? What’s the cause? Inflation? US $40 trillion government debt? AI corporate bubble and record debt crowding out government debt servicing? Why the US is approaching a crisis in inability to finance its massive debt with Treasury securities sales. Why the Empire is going broke!
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
What’s behind Japan and the US Treasury intervening to buy Yen? Will Japan join China in dumping US Treasury bonds? Who’ll make up the loss this time? What it means for the US deficit and Fed interest rates.
The AI bubble: more evidence of fragility as competition intensifies internally and from China. How China’s open source Deepseek AI model is destabilizing the AI market. Show concludes with latest on Iran and Ukraine wars: why Trump TACO-ed again and Iran’s deal with Oman to open the strait of Hormuz on its terms. Why the US can’t even get a proxy war going in the region. Finally, what are the facts behind the western media propaganda campaign that Russia’s losing the war in Ukraine.
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Why the Iran and Ukraine wars are leading to a merging of the conflicts and a ‘greater Eurasian war’. Iran and Ukraine 2026 are not unlike Spain and China 1937. Today’s show discusses at length the latest developments in both the Iran and Ukraine conflicts and why they are both escalating. Why Iran and Russia have given up on negotiations with Trump and the ‘west’. Why the wars are spreading. Why the Europeans want and need the war to continue. Trump’s latest flip flop in favor of Ukraine and search for proxies in Iran. The Empire’s deceptions of Anchorage and the MOU. Show concludes with discussion of latest US GDP figures of only 1.5% growth (actually 1%) and latest developments in AI bubble.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Dr. Rasmus on Twitter
Jack’s Weekly Radio Show, ALTERNATIVE VISIONS
NEW BOOK
While the capitalist system has undergone numerous restructurings throughout its history, capitalist elites purpose in restructuring has remained the same: to restore and/or extend their hegemony. The current restructuring, operative since 1978, is called Neoliberalism. The book examines Neoliberalism as both an Idea and an historical practice composed of a particular mix of fiscal-monetary-trade-industrial policies that began with the latest US capitalist restructuring in the late 1970s, continuing to evolve to this day. The book further explains the deeper material forces giving rise to - as well as now undermining - the Neoliberal policy regime, with special focus given to the crisis of Neoliberalism in the wake of the 2008-09 global crash, Obama's failure to resurrect it, and Trump's current doomed effort to restore it in a new, more aggressive form. Evidence why Neoliberalism is destroying US Democracy concludes the book's analysis.
NEW BOOK
Describes how US federal governments, often in cooperation with the largest US private banks, introduced and expanded central banking functions from 1781 through the creation of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Based on an analysis of the evolution of the US banking system - from pre-1781, through the 1787 US Constitutional Convention, Congressional debates on Hamilton's reports to Congress, the rise and fall of the 1st and 2nd Banks of the United States, and through the long period of the National Banking System form 1862-1913, the book shows how central banking in the US evolved out of the private banking system, and how following the financial crash of 1907 big New York banks pushed through Congress the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, creating a central bank which they then managed for their interests.
BOOK
(Click on image) CENTRAL BANKERS is a comprehensive critique of central banks’ policies in the 21st century, explaining why the massive injections of free money to the banking system since the 1970s enabled the creation of excess corporate debt that has led to financial bubbles and repeated crises. The book addresses the growing contradictions of central banking, why they are failing in their functions, targets and tools, and proposes a radical democratization and restructuring to transform them to serve the public interest and not the private banks.
Book:
(Click on image) LOOTING GREECE, A New Financial Imperialism Emerges. This book - Reveals clearly who calls the shots in the Eurozone—the hardliners, not the remnants and political residue of what was once European social democracy, - Follows the negotiations in their excruciating detail as the Troika tightens the screws from 2009 to the present, - Shows how Europe’s financial elite enriches itself on Greek debt, privatizations and financial manipulations, turning Greece into an Economic Protectorate.
Book:
(Click on image): This book offers a new approach to explaining why mainstream economic analyses have repeatedly failed and why fiscal and monetary policies have been incapable of producing a sustained recovery. It explains why the global economy is slowing long term and becoming more unstable, why policies to date have largely failed the trend, and why the next crisis may therefore prove even worse than that of 2008-09.
Book plus DVD and Powerpoint slideshow
(Click on image) Obama's Economy: Recovery for the Few, explains how the weakest and most lopsided economic recovery since 1947 has been the direct outcome of failed economic policies of the Obama administration and US Federal Reserve bank since February 2009. Includes a detailed 'alternative program' in the final chapter. Includes the book, a video DVD presentation, and 66-slide PPT slideshow.
Book
(Click on image) Obama's Economy: Recovery for the Few, explains how the weakest and most lopsided economic recovery since 1947 has been the direct outcome of failed economic policies of the Obama administration and US Federal Reserve bank since February 2009. Includes a detailed 'alternative program' in the final chapter.
Book
(Click on image) A theoretical analysis, with historical case examples, of origins, causes and future evolution of the recent--and continuing--economic crisis in the U.S. and global economy. Includes predictions in 2009 of the inevitable failure of Obama policies and more serious crisis to come, 2013-15.
Book
(Click on image) Seven specific reasons why economic recovery under Obama since 2009 has failed for all but the wealthiest few and largest corporations. The book spells out eight specific areas as an Alternative Economic Recovery Program.
Book
(Click on image) The War At Home: The Corporate Offensive From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, is a 534 page, extensively researched, nonfiction book that describes the evolution of corporate-government policies from 1980 to 2005 that have shifted more than a $1 trillion dollars a year, every year, from 90 million American middle and working class households to the wealthiest 10% and corporations.
Search
-
Join 450 other subscribers
Jack Rasmus Site: KYKLOS PRODUCTIONS
Dr. Jack Rasmus @drjackrasmus
