Listen to my January 7, 2022 Alternative Visions radio show in which I comment on the major developments and events in 2021 in the US/Global Economy (including the likely further slowing again of the economy in early 2022, continuing inflation, Fed rate hikes) and US/Global Politics (including the accelerating attack on US Democracy, the failure of Biden/Democrats to check it, and flash points in Ukraine and Taiwan). My predictions on what’s most likely to occur in US economy/politics in 2022 follow.
TO LISTEN GO TO:
https://alternativevisions.podbean.com/e/alternative-visions-2021-year-in-review-economy-politics/
A clear summary of what happened in 2021 and how things will probably unfold in 2022. Two comments may be of value. It is crystal clear as set forth on this site that Biden/Pelosi betrayed the 90% as to any meaningful fiscal stimulus, despite the critical need. As further evidence of Joe Manchin’s real politics take a look at the portrait of Manchin in Rolling Stone entitled Manchin’s Coal Corruption Is So Much Worse Than You Knew The Senator from West Virginia is bought and paid for by Big Coal. The reason that this article is important is that all the politicians knew—-but of course not the public—-that negotiation with Manchin was and is futile and thus the Biden/Pelosi strategy was empty political theater. The second comment goes to The Federal Reserve and its knowledge that the trillions that is being thrown at the banks and Fortune 500 will create destructive financial bubbles. As early as 2006 The New York Federal Reserve was seeking help from epidemiologists and their mathematical modeling to get a handle on the financial bubble driven by derivatives and subprime mortgages. [See The Rules of Contagion, Adam Kurcharski] It was at this time that metaphors such as financial contagion and superspreaders became part of the language describing financial speculation and ultimately the Lehman Brothers became the critical superspreader of the 2008-2009 collapse. But the take away is that despite the knowledge of the fragility of the financial markets, The Fed did nothing to prevent the 2008 collapse. Worse still, is that in 2008 the financialized markets were five times the size of the real economy which in turn means that the financialized markets must be at least ten times the size of the real economy at present and the depth of the coming collapse all the more severe