---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: marx.laboratory <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 6:34 PM
Subject: Fwd: new essay by petras - Wall Street Take-Off: 2012 - 2013
To: Marx Laboratory <[email protected]>
** ** **
*Wall Street Take-Off: 2012 – 2013*
On July 16, 2013, Goldman Sachs, the fifth largest
****US****bank by assets announced its second quarter profits doubled
the previous
year to $1.93 billion. J. P. Morgan, the largest bank made $6.1 billion in
the second quarter up 32% over the year before and expects to make $25
billion in profits in 2013. Wells Fargo, the fourth largest bank, reaped
$5.27 billion, up 20%. Citigroup’s profits topped $4.18 billion, up 42%
over the previous year.****
The ruling elite, the financial CEOs pay is soaring: John
Stumpf of Wells Fargo received $19.3 million in 2012; Jamie Dimon of J. P.
Morgan Chase pocketed $18.7 million and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs
took $13.3 million.****
The Bush-Obama Wall Street bailout has resulted in the
deepening financialization of the **US** economy: Finance has displaced
the technology industry as the profitable sector of the
****US****economy. While the US economy stagnates and the European
Union wallows in
recession and with over 50 million unemployed, US financial corporations in
the Standard and Poor 500 index earned aggregate profits of *$49
billion*in the second quarter of 2013, while the tech sector reported
*$41.5 billion*. For 2013, Wall Street is projected to earn $198.5 billion
in profits, while tech companies are expected to earn $183.1 billion.
Within the financial sector, the most ‘speculative sectors’, i.e.
investment banks and brokerage houses, are dominant and dynamic growing 40%
in 2013. Over 20% of the S and P 500 corporate profits are concentrated in
the financial sector.****
The financial crash of 2008-2009 and the Obama bailout,
reinforced the dominance of Wall Street over the ****US**** economy. The
result is that the parasitic *financial sector* is extracting enormous
rents and profits from the economy and depriving the productive industries
of capital and earnings. The recovery and boom of corporate profits since
the crises turns out to be concentrated in the same financial sector which
provoked the crash a few years back.****
*The Crises of Labor Deepens – 2013*
The new speculative bubble of 2012 – 2013 is a product of the
central banks’ (the Federal Reserve in the United States) low (virtually
zero) interest policies, which allow Wall Street to borrow cheaply and
speculate, activities which *puff up* stock prices but do not generate
employment, and furthermore depress industry and polarize the economy.****
The Obama regime’s promotion of financial profits is
accompanied by its policies *reducing* living standards for wage and
salaried workers. The White House and Congress have slashed public
spending on health, education and social services. They have cut funds for
the food stamps program (food subsidies for poor families), day care
centers, unemployment benefits, social security inflation adjustments,
Medicare and Medicare programs. As a result the gap between the top 10%
and the bottom 90% has widened. Wages and salaries have declined in
relative and absolute terms, as employees take advantage of high
unemployment (7.8% official) underemployment (15%) and precarious
employment.****
In 2013 capitalist profits , especially in the financial
capital, are booming while the crises of labor persists, deepens and
provokes political alienation. Outside of **North America**, especially in
the European periphery, mass unemployment and declining living standards
has led to mass protests and repeated general strikes.****
In the first half of 2013 Greek workers organized four general
strikes protesting the massive firing of public sector workers; in ****
Portugal**** two general strikes have led to calls for the resignation of
the Prime Minister and new elections. In ****Spain**** corruption at the
highest level, fiscal austerity leading to 25% unemployment and repression
have led to intensifying street fighting and calls for the regime to resign.
****
The bi-polar world of rich bankers in the North racking up
record profits and workers everywhere receiving a shrinking share of
national income spells out the class basis of “recovery” and “depression”,
prosperity for the few and immiseration for the many. By the end of 2013,
the imbalances between finance and production foretell a new cycle of boom
and bust. Emblematic of the demise of the “productive economy” is the city
of **Detroit**’s declaration of bankruptcy: with 79,000 vacant homes,
stores and factories the city resembles **Baghdad** after the
****US****invasion – nothing works. The Wall Street-devastated city,
once the cradle
of both the auto industry and the organized industrial workers’ leap into
the middle-class, now has debts totaling $20 billion. The big three auto
companies have relocated overseas and to non-union states while the
billionaire bankers “*restructure*” the economy, break unions, lower wages,
renege on pensions and rule by administrative decree.****
** **
--
You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up
a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on
the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.
-AMBEDKAR
http://venukm.blogspot.in
http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur
http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com
--
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