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United States of America (USA)

Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse Shows Little Has Changed for Big Banks Since 2008

14 March 2023 - by Branko Marcetic

The spectacular collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was caused by corruption, financial recklessness, and poor decision-making. With its bailout echoing 2008’s eager bailouts for the rich, it begs the question: How much longer will Americans put up (...)
SVB: from the valley to the chasm

13 March 2023 - by Michael Roberts

On Friday, Californian bank Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) became the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis. In a sudden collapse that shocked financial markets, it left billions of dollars belonging to companies and investors (...)
Radio Silence Concerning United States President Franklin Roosevelt’s Repudiation of Debts

28 January 2023 - by Eric Toussaint

During your education, did you learn that during the 1930s the government of the USA unceremoniously repudiated a central provision of debt contracts that represented phenomenal sums? Do any history books analyze that act? Historical narratives (...)
The US rate of profit in 2021

20 December 2022 - by Michael Roberts

Every year, I analyse the US rate of profit on capital. This is because the US data is the best and most comprehensive to use and because the US is the most important capitalist economy, often setting the scene for trends in global capitalism. (...)
Young people voted en masse

United States: Radicals and Socialists win landslide midterm elections!

10 November 2022 - by Yorgos Mitralias

The headlines of the international press on the outcome of the US midterm elections are not wrong: Yes, the long-awaited Republican tsunami did not materialise. And the Democrats held up much better than they had hoped. The reason for all these (...)
Student Debt Relief Is Undermining the Military’s Predatory Recruiting Practices

3 September 2022 - by Jordan Uhl

The US military has a long history of recruiting poor people by offering benefits like free college. With Joe Biden’s partial student debt forgiveness, GOP war hawks are fretting that the military won’t be able to prey on desperate young Americans (...)
Down the Jackson Hole

27 August 2022 - by Michael Roberts

Jay Powell, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, made a keynote speech at the annual summer symposium of central bankers in Jackson Hole. Powell reckoned that inflation was still too high and so the Fed’s tightening cycle was far from done. (...)
The IRA and the four horsemen of the climate apocalypse

9 August 2022 - by Michael Roberts

The announcement that US President’s Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has got the backing of pro-business, coal-mining owner Democratic Senator Manchin has been greeted with a wave of optimism that the US target of cutting carbon emissions in (...)
The Meltzer Report

29 March 2022 - by Allan H. Meltzer

The succession of crises that swept over the so called emerging countries in the nineties and the ensuing disastrous IMF and World Bank interventions provoked a world wide debate concerning the future and the role of these Bretton Woods’ (...)
Increased U.S. Military Spending Means More Militarism, Imperialism, and War

29 December 2021 - by Dan La Botz

The U.S. Congress is completely divided, Republicans versus Democrats. Except when it comes to the military. Bills for working people can’t be passed. But there’s always money for the generals and the arms-makers. Last week the U.S. Congress (...)
One year after: Joe Biden, president of the United States

24 December 2021 - by Eric Toussaint

Some commentators thought that Joe Biden as president would mean a Keynesian turn in the US. The same hopes and illusions had developed in the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009. In both cases, the election occurred when the US was (...)
“Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset”: Calls Mount to Cancel Debt & Halt Wealth Transfer to the Rich

16 December 2021 - by Amy Goodman, Astra Taylor , Nermeen Shaikh

As calls grow for Biden to extend the moratorium on student debt, we speak with the Debt Collective’s Astra Taylor and feature her new film for The Intercept, “Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset,” animated by artist Molly Crabapple. The $15 trillion (...)
Moderna’s free ride

29 October 2021 - by Vincent Kiezebrink

A leaked contract between Moderna and the European Commission indicates that the company’s vaccine profits will end up in some of the world’s worst tax havens. The contract signed with Moderna shows that it intends to receive payment for its EU (...)
The US Lost in Afghanistan. But US Imperialism Isn’t Going Anywhere

7 September 2021 - by Gilbert Achcar

The United States suffered grave losses in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as it did in Vietnam. But we shouldn’t mistake revisions of US military strategy after calamitous failures for a turn away from US imperialist ambitions. The debacle of the (...)
The Jackson Hole dilemma

30 August 2021 - by Michael Roberts

Next weekend, the central bankers of the world meet in a slimmed down COVID annual jamboree at Jackson Hole has more than doubled to $8tn. The European Central bank has total assets worth more than €8tn, the Bank of Japan has about $6tn, while (...)
The relative decline of US imperialism

22 August 2021 - by Michael Roberts

The swift collapse of Afghanistan puppet government when US troops withdrew from the war with the Taliban and left the country after 20 years has been likened to the fall of Saigon at the end of the 30-year ‘American’ war against the Vietnamese (...)
The US occupation took only human lives: Taliban victory is not a sign of peace

15 August 2021 - by Farooq Tariq

It is now evident that the US imperialism has lost all its human and financial investment in Afghanistan. The Taliban have almost occupied Afghanistan without a fight. What has been spent in Afghanistan in the name of development, ‘democracy’ (...)
Paradigm shifts

28 July 2021 - by Susan Watkins

Emerging from year zero of the pandemic, the us and eu have adopted recovery programmes widely acclaimed as historic turning points. The Next Generation eu programme (ngeu) offers €750 billion to help member states towards a greener, more (...)
USA: Imperialist Keynesianism

27 July 2021 - by Ashley Smith

In his address to Congress, Joe Biden celebrated his American Rescue Plan and promoted his American Jobs and American Families plans. The capitalist media declared it the end of Reaganomics and a return to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal (...)
American Democracy Will Remain a Mirage Without a Dramatic Overhaul of the Political and Economic System

28 June 2021 - by C.J. Polychroniou

It is no longer an unknown fact or a view propounded by a handful of radical historians and political scientists: the American political system has such severe structural flaws that it is potentially antithetical to democracy and surely (...)
On the Authoritarian Turn of Global Capital and its Contradictions in the USA

25 June 2021 - by Fouâd Oveisy

There’s a tendency within certain factions of the US left to regard the case of former US president Donald Trump as an ‘anomaly’. In dealing with other personifications of capital, the contradictions of Marx’s critique of political economy seem to (...)
How Many Strikes Are There in the U.S.?

18 June 2021 - by Johnnie Kallas, Eli Friedman, Dana Trentalange

How many strikes are there in the United States? It’s a question with obvious importance to labor activists, yet there is no readily accessible answer. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases an annual work stoppage summary in February (...)
The Monetary Cost of Migration and Debt Incurred in the Journey from Mexico to the United States (2011-2019)

10 June 2021 - by Víctor Manuel Isidro Luna

This note addresses migration and debt in the north border between Mexico and the United States. Specifically, I discuss the flow of people returned to Mexico by the US authorities, the amount that some of these people pay to coyotes (...)
Covid 2021: more calamity ahead?

16 November 2020 - by Michael Roberts

The news that a COVID-19 vaccine could well be available by the start of 2021 sent the stock markets of the world shooting up to new record levels. However, the rally was quickly tempered by the rocketing rise in COVID-19 infections as the (...)
El pueblo estadounidense depone a Trump

10 de noviembre de 2020 - por Dan La Botz

En la elección más importante desde hace varias décadas en EE UU, el pueblo estadounidense votó el 3 de noviembre a favor de deponer de la presidencia al Republicano autoritario Donald Trump, pues la mayoría dio su voto al Demócrata Joseph Biden. (...)