A Guide to Trump's Massive Debts to Deutsche Bank and Ladder Capital

Just some of the bigger Trump debts Ladder Capital 282 million dollars 364 million dollars to Deutsche Bank.

Lecture on Worker Co-ops : Theory and Practice of 21st Century Socialism by Richard D Wolff

Robert Brenner : Capitalism a System in Crisis

USA: Trump Fills the Swamp with Steven Mnuchin and other creatures

Political Economy Research publish the above video even though it does not originate from the political left - because it clearly demonstrates the hypocrisy of Trump supporters.

The roots of the economic crisis and the way forward - Harvey and Brenner

Steven Mnuchin - Goldman Sachs man and Foreclosure King - Treasury Secretary

Just as we forecast on November 7th Wall Sreet insider Steven Mnuchin is Treasury Secretary

Can Trump's Gangster Capitalism Manage the Global Economy

USA: Trump Considering Man who Rigged the Economy for Treasury Secretary

The Future of the Eurozone by Mark Blyth

Global Trumpism by Mark Blyth

Mark Blyth Economist Who Predicted Brexit and Trump Brilliantly Explains Capitalism's Collapse

USA: Michael Hudson on the Orwellian Turn in Contemporary Economics

Trump's wants ex Goldman Sachs man Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary

Democracy and Class Struggle highlighted some months ago Trump's relationship with Wall Street here 

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/usa-trumpism-lethal-combination-wall.html

Republican Donald Trump wants his campaign finance chairman, Steven Mnuchin, to be his Treasury secretary if he wins next week's U.S. presidential election, Fox Business Network reported on Thursday, citing sources.

Mnuchin, a former partner at Goldman Sachs Group Inc who also founded and runs the hedge fund company Dune Capital Management LP, joined Trump's campaign in May as his chief fundraiser.

Fox Business Network, citing unnamed sources from inside the Trump campaign, said the New York businessman has told his team he wants Mnuchin to lead the U.S. Treasury Department if he wins the Nov. 8 election.

Representatives for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump largely funded his own campaign during the primary contest for Republican presidential nomination but moved to join with the Republican National Committee to jointly fundraise his general election campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton. He has still contributed millions of his own funds.

Trump has faced a significant fundraising deficit compared with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Trump raised a total of $255 million, including about $56 million of his own money, compared to Clinton’s $513 million for the entire election cycle through Oct. 19.

Last week, Trump pledge to donate an additional $10 million of his own personal funds.

Mnuchin previously spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs and has helped finance numerous Hollywood movies, according to Bloomberg. He also previously worked for Soros Fund Management LLC, a hedge fund firm led by George Soros, a Clinton backer.

Over the years, Mnuchin has donated thousands to Republicans as well as Democrats, according to federal campaign finance records, including to Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and her earlier Senate races.

Mnuchin, a graduate of Yale University who serves on several boards, resigned last year from the board of CIT Group Inc.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson, Grant Smith and Susan Heavey; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Jonathan Oatis and Frances Kerry)

The Industrial Agricultural System is limiing Food Access and Driving Climate Change

The Alternative to Neo Liberalism by Steve Keen

Isn't There Anything Good about The TPP ?

Italian Bank Failures could cause the disintegration European Union

Gerry Epstein and Dimitri Lascaris say that the banks are in such trouble that they need to be nationalized with their management removed

Steve Keen on Brexit and why it could be good for us

Thom talks to Prof. Steve Keen of Kingston University, London, about why Brexit is a response to failed neoliberal policies and why that could be good for all of us. 

Brexit sends Europe into Political and Economic Crises by Heiner Flassbeck

The State of the Economy by James Meadway

Tariq Ali talks to James Meadway, radical economist, about the global economy, the failure of world leaders to effectively resolve the financial crisis in 2008, and the probability of another crisis occurring in the future.

There can't be a Green Market Economy by Peter Joseph

"The ecological crisis is thus presented as a technical problem that can be fixed within the current system, through better ingenuity, technological innovation and the magic of the market. In this view, the economy will be increasingly dematerialized, reducing demands placed on nature. The market will ensure that new avenues of capital accumulation are created in the very process of dealing with environmental challenges.

Yet this line of thought ignores the root causes of the ecological crisis. The social metabolic order of capitalism is inherently anti-ecological, since it systematically subordinates nature in its pursuit of endless accumulation and production on ever-larger scales.

Technical fixes to socio-ecological problems typically have unintended consequences and fail to address the root of the problems - the political economic order. 

Rather than acknowledging metabolic rifts, natural limits, and ecological contradictions, capital seeks to play a shell game with the environmental problems. It generates, moving them around rather than addressing the root causes."

Asit Das - Climate Change and Social Justice

See Also :

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/climate-change-and-social-justice.html

http://democracyandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=green+market+economy

http://democracyandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/real-green-solutions-to-climate-change.html

China Launches Yuan Gold Fix

Days of Revolt : Neoliberalism as Utopianism

Days of Revolt : Junk Economics and the Future : Michael Hudson interviewed by Chris Hedges

Days of Revolt : How we got Junk Economics - Michael Hudson interviewed by Chris Hedges

ECB Announces New Measures, and More

Asset purchase programmes

Expanded asset purchase programme

The expanded asset purchase programme (APP) adds the purchase programme for public sector securities to the existing private sector asset purchase programmes to address the risks of a too prolonged period of low inflation. It consists of

• third covered bond purchase programme (CBPP3)
• asset-backed securities purchase programme (ABSPP)
• public sector purchase programme (PSPP)

Monthly purchases in public and private sector securities will amount to €60 billion.

They are intended to be carried out until the end of March 2017 and in any case until the Governing Council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation that is consistent with its aim of achieving inflation rates below, but close to, 2% over the medium term.

SEE ALSO: http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4795276789001/ecb-moves-not-solving-europes-problems/?#sp=show-clips

Political Economy Research says buying Corporate Bonds is subsidising the rich and more cheap money for Banks is not helping small businesses and individuals but recapitalising Banks.

We also agree with Brian Denny of No2EU who says if you want to see what ECB solutions to financial insolvency looks like, study the strict conditions imposed on bailout countries such as Greece, Cyprus and other states. 

These include mass privatisation, abolition of trade union rights, pay cuts, vicious government spending cuts and massive structural adjustment in favour of monopoly capital.

As the left-wing Cypriot party AKEL pointed out the people of Cyprus are paying a very heavy price for the “solidarity” of its so-called friends

“The policies of the single economic governance on an EU level are destroying the sovereignty of the peoples and states for the sake of the interests of big capital,” he said.

Brian Denny is spokesman for No2EU.com

2016 Bank Bail Ins - Financial Crisis

BANK OF ENGLAND SUMMARY

There are a number of misconceptions about bail-in. The
article concludes by explaining how bail-in:

• is not an alternative term for contingent capital
instruments;

• does not interfere unduly with shareholder and creditor
property rights;

• is unlikely to be a cause of contagion to the wider
financial system; and

• is not, by itself, the silver bullet that ends ‘too big to
fail’


SEE ALSO:

BANK OF ENGLAND ARTICLE ON BAIL INS

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2015/q302.pdf

UK ECONOMY 
http://democracyandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-wilting-uk-economy.html

Richard Werner speaking in Moscow on Central Bank Issue

Russian Academy of Sciences, Blue Room

Round table "Anti-crisis fiscal policy of the state in the interests of economic development of Russia".

The main report "To a new understanding of the function of the banking sector: the mechanism of productive credit creation and quantitative easing" was delivered by Professor Richard Werner, a leading international expert on central banks, the author of the idea of ​​"quantitative easing."

Moderator of the event - Vladimir Yakunin, President of Russian Railways.

Political Economy Research finds this presentation by Richard Werner in Moscow to be a very useful summary of dissonance between reality and bourgeois Political Economy in 21st century

"Notes on Ricardo" by Karl Marx

See Also: http://democracyandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/on-proudhon-by-karl-marx-january-1865h.html

Richard Werner - Co-operative Bank for a Social Economy

SEE ALSO:

http://democracyandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/princes-of-yen-central-banks-and.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-24400036

http://democracy.portsmouth.gov.uk/documents/s4134/Hampshire%20Community%20Bank.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=126&v=zIkk7AfYymg

"European Union membership not helpful to formation of Public Bank in Wales" says Ellen Brown of Public Banking Institute at meeting in Cardiff on 24th February 2016 reports Alan Roderick Jones

Ellen Brown gave a very informative lecture on "A Public Bank for Wales and The World Economic Situation" in Cardiff on the 24th February organised by Arian Cymru.

The World Situation

She informed us that 25% of the worlds banks are public banks and not private banks, that it used to be 40% of world banks were public before the recent era of neoliberal privatisations.

Given that banks can create credit and hence money ,they have  unique role in society which should be for the public good  however  private banks have subverted that public good to their own private profit and we need to reverse this neo liberal trend.

We are now in the 21st century debt era of "Bail ins" and not just government bailouts for banks has in the past but depositor "Bail in's".

In 2011 the G20  facilitated "Bail ins" and the "Bail in" is now  law in the Eurozone.

We saw a bail in at work in the Cypriot financial crisis and it is a very concerning new development for bank depositors.

Article 123 of The Lisbon Treaty of the EU forbids direct borrowing from the national central bank by member governments and this makes borrowing more expensive for projects like infrastructure than it should be.

In the past when borrowing was from the national bank projects were cheaper, now that the government borrows from the private banks infrastructure projects have become twice as expensive.

Ellen Brown called for a People's Quantitive Easing has the existing QE  was only benefiting the banks and stock and commodity markets and not the people.

She mentioned the debate in the European Parliament for a People's QE and the notion of helicoptering funds to people's bank accounts to solve the people's debt problem.

Ellen Brown was of the view that a No vote in Wales to the European Union would provide best framework to advance public banking in Wales - she was especially concerned about the secret TTIP negotiations of The European Union which subordinates nations to corporations..

Wales

There was a discussion about a Welsh Public Bank on the model of the Bank of North Dakota the only public bank in the United States.

The Bank of North Dakota was formed  from North Dakota's State and local government funds being deposited in it own bank. North Dakota has a population of 640,000 people.

Ian Jenkins of Arian Cymru made the point  that one of the obstacles to the creation of such a public bank in Wales is that the UK local authorities are obliged by law to deposit their money only with the big five private banks.

It was also noted that the private banks have sold risky investments to local authorities.

Therefore there would be a requirement to change the law in UK to make local authorities deposit their funds with a Public Bank if one were formed in Wales..

Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru AM at the meeting said Plaid Cymru supported a public bank for Wales and there were discussions around question of an infrastructure bank for Wales.

Alan Jones of Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr said we should be clear about what terms we used as Bank of England can be seen as Nationalised Public Bank - would it not be better to talk about social ownership of a bank and call it a Community Bank of Wales, something which could start small in a Welsh town or county and grow as it overcame regulatory obstacles to become a genuine Welsh National Community Bank.

It was mentioned by an audience member that Hampshire had a community bank and we should look at that development .

The meeting thanked Ellen Brown for her informative lecture and hoped next time she visited Wales we would have a Welsh Public Bank.

SEE ALSO: 

http://www.matwigley.co.uk/bank/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Public-Banking-for-Wales-escaping-the-extractive-model.pdf

http://www.matwigley.co.uk/bank/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Wales-needs-to-consider-following-the-successful-public-banking-model-of-North-Dakota.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-24400036

Taking Control of Our Money

The FED and Public Banking Explained

Public Banking Needed to Stop "Cannibalisation of the Economy"

The Wilting UK Economy

On Proudhon by Karl Marx January 1865

P. J Proudon's The Philosophy of Misery, or the System of Economical Contradictions (1846) contains a long section on competition which attempts to show that because the aims of communism are hostile to competition, communism is utopian, that it is merely a dream. (We quote from the English Edition of 1888)

" competition is as essential to labour as division, since it is division itself returning in another form, or rather raised to its second power.. competition is in a word is liberty in division and in all the divided parts (Page 223) Competition is a principle of social economy, a decree of destiny, a necessity of the human soul.. (p229) " Man rouses from his idleness only when want fills him from anxiety; and the surest way to extinguish his genius .. is to take away from him all hope of profit and of social distinction which results from it (page 234) competition on its useful side should be universal and carried to its maximum of intensity. (page 251).

"Can competition in labour be abolished ? It would be as well worth while to ask if personality, liberty, indivudual responsibility can be supressed (page 258) there can be no question of destroying competition, as impossible as to destroy liberty: the problem is to find its equilibrium,
I would willing say its police (page 261)

" They ( the communists) say : emulation is not competition. But emulation is nothing but competition itself. There is no emulation without an object: just as there is no passional initiative without an object, and as the object of every passion is analogus to the passion itself, woman to the lover, gold to the miser, crown to the poet - so the object of industrial emulation is profit. Why substitute for the immediate object of emulation, which is personal welfare, that far away and almost metaphysical motive called general welfare, especially when the latter is nothing without the former and can result only in the former.

"My sole reply to him ( the communist) shall be : In denying competition you abandon the thesis: henceforth you have no place in the discussion.

The question is the solution of the problem of competition - that is the reconciliation of egoism with social necessities: spare your moralities (page 225-6)

But if they the ( the communists) now fall back upon the hypothesis of transformation of our nature, unprecedented in history.. its is nothing more than a dream... a contradiction given to the most certain economic sciences; and my only reply is to exclude it from the discussion (page 228)

Man may love his fellow well enough to die for him; he does not love him well enough to work for him"

Because of its hostility to competition " Communism is the very denial of society in its foundation" and the communists are "incessantly confounding matters of reason with those of sentiment" (page 283)

The above may have been written by the great annd fearless revisionist Marxist Ota Sik himself.

But let us see how the unrepentant Communist Karl Marx replied to the Philosophy of Misery in the Misery of Philosophy (1848) and we will see the aptness of his reply to the present day philosophers of misery, the solemn, long faced, mournful and miserable ideologists of market socialism.

"M Proudhon begins by defending the eternal necessity of competition against those who wish to replace it with emulation. Competition is emulation with a view to profit. Is industrial emulation necessarily emulation with a view to profit, that is competition ? M Proudhon proves it by affirming it. ( page 163)

"If the immediate object of a lover is a woman, the immediate object of industrial emulation is the product and not the profit."

"Competition is not industrial emulation it is commercial emulation. In our time industrial emulation exists only with a view to commerce. There are even phases in the life of modern nations when everybody is seized with a sort of craze for making profit without producing. This speculation craze which recurrs periodically, lays bare the true character of competition, which seeks to escape the need for industrial emulation (page 165).

The distinction between competition and emulation is of crucial importance. "Competition is not industrial emulation, It is commercial emulation" " The immediate object of industrial emulation is the product and not the profit".

This distinction between competition and emulation is blurred by all varieties of opportunism. It is easy to see why revisionists should wish to blurr it so as to make competition appear as a category of production as such instead of being mere a category of the commercial system.

On the other hand there are some so called anti revisionists who represent Stakhanovism, for example as a system of competition instead of industrial emulation. Thus revisionism and petty bourgeois Utopianism blur this vital distinction.

Bu it is clear that industrial emulation, in which the object is the product, is entirely different from , and of infinitely more significance in the development of the productive forces than, competition, whose object is profit made on the sale of the product.

As for Proudhon's good and bad sides of competition which recurs in modern revisionism, and the notion that what is required is to abolish the bad side of competition, while maintaining and developing its good side;

" They all want competition without the lethal effects of competition. They all want the impossible, namely the conditions of bourgeois existence without the necessary consequences of those conditions (page 213)

The "bad side" is an integral part of the competitive relationship.The is no possibility of retaining the competitive relationship while eliminating is "bad side".

Proudhon saw it as a necessity of the human soul that only competitive struggle for profit roused man from his innate tendency to idelness and stagnation.

This notion also recurs as a fundamental part of political economy of modern revisionism. The effect of the bourgeois system is represented as the cause of the bourgeois ( or market socialist ) system in human nature.

Marx commented;

" the bourgeois man is to them the only possible basis of every society; they cannot imagine a society where men have ceased to be bourgoeis (213).

"M. Proudhon does not know that all history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature" (page 165)