Second Wide-Ranging Interview with Kate Frey of We are Many, They are Few

 We Are Many, They Are Few

Interview with Jim Kavanagh of the Polemicist on the corruption of US politics, taxation, the upcoming election and the current political moment.

By Any Means Necessary Discussion of GDP Plunge and Trump Floating Election Delay (7/30/2020)

 Trump Floats Election Delay As US Economy Contracts At 33% Annual Rate

In this segment of By Any Means Necessary hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Jim Kavanagh, political analyst and contributor to Counterpunch and ThePolemicist.net (where you can read his latest piece, "Over The Rainbow: Paths of Resistance After George Floyd"), to talk about ongoing concerns that President Trump will attempt to postpone the elections and how this morning's unprecedented news that the US economy contracted by nearly a third in the last quarter may be impacting Trump's political calculus.

“By Any Means Necessary” on Radio Sputnik is hosted by Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman and aims to connect the political, social and economic movements shaping the world around us. With a sensibility informed by movements from Black Power to #BlackLivesMatter with a dash of Occupy, the show elevates the people and narratives that (while often ignored) are driving some of the most important changes in the world.

Discussion with Charles Dunaway on His Wider View Radio Podcast (7/30/2020)

Jim Kavanagh on the George Floyd Protests, COVID, and the election

This is the first episode since our summer hiatus and I am delighted to welcome Jim Kavanagh back to kick off our 4th season of Wider View.  

Jim refers to a recent article by Ajamu Baraka and echoes his call to expand the George Floyd protests into a struggle for the structural change that we need in this nation. (Broadcast on August 1)

;

PressTV Discussion of Unprecedented Drop in GDP (7/31/2020)

Second-quarter GDP plunged by worst-ever 32.9% amid virus-induced shutdown

PressTV Discussion of EU Coronoavirus Recovery Plan (7/19/2020)

EU summit on post-coronavirus economic recovery plan ends without breakthrough

The EU leaders gathering together in Brussels to discuss the €750-billion coronavirus recovery package, but they didn't manage to reach an agreement on a deal.

The Bailout Created the Debt,Not Vice-Versa

Take a look at this graph, from an interesting post (and follow-up) by documentary filmmaker David Malone on his blog Golem XIV. It shows that everything we've been told about the 2008 financial crisis and the resulting bailout is a complete crock of shit. It's the bailout that created the public debt crisis, not public debt that created the need for a bailout. The bailout, in every one of these countries, was a means for the financial elite to preserve its own enormous wealth by shifting its unsustainable private debt onto the shoulders of the public.

As Malone points out:

The green bars are debt as percentage of GDP before the bank bail outs and the blue bars are after. .... Notice Ireland. Its debt to GDP was down at 27%.  The ONLY thing that altered between 2007 and 2010 was the bank bails outs. Ireland’s ENTIRE debt problem is due to bailing out private banks and their bond holders. ... the fact is that all European nations apart from Portugal were either reducing their debt-to-GDP level or at least not allowing it to grow. Most of Europe was reducing government debt to quite manageable and historically low levels. ...Almost  every European country was keeping debt to GDP even or going down – before the banks were bailed out that is. The exceptions, of course, were Greece and Italy ..

The sudden explosion of European sovereign debt is the direct and indisputable result of all our political parties deciding they would safeguard their mates’ and their own personal wealth (it is the top 10% who hold the bulk of their wealth in the financial products which would be destroyed in a bank collapse. NOT the rest of us!) by bailing out the private banks and piling their unpaid debts on to the public purse.