Alternative Visions show

Alternative Visions

Summary: Dr. Jack Rasmus will focus on today’s continuing crisis in the U.S. and global economies.

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Podcasts:

 Alternative Visions - The TPP Trade Deal, Japan’s Faltering Recovery, and the Ukraine - 02/26/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus discusses the current state of the Transpacific Partnership free trade deal and why negotiations between the 12 countries are temporarily ‘on hold’ until after the US midterm elections this November. Last week’s show theme of the ‘Emerging Global Economic Perfect Storm’ is followed up with a brief view of what’s happening to Japan’s now faltering economic recovery, called ‘Abenomics’ after Japan’s present prime minister, Abe, and why even more money injection (QE) by Japan’s central bank is coming as Japan’s economy continues to slow. (see Dr. Rasmus’s just published article, ‘The Emerging Global Perfect Storm’, on the PRN website on why the global economy is entering a ‘3rdphase’ of crisis). Dr. Rasmus concludes the show with some initial commentary on the recent Ukrainian ‘revolution/coup d’etat’. The fundamental dynamic in the Ukraine is about ‘crony capitalists’ on both sides behind the scenes fighting for control as the Ukrainian economy sinks, while emerging fascist parties in control of the streets rise to contend for power in the Ukraine. The US-EU move behind the scenes to establish ‘its capitalists’ in parliament, and drive out the former Soviet ex-bureaucrats turned ‘crony capitalists’, is what the revolution is about, Rasmus notes. The US-EU would like to stabilize the situation in the next parliament elections this spring, but it remains to be seen whether the proto-fascists in the streets can be excluded. If the latter gain a foothold, expect parts of the Ukraine to secede, beginning with the Crimea. Meanwhile the Ukrainian economy, already among the worst in the world, will decline further, and EU and US promises of $tens of billions in bailout will not be delivered, Rasmus predicts.

 Alternative Visions - An Emerging Global Economic ‘Perfect Storm’? - 02/19/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus explains why the global economic crisis that emerged in 2007-08 may now be entering a ‘3rdPhase’. Dr. Rasmus discusses what’s happening now with the economies in China, Japan, Emerging Markets (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, So. Africa and others), and Europe. Why is China on a long term growth slowdown path? Why is Japan’s USA-like central bank QE money injection policy failing to stimulate Japan’s real economy and leading to Japan’s ‘fourth dip’ recession since 2008? Why is Europe drifting toward deflation and its recovery stagnating, with France now the ‘bad boy’ economy of Europe? Why are the emerging market economies locked into a growing crisis, with massive capital flight flowing back to the west, falling currency values, and inevitable slowing economies? What are the possible ‘contagion effects’ between the three ‘stormfronts’—China, Emerging Markets, Eurozone—and how are ‘mutually amplifying’ feedbacks about to exacerbate problems in each—creating a three front global economic ‘perfect storm’? Finally, what might this ‘Emerging Economic Perfect Storm’ mean for the USA economy, once again slowing in 2014 after its latest ‘false start’ last summer? (For more on this topic, read Dr. Rasmus’s forthcoming March 2014 ‘Z’ magazine article, ‘The Emerging Perfect Storm’, his last October 2013 ‘Z’ article, ‘The Slowing Global Economy’, and shorter entries on his blog, jackrasmus.com, since January).

 Alternative Visions - US Grass Roots Protests Rising? - 02/12/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus welcomes guests, Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, to discuss the rising crescendo of grass roots protests in the US and “what’s next”. Organizers of the popular website, ‘popularresistance.org’, that reports daily on grass roots movements in the USA, Zeese and Flowers give their impression of what appears to be growing resistance and protests along a number of fronts. Jack and guests discuss growing movements of opposition to TPP and free trade, what’s happening in North Carolina, restaurant workers’ strikes, New York city demonstrations, labor union reform slates and movements, XL pipelines and other environmental protests, and other regional protests. Discussion focuses on ‘what next’ and how to bring more coordination nationally between the various ‘single issue’ movements and the need for developing a common national strategy by all, while retaining local movements’ integrity. Jack argues for the need to consider a National Organizing Convention of the divers movements, out of which initial agreement on common elements of strategy might emerge, including an incipient national coordinating organization and the need for political action independent of the two political parties. Jack argues unification of movements and the organizational question are key tasks now on the agenda, if protests are to rise beyond localized and ‘single issue’ politics.

 Alternative Visions - Ellen Brown Candidacy for California State Treasurer - 02/05/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus welcomes back Ellen Brown to discuss her just announced candidacy for California State Treasurer. Ellen explains how, as Treasurer, she would create a California Public Bank, modeled on the North Dakota state public bank. The advantages of public banking are explained, and how it would operate in California to invest the State’s current $54 billion investment fund pool to benefit the people of California, instead of big global financial institutions. Ellen explains why low cost 1% or less loans to California citizens and businesses are possible, if a public bank existed, and why recent past proposals for a Public Bank in California got to governor Jerry Brown’s desk and were allowed to expire. Jack and Ellen also discuss the likelihood of future ‘bail ins’ in the next financial crisis, where depositors would have their savings confiscated in exchange for worthless bank stock to bail out the banks next time. Jack also gives his view of ‘Bitcoins’ as ‘digital tulips’ that will eventually collapse but are a threat nonetheless to credit card companies and government tax collectors.

 Alternative Visions - Are Unions At a Strategic Impasse?—Interview with Gregg Shotwell, UAW - 01/29/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Continuing a theme of recent Alternative Visions shows, Jack Rasmus interviews long-time United Autoworkers rank and file member and activist, Gregg Shotwell. Focusing discussion on what’s wrong with Union organizing and bargaining strategies in particular, Gregg shares his experiences of decades in the UAW which witnessed that once powerful union’s shift from an emphasis and reliance on union members themselves more to a model of union as Human Resources Partner to management. Gregg explains how the UAW leadership has shifted to ‘organizing the employer’ and emphasizing ‘neutrality agreements’ with management in its organizing strategy; and in bargaining strategy, to accepting the company’s bargaining agenda and discouraging members’ self-reliance on the job to resolve problems. Gregg explains how workers need to ‘occupy the workplace’ and focus on ‘inside strikes’ more, as well as understand that voting for a leadership change by itself often changes nothing in the end. Jack suggests new strategies—and new tactics—are also needed in union-community alliances initiatives

 Alternative Visions - Save Our Unions’ Book Interview with Author, Steve Early - 01/22/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Jack interviews author, Steve Early, on the release last week of Steve’s new book, ‘Save Our Unions’. An important book providing numerous cases and examples of specific union worker efforts over the past four decades to defend their unions and interests. Jack discusses with Steve, in the attempt to glean from the book’s many case examples what lessons it suggests for union labor’s current strategic impasse in bargaining, organizing, and political strategy—a continuing theme of recent Alternative Vision shows and interviews. Jack and Steve discuss the strategic implications of the past four decades of partial victories, and numerous defeats, suffered by union labor in America, and what ‘needs to be done’ going forward if unions are to rise again to play the economic and social role in the future they once did in the past. Jack argues more ‘thinking out of the box’ by unionists is needed in order to resurrect union labor, including revising internal union structure and organizational practices—locally, nationally, and globally

 Alternative Visions - Jobs, Budgets and Bernanke’s Bank - 01/15/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus discusses in detail last Friday’s employment report by the government, this week’s agreement by Congress on a budget until October 2014, and the performance of Bernanke’s Federal Reserve as he retires on January 31. Jack describes the December jobs report as a disaster, not just in terms of a dramatic drop in job creation but in the even greater exodus of workers from the labor force. Jack refers to his prediction of last November that December jobs creation would falter (see his ‘False Positives’ blog articles). Congress’s just approved passage of another $1.1 trillion budget bill is then analyzed. The show concludes with a brief assessment of the performance of Bernanke as Federal Reserve chair the past 7 years, showing how ‘shadow banks’ and ‘very high net worth’ investors have been the major beneficiaries, with financial asset increases in excess of ten trillion dollars since the financial crash

 Alternative Visions - Boeing Workers Tell Their Story of Force Concessions - 01/08/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Jack Rasmus interviews Boeing workers who over the weekend were forced into massive concessions by a combined offensive by the Boeing Corp., in alliance with politicians, their International Union office, and suspiciously organized community groups paid by sources yet unknown. Listen to the story of how, after rejecting company proposals 2 to 1 to end their pensions, dismantle their health care, reduce wages to minimum levels in an 11 year contract extension, they were forced by a vote over the holidays to accept the agreement when 8000 of their members were on holiday and couldn’t vote. The concession agreement at Boeing is historic and a likely template of things yet to come. No longer are concessions forced by companies in financial trouble. Boeing reported profits of $4.7 billion after the settlement, and after having paid its stockholders $10 billion in buybacks and $2 billion in dividends just last month. The Boeing debacle represents a case example of union labor at a strategic impasse, in its bargaining strategy, political strategy, and community alliances strategy.The Boeing worker guests on today’s show were:Shannon RykerShannon Ryker began working at Boeing at 17, and has been an employed 8 years at the company as a final assembly installer on the 767 aircraft and a structures mechanic on the 777 aircraft. She recently started a union support Facebook page called Rosiesmachinists751, which in the last eight months has grown from 8 members to almost 1600.Jim LevittJim is a 35 year veteran at Boeing, working as a machinist and a tool die maker. He was at the same time a member of Impact Visuals, a cooperatively owned photo agency specializing in labor and social change from 1985-2001.His photographs have appeared in AFL-CIO, IAM, Teamsters, and other union publications, along with BusinessWeek, Time, the NY Times, Labor Notes, and many other outlets.Before working at Boeing Jim was a graduate student in history.Hazel PowersHazel is a Tooling Inspector at Boeing, a 55 year old single parent, and has worked at Boeing since 1979. She is an IAM District Council Alternate delegate and has held past IAM Local Lodge positions as well. Hazel voted to reject the Boeing contract due to concessions with pension and other benefit cuts, and concern the new contract language is not specific enoughabout keeping new aircraft 777X work in Puget Sound.“ 

 Alternative Visions - What’s Wrong with Economists: Part 3 - 01/02/14 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus follows up to parts 1 and 2 in previous weeks on this topic, presenting his own views on the causes of the economic crisis that erupted in 2007-08, its evolution of slow, stop-go recovery since 2009, and its likely trajectory in coming years. Providing an overview of his 2010 book, ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression’, and his follow up 2012 book, ‘Obama’s Economy’, he rejects the analysis of mainstream economics, both its ‘hybrid Keynesian’ and ‘Retro Classicalist’ perspectives, explaining the need for an entirely new conceptual apparatus to better understand the recent crisis and its continuing global evolution. Looking at depressions in the 1800s in the US, and the often ignored financial crash of 1907-08 and ‘epic’ recession of 1908-13, Rasmus explains his own ‘3rdway’ theoretical and historical economic analysis and how it differs from mainstream economics (Hybrids and Retros) in explaining the origins and evolution of the current crisis. He concludes with an overview of his forthcoming works, ‘What’s Wrong With Economists’, to appear in late 2014 and the planned sequel, ‘Transitions to Global Depression’, scheduled for 2015

 Alternative Visions - Are US Unions at a Strategic Impasse, Part 3? - 12/18/13 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Jack Rasmus continues the discussion series on the topic ‘Are US Unions At a Strategic Impasse’, interviewing long time, experienced grass roots union leaders on the state of union strategy today. Topics raised include unions ‘Organizing’, ‘Industrial-Bargaining’, ‘Political’, and ‘Community Alliances’ strategies. Jack welcomes today, as his latest guest in the on-going discussion, Ray Rogers, originator of the ‘Corporate Campaign’ strategy approach developed first in the 1980s in organizing and industrial-bargaining fights with corporate giants, J.P. Stevens and Hormel & Co. foods—as well as in corporate campaigns that continue today against Coca-Cola and other corporate behemoths. Jack and Ray discuss how a ‘corporate campaign’ strategy approach challenges current union approaches—and how a corporate campaign might be implemented today in current union worker struggles at Boeing Corp. and Verizon.’‘Ray Rogers is a union activist and lead organizer for dozens of corporate campaigns since the 1970s, across many industries in the food, insurance, airlines, paper, textiles, and various New York City public sectors, including Coca Cola, RJ Reynolds, International Paper, Hormel, JP Stevens, American Airlines, NY city transit authority, Brooklyn Gas and others. For more on the corporate campaign strategy as alternative to current union organizing-industrial/bargaining strategies, see his website at corporatecampaign.or

 Alternative Visions - Are US Unions Today at a Strategic Impasse, Part 2 - 12/11/13 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Continuing the discussion initiated on November 20 with guests with long-time grass roots experience in the American union movement, Dr. Jack Rasmus invites Jerry Gordon and Alan Benjamin, to discuss the general topic: Have the basic strategies of US Labor employed since the 1980s now reached an impasse and dead end?. Both guests have more than 40 years of experience each in the union movement, and offer their comments on the state, and future direction, of union labor's current political, industrial (bargaining, organizing, strikes), and community alliance strategies. Topics addressed include the recent Chicago teachers strike, the fight to protect jobs at Boeing in Seattle, the recent AFLCIO convention, organizing the south, labor's increasingly shabby treatment by the Democratic Party, and other examples, as discussants take on the topic of 'what needs to change strategically and organizationally for union labor in America to reverse its decades-long decline.The theme of today's show will continue in coming weeks. Tune in next wednesday, December 18, when Jack interviews long-time union strategist, Ray Rogers.Jerry Gordon is a former representative of the United Food & Commercial Workers for decades, now retired, and currently secretary of the Emergency Labor Network and Labor Fightback coalition. Alan Benjamin is a long time delegate to the San Francisco Central Labor Council, AFLCIO, a member of OPEIU, and active in labor immigration coalition work.

 Alternative Visions - What’s Wrong With Economists, Part 2 - 12/04/13 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus continues his discussion and critique of the fundamental errors of analysis shared by the two wings of contemporary academic economics: the ‘Retro Classicalists’ and ‘Hybrid Keynesians’, focusing on their fetish attachment to money supply, interest rates, and their inadequate shared, misunderstanding of the relationships between money and credit, real and financial asset investment, and the growing role of Finance Capital in the 21stcentury global capitalist economy. Dr. Rasmus then takes on what he calls the ‘Neo-Marxist’ wing of contemporary Marxist economic analysis, explaining how and why their fixation on the idea of a ‘Falling Rate of Profit’ in real production leads to wrong conclusions that are not even shared by Marx himself. The neo-marxist notion that falling profits (not supported in fact) are why capitalists have been turning toward finance is shown as logically incorrect, as well as not supportable by either definitions of profits or global data on profits. Rasmus argues the central concept in Marx is not falling rate of profit, but capital accumulation—that is investment—and that Marx himself began to explore, but did not complete, his analysis of the proper role of finance in capitalist investment and capital accumulation

 Alternative Visions - What’s Wrong With Economists - 11/27/13 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus takes the two dominant wings of academic economics—what he calls the ‘Hybrid Keynesians’ and the ‘Retro Classicalists’—to explain why their predictions have been consistently wrong about the US and global economies since 2008. Why the 10,000 professional economists failed (with a handful of exceptions) to predict the 2008-09 crash, why most inaccurately predicted a quick, V-shaped, recovery that hasn’t happened, and why they are again failing to see the drift toward yet another global crisis. Rasmus explains why the ‘Hybrid Keynesians’ aren’t really Keynesian, and why the Retro Classicalists cannot explain the 21stcentury global economy in terms of 19thcentury classical economics. Both fail to understand the nature and role of debt, credit, income, and financial speculation in the 21stcentury, while continuing to adhere to simplistic notions of money, money supply, interest rates as solutions to a slow economic recovery, and short term government subsidy spending as a long term solution to investment, jobs, and real income growth. Both Retros and Hybrids labor with an outmoded conceptual apparatus and models that are increasing irrelevant to the real world. With incorrect analyses, they propose incorrect solutions—or no solutions at all

 Alternative Visions - Union Labor’s Strategic Dead-End - 11/20/13 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Jack Rasmus invites guests, Steve Early and Arun Gupta, to discuss ‘What Strategy for Union Labor in America’. Dr. Rasmus notes how union membership is now in freefall despite tens of millions of workers wanting to have a union today, how collective bargaining is in retreat now on the benefits as well as wages front, and how Labor’s political and industrial strategies of the past two decades have both produced little positive result. Dr. Rasmus and guests discuss how US Labor’s political strategy of ever closer ties to the Democratic Party has resulted in virtually no gains for workers the past 6 years despite billions of dollars of union contributions to the party. And how Labor’s industrial-bargaining strategy, focused on maintaining health and pension benefits in lieu of wage increases, is now being ripped apart as well by legislated health care and pension changes. With political-industrial strategies of the last two decades now in disarray, what are the alternatives for forging new strategies for organized labor in America? Jack and guests discuss what it means to say labor should embark on a path of more ‘independent political action’ and/or initiate new forms of industrial and bargaining, while reducing its reliance on the Democratic party and its primary focus on maintenance of benefits bargaining

 Alternative Visions - The Unraveling of Obamacare: A Progressive Critique - 11/13/13 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Dr. Jack Rasmus and guest, Dr. Margaret Flowers, provide a progressive critique of Obamacare and its growing problems of implementation and coverage. Dr. Rasmus explains how, and why, Obamacare will continue to unravel in 2014-15 and potentially implode, in whole or part, by 2016. Rasmus explains in detail how Obamacare has delayed and exempted businesses from participation in the program; why business penalties for failure to participate are in sufficient; why subsidies for individuals to participate are inadequate and won’t work; why enrollment will continue to seriously lag projections by wide margins in 2014; why the Act is the death-knell for union negotiation health plans; how businesses and health insurance corporations area increasingly ‘gameing’ the system. Rasmus explains how the Act is really a scheme for ‘moving the money around’, from those who now have coverage to those who don’t—where the money is moved first through the health insurance companies that skim off excess profits in the process—and how Obamacare should be understood as the extension of prior attempts to privatize health care via George W. Bush’s Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) in the past decade and Bill Clinton’s ‘Managed Health Care’ before that.Rasmus and Margaret Flowers explain how ‘Medicare for All’ is the only real alternative that will work, showing how its initial enrollment process, benefit coverage, and costs have been, and continue to be, far superior to the Obamacare-Bushcare-Clintoncare market privatization approaches. Rasmus forewarns that as Obamacare continues to unravel the real fight will begin over ‘Medicare for All’ vs. total privatization of health care via ‘Vouchers for Some’ that conservatives are now preparing in the wings once again

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