Published Articles by Jack Rasmus:

Jack Rasmus, copyright November 2009
Jack offers 15 predictions for the course of the current economic crisis and the U.S. and global economies for the coming year, 2010, and beyond. Jack reviews the events of 2009 and his January 2009 predictions, then provides new predictions for both the state of the economy and financial system, including jobs, foreclosures, bank lending, defaults, state and local government, sovereign debt crises, the Federal Reserve, stimulus bills, financial regulation, and fate of the dollar.

Jack Rasmus, copyright October 2009
One year after the banking panic of September-October 2008, Jack reviews the condition of the banks and shadow banks in the U.S. He concludes a small number of too big to fail banks have been temporarily stabilized by trillions of Federal Reserve dollar injections, zero interest rates, and rising bank stock prices enabled primarily by suspension of accounting rules. In contrast, hundreds of smaller banks and ’shadow’ bank institutions are continuing to deteriorate, lending to nonbank companies and consumers continues to contract, new speculative ‘bubbles’ are beginning once again to appear globally, and government debt problems are rapidly growing.

Jack Rasmus, copyright July 2009
This article explores the ideological proposition that ‘tax cuts always create jobs’ that is common among policymakers in the U.S. since the late 1970s. It explores how in the history of economic thought this was not always the case. In the course of the critique, the meaning of ideology in economic policy is more deeply examined, calling on a synthesis of the meaning of ideology in the works of the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and of Karl Marx.

By Jack Rasmus. copyright June 2009
18 economic reasons why the economic recovery has not yet begun. Jack debates the prevailing ’spin’ by press and economists maintaining that the current Epic recession has ended this summer and the economy will snap back in a ‘V-shape’ recovery. There can be no recovery, Jack argues, until the 22 million jobless and continuing housing foreclosures problems are effectively addressed, which has not yet been done by the current Obama administration.

Dr. Jack Rasmus provides two in depth interviews with WERC (Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign), organizers of the recent May 9 ‘Teach In’ on the economic crisis, sponsored and organized by the five AFLCIO Central labor Councils in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jack was a keynote speaker at the May 9 event, explaining why the current Obama bank and economy bailout will not succeed and why neither the banking sector nor the non-financial economy is now stabilizing, contrary to claims by politicians and bankers. Jack clarifies the current downturn and how it is similar and different from the depression of the 1930s. He suggests alternative ideas for a new jobs and housing sector bailout in lieu of bailing out the banks

Jack Rasmus, copyright April 2009
Jack Rasmus explains the many approaches to bank nationalization that have arisen since last September. He explains what Wall St. and Alan Greenspan mean by ‘nationalization’ and alternative, non-capitalist versions of the proposal. Why Obama-Geithner-CEOs of the Big Banks are downplaying the idea, and why it will be a topic high on the public agenda within months once again as the current Geithner-Bernanke bank bailout proposals eventually fail.

Jack Rasmus, copyright March 2009
Jack Rasmus explains how the recent Geithner bank bailout plan will not result in the sufficient sale of ‘bad assets’ as planned, will enable bankers and wealthy investors to ‘game the system’, and will cost taxpayers trillions more. Jack explains why Geithner shifted the PPIF to a PPIP and how the Fed is turning to the shadow banking system and hedge fund and private equity speculators to bail out the financial system they helped destroy. Finally, how the key drivers of the real economic downturn, job losses and housing foreclosures, are inadequatley addressed in the Geithner plan.

by Jack Rasmus, copyright February 2009
Jack Rasmus explains in detail his 20 point alternative recovery program submitted in January to the House of Representatives Finance Committee. Jack critiques the Obama $787 billion fiscal stimulus package passed in February by Congress as ‘too little too late’. Jack’s 20 proposals call for an immediate $1 trillion jobs focused spending and another $1 trillion to stabilize the housing markets by providing interest and principal resets and nationalizing the residential mortgage and small business property markets. His plan includes long term income redistribution to maintain consumption, by means of single payer health care, a national 401k pool, deprivatizing student loans, and restoring unionization rights.

Jack Rasmus, copyright, January 2009, CRITIQUE Journal
Jack Rasmus provides an initial theoretical analysis of the origins of the current financial crisis and deepening global epic recession in the structural changes in finance capital and shift to speculative forms of investment in particular since the late 1970s; Why traditional fiscal and monetary measures to check the crisis are destined to fail; and why the current debt-deflation driven cycle has still a long way to go and may yet transform into a classic Depression-like event.

Jack Rasmus, copyright, December 2008
Jack shows how current government statistics grossly underestimate the unemployed and how, when properly calculated, 1 million new unemployed were created in each of the past two months, November and December 2008. Since the recession began in November 2007, 5.3 million more have lost their jobs, for a total of 13 million jobless and an unemployment rate today just under 9%. Jack shows how 5-7 million more, 20 million total, and 13% may be jobless by the end of 2009 if the Obama recovery program proves too little-too late.

Jack Rasmus, copyright December 2008
In the following article Jack Rasmus relooks at predictions made last May that mass layoffs and banking failures would occur by the end of 2008, resulting in a new kind of ‘Epic’ recession, that was far worse and qualitatively different from typical post-1945 recessions with 10 characteristics shared with classic Depression events. Read Jack’s more in depth analysis of Epic recession

Jack Rasmus, copyright November 2008
Obamanomics 1 was the president-elect’s campaign economic program. That has been eclipsed by the banking panic of 2008, credit crash, mass layoffs and collapsing real economy after september. Obamanomics 2 is now in preparation. Will it be enough to contain the crisis, or ‘too little too late’. Jack Rasmus evaluates the limits of Obama’s first program and raises questions about its subsequent version.

Jack Rasmus, copyright November 2008
A summary of the disastrous economic legacies of George W. Bush after eight years, including the accumulation of $21 trillion of debt since 2000, the resulting financial crisis, emerging epic recession, coming trillion dollar government deficits, the destruction of health care and retirement, and the historic stagnation of incomes for 110 million workers.

Jack Rasmus, copyright, October 2008
How the real economy is now accelerting into ‘Epic Recession’ behind the intensifying financial crisis and ‘Banking Panic of 2008′ events of September-October. Jack explains how the Paulson ‘TARP’ bailout is fundamentally flawed. will lead to $1 trillion dollar deficits and fiscal crisis in 2009, and the coming of a general ‘austerity’ program after November. The new motto of Finance Capital: “From each according to his balance sheet; to each according to is Portfolio".

Jack Rasmus, copyright September 2008
How the current, real (nonfinancial) U.S. economy is really in much worse shape than reported by US government data, and how US GDP figures are overestimated while unemployment underestimated. Where the financial and real economies in the US are going after the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac bailouts of early September.

by Jack Rasmus, copyright August 2008
What the near collapse of the two mortgage giants in July means for the deepening financial crisis. Why the crisis of Fannie/Freddie has just begun and will eventually cost more than $200 billion. Their risk to global banking instability. Why Fannie/Freddie should be nationalized.

by Jack Rasmus, copyright July 2008
In this end of June 2008 update to the continuing economic crisis, written for the South African Journal, Amandla, Jack Rasmus tracks the latest evidence of the U.S. economy drifting toward a condition of ‘Epic’ Recession.

by Jack Rasmus, copyright June 2008
Recent economic data for April is being touted as indicating the recession has been averted and the financial crisis stabilized. But more fundamental and widespread data looking beyond just one month indicate both financial crisis and recession are still in development. Rather than the ‘beginning of the end’ the data, and a deeper analysis, show only the ‘end of the beginning’. Read how politicians and bank CEOs are once again manipulating the numbers and why the current crisis will be with us for some time to come.

Jack Rasmus, copyright May 2008
As the current financial crisis deepens beneath the apparent hiatus of events since the Bear Stearns Investment bank bailout in March, the recession continues to develop in ways unlike prior postwar recessions in the U.S. How is the present recession different from preceding recessions? What characteristics does it share with major Depressions? Will conditions evolve in the direction of the latter? What’s a recession, Epic recession, and Depression? are key questions discussed in the article, appearing June 2008 in “Z” magazine.

by Jack Rasmus, copyright January 2008
The following is a lengthy article, published April 2008, in the British journal, CRITIQUE, which summarizes the financial crisis through early 2008, and begins to analyze the crisis from a more theoretical perspective by considering it from the perspective of ideas on finance capital and money in Marx and the notable financial Keynesian economist, Hyman Minsky. In it Jack Rasmus explores how ‘classical Marxist’ categories of organic composition of capital and falling rate of profit might be revised to more accurately account for the new role of finance capital in the 21st century.

Jack Rasmus, copyright January 2008
Explains the origins of the current financial crisis from the subprime mortgage collapse through the end of 2007 and its spread to other credit markets. Compares the present financial crisis with events of the 1920s and 1930s and explains how the present crisis is increasingly more like those events than like less severe financial instability during the 1980s and 1990s.

Jack Rasmus, copyright March 2008
Continues the analysis of the origins, consequences and evolution of the financial crisis from January 2008 through March, and explains how the crisis and massive credit contraction is leading to the deepest and longest recession in the U.S. since the 1930s.

Jack Rasmus, copyright 2007
How the big three auto companies are dumping their health care funds and $50 billion of liabilities on the autoworkers and their union–the new ‘pattern’ for health care benefit negotiations in the U.S. and the final chapter in employer-negotiated health care insurance.

Jack Rasmus, copyright 2007
Traces the history of the rise and fall of employer provided health insurance plans in the U.S. from the late 1940s to the present

Jack Rasmus, copyright 2007
How to finance $1.6 trillion a year to pay for universal health care, by eliminating insurance companies and middlemen, restoring the tax system to pre-1980 levels, and cutting the payroll tax for social security by 7.7% and taxing capital incomes

Jack Rasmus copyright 2007
‘Z’ Magazine, February (Part 1), April (Part 2), May (Part 3) 2007

How more than a $trillion a year is now being shifted from 90 million working/middle class families in America today to the wealthiest 1% households and corporations, as a result of two decades of corporate-government policies radically restructuring jobs, tax system, free trade, health benefits, pensions, social security and other policies. How income distribution in the U.S. is now super concentrated at ‘the top’ and back where it was in 1929 on the eve of the Great Depression.

Jack Rasmus copyright 2006
‘Z’ Magazine, December 2006

How 44 million workers in America now no longer have regular full time permanent jobs; how nearly 60 million or roughly 40% of the work force are either unemployed, part time employed, temporary or contract labor, and how this radical structural change in job markets in the U.S., driven by corporate America, is behind stagnating hourly wages and tens of million uninsured.

Jack Rasmus copyright 2006
“Z” Magazine, October 2006

How the Pension Act of 2006, U.S. court, and Government Agencies together are working to bring about a collapse of defined benefit pensions that will require a massive taxpayer bailout of a $1 trillion in the next two years.

copyright 2006 by Jack Rasmus
‘Z’ Magazine, July-August 2006

A new structural proposal for reunifying the AFL-CIO and Change To Win unions that creates a new union membership concept and closer integration between labor and community allies.

copyright 2006 by Jack Rasmus
‘Z’ Magazine, April 2006

How corporate managers in America raised their pay from 35 times to 500 times the average pay of the average worker in their company between 1980 and 2005, a 350% increase, while 100 million American workers got a 1.2 cents per hour per year raise the past 25 years.

copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
ILWU ‘Dispatcher’ October 2005

About to pass Congress, Bush’s latest proposed cuts in Estate Taxes for the wealthiest 1% will mean another $700 billion minimum handout for the rich

coyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
‘Z’ Magazine, November 2005

After $4 trillion in tax cuts for the rich in his first term, Bush continues to beat the drum for $trillions more for the wealthy with a radical restructuring of the entire tax code

copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus

Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans laid bare the growing class divisions in America. In its wake, Corporate America is poised to reap super-profits in the aftermath.

copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
‘Z’ Magazine, September 2005

What are the real organizational causes of the recent split in the AFL-CIO?

“CAFTA and THE LEGACY of FREE TRADE”
copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
“Z” Magazine, July 2005

This past April debate began in Congress on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. Currently pro-Free Trade forces, notably …

“CRASH LANDING: United Airlines Ditching of its Pensions
May Well Precipitate a National Crisis“
copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
“In These Times” Magazine, June 2005

On May 10, 2005 a federal court announced United Airlines could pocket $3.2 …

“UNITED AIRLINES’ PENSIONS GO BUST”
copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
The ILWU “Dispatcher", May 2005

On May 10, 2005 a federal court announced United Airlines could pocket $3.2 billion of contributions it owed its 134,000 workers’ pension plans, …

“WHO BENEFITS–THE BIG WINNERS
OF PRIVATE INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS”
copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
“In These Times” Magazine, March 2005

George W. Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security has nothing to do with enhancing workers’ retirement income. Rather, …

“MEDICAL MT. ST. HELENS: HEALTH CARE CRISIS IN AMERICA”
copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
“Z” Magazine, March 2005

In America, the richest county in the world, millions of workers and their children face the human and economic …

“STEALING SOCIAL SECURITY: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE”
copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
“Z” Magazine, December, 2004

With Bush’s recent election victory, privatizing Social Security is once again on the agenda—in fact high on the agenda! If not …

“THE ROAD BACK TO 1929”
copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus
“Z” Magazine, November, 2004

For the first time since 1929, more jobs were lost than created under a sitting President. Officially, more than a million jobs disappeared …