Articles

Jack Rasmus
April 2011 (also available on the blog, jackrasmus.com)
Jack shows why the jobless numbers are really quite worse than the much hyped 216,000 jobs created in march 2011. He also outlines and forecasts why the jobs numbers are about to get much worse later in 2011-12, both in the public and private sectors.

Jack Rasmus
March 2011
Jack explains why the gap in public pensions funding is not due to worker benefit increases, but a result of pension managers\’ failure to make contributions to the funds, the pension act of 2006 and speculative investing by pension managers, and the sluggish job recovery and deep recession of the past decade.

Jack Rasmus
February 2011
Jack critiques Obama\’s speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, arguing the President\’s newest \’jobs\’ program is to stimulate manufacturing exports and provide more subsidy for multinational corporations, in the hope that manufacturing sector will stimulate the moribund recovery. He explains why it won\’t work, however.

Jack Rasmus
January 2011
Jack provides a critical analysis of President Obama\’s State of the Union Address

Jack Rasmus
\’Z\’ magazine, February 2011
This article explains how to raise $14.7 trillion in progressive taxation on wealthy investors, corporations, and business and use the funds in direct government job creation. Eight specific tax proposals are defined and amounts raised noted. Seven specific job programs are then described and how the tax revenues are allocated to each to create how many jobs is then explained.

Jack Rasmus
January 2011
The December jobs and unemployment numbers are masked by a variety of statistical assumptions and manipulations, as explained in this article. The true condition of the labor market in the US continues to deteriorate by a number of alternative measures. Here\’s the details of analysis and data.

Jack Rasmus
December 2010
A rebuttal to Paul Craig Roberts\’ (Reaganite turned \’liberal\’) recent piece in Counterpunch online, defending Reagan\’s economic record. Jack takes apart his logic and provides extensive data showing the impact of Reagan policies on wages, jobs, pensions, and workers\’ benefits. Republican no-nothings today look back in false nostalgia on Reagan, with no policy for recovery of their own.

Jack Rasmus, December 2010
This short piece explains, and provides data, to show how a payroll tax INCREASE on capital incomes above the current ceiling could provide funding for creating six million jobs and save 3 million homeowners as well without adding a dollar to the budget deficit–in contrast to Obama\’s payroll tax cut.

Jack Rasmus
December 2010
The Bush Tax cuts extension is just the first of three phases of Obama policies in the next Congress designed to continue to ensure corporations and investors maintain profits, while the remainder of the economy pays for the deficits caused by the subsidization of capital incomes. The dominant elites in both parties are growing closer in terms of policy as the economic crisis drags on. Phase two will be general austerity in the US budget. Phase three will be a general revision of the US tax code in 2012 to benefit corporations and the permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Jack Rasmus
December 2010
This short oped piece shows how historically business tax cuts have not created jobs, and explains why the extension of the Bush tax cuts by Obama will fail to do so as well.

Jack Rasmus
copyright November 2010
Jack considers the two major dilemmas to Obama\’s economic policies: jobs and foreclosures, and how Obama policies have failed to address these central problems to economic recovery. US economic recovery as a result has been for investors, banks, and large corporations only. Obama\’s forthcoming 3rd recovery plan will also fail without proper focus on jobs creation and the simultaneous rising foreclosures (and falling home construction and prices). The article ends with extended forecasts and predictions for the US and global economy in 2011 and beyond.

Jack Rasmus
copyright November 2010
Jack interprets the recent midterm Congressional elections in the US in terms of parallels with past midterm elections. This is not 1994, as conservatives argue. Nor is it 1937, as liberals like Paul Krugman maintain. Jack argues it is most like 1978, and then Democratic party president, Jimmy Carter\’s midterm debacle followed by an even sharper turn to corporate policies. Jack contrasts Obama\’s and the Democrats\’ failure in 2010 to Roosevelt\’s turn toward his base of worker and farmer supporters in the 1934 midterm election, igniting even more support after 1932 and two years of economic stagnation, 1933-34. With Tea party developments \’reforming\’ the Republican party on the right, a Labor party on the left is for the first time in more than seven decades becoming a practical alternative.

by Jack Rasmus
copyright October 2010
As predicted in his recent book, Epic Recession, the US economy\’s recovery, already the weakest on record in the post-1945 period despite a $4 trillion bank bailout and $812 billion stimulus, has begun to fade this past summer. Jack assesses the core of that weakness, the jobs dimension and housing dimension. He explains why tax cuts don\’t create jobs, why banks are sitting on $1 trillion surplus and not lending, and why large US corporations are hoarding $1.84 trillion without creating jobs. Jack concludes with historical parallels, arguing the current crisis is most similar to 1934, and not 1937 as liberals maintain or 1994 as conservatives would like us to believe. Given the obvious failure of the Obama recovery, the President is headed toward a 1978, Jimmy Carter-like fiasco.

copyright July 2010 Jack Rasmus
Jack sums up the economic crisis over the past three years, commencing with the financial implosion of August 2007, the emergence of recession in late 2007, its spread globally, the banking panic of Sept-Oct. 2008, the onset of the Epic phase of the recession, and the failed Obama recovery. Jack explains why the Obama policies failed to generate recovery of the general economy–jobs and housing in particular–after the banks were bailed out, and why recovery in the second half of 2010 will still not occur.

Jack Rasmus, copyright May 2010
In a forthcoming article in Against the Current magazine, Jack examines the U.S. jobless picture as of the month of May 2010, and explains how the actual jobless numbers are far greater that officially reported by either the US Dept. of Labor\’s U-3 (official) unemployment numbers or even its broader U-6 unemployment gage. How the BLS manipulates statistics is uncovered, and a view of the broader jobs trend from January 2010 is presented. Whatever jobs gains have occurred, Jack notes, are involuntary part time in the private sector and temp jobs by the federal government–both of which will soon quickly fade.

by Jack Rasmus
copyright April 2010

In the forthcoming next issue of CRITIQUE magazine, Jack discusses Epic Recession from a more theoretical perspective. Criticizing academic economic theory approaches to price, in which price is a system stabilizer, Jack provides historical evidence and argument that price (and the market system) is instead a destabilizing force causing repeated financial implosions, now growing in frequency. Jack then shows how this thesis might be explained using classic Marxist economic categories so long as major revisions to those categories are developed.

Jack Rasmus, copyright, March 2010
Third in a three part series summarizing Jack Rasmus\’s new book, Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression. Part 3: Program for Recovery. Jack offers a critique of the Bush-Obama bank and economic programs, explaining why they fail to produce a sustained economic recovery, how bank bailouts only temporarily stabilize the financial system but cannot lead to general recovery, how traditional fiscal policies fail to generate sustained recovery, and why a fundamental restructuring of the economy is necessary. Jack\’s 28 point alternative program focuses on housing, jobs, tax and bank restructuring, long term income redistribution programs, and proposals to \’tame\’ the global money parade and speculative excesses behind the current crisis.

Jack Rasmus, copyright, February 2010
Jack Rasmus\’s second in three part series summarizing the main themes of the book, Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression. Part 2: The History. Jack examines depressions in the 19th century USA, and the key financial-economic crises of the early 20th century: The Financial and Economic crisis of 1907-1914 (A \’Type I\’ Epic Recession), and the Epic Recession of 1929-1931 (A Type II Epic Recession). Both \’types\’ are compared to the current epic recession of 2007-2010. Type I leads to extended stagnation periods while Type II descends further into a classic depression. 2007-2010 is a Type I but with risks rising it may transition to a Type II circa 2012.

Jack Rasmus, copyright, January 2010
Jack Rasmus\’s first of a three part series in \’Z\’ magazine summarizing the book, Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression. Part 1: The Theory. The quantitative, qualitative, and dynamic characteristics of the current epic recession, 2007-2010. Jack explains in new terms how the current crisis is different from both prior \’normal\’ recessions and classic depressions. Why current Obama policies will fail to generate sustained economic recovery. The roots of the downturn in global speculative investing, the global money parade, debt-deflation-default processes, and growing financial and consumption fragility.

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 TRADEâ€? copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus “Zâ€? Magazine, July 2005 This past April debate began in Congress on the Central American Free Trade Agreement,…

“CRASH LANDING: United Airlines Ditching of its Pensions May Well Precipitate a National Crisis“ copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus “In These Timesâ€? Magazine, June 2005 On May 10, 2005 a…

“UNITED AIRLINES’ PENSIONS GO BUSTâ€? 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…

“WHO BENEFITS–THE BIG WINNERS OF PRIVATE INVESTMENT ACCOUNTSâ€? copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus “In These Timesâ€? Magazine, March 2005 George W. Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security has nothing to…

\”MEDICAL MT. ST. HELENS: HEALTH CARE CRISIS IN AMERICA\” copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus “Zâ€? Magazine, March 2005 In America, the richest county in the world, millions of workers and…

\”STEALING SOCIAL SECURITY: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE\” copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus “Zâ€? Magazine, December, 2004 With Bush’s recent election victory, privatizing Social Security is once again on the agenda—in…

“THE ROAD BACK TO 1929â€? copyright 2005 by Jack Rasmus “Zâ€? Magazine, November, 2004 For the first time since 1929, more jobs were lost than created under a sitting President….