Over the last two decades, corporate America’s credit rating has collapsed. In the early ’90s, more than sixty companies held AAA credit ratings. Today, only two US firms are AAA rated: Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft. In 2001, fewer than one in five “investment-grade” firms were rated BBB. Today half of all investment-grade corporate debt belongs to firms rated “triple-B” (BBB) or lower. A third of those firms are rated triple-B minus (BBB-), one notch away from speculative or “junk” status.
jacobinmag.com/2020/03/corporate-debt-crisis-coronavirus-financial-covid-19/
jacobinmag.com/2020/03/corporate-debt-crisis-coronavirus-financial-covid-19/
Jacobin
Corporations Are Broke. It’s Time to Cut Up Their Credit Cards.
After a decade-long, worldwide corporate debt binge, the bill has come due: huge swaths of the corporate world are now at risk of default, with only governments able to save them. This time, any bailouts must place corporate investment under public control.
During one of the many Indian famines (Southern India, 1876-78), the British viceroy Lord Lytton declared, “there is to be no interference of any kind on the part of government with the object of reducing the price of food.” Johann Hari tells the story of one British official, Sir Richard Temple, who, when he imported some food to give to the starving during another famine, was denounced by the Economist magazine for giving Indians the notion that “it is the duty of the Government to keep them alive.”
www.socialisteconomist.com/2020/03/when-economists-try-to-solve-health.html
www.socialisteconomist.com/2020/03/when-economists-try-to-solve-health.html
Socialisteconomist
When Economists Try to Solve Health Crises, the Results Can Often Be Disastrous
✑ Justin Podur. Classical economics helped kill millions in the British Empire’s famines—following economic orthodoxy today could be just as deadly.
Forwarded from Strike Force
Forward this post if your channel stands in solidarity with everyone who is not paying rent on April 1st or is refusing show up to work ✊🏳️
#podcast
theintercept.com/2020/03/19/organizer-mariame-kaba-we-need-a-peoples-bailout-to-confront-coronavirus/
theintercept.com/2020/03/19/organizer-mariame-kaba-we-need-a-peoples-bailout-to-confront-coronavirus/
The Intercept
Intercepted Podcast: Mariame Kaba and a People’s Bailout for Coronavirus
Organizer Mariame Kaba discusses the realities facing some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
Forwarded from Political memes
AP NEWS
UN General Assembly to decide on rival COVID-19 resolutions
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — How should the U.N. General Assembly and its 193 member states respond to the coronavirus pandemic? Members have been sent two rival resolutions for consideration — and under new voting rules instituted because the global body isn’t…
From "Globalisation: A systematic Marxian account" by Tony Smith, which you can also find on @pantopialibrary