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      Political Democracies, Economic Dictatorships

      Political Democracies, Economic Dictatorships

      Countries are held hostage by big capital that migrates from one country to another in a matter of hours, terrorizing populations with the threat of another economic crisis and forcing their rulers, democratic or not, to kneel before these feudal lords.

      Jorge Majfud
      Mar 26, 2023

      From France to Uruguay, not by chance, neoliberal governments have proposed a pension reform that adds years to the retirement age (two in France; up to five in Uruguay). The narrative that justifies raising the retirement age is twofold: (1) People live longer and, therefore, have to work more; (2) If these "necessary and painful reforms" are not carried out, the system will be defunded and the country will lose competitiveness in the world since other countries have applied these same measures, necessary for the financial class and painful for the productive classes. The same discourse, plus a third threat, has been repeated for decades in the United States: (3) Social Security (invented by "the communist president" Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression) is not sustainable, so we must raise the retirement age and, as far as possible, privatize it. It does not matter that it is and always has been self-sustaining. Social security is just that: insurance, not risky investments.

      Privatization was first put into practice in peripheral countries. The destruction of Salvador Allende's socialist democracy 50 years ago and the imposition of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship had the declared intention of preserving the freedom of capital and using this country as a laboratory for the neoliberal theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The "Chilean Miracle" was noted for its social and economic crises, despite the tsunami of dollars from Washington and large corporations. The semi-private pension model was brought to Uruguay in 1996 and it only took 20 years for it to fail. The damn state should have come to the rescue of those harmed by investment geniuses.

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      Opinion
      Capitalism
      home healthcare

      'Shocking and Immoral': Report Details Private Equity's Stranglehold on US Healthcare

      "The damage that private equity has wrought on Americans' healthcare from cradle to grave, simply for profit, has become a life-or-death situation."

      Brett Wilkins
      Mar 22, 2023

      Private equity's ownership of U.S. healthcare providers is incompatible with the needs and best interests of patients and should be checked with federal legislation, according to a report published Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

      Critics of for-profit care have long decried private equity's focus on maximizing returns through practices including slashing staff, surprising patients with astronomical bills, and eschewing low-margin care upon which vulnerable populations rely. The new report—authored primarily by Public Citizen healthcare policy advocate Eagan Kemp—examines investment firms' impact on more than a dozen healthcare sectors, from reproductive health through end-of-life care.

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      private equity
      Dow Drops Sharply After Federal Reserve Interest Rate Announcement

      Making Sense of the Latest Global Banking Crisis

      The latest debacle in the financial system will likely worsen stagflation and possibly tip the U.S. and Europe into recession.

      Jeffrey D. Sachs
      Mar 21, 2023

      The banking crisis that hit Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week has spread. We recall with a shudder two recent financial contagions: the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which led to a deep Asian recession, and the 2008 Great Recession, which led to a global downturn. The new banking crisis hits a world economy already disrupted by pandemic, war, sanctions, geopolitical tensions, and climate shocks.

      At the root of the current banking crisis is the tightening of monetary conditions by the Fed and the European Central Bank (ECB) after years of expansionary monetary policy. In recent years, both the Fed and ECB held interest rates near zero and flooded the economy with liquidity, especially in response to the pandemic. Easy money resulted in inflation in 2022, and both central banks are now tightening monetary policy and raising interest rates to staunch inflation.

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      Opinion
      banking crisis
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