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economy
From Texas to Covid, Trump Washes His Hands of Deaths on His Watch
The president has a long history of refusing to take responsibility and shifting blame on to political rivals.
Jul 10, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump may not be very good at running things, but when it comes to shifting blame, he is truly world class. As the magnitude of the disaster in Texas becomes clearer, the one thing we can be certain of is that Trump will accept none of the responsibility.
He will insist that his decision to have mass layoffs at the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and National Weather Service (NWS) had nothing to do with the state’s lack of preparedness for the storm and the inadequate response. At this point it is not clear whether the layoffs at the agencies played a role in the warnings given or the speed of the response to the floods.
The Texas offices were clearly understaffed. However, we don’t know whether that impeded their operations in important ways.
He routinely makes absurd and ridiculous statements which would be treated as a major scandal if they came from the mouth of any other politician, but instead are dismissed with an “Oh, that’s Trump” from the media.
We do know that global warming makes events like the Texas floods both more common and more extreme. For that reason, we certainly can blame Trump’s efforts to promote global warming with increased subsidies for fossil fuels and ending support for electric vehicles and clean energy. We can anticipate many more weather disasters in the years head thanks to Trump’s policies.
Weather and natural disasters are far from the only area where Trump refuses to take responsibility for his actions. The economy shrank at a 0.5% annual rate in the first quarter. This was after it grew 2.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 2.8% for the full year.
Nearly every forecaster expected the economy to keep growing at a healthy pace through 2025. However, Trump’s tariff threats, budget cuts, and layoffs at the federal level managed to quickly end the economy’s growth streak and push it into negative territory in the first quarter he was in office.
Naturally Trump responded to the bad news on growth by blaming former President Joe Biden for giving him an “economic disaster.” In reality land, Trump was handed the best economy of any president in more than half a century, with low unemployment falling inflation, rising real wages, and a unprecedented boom in factory construction.
Probably the all time classic for Trump denying responsibility was his response to the pandemic. He made it clear that he wasn’t especially concerned about how many people got sick or died from Covid-19, he was only concerned that he not be given the blame.
At the start of the pandemic, there was an outbreak on a cruise ship. Trump said that he wanted the passengers to be kept on the ship so that the number of infections reported in the United States would not increase. In a campaign speech that summer, Trump said he ordered his staff to slow down the testing for Covid so that there would not be so many cases reported.
But Trump’s best moment was when he complained “the cupboard was bare,” and blamed former President Barack Obama for a lack of equipment and protective medical gear needed to deal with a pandemic. In fact, Obama had left considerable stockpiles to deal with a pandemic, but the more important point is that Trump had been president for more than three full years at that point.
If there were inadequate stockpiles, that was 100% on Trump. If he is to be taken at his word, Trump never even bothered to check on pandemic preparedness the whole time he had been in office. That was an astounding level of ineptitude.
Trump’s complaint says everything about the way he thinks. Rather than owning up to the reality of the situation, Trump absurdly sought to blame Obama for what was obviously his own failing.
The reporting on Trump’s complaint also says a huge amount about how the media adjusts its reporting to Trumpian standards. Rather than ridiculing Trump for what was obviously his own failing, it tried to evaluate the accuracy of his complaint about the stockpile Obama had left more than three years earlier.
Unfortunately, this sort of affirmative action for the son of a billionaire has been a regular feature of reporting on Trump. He routinely makes absurd and ridiculous statements which would be treated as a major scandal if they came from the mouth of any other politician, but instead are dismissed with an “Oh, that’s Trump” from the media. The idea that Trump is an adult who should be held responsible for his actions seems too difficult for many reporters to grasp.
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Global Financial Reform: Breaking Free from the Money Scam
Markets distorted by concentrated wealth do not serve the common good. They serve the already rich.
Jul 05, 2025
The $34 trillion U.S. federal debt cannot be eliminated so long as private bankers control money production and profit from interest on money they create from nothing. This column puts this issue in a global perspective.
Most of the U.S. federal debt arises when the U.S. government borrows from private bankers by selling them Treasury bonds and other financial instruments. A banker opens an account in the government’s name and enters the amount of the bond. With a few keystrokes, the banker creates expendable currency for the government’s use. The government is expected to repay the bank for the principal when due, plus interest.
When the bond principal is repaid, that money disappears, but no money has been created to pay the interest. Thus, the accumulating interest creates a perpetually growing government debt spiral.
Private bankers collect interest in perpetuity on money that could just as easily have been created by national governments interest-free with no need for repayment.
The Privatized Financial Commons
In modern society, nearly everyone depends on money to meet their basic needs through transactions in the productive economy. In this sense, the money supply that serves the productive economy functions as a global commons—a shared resource essential to life in the modern world. Like any commons, it should be subject to democratic governance and managed for the common good.
This is more than economic injustice. It is a recipe for global breakdown.
The world’s productive economy relies on a limited pool of liquid money—what economists call the M2 money supply. This includes physical currency, checking accounts, savings deposits, and other readily spendable bank holdings. As of 2025, global M2 is estimated at approximately $93 trillion. It represents the total stock of money available at any moment for real economy activity—paying wages, buying groceries, building homes, funding schools and hospitals, and much more.
Over 90% of the global M2 is created not by governments, but by private banks issuing loans. Most of the money the world’s people depend on for their living is interest-bearing debt owed to private banks that created it from nothing.
Beyond this limited pool of money circulating in the productive economy lies a vastly larger financial universe—over $500 trillion in non-cash financial assets: stocks, bonds, derivatives, and cryptocurrencies. These cannot be used directly to buy goods and services. To be used in the productive economy, they must be sold and thus converted into spendable money—into M2 cash.
Most of these assets are fictitious, created not to support productive activity, but rather to extract speculative profit from the productive economy. This vast pool of fictitious assets actively directs attention of investors away from supporting the work of the real economy.
Fictitious Wealth, Real Harm
The non-cash financial assets—especially derivatives, leveraged buyouts, and cryptocurrencies—serve only the already wealthy seeking to extract unearned wealth from the productive economy without doing or producing anything in return that might benefit society.
This parasitic financial system generates massive profits for the few while inflicting widespread harm on the many. Its consequences include:
- Eroding democracy, as financial elites gain disproportionate influence over governments and public institutions.
- Driving inequality, enriching those who already own assets while leaving the rest to borrow at usurious interest rates just to survive.
- Starving the real economy—where people grow food, care for children and elders, build infrastructure, and heal the sick—of stable, affordable financing.
- Fueling financial instability, as speculative bubbles repeatedly inflate and burst.
- Accelerating ecological collapse by prioritizing short-term gain over planetary survival.
Governments that could issue their own currency—interest-free and debt-free—instead borrow from private banks, thus redirecting public funds to pay interest on private loans. The result is a transfer of power and wealth from the many to the few, underwritten by public debt and justified by economic myths.
A System Justified by Myth
The defenders of the current financial system insist it promotes efficiency and innovation by letting “free markets” allocate capital. But markets distorted by concentrated wealth do not serve the common good. They serve the already rich.
Private banks lend primarily to those who already have substantial assets—speculators, real estate developers, and large corporations. They dismiss community-serving or ecologically restorative projects as “too risky” or “insufficiently profitable.”
A just and sustainable future begins with liberating ourselves from the tyranny of private money creation.
The result? A system in which the wealthy borrow cheaply to amass more wealth, while the poor pay high interest—if they can borrow at all. Local communities and vital ecosystems are left underfunded and vulnerable.
This is more than economic injustice. It is a recipe for global breakdown:
- Billionaires launch themselves into space while the poor go hungry.
- A debt-driven growth imperative accelerates extraction from Earth just to service unpayable loans.
- Financial imperialism traps nations in dependency and fuels geopolitical conflict.
- Governments that borrow their own currency become debt slaves—not sovereign democracies.
Begin with Public Education and Democratic Dialogue
Transforming this deeply entrenched system cannot be left to backroom negotiations, technical fixes, or elite commissions. Real change must begin with a broad, inclusive public conversation grounded in honest education and democratic engagement.
Most people have no idea where money comes from nor how the financial system works. This ignorance is not accidental. Mainstream economics education often obscures or distorts the process through abstract models and technical jargon that serve the interests of financial elites.
Reform begins with demystification. Citizens must understand how money is currently created and who benefits. They must also understand how we can change the way money is created so it serves public—not private—purpose. This awakening will require the leadership of independent media, educators, grassroots movements, public servants, and faith leaders committed to truth and justice. It must reach across generations, communities, and ideologies to ignite the public imagination.
A new conversation about money is foundational. Without it, movements for economic justice, environmental regeneration, or democratic renewal will remain trapped within the constraints of a system rigged against them.
Then, Reclaim the Public Power to Create and Govern Money
Once the broad public understands how money is created—and who benefits—we must take the next step: reclaim the power to create and govern money as a public function, accountable to democratic institutions.
This means:
- Transferring the power to create money from private banks to public institutions designed to serve the common good.
- Establishing an independent, transparent, democratically accountable body to regulate money creation—ensuring enough is created to meet real needs, but not so much as to fuel inflation.
- Creating public banks, credit unions, and community-rooted financial institutions that circulate money locally to support the meeting of real needs, while resisting speculative extraction.
- Curtail financial speculation by strictly regulating—or abolishing—predatory financial instruments like derivatives, leveraged buyouts, and crypto schemes.
- Using public money creation to fund health care, education, affordable housing, infrastructure, and ecological regeneration—rather than speculative profits.
In a healthy economy, money serves life. It facilitates the exchange of real goods and services. It connects people in mutual caring relationships. In such an economy, billionaires would not exist, because the mechanisms that currently create extreme wealth would be replaced with mechanisms that secure the well-being of all.
We should expect fierce resistance from those who profit from the current system. But there will be no refuge on a dying Earth—and there is no planet B. In the end, all but the most self-delusional will come to understand that their own survival depends on a living planet and a just society.
We should expect fierce resistance from those who profit from the current system. But there will be no refuge on a dying Earth—and there is no planet B.
From Illusion to Liberation
To reclaim our future, we must reassert the public’s right to create and govern money as a democratic instrument of shared well-being—not private wealth accumulation.
We will not end war while private financiers profit from war. We will not end poverty while public wealth is siphoned into private interest payments. We will not stop environmental collapse while debt-fueled growth drives relentless extraction. And we will not build an Ecological Civilization until we dismantle the financial system that feeds on life rather than serving it.
A just and sustainable future begins with liberating ourselves from the tyranny of private money creation. To build a just and sustainable future, we must make financial education and reform a priority of every social movement advocating for peace, justice, and a healthy living Earth.
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Hungry for Progressive Economics, Nearly 2/3 of Democrats Want New Party Leadership: Poll
Voters described universal healthcare, affordable childcare, and higher taxes on the rich as top priorities in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. But they were less likely to believe that party leaders shared those priorities.
Jun 20, 2025
Democratic voters want new leadership that will prioritize their day-to-day needs and do more to challenge corporate power, according to a poll published Thursday.
Sixty-two percent of the nearly 1,300 self-identified Democrats who responded to the new Reuters/Ipsos poll agreed with the statement that "the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people," while just 24% wanted to keep the old guard around.
The new data delivers another blow to party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who have faced growing scrutiny for failing to effectively oppose President Donald Trump in the eyes of their constituents.
The poll, conducted from June 11-16, revealed stark gaps between the agenda Democratic voters would like to see prioritized and what they perceive as party leadership's priorities. Voters overwhelmingly support populist economic policies, according to the data, but doubt that party leaders share those goals—with young voters especially skeptical.
(Graphic: Reuters/Ipsos)
Across all age groups, more than three-quarters of voters described universal healthcare, affordable childcare, and higher taxes on the rich as top priorities. But voters were less likely to believe that party leaders did as well.
Voters between ages 18 to 39 especially had a grim view of leadership. While 81% said they wanted universal healthcare, just 66% said they thought party leadership did too. On limiting money in politics, 62% said it was a priority, compared with just 44% who thought leadership felt the same.
Democrats over 40 were even more inclined to believe in top progressive agenda items. Although they perceived less of a divide between their views and those of party leaders, a significant gap remained.
Following Kamala Harris' defeat in the 2024 election, many corporate-friendly pundits embraced the narrative that voters perceived the Democratic policy agenda as too far left. But the Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests the opposite.
As Sharon Zhang wrote for Truthout, "The majority of federally elected Democrats actually oppose proposals like Medicare for All, and many party leaders have actively worked to sabotage support for such ideas," including Schumer, who declined to support Sen. Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill this year.
"Far from taxing the rich," she added, "party leaders have also cozied up to billionaires." Tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple all donated millions of dollars to the Harris campaign.
Ben Tulchin, a pollster for Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, told Reuters that Democratic Party had "room for improvement" on showing Americans that they "are the ones standing up for working people."
"It needs to transform itself into a party that everyday people can get excited about," Tulchin said. "That requires a changing of the guard."
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