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Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice: for they shall be filled. Mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works. He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke. I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Praise ye the Lord.


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Topic Summary

Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 26, 2024, 12:57:50 am »

The economics of imperialism: Can the Global South resist Western exploitation?
Can China help?


Geopolitical Economy Report 194K subscribers Mar 25, 2024

The world economy is structured in an unjust way in which the
 West drains the wealth of the 🥺 Global South.
Ben Norton discusses the economics of imperialism - and how China has partially reversed it.

China is now the 'world's sole manufacturing superpower'. How did it develop so fast?

Topics
0:00 Global inequality
1:45 The China exception
3:01 World-systems analysis
4:37 Prebisch-Singer thesis
6:55 Dependency theory & commodity supercycles
8:27 Unequal exchange
11:01 Haiti & Honduras: Wage suppression in the periphery
13:57 New International Economic Order
15:22 China & the Asian Tigers
19:27 The Global South rebels
22:41 South Africa's President Ramaphosa on industrialization
25:13 Indonesia's economic development
26:34 (Neo)colonialism in Indonesia
29:29 Indonesia bans raw mineral exports
32:18 Protectionism (for the West, not for the rest)
37:38 China helps Indonesia industrialize
42:04 The myth of Chinese "imperialism"
43:04 India's economy vs. Indonesia's
46:41 China's South-South integration
49:33 Outro

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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 21, 2024, 05:44:57 pm »


The truth about China's economy: Debunking 🐍 Western media myths


Geopolitical Economy Report 193K subscribers Mar 21, 2024

Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are joined by Beijing-based scholar Mick Dunford to discuss China's economy and debunk Western media myths, addressing accusations that consumption is too low, fears of "Japanification", the role of exports, and the new Chinese growth strategy.

This is part 2 of their discussion. Watch part 1 here:

You can watch other episodes of their program Geopolitical Economy Hour here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD...

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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 14, 2024, 01:40:15 pm »

China's Shipbuilding Capacity is 232 Times Greater than the United States. What Happened?


Alliance for 🦅 American 🗽 Manufacturing 6.05K subscribers Mar 12, 2024

The United States once dominated global shipbuilding, but 💵🎩😈 poor 🐘 policy decisions decimated this vital industry and left us dependent on adversaries like China. Now the United Steelworkers and other trade unions have filed a petition urging President Biden to launch an investigation into China's predatory trade practices and get America's 🦅 shipbuilding industry back on 🗽 track.

@benedict6897
It's important to consider the capabilities of Chinese and American warships. The Chinese are so far behind in advanced weapon systems, but the Americans want the world to think otherwise so they can justify the insane military budget.

Agelbert > @benedict6897
Reagan's greedball Neoliberal Social Darwinist ADVERSARIAL and PREDATORY policies destroyed the U.S. Shipbuilding Industry, along with most of the middle class jobs in the USA, thereby viciously decimating the American middle class. 😠



I do not know whether the Chinese are behind in advanced weapons systems or not, but I think it is a mistake to characterize the Chinese shipbuilding efforts as "adversarial" and their trade polcies as "predatory". From Reagan through Bush, Clintion, Shrub, Obama AND Biden, we need to look in a mirror before we brand some other country as ADVERSARIAL and PREDATORY. As you said, these transparently hypocritical efforts to justify the insane war profiteer benefiting  U.S. military budget are worthy fo condemnation.
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 12, 2024, 09:35:04 pm »


What is China's future? Economic decline, or the next industrial revolution?


Geopolitical Economy Report 191K subscribers Mar 12, 2024

Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are joined by Beijing-based scholar Mick Dunford to discuss what is actually happening in China's economy, explaining its technological development and transition toward a new industrial revolution.

You can watch other episodes of their program Geopolitical Economy Hour here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD...

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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: February 28, 2024, 09:54:22 pm »

The reality of Bidenomics: How good was 💵😈🎩🍌 Biden for the economy?



Geopolitical Economy Report 185K subscribers Feb 28, 2024

Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss the rhetoric and reality of Bidenomics, and how good US President Joe Biden really was for the economy.

Transcript: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/...

You can watch other episodes of their program Geopolitical Economy Hour here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD...

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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: February 01, 2024, 12:38:19 am »

China is now the 'world's sole manufacturing superpower' . How did it develop so fast?



Geopolitical Economy Report 177K subscribers Jan 31, 2024

"China is now the world’s sole manufacturing superpower", a mainstream European think think has acknowledged. Ben Norton explains China's historic growth and development model, and how the Chinese socialist market economy works.

Sources and more information here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/...

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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 23, 2024, 10:21:59 pm »


Economic Update: As The Empire Crumbles


Democracy At Work 379K subscribers 4.6K 67,765 views  Jan 22, 2024  Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff [Full Episodes]
*********************************************************************
[EU S14 E03] As The Empire Crumbles
*********************************************************************

In this week's episode of EU, Prof.Wolff delivers updates on the mass closing of Greyhound bus stations around the U.S., the escalating strengths of Russian obstacles in Ukraine, the choice the UK faces between paying for the bombing of Yemen or funding their National Health Service, how Boeing's safety debacle propelled China into the lead of global automotive exports and how Israel has also been aversely affected by the shifts and changes of the world economy caused by the decline of U.S. dominance.

If you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel, follow us on social media and of course be sure to sign up on our website:
www.democracyatwork.info

And as always, we thank for your attention, support and solidarity.

The d@w Team

Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc.  production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community:
 
 / democracyatwork   
Or you can go to our website:
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Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else.

We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

Explore the podcast 425 episodes 🔊 Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 13, 2024, 10:44:54 pm »


The debt explosion: How 💵🎩🍌😈 neoliberalism fuels debt crises (with Radhika Desai & Michael Hudson)



Geopolitical Economy Report 170K subscribers 9,192 views  Jan 12, 2024

Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss the massive explosion of debt in the US and around the world, and how neoliberal economics leads to large bubbles based on speculation and asset-price inflation.

Transcript: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/...

You can watch other episodes of their program Geopolitical Economy Hour here:   
 • Radhika Desai & Michael Hudson - Geop... 

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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 11, 2024, 09:22:24 pm »


Global Economy's Momentous Shift and Monumental Inequality | Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson



Dialogue works 77K subscribers Jan 11, 2024  Interviews

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (Editions 1968, 2003, 2021), ‘and forgive them their debts’ (2018), J is for Junk Economics (2017), Killing the Host (2015), The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971), amongst many others.

ISLET engages in research regarding domestic and international finance, national income and balance-sheet accounting with regard to real estate. We also engage in the economic history of the ancient Near East.

Michael acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide including China, Iceland and Latvia on finance and tax law. He gives presentations on various topics at conferences and meetings and can be booked here. Listen to some of his many radio interviews to hear his hyperspeed analysis of the geo-political machinations of global economics. Travel costs and a per diem are appreciated.
https://michael-hudson.com/

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City.

Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne). Wolff was also a regular lecturer at the Brecht Forum in New York City. (https://www.rdwolff.com/about)



Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 07, 2024, 12:17:31 am »


Russia and China are Melding | Dmitry Orlov


Dialogue works 76.4K subscribers 33,314 views  Jan 6, 2024  Interviews

Dmitry Orlov was born in Leningrad, USSR, into an academic family, and emigrated to the US in the mid-1970s. He holds degrees in Computer Engineering and Linguistics, and has worked in a variety of fields, including high-energy physics, Internet commerce, network security and advertising. He is the author of several previous books, including Reinventing Collapse and The Five Stages of Collapse.
https://boosty.to/cluborlov
Dmitry's books: https://www.amazon
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: December 31, 2023, 08:15:33 pm »

Most important stories of 2023: Gaza 😱, Ukraine, China, BRICS, dedollarization, bank crises, inflation


Geopolitical Economy Report 169K subscribers Dec 31, 2023

These were the most important geopolitical and economic issues of 2023, including the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, US-China tensions, BRICS expansion, growing de-dollarization, inflation crisis, crypto fraud, bank crashes, European de-industrialization, and more. Journalist Ben Norton reviews the chaotic year.

Links
 here:

Topics
0:00 Top stories of 2023
5:01 Israel's war on Gaza
8:24 Ukraine losing in NATO-Russia war
13:02 Africa's Sahel rebels
14:42 Growing global inequality
16:10 BRICS expansion
19:10 De-dollarization
25:52 Inflation (and 'greedflation')
29:40 Debt crises
34:19 Bank failures (and US bailouts)
41:39 Crypto fraud
43:21 Europe: stagnation and de-industrialization
46:12 China's economic transition
56:06 US new cold war on China
1:01:09 India grows closer to US (and Russia)
1:03:55 Pakistan's Imran Khan imprisoned
1:05:08 Brazil's Lula returns
1:07:40 Argentina's Javier Milei
1:09:53 Peru coup
1:12:03 US-Mexico tensions
1:13:26 Biden loses supports as 2024 election nears
1:15:43 Outro

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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: December 15, 2023, 09:47:18 pm »


Is neoliberalism really dead?
Or does it live on like a zombie?



Geopolitical Economy Report 166K subscribers Dec 15, 2023
Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss neoliberalism, and the premature predictions about its demise.

You can watch other episodes of their program Geopolitical Economy Hour here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD...

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Posted by: AGelbert
« on: November 11, 2023, 12:45:27 pm »


As far as eternity is concerned, a bulging bank account is worthless. A moving van never follows a hearse.
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: October 16, 2023, 04:18:59 pm »

The New Yorker

March 8, 2021

What Happens When Investment Firms Acquire Trailer Parks

By Sheelah Kolhatkar, a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes about Wall Street, Silicon Valley, economics, and politics. She is the author of “Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street.”

The financial industry’s pursuit of profits from mobile-home communities is undermining one of the country’s largest sources of affordable housing. 

SNIPPETS:

Trailer parks first sprang up in the nineteen-twenties, as campgrounds designed to attract wealthy tourists. As the country entered the Great Depression, some unemployed Americans, known as “hobo-tourists,” took to compact travel trailers, migrating in search of work. Soon, local governments began to pass zoning restrictions that dictated the size of the lots on which mobile homes could be placed, forcing them into less dense areas of town, and limited how long trailers could be stationed. In the fifties, manufacturers started producing trailers that were more like small bungalows. Trailer parks began to serve largely as housing communities for lower-income and working-class families; many had amenities like clubhouses and swimming pools, and fanciful names like Shangri-La. By the time Table Mound was established, in 1963, there were at least three million Americans living in mobile homes; during the next two decades, the structures became more elaborate and harder to move. ... ...

In a 2016 interview, Rolfe recalled that he had assumed that almost anyone who lived in a mobile home was a “drug addict, a hooker, and just the scum of the earth,” and claimed to have felt so unsafe walking around Glenhaven that he applied for a concealed-weapon permit. But, he went on, he came to realize that just because tenants were poor didn’t mean that they were “dangerous” or “stupid.” It was possible to provide clean, safe housing for working people who were “just like you and me,” but who had very little money.

Rolfe met Dave Reynolds, an accountant whose parents owned a mobile-home park in Colorado, at a mobile-home-investing conference in 2006, where both of them were speaking. Soon afterward, they created Mobile Home University, a program for potential park owners which offered, among other things, three-day seminars in Southern California and Denver, for almost two thousand dollars a ticket. (The program is currently being offered virtually.) Later, they established a partnership that invests in mobile-home parks. In 2017, Rolfe was reported to have compared a typical mobile-home park to “a Waffle House where customers are chained to their booths.” (He has said that the quote was taken out of context, and was meant to refer only to the “incredibly consistent revenue” of mobile-home parks.) Esther Sullivan, who attended one of Rolfe and Reynolds’s Mobile Home University seminars in California while researching her book, summarized the advice that they offered participants: “Look for a park that’s got high occupancy and that doesn’t need a lot of investment. Take out any possible amenity you’d ever need to invest in, such as a playground or a pool that’s going to need insurance. Make sure it’s got a nice sign, and pawn off any maintenance costs onto your tenants.”

Rolfe and Reynolds recommended that owners regularly raise rents, but not so much that it would drive out desirable tenants. They also told investors to avoid “tenant-friendly” states such as California and New York, where evictions can take months, and urged them to concentrate on areas where there is a shortage of reasonably priced rental apartments. The Mobile Home University Web site states, “Mobile home parks are the hottest sector of real estate right now, due to the endless decline in the U.S. economy.” The site points out that thousands of baby boomers are retiring each day, and that they will receive around fourteen thousand dollars a year in Social Security income: “Mobile home parks are the only segment of real estate that grows stronger as the economy weakens.” ... ...

Whereas traditional homeownership can form the basis for intergenerational wealth, mobile homes depreciate in value, like cars or motorboats. Still, many of Presley’s neighbors had saved for years or used inheritances to buy their homes. Karla Krapfl, Presley’s second cousin, has lived in Table Mound for three decades with her husband, Dennis, an Army veteran. In 1993, they bought their current home new, and had it fitted with large windows, so that Krapfl could watch from the kitchen as their three boys played outside. Their sons are now grown; two served in the armed forces and the third is a controller at a local company. When I stopped by, Krapfl showed me around the house, which was decorated with quilts, porcelain animals, and silk flowers. Princess Diana plates from the Franklin Mint hung in a triangle in the master bedroom. Krapfl had enjoyed raising a family in Table Mound, and compared living in the park in those years to being on a military base. “Everybody knew everybody’s kids,” she said. “It was all very friendly.”

Table Mound’s owner, Michael Friederick, was from Dubuque, and had made typical investments in the park, plowing the roads in the winter and repairing the curbs. He raised the rent by no more than two per cent a year. During the summer of 2017, less than a year after Presley moved to Table Mound, she and the other residents learned that Friederick had sold the park. It had gone for more than six million dollars, and was now being managed by RV Horizons.

As it later emerged, according to court documents, RV Horizons is one of several foreign limited-liability companies controlled by another L.L.C., Impact MHC Management. RV Horizons announced that it would be charging residents for water and trash removal, which had previously been included in the rent. It installed new digital water meters on each property, billing residents five dollars a month for the meters. It also raised the rent on lots: Mills’s lot rent rose from two hundred and seventy dollars a month to three hundred and ten 😵 . According to Jim Baker, the executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a think tank that monitors the effects of private-equity firms’ investments, extracting profits by increasing lot rents and decreasing expenditure on upkeep is 😈 common. “In many cases, residents have invested forty, fifty, sixty thousand dollars into the homes,” he said. “There is such a strong incentive to pay, because are you going to walk away from this home that you put your retirement into?”

A year later, RV Horizons raised the lot rent again . By then, Presley had moved out of Mills’s single-wide and was living with Cheyenne in her own home, a dilapidated trailer built in 1974 that she acquired for twelve hundred dollars. Her brother, Buddy, who worked at a company that sold and installed building supplies, delivered flooring, drywall, and insulation. Presley suffers from spinal stenosis, which sometimes leaves her hobbling in pain. The condition entitles her to federal disability benefits, provided that she works only part time—a situation that requires a delicate financial balancing act. At the time, she was employed as a substitute cafeteria worker for the Dubuque Community School District, in addition to bartending. She immediately started worrying about how she was going to make the new lot rent 🥺.

RV Horizons had sent all the residents a new lease, forty-seven pages long and full of addenda, which contained some provisions that struck Presley as unfair and potentially illegal, including an eight-hour limit on street parking for guests, a requirement for a hundred-thousand-dollar-minimum insurance policy to cover accidents related to pets, and the institution of quiet hours. Despite the fact that the land belonged to the park, residents were now responsible for repairs to the water pipes connected to their homes. Clotheslines were no longer permitted. There would also be a fifty-dollar late fee for any rents received after the monthly deadline. RV Horizons claimed that the money from the rent increases would be spent on repairing the roads and installing satellite-television service.

As Presley discussed the complexities of the lease with Mills and their neighbors, she felt a surge of fury. “I was pissed,” she said. “I thought people were being played with.” The next day, she and Mills printed flyers inviting residents to a meeting the following Sunday afternoon in the yard outside the community storm shelter. A hundred and fifty people showed up. Presley and Mills handed out yellow stickers that read “No to illegal lease.”

Full article:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-when-investment-firms-acquire-trailer-parks

newestbeginning Mod > AGelbert

I had not realized that this predatory practice was a "thing" until my son dated (for a mercifully short time) an awful woman who owned trailer parks in TN. She was also a trailer park broker. In many ways, she was just an awful person.


I had not realized that this predatory practice was a "thing" until my son dated (for a mercifully short time) an awful woman who owned trailer parks in TN. She was also a trailer park broker. In many ways, she was just an awful person.

AGelbert > newestbeginning Mod

I'm glad for your son that he did the right thing. As a young man I did exactly the wrong thing in 1970, and paid for it until 1988. The divorce was ugly and I remain estranged from both "my" children by their choice, not mine.
In 1991 I met my present wife, who is a woman of virtue. In many ways I owe my life to her, as she taught me through her example what I had never learned before.
The Mobile Home Park we live in was run by a couple that owned a mansion worth over 1 million dollars (in 1996!). They were (both died of natural causes years ago), as slumlords go, fairly decent people. The lot is 1/3 acre and due to the fact that Vermont is a "rent control" state, they could not raise the rent above the published annual increase in the CPI.

So, we did okay with the Manufactured Home we purchased new in the year 2000.   

After the widow of the couple that owned the Park died, the Park was put up for sale. We-the residents took ROC (Resident Owned Community) advice and formed a CO-OP that bought the Park for about 12 million dollars. The rent still keeps going up, even though part of the CO-OP pitch was that it wouldn't, but at least with a CO-OP there is no slum lord to make up excuses for adding "fees" for this, that or the other. That said, I am not impressed with the fact that all the "rules" we were saddled with before were voted in AGAIN by the majority of the residents. It seems democracy is no guarantee that nit pickers will stop their nit picking. Se la vie.

At any rate, with the homeless rate in Vermont at crisis levels, we are pretty sure the racists in the Park (there are way too many of them) will not be able to gin up excuses to "evict" two old Hispanic Geezers, one of which is on a Disability Pension from the Federal Aviation Administration.

I forgot to add one thing: That mansion I told you about that the couple owned? When the husband died of a heart attack around 2005 or so, the widow had the mansion torn down because it "depressed her".  I'm sure the tax on the assessed value of said mansion in Essex Junction had nothing to do with it...

I am quite certain that selling that mansion and giving the money to the residents of the Park that had enabled them to build it in the first place never entered her mind...
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: October 14, 2023, 04:06:06 pm »


How corporate profits are driving inflation, not workers' wages