Fight Back! News

News and Views from the People's Struggle

Capitalism and Economy

By Masao Suzuki

San José, CA – The February 2024 employment report released by the Department of Labor on Friday, March 8 continued to show signs of weakness. While total job creation seemed healthy, with 275,000 net new jobs reported by the survey of employers, there were significant downsides to the overall report.

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By Masao Suzuki

San José, CA – The January 2024 jobs report was labeled “Blockbuster” by the New York Times, “Hot” by the Wall Street Journal, and “Shockingly Strong” by the Washington Post. Yet the headlines of three of the national newspapers failed to capture the weaker side of the report.

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By Jennifer Lin

San Francisco, CA – On November 12, over 5000 people from across the country took to the streets to protest the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, which runs in San Francisco from November 11 to 17.

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By staff

Milwaukee protest against APEC. | Fight Back! News/staff

Milwaukee, WI – On Saturday, November 11, the Milwaukee Anti-war Committee (MAC) held a banner drop over a Milwaukee freeway to say “No to APEC!” The bannering was held in solidarity with the People’s Summit counter-protest on the same date in San Francisco, where the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit is being held.

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By Masao Suzuki

San José, CA – On Tuesday, September 12, the U.S. Census Bureau reported on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in 2022. The report on poverty was dire, with the poverty rate as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure, or SPM, jumping almost 60% between 2021 and 2022.

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By Masao Suzuki

San José, CA – On Friday, September 1, the Department of Labor’s report on the job market in August showed continued signs of cooling. Only 187,000 net new jobs were created, and the Labor Department adjusted down the new jobs for June and July by 130,000. This meant that the three month average was only 150,000 new jobs. In contrast, in the first three months of the year, employment grew on average by 312,000 jobs, so that the rate of job creation has been cut in half.

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By Rick Majumdar

The 15th BRICS summit took place in South Africa August 22-24 to discuss the expansion of the group of countries, and to counter the influence of Western countries like the U.S., France and Britain on developing countries.

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By Masao Suzuki

San José, CA – On Friday, May 19, Republicans walked out of debt ceiling negotiations with the Democrats. Presidential candidate Donald Trump followed with a no-compromise stance, saying the Republicans should hold out for “everything that they want.” More than a quarter of Democrat Senators who are opposed to the Republican cuts called on President Biden to overrule the debt ceiling using the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees that the national debt shall be paid.

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By staff

Interview with Professor of Economics Masao Suzuki

Masao Suzuki.

In 2023, there have been many announcements of layoffs by technology firms. This is a result of what the media calls post-COVID normalization. But this “normalization” has also shown that many technology companies that boomed during the pandemic were in fact overproducing and building new capacity too quickly, forcing them now to scale back. In the past ten days this slowdown in the technology industry spilled over into the banking system, triggered by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, based in Santa Clara, California. Soon after the failure of SVB on Friday, March 10, regulators shut Signature Bank in New York. First Republic bank, headquartered in San Francisco, had to borrow $30 billion from other banks, under the direction of the Federal Reserve. The crisis even spilled overseas, as the troubled Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse was forced to sell itself to the even larger Swiss bank UBS. Fight Back! News sat down with Professor Suzuki to ask him about this crisis. Fight Back!: How is the failure of Silicon Valley Bank related the crisis unfolding in the technology industry?

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By Masao Suzuki

San José, CA – After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, headquartered in the city of Santa Clara, just north of San José, the local news was full of interviews with technology entrepreneurs talking about the “importance to the community” to have all of the uninsured depositors get their money back. With the closing of Signature Bank in New York, which had large numbers of crypto-investment related depositors, over the weekend, federal regulators tried and failed to find buyers for the two banks. This made these two banks the biggest ever – with about $200 and $100 billion in deposits, respectively – to have to shut down.

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