Tuesday, December 10, 2019
RIP, Paul Adolph Volcker
Doug Henwood
Posted: 09 Dec 2019 10:45 AM PST
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/
Paul Adolph Volcker is dead at the age of 92. (Most accounts of the man suppress the middle name, though it was often pointed out with bitter glee by builders and others who were undone by his high interest rate policies in the early 1980s.) As I wrote in LBO when he left office in 1987, if capitalism gave out a Hero of Accumulation award, he would have been first on the honors list.
Let’s recall what he did, because all the worshipful obits will almost certainly sanitize the history. Volcker was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve by Jimmy Carter—on the recommendation of David Rockefeller—to get inflation under control. Carter’s old Georgia friend and advisor Bert Lance tried to tell him it was a mistake, and that it would almost certainly cost him re-election. Lance, now remembered as little more than a Good Old Boy, if he’s remembered at all, was right. But Carter ignored him. The charms of a Rockefeller are irresistible.
Inflation is a complicated thing, and this is no place to delve into those complexities. For the purposes of this post I’ll just say a couple of things. Part of the reason for rising inflation in the 1970s was that oil exporters had been jacking up prices—from under $4 a barrel to over $10 in the first oil shock of 1973–1974, and then from under $15 to over $30 in the second shock, 1979–1980. Other commodity-exporting countries were trying to emulate their oil-exporting colleagues. And with those commodity price moves came calls for a new world economic order—one in which the North no longer lorded it over the South, and one in which the South claimed a larger portion of global wealth.
Domestically, labor was restive. There were an average of almost 300 major strikes a year during the 1970s—more in the earlier years of the decade, but they persisted throughout. There was a lot of worry that the working class had developed a serious attitude problem. There’s an appealing theory that reads inflation as a sign of stalemate in the class conflict: workers push wages higher and employers respond by raising prices to protect profits. If the workers were winning, profits would suffer; if employers were, wages would suffer. Neither happened in the 1970s.
The month Volcker took office, August 1979, the consumer price index was up almost 12% from the year before. (See graph below.) But the unemployment rate was 5.8%—not low, but below average for the 1970s. In Congressional testimony a couple of months later, Volcker declared that “The standard of living of the average American has to decline” if inflation was going to be subdued. He worked hard to make that happen.
He made that happen by driving interest rates up to levels previously unknown in US history (and the history at my fingertips goes back to 1857). The federal funds rate—the rate at which banks lend each other money overnight, the most sensitive indicator of Fed policy—went from 10.9% when he took office to 17.6% in April 1980. That drastic tightening of monetary policy sent the economy into a sharp recession. Unemployment rose by almost two points in a matter of months. The downturn was so brutal that Volcker retreated. He—and while Fed policy is set by a committee, the institution is dominated by its chair, and Volcker was a particularly forceful chair—drove fed funds briefly below 10% in the summer of 1980.
But inflation persisted as the economy recovered, so Volcker went back to war. He pushed the fed funds rate to a peak of 19% in January 1981, let it fall a few points into the spring, then pushed it back to 19% in June and July. The economy went into a deep recession, the worst since the 1930s (though we outdid it in 2008–2009). Bankruptcies zoomed, and the unemployment rate broke 8% in November 1981, 9% in March 1982, and 10% in September. Inflation, which had been falling in 1980 but not seriously enough for Volcker, began falling for real in late 1981.
With inflation breaking below 6%, Volcker relented in August 1982—not so much because the US working class was suffering and interest-sensitive industries like housing and manufacturing were in depression, because Mexico was about to “blow,” as he put it. Like many Latin American countries, Mexico had borrowed heavily in the 1970s, the the interest rate spike was ruining them. Fearing that a Mexican default would bring down the banking system, Volcker began pushing down the fed funds rate, and in August 1982 made it clear that the regime of extreme monetary tightness was over. Inflation continued to fall, however, breaking below 3% in 1983.
From the POV of the ruling class, a couple of very good things happened as a result of that regime of extreme tightness. The recession scared the hell out of the working class, leaving millions in terror of job loss. That consciousness was reinforced by Reagan’s firing of the striking air traffic controllers in August 1981; the leader of the striking local was hauled away in chains, a picture that spoke many more than a thousand words. Strikes fell from an average of 300 in the 1970s to 80 in the 1990s—and 23 since. The stock market took off the minute Volcker made it clear that interest rates would fall; investors celebrated the decisive victory of the owners’ contingent in the class war, a party that has continued to this day. That fearful consciousness instilled by Volcker and Reagan persists in the US working class almost forty years later: make no demands or you might find yourself sleeping on the sidewalk.
There was an international dimension to that class war victory as well. Capital successfully turned Mexico’s threatened default into a great opportunity to restructure the global economy to its liking. As a condition for getting fresh loans, and indulgence on the old ones, Latin American and other debtors had to agree to open up their economies to foreign capital and trade and lift domestic regulations and subsidies—the entire package of hypercapitalism that would come to be known as neoliberalism. In less than a decade, calls for a new world economic order, one favoring the South, were replaced by a intensified arrangement of rich countries telling poorer ones what to do, down to the level of what basics like food should cost. As with the domestic reconstruction, Volcker was at the center of it.
RIP Paul Volcker, Hero of Accumulation.
Posted: 09 Dec 2019 10:45 AM PST
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/
Paul Adolph Volcker is dead at the age of 92. (Most accounts of the man suppress the middle name, though it was often pointed out with bitter glee by builders and others who were undone by his high interest rate policies in the early 1980s.) As I wrote in LBO when he left office in 1987, if capitalism gave out a Hero of Accumulation award, he would have been first on the honors list.
Let’s recall what he did, because all the worshipful obits will almost certainly sanitize the history. Volcker was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve by Jimmy Carter—on the recommendation of David Rockefeller—to get inflation under control. Carter’s old Georgia friend and advisor Bert Lance tried to tell him it was a mistake, and that it would almost certainly cost him re-election. Lance, now remembered as little more than a Good Old Boy, if he’s remembered at all, was right. But Carter ignored him. The charms of a Rockefeller are irresistible.
Inflation is a complicated thing, and this is no place to delve into those complexities. For the purposes of this post I’ll just say a couple of things. Part of the reason for rising inflation in the 1970s was that oil exporters had been jacking up prices—from under $4 a barrel to over $10 in the first oil shock of 1973–1974, and then from under $15 to over $30 in the second shock, 1979–1980. Other commodity-exporting countries were trying to emulate their oil-exporting colleagues. And with those commodity price moves came calls for a new world economic order—one in which the North no longer lorded it over the South, and one in which the South claimed a larger portion of global wealth.
Domestically, labor was restive. There were an average of almost 300 major strikes a year during the 1970s—more in the earlier years of the decade, but they persisted throughout. There was a lot of worry that the working class had developed a serious attitude problem. There’s an appealing theory that reads inflation as a sign of stalemate in the class conflict: workers push wages higher and employers respond by raising prices to protect profits. If the workers were winning, profits would suffer; if employers were, wages would suffer. Neither happened in the 1970s.
The month Volcker took office, August 1979, the consumer price index was up almost 12% from the year before. (See graph below.) But the unemployment rate was 5.8%—not low, but below average for the 1970s. In Congressional testimony a couple of months later, Volcker declared that “The standard of living of the average American has to decline” if inflation was going to be subdued. He worked hard to make that happen.
He made that happen by driving interest rates up to levels previously unknown in US history (and the history at my fingertips goes back to 1857). The federal funds rate—the rate at which banks lend each other money overnight, the most sensitive indicator of Fed policy—went from 10.9% when he took office to 17.6% in April 1980. That drastic tightening of monetary policy sent the economy into a sharp recession. Unemployment rose by almost two points in a matter of months. The downturn was so brutal that Volcker retreated. He—and while Fed policy is set by a committee, the institution is dominated by its chair, and Volcker was a particularly forceful chair—drove fed funds briefly below 10% in the summer of 1980.
But inflation persisted as the economy recovered, so Volcker went back to war. He pushed the fed funds rate to a peak of 19% in January 1981, let it fall a few points into the spring, then pushed it back to 19% in June and July. The economy went into a deep recession, the worst since the 1930s (though we outdid it in 2008–2009). Bankruptcies zoomed, and the unemployment rate broke 8% in November 1981, 9% in March 1982, and 10% in September. Inflation, which had been falling in 1980 but not seriously enough for Volcker, began falling for real in late 1981.
With inflation breaking below 6%, Volcker relented in August 1982—not so much because the US working class was suffering and interest-sensitive industries like housing and manufacturing were in depression, because Mexico was about to “blow,” as he put it. Like many Latin American countries, Mexico had borrowed heavily in the 1970s, the the interest rate spike was ruining them. Fearing that a Mexican default would bring down the banking system, Volcker began pushing down the fed funds rate, and in August 1982 made it clear that the regime of extreme monetary tightness was over. Inflation continued to fall, however, breaking below 3% in 1983.
From the POV of the ruling class, a couple of very good things happened as a result of that regime of extreme tightness. The recession scared the hell out of the working class, leaving millions in terror of job loss. That consciousness was reinforced by Reagan’s firing of the striking air traffic controllers in August 1981; the leader of the striking local was hauled away in chains, a picture that spoke many more than a thousand words. Strikes fell from an average of 300 in the 1970s to 80 in the 1990s—and 23 since. The stock market took off the minute Volcker made it clear that interest rates would fall; investors celebrated the decisive victory of the owners’ contingent in the class war, a party that has continued to this day. That fearful consciousness instilled by Volcker and Reagan persists in the US working class almost forty years later: make no demands or you might find yourself sleeping on the sidewalk.
There was an international dimension to that class war victory as well. Capital successfully turned Mexico’s threatened default into a great opportunity to restructure the global economy to its liking. As a condition for getting fresh loans, and indulgence on the old ones, Latin American and other debtors had to agree to open up their economies to foreign capital and trade and lift domestic regulations and subsidies—the entire package of hypercapitalism that would come to be known as neoliberalism. In less than a decade, calls for a new world economic order, one favoring the South, were replaced by a intensified arrangement of rich countries telling poorer ones what to do, down to the level of what basics like food should cost. As with the domestic reconstruction, Volcker was at the center of it.
RIP Paul Volcker, Hero of Accumulation.
Union support for Bernie shows why he’s the only M4A candidate
https://www.dsausa.org/
As we head into 2020, we have everything to gain and the polls to back it up: support for Sen. Sanders is growing in key states like New Hampshire, and voters consistently say he’s the candidate they trust most to enact Medicare for All in office. This is an unprecedented moment in history where the United States could see a Sanders presidency, and Medicare for All is closer to reality than ever before. Working alongside dozens of other coalition organizations, thousands of socialists in DSA chapters across the country have spent countless hours this year organizing events, door-knocking, phone banking and talking to their friends and neighbors about Medicare for All. We know we’ll have to fight much harder in 2020, but it’s clear our hard work is paying off. Please remember to forward this issue to everyone you know interested in Medicare for All and in Bernie's political revolution and get them to subscribe so we can hit the ground running in January.
Big pay-offs have come lately in the form of major union support for Sanders and his Medicare for All plan. National Nurses United endorsed Bernie for president in November, counting his “trailblazing leadership” on “Medicare for All” as one of the reasons for their endorsement. NNU is a leader in the fight for Medicare for All nationally, and support from the nation’s largest nurses union speaks volumes about which candidate has the trust of working-class people to enact Medicare for All and fundamentally disrupt the status quo.
Nurses aren’t the only ones backing Bernie — United Teachers Los Angeles, the second-largest teachers’ local in the country, overwhelmingly voted to support Sanders’ run for president. Union members voted to endorse Sanders not only because he has “the most comprehensive, progressive plan for public education among the candidates,” but also because his platform “aligns with our values on a range of issues, including rebuilding the US labor movement and winning Medicare for All.”
NNU and UTLA are the two most recent large unions to endorse Bernie, with more joining daily. Shoutout to the APWU of New Hampshire, who endorsed Sanders on December 6th, and IBEW Local 1634 in Iowa, who also recently endorsed. These unions follow the lead of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which was the first major union to endorse him in August. The fact that more than 150,000 nurses, 36,000 electrical workers and machinists, 34,000 public school teachers, New Hampshire postal workers and many other locals have endorsed Bernie Sanders and his Medicare for All plan sends a crystal clear message about who is truly on the side of working people and committed to taking the profit motive out of healthcare.
Contrast those endorsements to what happened in the stock market when Elizabeth Warren announced her “Medicare for All” plan: managed-care and hospital stocks actually rose more than 5 percent after notably slumping for the first nine months of 2019. Capital knows that Warren is no threat, which means she is no friend of ours.
In 2020 we need to maintain the momentum we’ve built while remaining uncompromising and steadfast in our demands: we’re fighting for Medicare for All and nothing less.
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