Interview with Larry Summers, Former Secretary of the Treasury | The Problem with Jon Stewart

Lots point to Covid-19 ppp and spending to be the cause of inflation. When the majority is supply chain and corporate opportunist. Great interview with Jon Stewart ad fed chair here: [VIDEO]

There's an episode of The Problem With Jon Stewart about two months ago where he interviews Larry Summers about inflation in general and corporate profits being part of the issue. It's a real good exchange of viewpoints on the matter -- better than you'd get with most other commentary. Relevant clip is here: [VIDEO]

Jon Stewart touches on this issue (but for the US): [VIDEO] It's rather funny (and sad) to watch the entire conversation reflecting how inflation solutions are geared towards benefiting corporations over the people.

I dunno. I think he's the only person doing serious journalism. He had access and was willing to speak truth to power, publicly. [VIDEO] [LINK] It's not surprising that the show was finally shuttered.

This is why corporate taxation is so important as well as the real solution to rising inflation. We have the additional factor that the banking sector may not be able to withstand further interest rate hikes due to bad risk management. Protecting the banking system is pretty much the only thing that could prompt lawmakers into action (eg a windfall profits tax) but these aren't ordinary times. But this will never happen. It's not even a partisan issue. Particularly since the awful "money = speech" decision [1], both sides of politics are bought and paid for by unchecked corporate power (eg [2]). Corporate consolidation makes this worse. Terms that might otherwise be illegal like "price gouging" and "price fixing" have been replaced by sanitized legal versions like "price leadership", which is basically the same thing. One company raises prices. The other follows suit. And for some reason corporate profiteering is fine but workers getting paid more isn't [3]. Weird . [1]: [LINK] [2]: [LINK] [3]: [VIDEO]

I wouldn't call this "class war". It's more accurate to say "neofeudalism". Real wages have been relatively stagnant for 40+ years while we've seen a massive concentration of wealth at the top. Trickle-down economics and deregulation have repeatedly shown themselves to be nothing more than tools for increasing income and wealth inequality. Every aspect of your life is increasingly financialized. College, once free or cheap, now saddles you with lifelong debt. Mortgage debt and rent as a ratio to income have massively increased. Medical debt can wipe you out in the blink of an eye. All of this is by design. It's an inevitable consequence of hyper-capitalist neoliberalism. All of this debt without a real increase in wages is designed to keep you a compliant worker. After all, with any kind of real freedom or financial independence, you're absolutely showing up for work tomorrow. Additionally, inflation could be tackled way more effectively with a windfall profits tax without indiscriminately hitting all businesses as well as individual borrowers. Even if it did it would fill government coffers so the most in need could be helped. You get the same sentiments as the Bank of England governor from Larry Summers [1]. All of this is built on the lie that wages are the real threat to inflation rather than boundles corporate greed and profiteering. [1]: [VIDEO]

> Asset inflation at this point is a runaway process caused by companies raising prices to cover increased costs and adding a margin for safety because of volatility Aka profit inflation, instead of wage inflation. [VIDEO]

This is the classic WSJ defending the Fed protecting the upper class wealth and telling the lower classes to suck it up, imo. Greedflation. [VIDEO]