"Slavery was and is a pathology of economics." niesr.ac.uk/blog/economics… "Slavery is regarded as arising for reasons which have nothing to do with economics; it is seen as a social or historical phenomenon. Our standard take therefore is that the practice is 'utterly unthinkable now; what more is there to say? No need for a guilt trip.'

THREAD—Workers are getting laid off for a second time, as the virus’s surge puts reopenings on hold washingtonpost.com/business/2020/… "When she was first furloughed in March, Randee Heitzmann knew how to make ends meet.

She deferred payments on her new Honda Civic, spent $3,000 in stimulus money and tax refunds on other payments, and drained her savings.

THREAD—"Modern economics has a deep and painful set of roots that too few economists acknowledge. The founding leadership of the American Economic Association deeply and fervently provided 'scientific' succor to the American eugenics movement." forbes.com/sites/pedrodac… "Their concept of race and human interaction was based on the 'racial' superiority of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. minneapolisfed.org/~/media/assets…

"This virus is still out there. We respond to 911 calls for covid every day. I’ve been on the scene at more than 200 of these deaths—trying to revive people, consoling their families—but you can’t even be bothered to stay six feet apart and wear a mask?" washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06… "Some of us can’t stop thinking about it. I woke up this morning to about 60 new text messages from paramedics who are barely holding it together. Some are still sick with the virus. At one point we had 25 percent of EMTs in the city out sick.

Boris Johnson’s physician calls Covid-19 'this generation’s polio’ as new evidence emerges of long-term effects bloomberg.com/news/articles/… "What these chronic issues ultimately look like – and how many patients ultimately experience them – will have huge implications for patients, the doctors who treat them, and the health systems around them." - Kimberly Powers, epidemiologist at UNC Chapel Hill

THREAD—A Glaring New Conflict Of Interest Undermines Public Trust In Federal Reserve forbes.com/sites/pedrodac… The Federal Reserve just made the problem of financial firms considered 'too big to fail' a whole lot bigger.

The #Coronavirus Recession Deepens: ‘This Is Not A One-Quarter Event’ forbes.com/sites/pedrodac… “We downgraded our quarterly GDP growth estimates for the second quarter to -17% and, more important, for the third quarter to -7.3%.”

Retweet this if you still have no idea how to get tested for the #coronavirus. Some perspective:

https://twitter.com/jstein_wapo/status/1237375907716911104?s=21

https://twitter.com/jstein_wapo/status/1237375907716911104

THREAD—"When Hitler took power in 1933, #DeutscheBank was transformed into a financing source for the Nazi military machine. [...] Deutsche Bank and its executives were parties to genocide." harpercollins.com/9780062878816/… "World War II and the Holocaust would happened without the bank, but its participation allowed the Nazis to improve the ruthless efficiency of their military campaign and their quest to 'cleanse' Europe of Jews. And it was not an accident.

"Countries across the globe face slow growth, low real interest rates, and persistently low inflation. This makes our economies less resilient to everyday shocks and less able to offset them with the tools we’ve traditionally relied on." - @MaryDalyEcon frbsf.org/economic-resea… @marydalyecon "Expanding the array of automatic stabilizers that form part of the social safety net can help mitigate the depth and duration of economic downturns.

"We find that the ACA affected not only people’s ability to get health insurance, but also enabled them to use this insurance to change their lives in other respects." "We find evidence that relaxation of the job lock brought about by the ACA led to an increased inflow into vocational degrees in less-than-two-year for-profit colleges.

THREAD—"The debates about our economic
system are sometimes framed as a stark choice between market-based capitalism and government-controlled socialism. But the actual choices are much more complicated." - @anatadmati gsb.stanford.edu/sites/gsb/file… "Corporations, which control much of our economic activity today, owe their existence to governments. Although they do not vote in elections, the economic and political power of corporations and their impact on democracy is immense."

"While the @FederalReserve has taken the necessary action to ensure that markets continue to function, I am alarmed that it has been required to engage in money market interventions that have not been used since the 2008 financial crisis." - @senwarren warren.senate.gov/oversight/lett… @federalreserve @SenWarren "I write to obtain your understanding of the underlying causes of this fluctuation in the market and how you plan to mitigate them."

"Global trust in the United States ... has dropped by more than 50% since [Trump's election in] 2016, the sharpest drop of any country assessed in the 2020 Best Countries report." usnews.com/news/best-coun… "The United Kingdom has experienced the second-greatest drop in the world’s trust since 2016." #Brexit

"McKinsey & Company consultants are corporate mercenaries who prop up authoritarian dictatorships around the world. So it's no surprise that when McKinsey started helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement, its recommendations were downright horrifying." act.credoaction.com/sign/mckinsey-… "The company – which brags about its well-educated, influential employees – claims it has a socially responsible mission, but its consultants helped opioid manufacturers bolster sales of addictive drugs, advised authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, China, Russia and Ukraine...

THREAD—Overdue #reparations is the key to closing the racial wealth gap | by @SandyDarity mlk50.com/overdue-repara… @SandyDarity The United States "can ill afford to remain stranded in the mire of injustice, perpetually refusing to resolve the fundamental, historic national dilemma facing all Americans.

THREAD—Indigenous Mapuche pay high price for Argentina's fracking dream; Community feels devastating environmental impact on land where their animals grazed theguardian.com/environment/20… "The roar of the burning gas well could be heard almost a mile and a half away, from atop the high plateau where Albino Campo Maripe stood, looking down at the orange flames lapping the earth in the distance.

THREAD—Most economists don't care about studying gender or race—because the vast majority are white men promarket.org/economics-lack… via @ProMarket_org @ProMarket_org "Economists are still in the dark about the role of gender. For economics to be credible, we have to recognize that our knowledge is incomplete and learn from the diversity of humanity and experiences in our own profession." forbes.com/sites/pedrodac…

THREAD—"More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime rule; Workers would receive $1.4 billion less than under the Obama rule"
| by @hshierholz epi.org/blog/more-than… The Trump Labor Department has announced its final overtime rule, "which will set the salary threshold under which salaried workers are automatically entitled to overtime pay to $35,568 a year.

THREAD—"For nearly two decades, Deutsche Bank was the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with Trump, who had a long record of defaulting on loans." nytimes.com/2019/08/28/bus… "The bank over the years collected reams of his personal and corporate information. Two congressional committees have subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for a vast array of records related to Trump — including any tax returns since 2010."

THREAD—The central role of wanton, racialized torture in America's bloody history: "The excruciatingly painful medical experiments went on until his body was disfigured by a network of scars." #1619project h/t @nhannahjones @nhannahjones "John Brown, an enslaved man on a Baldwin County, Ga., plantation in the 1820s and ’30s, was lent to a physician, Dr. Thomas Hamilton, who was obsessed with proving that physiological differences between black and white people existed.