Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
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Report card on a failing economic system
Capital’s imperative to reproduce itself has taken it into riskier and riskier places, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York
BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
ON Friday May 6 the Federal Reserve released data showing that consumer credit (debt) has been accelerating since the fourth quarter of last year, with revolving credit (largely credit card debt) speeding up at an even greater pace since the third quarter of 2021.
Total consumer credit in the US grew by an annualised rate of 7 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, increased to 9.7 per cent in this year’s first quarter, and expanded to 14 per cent in March.
At the same time, revolving credit — the debt largely incurred through credit cards — grew 8.3 per cent in the third quarter and 12.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021, and then 21.4 per cent in the first quarter of this year, and an astonishing 35.3 per cent in March.
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In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Washington’s tariff policies become explicable in light of the US economy’s relative decline and the astonishing rise of China, argues MICHAEL BURKE
BERNIE EVANS despairs of a government that is asking the crooks sucking Britain dry how to get the economy back on track
GAWAIN LITTLE argues that the prolonged economic crisis we have been experiencing presents opportunities for a working-class fightback