What we’re seeing in the economy is something not seen in this country since the 1930s, the time of the Great Depression. If we think of the companies shedding jobs like trees shedding leaves, they’re so numerous that it may prove easier to name companies that haven’t — if we could find any. In January alone, some half a million workers got pink slips, and this economic crisis is global.
Europe is locked in a financial vise, and big countries like England and France have announced ambitious stimulus packages. England has openly nationalized prominent banks facing default. Iceland has, for all intents and purposes, declared bankruptcy with not just banks, but government itself, falling. And while China, the site of the world’s most robust economy, is still growing, its rate of growth has fallen so fast that some 20 million people — 20 million — have lost their jobs; a direct result of the US economic recession.
Globalization was sold as the next best thing to the vaunted Industrial Age, when Americans would live in the warm glow of the Information Age, lit by computer screens and the rest of the world would do scut work. How’s that working out? With the economy crumbling, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
