The Biden administration announced on Monday that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell would be

re-nominated for a second term. Powell, a former finance capitalist who has headed the Fed since

2018, was the Wall Street favorite for the job. What role has Powell played in the management

of U.S. capitalism? We need a new system. We need a new society. We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. Deepening unemployment, a looming wave of evictions, massive and widening inequality,

there's no denying it, capitalism is in crisis and capitalism is the crisis.

We are very excited to have Professor Richard Wolfe join us for a regular weekly

segment where we discuss the biggest stories related to the economy, the state of the working

class, and the crimes of big business. I'm Walter Smolerick, filling in for Brian Becker.

The Socialist Program brings you content three days a week thanks to the support of our patrons at patreon.com slash the socialist program.

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Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of many books,

the latest being The Sickness is the System when Capitalism fails to save us from pandemics

or itself. And a new hard copy edition of Professor Wolf's book, Understanding Marxism,

has been released, which features a new lengthy introduction, which strengthens the case for

why Marxism is worth understanding. You can check out all of his work at R.D.Wolf.com.

Professor Wolfe, who is Jerome Powell? What has his role been? What kind of policies has he

pursued as head of the Federal Reserve?

Well, Jerome Powell is the chair of the Federal Reserve System.

That is the central bank of the United States.

In other countries, it's called the Central Bank, for example, the Bank of England or the

Bank of France. But in American history, we once had a bank of the United States. It got itself

into political trouble with corruption and so on, went out of favor in the 19th century.

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