Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. In today's show,

we're going to talk a little bit about the banking and railroad disasters that are in a recent

history of our country. We're going to talk about layoffs in the high-tech industry. We're going to

talk about food insecurity, the latest

euphemism for hunger in America. And then in the second half, I'm going to try to explain

how American history gives us reason to believe in the possibility and indeed in the likelihood

of a political and economic surge to the left here in the possibility and indeed in the likelihood of a political and economic surge to the left

here in the United States, and what lessons from the past surge is we need to have in our minds

as the next one emerges. So let's jump right in. I won't need to go over what has happened. We had a catastrophe of

rail derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. You all know about that. It got a good bit of attention.

And I think you all know for sure about the collapse of banks in California, in New York,

in Switzerland, and beyond that are roiling the financial markets.

What you have heard much less about are the actualities of mass struggles in the world

designed to go after that kind of an issue.

What do I mean? Millions of people have been in the streets of France now for quite a while,

and tens of thousands have been in the streets of Greece quite a while.

And it's all about governments and big businesses getting together

to avoid paying taxes in a difficult economic time by loading the costs of the decline of

Western capitalism onto the mass of people. In the case of one example, not maintaining the safety

rules of railroads. In another example, not maintaining proper supervision on the profit-driven

decisions of private banks. This outrages people as it should. It hurts people badly.

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