the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Dec 7, 2009
On Tuesday, December 1, Obama announced he was sending more troops into Afghanistan, expanding the war there, in order to “finish the job” of dealing with terrorists, so the “U.S. can leave.”
It’s been obvious ever since August, when General Stanley McChrystal leaked his request for more troops to Afghanistan, that the U.S. was preparing for a wider war.
Despite all the public discussion about numbers–40,000, 25,000, 30,000–it was never really about numbers. That was just for show. Just like three months of “war cabinet” meetings were just for show. Just like Obama’s speech at West Point on Tuesday was just for show.
It’s a show, and it has one aim: to convince the U.S. population that we have no choice but to accept another four, five, six or more years of this rotten war, justified by lies at the beginning, justified by lies today.
On Tuesday night, Obama told us that terrorism was still a threat to us. It’s an old refrain, coming from American presidents.
In 2001, Bush went into Afghanistan, claiming that the terrorism of 9-11 was planned, organized and put together in Afghanistan. (In fact, the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center were based in Germany, not Afghanistan. The man the U.S. has now accused of planning the attack is Kuwaiti, who lived in Pakistan. And funding for some of the terrorists came from wealthy families in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two close U.S. allies.)
Is there terrorism in the world? Absolutely, and it’s on the increase.
But, first, we should never forget that many of these terrorist groups got their beginning from money, aid and weapons the U.S. gave them in the 1980s. Many of the warlords who today are leading the attacks on U.S. forces were used by the U.S. in the 1980s to tie up the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The 2001 U.S. war on Afghanistan was not aimed at stopping terrorism, but at recreating a sense of U.S. invincibility after 9-11. Bush’s advisers calculated they could quickly win a war against Afghanistan.
The Bush people calculated wrongly, it turns out. Not only was the war not over quickly, it did not eliminate the problem of terrorism. The war simply created a much larger reservoir of anger against the U.S. not only among the Afghan population, but also among peoples whose countries are also dominated by the U.S. And this has laid the groundwork for still more terrorism.
On Tuesday night Obama told us that he is sending in another 30,000 troops–supposedly in order to end the war.
To expand a war is not to end it! General McChrystal himself told Senators it would be at least four years before there could be any troop reduction at all in Afghanistan, and he didn’t rule out additional troops going in.
The war in Afghanistan–just like the war in Iraq–is a war for U.S. dominance of the world, and especially of the whole oil-rich Middle East and Western Asia, cut by oil pipelines.
The cost for the people of the region will be worsening destruction and carnage. At least 750,000 civilians have already been killed in these two major wars, very likely as many as one and a half million. Civil wars have been fomented, drug-dealing warlords reinforced, women relegated to positions of servitude.
The cost for U.S. troops is death and trauma. More than 1,000 have already died in Afghanistan–another 4,000 in Iraq. All told, between the two wars, 370,000 soldiers have returned with traumatic head injuries. 220,000 returning soldiers have already sought help from the VA for psychological problems. How many more just simmer without help? Suicide takes a higher toll than combat. In 2007, 6570 vets succeeded in killing themselves.
The cost for the U.S. population–apart from this lost generation of returning soldiers–is the loss of public services, social programs and education, all sacrificed to pay for trillion dollar wars.
For what? Only so U.S. oil and other U.S. capitalists can exploit labor and resources in countries all over the world.
Not one more day in Afghanistan. Not one more day in Iraq. Out now!
Dec 7, 2009
On November19, the University of California (UC) Board of Regents hiked tuition by 32%. This provoked student demonstrations on many campuses, including at UCLA, where the Board of Regents meeting was held, as well as at Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz.
This enormous tuition hike was only the latest in a series of big attacks by the University of California. It has slashed student enrollment, laid off thousands of teachers and staff, and imposed across-the-board pay cuts and furloughs.
The UC President Mark Yudof claims that these attacks are the painful but necessary result of California’s budget crisis and cuts in state funding. “When you don’t have any money, you don’t have any money,” said Yudof.
No money? The UC system took in more money last year than ever before. Federal stimulus money made up for most of the state budget cuts. The four billion dollars in surplus (that is, profits) from the five UC medical centers more than made up for the rest. Besides that, the UC system got increased funding from government and private grants, as well as sharply higher fees for everything from parking to housing.
In its latest report, Moody’s, the Wall Street rating company, found that the UC system has “healthy and highly consistent operating performance.” The UC system has so much money, it just lent the state of California over a half a billion dollars.
Of course, it is hardly a surprise that the UC system would be loaning money to the state government. The UC Board of Regents is dominated by bankers and speculators. Regents Chairman Russell Gould, appointed by Republican Governor Schwarzenegger, was a senior vice president at Wachovia Bank, a major source of student loans, which collapsed last year during the financial crisis. The previous chairman was investment banker, Richard Blum, appointed by Democratic Governor Gray Davis. Blum, who is married to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, owns and controls companies in real estate, construction, and the military, which are also important avenues of business and research for the UC system schools.
“Universities, in some ways, are just a kind of front for investment banks and investments”–so explained Bob Samuels, American Federation of Teachers president at the University of California. Big tuition hikes, cutbacks in classes, staffing and pay, are all used to put more money into the pockets of big business. It’s no different than what is happening in the educational system throughout the country.
Dec 7, 2009
Alfred Villalobos, a former board member of CalPERS, the California state workers pension fund, made more than 70 million dollars in seven years acting as a middleman between CalPERS and certain companies in which CalPERS invested.
The Los Angeles Times reported about the huge “fees” Villalobos pocketed in a tone of shock–although, of course, this could not have happened, for years, without the open knowledge and approval of the officials who manage CalPERS.
Behind this obvious case of corruption, there is a more basic problem. Many of the investments that went through Villalobos were highly risky. Such risky investments caused CalPERS to lose 60 billion dollars last year alone. So, why did CalPERS’ managers gamble so much of the state workers’ money, set aside for their retirement, in high-risk bets?
It’s because, on paper, such investments made it look like CalPERS had a lot of surplus money. But when the financial markets went down last year, a big chunk of those billions disappeared into thin air.
Behind these paper figures, however, there is a grim reality. Local governments and the state of California have been underfunding CalPERS for years. As of last summer, for example, CalPERS had only about $2 on hand for every $3 it has to pay monthly to retirees.
CalPERS is not alone. According to the Pension Rights Center, state and local governments in the U.S. fund only about 20% of what they have promised to their retirees.
Local government officials in California still continue to skirt their obligation to fully fund pensions–especially now that they can blame it on the state budget cuts–and state politicians, in turn, use the economic downturn as an excuse. And CalPERS officials go along with it. Last summer, CalPERS asked California municipalities to increase their contributions 1.1% only–much less than what’s needed for full funding.
Instead, to cover for their losses, CalPERS managers are even today resorting to the same kind of high-risk investments that have already cost the fund dearly.
The workers’ money, supposedly set aside for their retirement, is ending up in the pockets of thieves who call themselves entrepreneurs, go-betweens and politicians.
Dec 7, 2009
In Baltimore City, Baltimore County and State of Maryland offices, workers have faced layoffs, speed-up, loss of wages, cuts in pensions and benefits. Way back in 1971, Baltimore County Council had voted itself a 100% pension after 20 years of service!
When some taxpayers expressed outrage recently, a Baltimore County councilman proposed the council lower its pensions to a mere 60% of what they make after 20 years. (The council had already given itself an increase to $54,000 per year in 2006.)
As one person told the press, “It is the arrogance of power to vote yourself a cushy pension.”
Dec 7, 2009
In Michigan, the head of the state’s housing authority went bankrupt.
This home builder of many years is being sued for default in several locations. In one of his Michigan developments, the streets were never put in. Now the city of Monroe is putting in the streets and billing the residents. He also left these homeowners in the dark. Residents have had no street lights because he never paid the electricity bill.
When a reporter contacted him, he said, “Nobody told me.” As if a home builder does not know that homes need streets and streetlights.
Dec 7, 2009
Congress passed a law in early November, providing up to 14 weeks of federal aid for people who had exhausted their unemployment benefits.
Such aid is needed, for sure. Officials say–and the reality is probably worse–that there is only one job opening available for every six unemployed. With nine million Americans on unemployment aid, and four million of them already on federal extensions, millions of families are facing the immediate threat of ending up in the street, with absolutely no means to live.
There is one “glitch,” though, as one official put it. The politicians who wrote and passed the law “forgot” one detail: the new federal benefits were added on previous extensions, which will expire on December 31. So, for anyone to receive the additional extension, Congress has to pass another bill to renew the old extensions–before the Christmas break.
The politicians sure could do that, and in hours, if they wanted to–just like when they released hundreds of billions of dollars to big banks last year. But will they do it for workers? Probably only if there is enough of an uproar about this “little oversight.”
Dec 7, 2009
Investors, some known on Wall Street as “vulture funds,” have found a new way to make money. Mortgage lenders arrange refinancing and then bundle thousands of mortgages together to sell to investors. Does this sound familiar? It’s what happened during the housing bubble that got the entire world into an economic mess.
But this time, government agencies like the Federal Housing Administration will guarantee the loans, thanks to the U.S. taxpayers. The government takes all the risk while the investors gain new fees and profits from the mortgage pools they invest in. And all they have to do is pretend to rewrite the mortgages of those currently losing homes. Yet who really knows whether the terms of these new mortgages will allow people to keep their homes?
As one former housing official put it, “there is something disturbing about investors that had substantial short-term profit in backing toxic loans now swooping down to make another profit on cleaning up that mess.”
For investors, it’s always a win-win situation.
Dec 7, 2009
Congress has expanded an existing business tax break. Instead of companies with up to 15 million dollars revenue, ALL companies, big and small, will now get a cash refund for any losses they declared in 2008, and will declare in 2009.
Yes, politicians give tax breaks to big bosses all the time–except that, this time, they had the nerve to call it a bill to help unemployed workers!
To see what this bill really is about, just look at the money involved. Thanks to the new tax break, big business stands to collect an extra 18 billion dollars over the next 10 years. The unemployment aid, on the other hand, would amount to about two billion dollars IF that extension ever goes into effect. The politicians have tied it to a previous extension, which needs to be renewed before Christmas!
To call these politicians scam artists is an understatement.
Dec 7, 2009
The following article is taken from a presentation made at a Spark public meeting in Detroit on November 8, 2009.
Over the last two years, the U.S. and the world have gone through the longest, broadest and most severe depression since the “Great” Depression. At times, the plunge was so severe, key economic indicators–world trade, world industrial production, stock prices–were falling as fast as or faster than they did at the start of the last Great Depression in 1929-30. And capacity utilization in industry in the United States fell to its lowest level since the 1930s. Nearly every industry and region in the country was dragged down.
This latest depression has left the economy in a shambles. Official unemployment more than doubled within a year. The unemployment rate in construction hit 20%, and in manufacturing it hit close to 15%. Not able to find jobs, the number of long-term unemployed swelled to numbers not seen since the government began keeping statistics, more than 75 years ago.
Starting about six months ago, government officials and the news media began talking up some kind of recovery. First it was “green shoots,” as though the economy was thawing out and spring was arriving after a long, hard winter. Pretty soon the stock market began to take off, a sign, we were told, that the rest of the economy would soon follow. Meanwhile, the broader economic decline was supposed to be “bottoming out.” The housing market was supposed to have found a bottom. Production was supposed to be almost ready to turn around.
In late October, the government reported that GDP, the broadest official measure of the economy, had increased by 3.5%. In other words, the economy was supposedly expanding–finally. Of course, in November, the government revised that figure down to 2.6, with two more revisions to come.
The Obama administration has claimed credit for this supposed “success.” It certainly had pulled out all the stops (and then some), following in the footsteps of the Bush administration. The U.S. government literally showered and drowned big business with taxpayer money, more than 14 trillion dollars total–an amount comparable to the value of all the goods and services produced in the United States in one year’s time.
Taxpayer money was directly injected into banks and other financial companies. The government also purchased bad corporate debts, insured other debts and lent big companies, especially the banks, tax payer money interest-free. Under the economic stimulus, the government handed out very profitable contracts to big construction and other companies.
The entire government bailout–under both Bush and Obama–was aimed at rescuing corporate profits. Companies, which at the beginning of the year had appeared to be at death’s door, suddenly appeared to have revived. Their profits, executive salaries and bonuses increased wildly. It was a bailout of the capitalist class.
But the rest of the economy continued to plunge.
Government officials claimed they were optimistic because job cuts were slowing. Starting in July, they said, the number of job cuts had slowed to “only” about 250,000 job cuts per month, from close to 700,000 job cuts starting in October 2008. That was the supposed “improvement.” But the reality is that job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. The depths of unemployment were even worse than the statistics indicated. Just to absorb the growth in the workforce, the economy would have to CREATE more than 125,000 jobs a month. And this doesn’t count the 8.2 million jobs that have been destroyed since December 2007.
The housing crisis, which was the initial detonator of the financial crash, continues unabated. Over the last three months, there were close to one million foreclosures, a five% increase from the previous three months and an increase of nearly 23% from the same quarter in 2008. One in every 136 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in just the last three months. Many of these foreclosures are now being driven by the mushrooming unemployment and wage cuts. The foreclosure crisis, in turn, throws more houses onto the market, driving down new construction, eliminating a major provider of jobs in ordinary periods.
Finally, investment in new plants and equipment, itself a major part of the productive economy and source of jobs, has practically ground to a halt. Capitalists see no reason to invest in production when more profit can be made elsewhere.
In their never-ending drive to increase their profits, the capitalists have been cutting labor costs faster than the recession cuts into their profits–and this only prolongs the crisis. Pushing many fewer people to do more work, business has squeezed out an astounding 10% increase in productivity over the past year. At the same time, companies continue to cut wages and benefits in a multitude of ways, grabbing every penny in profit they can.
With the capitalists demanding more bailouts and profit stimulus, the government continues to squeeze more money from other parts of its budget, starting with social programs, education and health care. The government is cutting up the social safety net at exactly the point when millions and millions more people need it. Deficits at every level of the government, federal, state and local, have been caused by the enormous gifts given to the capitalist class.
The combined attacks of the capitalist class and their government have been reducing consumption by the vast majority of people, which in turn reduces production and distribution, which in turn leads to more layoffs, a vicious cycle that worsens with each new attack.
Profits are heaped on more profits, even as the crisis of the rest of the economy gets worse.
The capitalists have returned to doing what they had done before the crash, taking their profits to gamble on riskier and riskier speculative schemes–along with the money the government handed to them. The capitalists are trying to buy anything they can get their hands on: stocks, real estate, gold, copper, government bonds, junk bonds, absolutely anything. The mad rush to buy up resources pushed up their prices.
The capitalists invested the money they got from the government not just in the U.S., but all over the world. The Fed’s almost zero-interest rates made the money they borrowed to invest practically free. And since the U.S. dollar was dropping, speculators got an extra boost in profit margins. Suddenly, they had the possibility of doubling their money within a matter of months.
Speculators drove up the price of gold by almost 50% this year, a record high. They drove up copper prices by about 50% in the past year, and the price of crude oil by 78%. Speculators are jumping from one currency to another in order to enhance or super charge their profits.
This speculation grew so rapidly and with such force that both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have been warning of dangerous financial bubbles in real-estate, stock and currency markets. A prominent mainstream economist, Nouriel Roubini, warned in the Financial Times in early November, “one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest financial bust ever.” Roubini was one of the few economists to have warned about the dangers of the last crash several years before it happened.
The government bailout did not get rid of all the bad debts. It only shifted them from the big banks or big companies to the government. Since every other major government has been doing the same thing as the U.S., bailing out their own capitalists with massive amounts of taxpayer money, they have all begun to run such dangerously high deficits that they risk a credit crisis. The speculators themselves recognize this, as they try to hedge their bets on various currencies. If and when any major government suddenly defaults on its debt, this could set off a much worse financial panic than the one that froze up financial markets after the fall of Lehman Brothers last year.
There is an enormous need for more production and investment for basic necessities, the infrastructure, social services, etc. There is a growing need for those things in this country and all over the world. But the capitalists would rather speculate with their money, or else even hoard it. The Wall Street Journal recently published a survey of the 500 biggest companies in the country that showed corporations are hoarding more cash than ever before, close to one trillion dollars. This hoard has grown substantially in just the last year, despite the economic depression.
In other words, the very policies by which the capitalists protect their own interests makes the crisis worse, threatening catastrophe for everyone. A system like this needs to be uprooted and replaced.
Dec 7, 2009
So far, the big U.S. auto companies report government stimulus purchases of 17,600 vehicles for 270 million dollars, supposedly aimed at creating jobs.
GM originally told the government that it would use the 88 million dollars it received to create or retain 105 jobs. But “the government asked us to attach a number of employees to fulfill the order,” said GM’s spokesperson. There were actually no jobs created.
A Ford spokesperson said that they were given a stimulus order worth 129 million dollars. The order “was absorbed by the existing headcount within the assembly plants.”
The stimulus packages are prettied up with pledges about jobs–empty pledges. In fact, taxpayer money is simply given to companies with no strings attached–no requirements that they create real jobs.
Dec 7, 2009
The average annual premium for private health insurance today runs $4,824 for an individual and $13,375 for a family. That’s roughly double what it was nine years ago.
Outrageous costs dump most workers into low-priced policies–paid for either by the employer or by themselves. And, with such policies, we make big payments before insurance covers anything. Our part of the annual insurance premium for the “cheap” policies may be “only” $1,000 to $3,500 a year, depending on, among other things, whether we have a family and on whether we have coverage through an employer. But then we are hit with a deductible running as much as $1,500 to $4,000 a year, again dependent on family status and employment benefits. In other words, we could be coughing up as much as $7,500 each year before our insurance pays a single bill.
But the medical system isn’t done with us. Once we get past those obstacles, those of us with “low-premium” policies have co-pays on the bills running sometimes 10% or 20% or even more.
Ten% doesn’t sound like much? Consider this: The AVERAGE price for a short hospital stay after a heart attack came to $54,400 in 2007. A 10% co-pay gets you a bill for $5,440; 20% co-pay and it comes to almost $11,000.
Medical care is so expensive that it literally is expected to drive 900,000 households–or 2.6 million people–into bankruptcy this year. That’s not because people had no insurance–in 2008, eight out of every ten people who declared bankruptcy due to medical costs had insurance when they fell ill.
They went bankrupt because their insurance–just like most people’s insurance–did not nearly cover the outrageous costs.
This is a health care system that cries out for reform. But the so-called “reform” working its way through Congress today does nothing to lower these costs.
It will force more people to buy insurance from profit-driven companies. But who benefits from that? Only the medical care industry that has already deformed health care in this country.
Dec 7, 2009
Every other industrialized country provides medical care practically to its whole population. Yet, all those countries spend less on health care than does the U.S.–much less. This country spent $7,290 per person on health care in 2007, which is about double what Canada, The Netherlands, Austria and France each spent. The U.S. also spends a much bigger share of the total wealth produced in the country on health care than does any other country. According to the OECD, the U.S. spent more than 16% of its gross domestic product just on health care in 2007, while the average for all OECD countries was less than 9%.
The right wing, not able to blow off such facts completely, argues that we spend more because we get more–that is, better medical care.
Yes, for the wealthy, this country provides some of the most advanced procedures and equipment and the most skilled doctors. Operating rooms at the big name hospitals are the envy of the world and draw wealthy people from all over the world.
But that doesn’t translate into good medical care for most of the U.S. population. We have fewer doctors in comparison to the size of the population than does any other industrialized country–only about two-thirds as many. In the U.S. there are too many specialists but an acute shortage of primary doctors, the ones who work to prevent disease and co-ordinate care–the very doctors that most of us need to see.
Of the thirteen richest countries in the world, the U.S. ranked 12, next to last, on the average of 16 indicators of the population’s health. The U.S. is dead last in the rate of deaths in childbirth, and dead last in the rate of infant mortality. Only two of those other countries came in with a lower life expectancy than the U.S.–and that by only a few months!
So, yes, we need health care reform. But to keep in place a system that produced worse results spending more money is nothing but idiocy–and another gift to the medical care industry.
Dec 7, 2009
Anita Alvarez, the Democratic Cook County States Attorney, is harassing the Northwestern University journalism students who worked to free innocent people from prison. She subpoenaed the students’ grades, memos, email messages and course outlines to look at their “bias, motive and interest.”
The case the students were investigating that provoked Alvarez involved Anthony McKinney, who has been in prison for 31 years. He was 18 years old when he was arrested for a murder. After he was beaten with a pipe by a cop with a history of brutality, he confessed to the murder.
The Northwestern students tracked down seven people who testified that someone else confessed to them he was the murderer. They said there is a video of the other man’s confession.
Alvarez, the prosecutor, is attacking the students instead of looking at evidence of McKinney’s innocence.
The prosecutor didn’t like the fact that the students showed up the injustice of Cook County prosecutions.
Dec 7, 2009
Warren Buffett has been gobbling up shares in Exxon, Nestlé and Wal-Mart. Buffett’s holdings in Wal-Mart jumped from 19.9 million shares at the end of June up to 37.8 million by the end of September. Since the beginning of November, Buffett has spent 26 billion dollars to buy a majority stake in Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroads.
Last year, in the midst of the current financial crisis, the press presented Warren Buffett and his billions as a potential savior for American finance capital. When Goldman Sachs’ price fell from $115 to $60 a share, Buffett rushed to buy up five billion dollars worth of shares. Today the price has rebounded and then some–up to $170 a share–after the Federal Reserve provided billions of dollars of public money to Goldman Sachs. When commentators go on about Buffett’s supposed “genius,” they are forgetting that he is able to do his “shopping” in large part thanks to the taxpayer money poured into Goldman Sachs.
The concentration of capital, as illustrated by the shares bought by Warren Buffett in various companies, will not save a single American worker from layoffs, unemployment or poverty.
Wealth on one side, poverty on the other–the crisis pitilessly increases both at an ever faster rate.
Dec 7, 2009
On October 14, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that more than a billion people in the world suffer from chronic hunger–that is one-sixth of the world’s population. This is an increase of 346 million people since the dramatic food price spikes of 2008.
Most of the hungry people live in poor countries: 642 million in Asia and the Pacific, 265 million in sub-Saharan Africa, 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 42 million in the Middle-East and North Africa. Almost one out of every three people on the entire continent of Africa does not get enough to eat.
Alongside these one billion hungry people are two billion more who are malnourished, out of the world’s current population of six and a half billion. Hunger is permanent in capitalism, even during so-called “ordinary times.” Over the last decade the number of malnourished people has continuously increased. For example, in Central Africa the undernourished part of the population passed 36% at the beginning of the 90’s, reaching 56% a decade later.
But in just one year, 2008 to 2009, 105 million additional people were brutally forced into hunger. All this is due to the financial crisis of last autumn, which was preceded by a food crisis. Food prices shot up around the world, brought on by insane speculation. The price of rice shot up 54% in the first month of 2008, to give only one example. Prices have fallen a bit since, but they are still 24% higher than they were in 2006. In Latin America and the Caribbean, food prices have risen 25% or more in the past two years.
These prices rose because the capitalists speculate on rice, corn, and wheat, just like they do with oil. Moreover, they will destroy tons of food in order to keep prices at inflated levels.
Enough food is produced to feed the entire world’s population. Food production increased 2% every year on average between 1980 and 2004. But this increase has not been used to improve the situation.
The director of a prominent research group said, “Chronic hunger is not due to a lack of food, rather it is the lack of resources of a whole part of the population that makes it impossible for them to have access to food.” So it’s not a lack of rice or wheat that explains the catastrophic food situation, but the fact that food, like everything under capitalism, is bought and sold.
If they have no money, people die of hunger next door to a warehouse full of food.
Dec 7, 2009
Forty-nine million Americans failed to get enough food, nearly one in six people. This is the conclusion of a study just released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture about last year. This year obviously it would be worse. And the rate of unemployment is not expected to go down any time soon. This is nothing less than a catastrophe for working people and their children.
In this huge agricultural, technologically advanced country, why should even one single person go hungry for even one single day?
Officials and “experts” blame it on the recession and high food prices. But these things don’t happen by themselves. They result from the bosses’ conscious policies. In their constant drive for higher profits, bosses push workers to produce more for less money–which lowers the buying power of the population and leads to a recession. Then, trying to protect their profits, bosses lay off workers, further deepening the recession. And as for high food prices, it’s because bosses have set them high to secure still higher profits.
This is the madness of capitalist economy: people are allowed to have enough food–that is, to live–only if some boss decides he will make enough profit selling that food.