Our staff writer reviews 2022 and her work.
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2022 was a turbulent year. In the spring, I attended the Milken
Conference, a glitzy confab
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of financiers and philanthropists hosted in Beverly Hills by junk bond
king Mike Milken. Panelists didn't dwell much on the physical stuff of
the global economy-industrial supply chains, oil, lithium-and
instead emphasized the inevitable institutionalization of crypto, the
unstoppable rise of private capital (contrasted with the diminishing
role of banks and public companies
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and the lucrative future of environmental, social, and corporate
governance (ESG) investing.
Even then, it seemed clear that those predictions would age poorly.
Rising interest rates and a declining stock market have undercut the
business model for financial service firms like private equity. Yet,
amid a looming downturn in economic conditions and over the outdoor
chants of United Steelworkers protesting labor conditions at Chevron,
panelists at the Beverly Hilton insisted on the optimistic outlook for
returns. A pamphlet for attendees suggested that the world could be
entering "a new paradigm in which the value of assets relative to income
remains historically high."
With the Federal Reserve now wringing fake industries like crypto out of
the economy, that prospect has been thrown into question. I wrote in
March about the stranglehold of high debt and a soaring dollar
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on middle-income economies like Sri Lanka, which defaulted a month
later. Financial conditions have continued to tighten for the developing
world. That debt crisis is a geopolitical opportunity for the United
States to remake multilateral institutions like the World Bank and IMF
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Yet while the Biden administration has revived domestic industrial
policy and speaks in high-flown terms about the importance of democratic
allies, it has maintained the neoliberal orthodoxy
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in its relationships with developing countries.
Over the summer, the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and
the CHIPS Act kicked off a new era of green industrial policy
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The U.S. emphatically did not pass a Green New Deal, rejecting that
vision for direct investment in a new political coalition of green
workers. Still, it passed an ambitious agenda structured around
partnerships with green capital
<[link removed]>.
As manufacturing shudders back to life in a tight labor market, the U.S.
is already seeing an uptick in factory openings and labor militancy. But
it remains to be seen whether, given depleted know-how and state
capacity, the U.S. can reshore critical supply chains such as machine
and weapons parts, pharmaceuticals, and shipbuilding. I went to Missouri
to cover the ambitious campaign of an economic populist
<[link removed]> running for
Senate trying to do just that, with a "Marshall Plan for the Midwest."
Like any economic bonanza, this burst of climate spending is sure to
produce its share of grifters, failed starts, and bogus technologies.
Some of that is inevitable-and is in fact a good sign that the green
boom is happening at the necessary scale. But it demands oversight.
Trump cronies are among the investors already lining up to lay carbon
pipelines through Iowa, as the growing ethanol industry
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attracts subsidies to pursue dubious carbon capture schemes.
Perhaps the biggest fight coming out of President Biden's ambitious
legislation will be whether the new green jobs being created by IRA
investments are good union jobs
<[link removed]>.
Money is scarcely out the door, but so far, the shift to green
technologies has been an excuse to rely on exploitative temp staffing
agencies <[link removed]> and
for the handful of remaining unionized companies to wriggle out of
neutrality agreements with their workers. That's no
surprise-technological change is always an opportunity for a
corporation to say that production doesn't fall under an old union
contract. But it is an alarming trend that-coupled with the threat of
building new factories in the anti-union South-threatens the promise
to create green jobs for union workers.
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