"We Hope Conditions Worsen for Workers" says Bank of America Memo | Thinking Out Loud

In this episode of his "Thinking Out Loud" series, Double D examines an article from The Intercept, which dissects a memo regarding inflation and labor markets from the economic research wing of Bank of America.
Jumping into the video, Double D reads excerpts from the memo where its author, Ethan Harris, details fears of a "strong labor market", which could make conditions difficult for investors. He also outlines the current economic backdrop into which this memo has been released, detailing "The Great Resignation", a renewed vigor in the labor movement, and rising inflation.
Double D notes Bank of America's hope that the current ratio of unemployed workers to potential job openings will return to "pre-pandemic levels." He points out that capitalists rely on unemployment to keep wages low and to encourage inter-worker competition, and that the current labor market has by default put a certain degree of leverage in the hands of working people.
Next, Double D touches on how the Federal Reserve has opted to increase interest rates in order to tackle the rise in inflation, their strategy being based in the presumption that the inflation is tied to an increase in wages. Meanwhile, statistic show that wage increases have been minimal, reflecting only 4-6%, while inflation has peaked at 9, 10, or 11% for varying commodities. Double D scoffs at the ever changing excuses capitalists cook up to justify inflation, citing the pandemic checks, the war in Ukraine, and now the negligible increase in wages at a time when corporations are boasting record profits. In quoting Adam Smith, he notes that capitalists will blame anything other than their own bottom line in explaining the prevalence of inflation.
Double D then examines the boom and bust cycles of capitalist societies, citing the articles statistic which shows that at the height of the 2008-2009 housing market collapse, there were six unemployed workers for every job opening. He ruminates on how these crisis are portraited as being unprecedented, while they tend to occur every 7-10 years, completely upending the lives of every day people, forcing them to toil away in rebuilding an economy that will inevitably crash again.
He touches also on Bank of America's fear of "Full-Employment", analyzing more clearly how unemployment is a permanent fixture of capitalist societies, its being the result of the contradiction between capitalists need to have consumers able to afford their products, while simultaneously needing to suppress the employment and slash the wages of those very same consumers.
Ending the video, he again examines Bank of America's hope that the Federal Reserve's purposeful inducement of a recession will stifle working class leverage in the economy, despite the fact that their belief in a wage to price inflation spiral is fictitious. Relating this phenomena to Antonio Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, he notes this as an example of the detached reality of the ruling class, pointing out that in their hubris the economic elite have chosen to go on chasing ghosts, rather than to realistically examine the consequences of their own exploitative systems.

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