Daily News Digest October 10, 2022
Images of the Day:
The Robber Baron President: One Lucky Borrower Got 17 PPP Loans: How The Trump Administration Lost Millions in an Effort to Shore Up Small Businesses
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming Over 5 Decades Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity,2. Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1%, Who Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Quotes of the Day:
The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively. — Bob Marley
The day before Hurricane Ian hit Cuba, 50,000 people were evacuated and taken to 55 shelters. No private vehicles or public transportation was visible on the streets. Work brigades were mobilized to work on the resumption of electricity supply after the storm had passed. In Artemisa, for instance, the Provincial Defense Council met to discuss how to react to the inevitable flooding. Despite the best efforts made by Cubans, three people died because of the hurricane, and the electrical grid suffered significant damage. — Damage — The entire island—including Havana—had no power for more than three days. The electrical grid, which was already suffering from a lack of major repairs, collapsed. Without power, Cubans had to throw away food that needed to be refrigerated and faced difficulty in preparing meals, among other hardships. By October 1, less than five days after landfall, 82 percent of the residents of Havana had their power restored with work ongoing for the western part of the island (the amount of time without power in Puerto Rico, which was hit by Hurricane Fiona on September 18, is longer—a quarter of a million people remain without power more than two weeks later). — How Cuba is Dealing With the Devastation of Hurricane Ian
Videos of the Day:
Scott Ritter: Russia is Ready to Win the War in Ukraine
United States:
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Reublicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Rax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay!
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” ― Louis Brandeis
Jim Mamer: Fake Journalism Is Only the First Draft of Fake History. 35 year teaching veteran Jim Mamer explores the areas of history many schools fail to teach and what it means about the state of the world today, on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.” In recently crediting the slave owners who wrote the Declaration of Indepenence with inspiring the abolitionist movement, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was only the latest in a long line of politicians determined to purify the innocence of the American experience despite its original and enduring racist sins. It is only one of a series of inconvenient truths concerning this nation’s imperialist legacy that have been bleached out of our historical memory to leave us, as Gore Vidal once described, the United States of Amnesia.
Scott Ritter: The Onus Is on Biden & Putin We are, literally, on the eve of destruction. Now is the time for the kind of political maturity leaders rarely demonstrate. Wars should be avoided at all costs. Nuclear conflict should never be contemplated. These two truisms are often spoken, but rarely adhered to. Wars occur all too frequently, and so long as nations possess nuclear weapons, their use is contemplated on a continuous basis. The ongoing Ukrainian-Russian conflict has put the world’s two largest nuclear powers on opposing sides, with the U.S. supporting a Ukrainian military that has become a de facto proxy of NATO, and Russia viewing its struggle with Ukraine as including the “collective West.”
US Poverty and Economic Inequality Poverty and economic inequality are pressing human rights problems in the United States. For many residents living in poverty, certain human rights are out of reach. They may lack access to safe work conditions, housing, education, health services, or clean water and basic sanitation. They may be unable participate in political life or vindicate their rights in court due to their poverty. They may also suffer unequal treatment or discrimination due to their status as poor people. Finally, they may face unfair burdens of debt and unequal treatment due to state and local governments’ growing reliance on offender-funded systems of criminal justice. The persistence of these problems and of poverty in the United States, which can afford to do far more to address them, is unconscionable. Our work aims to investigate the intersections between rights violations and poverty in the United States and advocate for reforms that will end them.
Fears of a Housing Crash Threaten Life Savings of Tens of Millions in the US The Federal Reserve’s policies are also pushing home ownership further out of reach for first-time buyers. In the late summer of 2021, mortgage rates fell to near-all-time lows, even as the rate of inflation picked up. A borrower with good credit could borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars for 30 years at under 2.9 percent, despite the fact that the rate of inflation had already ticked up to above 5 percent. Fourteen months later, that same 30-year mortgage is going for not far shy of 6.5 percent, with analysts predicting it could hit 7 percent within weeks. The average mortgage in the U.S. is just over $400,000. Thus, a hike in mortgage rates of 4 percent in the span of 15 months means that the average family with a new house will have to come up with $16,000 more in interest payments in late 2023 than they would have, had they locked in place a mortgage a year earlier
“We Deserve to Have a Place to Live” How US Underfunding Public Housing Harms Rights in New York, New Mexico, and Beyond. The 63-page report, “‘We Deserve to Have a Place to Live:’ How US Underfunding Public Housing Harms Rights in New York, New Mexico, and Beyond,” examines the impact of a decline in federal funding for public housing, which has been accompanied by a modest increase in investment in affordable housing programs that rely on the private sector, such as voucher and subsidy programs. Human Rights Watch found that budget cuts have led to deteriorating living conditions in public housing in New York City, as well as in northern New Mexico, and have reduced the public housing stock nationwide. It also finds that other affordable housing programs, which rely on the private sector, have often failed to guarantee long-term affordability for people with the lowest incomes.
Trump Erased Millions of Possible PPP Fraud Flags in Last Days in Office An explosive new investigation of data from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) finds that, in Donald Trump’s final days in office, his administration rushed to eliminate oversight for loans which were flagged for potential fraud or further investigation — and wiped flags from nearly every one of the largest PPP loans.
Fury Over Privatized Grid Grows as Tens of Thousands Still Without Power in Puerto Rico Until the U.S. island’s colonial status “is rectified,” wrote one observer, “it’s a safe bet that Puerto Rico will never fully recover.”
Environment: Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:
600 Million Metric Tons of Plastic May Fill Oceans by 2036 If We Don’t Act Now Global plastic waste is expected to triple by 2060 as fossil fuel stakeholders pursue new revenue in petrochemicals.
Covid Inaction Leaves US Facing ‘Major Storm Without Even an Umbrella in Hand,’ Experts Warn “We are deeply concerned that the Biden administration is minimizing Covid at a time when it needs to be redoubling its efforts to ensure funding and resources to prevent another surge.”Refuting President Joe Biden’s recent claim that “the pandemic is over,” a group of physicians, epidemiologists, and other experts warned in an open letter published Friday that Covid-19 remains a deadly and disabling threat, including in the United States, which is ill-prepared for a possible winter surge “fueled by the emergence of new Omicron strains.” “We know from our clinical and research experience that the pandemic is far from over, and that national efforts to secure the health and well-being of the American public are far from complete,” the scholars wrote in the esteemed British Medical Journal. “We are deeply concerned that the Biden administration is minimizing Covid at a time when it needs to be redoubling its efforts to ensure funding and resources to prevent another surge.”
Safe Tap Water Should be a Human Right The water drips lethargically from the tap, if at all. Its appearance shifts from chemical brown sludge to ghoulish clouds. The accompanying stench is revolting. Unsafe tap water is unacceptable in any modern society. But from Michigan to Mississippi to Tribal communities in the West, people across the United States are all too familiar with it as climate change, environmental racism, and privatization take their toll on this resource that sustains all life. Over 2 million people in the United States live without running water. This includes 10 percent of Indigenous Americans, whose communities have been harmed and impoverished by decades of racialized federal disinvestment. Their water insecurity, particularly within the Colorado River Basin, has been compounded by climate change-induced drought and contamination from mining companies — as evidenced in the arsenic-laced water on the Arizona Hopi Reservation, to take but one example.
Civil Rights/ Black Liberarion:
Labor:
Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy. Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression. However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities. During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through October 2022, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.3 percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy (Ipdated)
FRED: Labor Force Participation Rate is 62.3
The Above Graph and Quote Proves the Accuracy of Shadow Government Statist’cs Alternate Unemployment Charts Unemployment Rose to 24.6% From 24.4% on Top of U.6 Rising to 6.97% from 6.73% The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
Economy:
Larry Summers: ‘The Destabilisation Wrought By British Errors Will Not Be Confined To Britain’ (This is part of a series, ‘Economists Exchange’, featuring conversations between top FT commentators and leading economists) It is a critical juncture for the world economy, with the legacy of Covid, war in Ukraine, high inflation (especially soaring food and energy prices), tightening monetary policy and a strong dollar. This was the background when late last month, Kwasi Kwarteng, chancellor of the exchequer in Liz Truss’s new government, delivered his “mini” Budget. The statement included a costly energy plan as well as substantial permanent tax cuts, including an unexpected reduction in the top rate of income tax from 45p to 40p in the pound. This, he said, was the government’s new “growth plan”. He also offered no estimates of the cost nor implications for debt sustainability. The market reaction was devastating, causing a sharp fall in the value of the pound and the price of gilts. Early the following week the Bank of England was forced to intervene in the gilts market to limit the damage done to pension funds — some of which were threatened with bankruptcy as complex trades in derivatives came under market pressure. Substantial opposition emerged on the Conservative backbenches to the large, planned tax cut for those earning over £150,000 a year, which forced the government to back down. It was also forced to accept an early forecast of the fiscal implications from the Office for Budget Responsibility. So what impression has this astonishing episode had on informed outside observers? One who knows the UK and global macroeconomics well is Larry Summers, former US treasury secretary. I asked him for his view of these events in a discussion last weekend, just before the government’s U-turns on the proposed cut in the top rate of tax. Larry Summers: I think there’s an element of perfect storm in it. You had misguided fiscal policy coupled with lack of central bank credibility coupled with toxic leverage creating positive feedback loops that led cumulatively to a disastrous outcome. The UK did not have room for a massive ineffectual fiscal expansion. The uncontained energy subsidies were themselves substantially problematic and did not leave room for large, permanent tax cuts. That called the credibility of the government into substantial question.
IMF Director Warns of ‘Fundamental Shift’ Towards Uncertainty In Global Economy Global output loss of $4tn The world is experiencing “a fundamental shift in the global economy” as volatility, uncertainty and natural disasters continue to increase, Kristalina Georgieva the International Monetary Fund’s managing director stated. In a speech given yesterday (6 October), Georgieva described a “darkening outlook”, explaining that various economic shocks, from the coronavirus to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, had created persistently high inflation and a cost of living crisis. Georgieva warned that the IMF had downgraded growth projections three times to 3.2% for 2022 and 2.9% for 2023.
European Capitalism Buckling Under Pressure of Unprecedented Crisis The cost of energy has been soaring. There are very real worries amongst the representatives of the European ruling class that this could lead to deindustrialisation, unemployment and an almighty response from the working class. There is talk of a new winter of discontent. It is clear that, for much of the European ruling class, a quick end to the war would be desirable. However, the United States is far more insulated from soaring gas prices. Furthermore, it stands to benefit from the weakening of both Russia and Europe, whereby the latter would become all the more dependent on the US. Although, it must also be said, this same policy is also pushing Russia into China’s arms whilst weakening the US’ main ally. Nonetheless, the Biden administration – as long as it remains in control, although that is uncertain with midterm elections looming – for now looks set to continue pushing ahead with its support for the war effort. This is putting Europe under immense pressure.
All Eyes Are on Credit Suisse; But Media Blacked Out Data from the New York Fed Suggest Contagion from Nomura Is Another Threat Nomura Holdings is tiny compared to the mega banks on Wall Street. According to its website, it had just $384 billion in assets as of March 31, 2021. On the same date, JPMorgan Chase had $3.2 trillion in assets. But for reasons that neither the Federal Reserve nor Congress have yet to explain, a unit of Nomura was allowed to borrow trillions of dollars in emergency repo loans from the Fed beginning on September 17, 2019 – months before there was any COVID crisis anywhere in the world. The chart above shows that in the last three months of 2019, Nomura borrowed $3.7 trillion cumulatively under the Fed’s emergency repo loan program, topping the amount borrowed by JPMorgan Chase by $1.11 trillion. The loan amounts come directly from the emergency repo loan data being released quarterly by the New York Fed, adjusted for the term of the loan. (Reverse repo amounts have to be deleted from the data released by the Fed.)
New Study: Wall Street Banks Are Doubling Down on Risk by Selling Credit Default Swaps on their Risky Derivatives CounterpartiesLast Thursday, while news outlets focused on videos of the devastating impact of Hurricane Ian on the southwest coast of Florida, two researchers at the Office of Financial Research published a breathtaking and almost surreal analysis of how the mega banks on Wall Street are once again doubling down on unprecedented risk with derivatives and threatening the financial stability of the U.S. The report was ignored by mainstream business media.
World:
Truss and the Tories: The Crisis of Capitalism Takes Its Toll After the chaos of Boris’ premiership, the Tories have gone from the frying pan into the fire, with Liz Truss leading the party towards electoral disaster. We are seeing a crisis of the regime – a reflection of the crisis of British capitalism.
British Capitalism’s Demise and the Tasks Confronting Us The UK economy is crashing – the latest disaster in the long-running decline of British capitalism. At the same time, the class divide is widening, and industrial militancy is on the rise. We must prepare for revolutionary explosions.
Indonesia: Police Brutality and Capitalist Profit Responsible for Deadly Football Stampede Indonesian football has been struck by another tragedy. At least 131 people were killed, and hundreds more injured, in a deadly stampede following a match between two rival clubs, Arema Malang and Persebaya Surabaya
Education, Health, Science, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘:’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare
FYI:Patrick Lawrence: The Strong, and the Merely Powerfull In the world order now emerging, it is genuinely strong nations that will prevail over those reliant on power alone, and force will have little to do with it. Vladimir Putin’s speech from the Kremlin last Friday, delivered to the nation and the world as four regions of Ukraine were reintegrated into Russia, was another stunner, in line with numerous others he’s made this year, demonstrating a fundamental turn in the Russian president’s thinking over the past eight months. The implications of this new perspective warrant careful consideration. Putin has taken to looking forward and seeing something new, and in this he is hardly alone. “The world has entered a period of a fundamental, revolutionary transformation,” Putin said while standing beside the leaders of the Luhansk and Donetsk republics and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Phrases such as this bear the weight of history. By way of magnitude, presidential speeches do not get any larger. Here is how the Russian leader expanded on the thought: “New centers of power are emerging. They represent the majority — the majority! — of the international community. They are ready not only to declare their interests but also to protect them. They see in multipolarity an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means gaining genuine freedom, historical prospects, and the right to their own independent, creative, and distinctive forms of development, to a harmonious process.” Putin has been speaking in this register since Feb. 4, 20 days before Russia launched its intervention in Ukraine and on the eve of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. In the Joint Declaration on International Relations Entering a New Era and Global Sustainable Development, issued with Xi Jinping, Putin and the Chinese president declared, “Today the world is going through momentous changes, and humanity is entering a new era of rapid development and profound transformation. There is increasing interrelation and interdependence between the States; a trend has emerged toward redistribution of power in the world.”