Daily News Digest March 15, 2023
Capitalism is Now a Worldwide Threat to Humanity! It is on the Fast Track to Global Warming and/or Nuclear War Catastrophes!
Images of the Day:
The $2.3 Quadrillion Global Timebomb
Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”, is Still True for Today’s World!
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism 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:
In 2002, mega-investor Warren Buffett wrote that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction.” At that time, their total “notional” value (the value of the underlying assets from which the “derivatives” were “derived”) was estimated at $56 trillion. Investopedia reported in May 2022 that the derivatives bubble had reached an estimated $600 trillion according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and that the total is often estimated at over $1 quadrillion. No one knows for sure, because most of the trades are done privately. — Ellen Brown: The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami
This column, meanwhile, focuses on derivatives and is a followup to my Feb. 23 column on the “bail in” provisions of the 2010 Dodd Frank Act, which eliminated taxpayer bailouts by requiring insolvent SIFIs to recapitalize themselves with the funds of their creditors. “Creditors” are defined to include depositors, but deposits under $250,000 are protected by FDIC insurance. However, the FDIC fund is sufficient to cover only about 2% of the $9.6 trillion in U.S. insured deposits. A nationwide crisis triggering bank runs across the country, as happened in the early 1930s, would wipe out the fund. Today, some financial pundits are predicting a crisis of that magnitude in the quadrillion dollar-plus derivatives market, due to rapidly rising interest rates. This column looks at how likely that is and what can be done either to prevent it or dodge out of the way. — Ellen Brown: The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami
The corporate-owned press and broadcasters worked with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and worked well, until the Obama administration turned against the man and the publisher. Now they dishonestly mark both down as creatures of the Kremlin. Who defends Assange now? Where did the OPCW story break? Where did Sy Hersh publish “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline?” Where, to answer these questions all at once, are you reading this commentary? No, the optimism and confidence Ellsberg did so much to give America and its journalists back in the 1970s has nothing like evaporated. It only looks that way. It resides among independent publications and those who read them. Whether he thinks of it this way or otherwise, Daniel Ellsberg, now 91, has long waged war against the very press that once gave sanctuary to the course of action he took. Let us reflect for a moment on how times have changed. And then let us honor the man and “keep going!” as he asks. Yes, let us wish him all the salt his palate desires and keep going. — Patrick Lawrence: What Dan Ellsberg Mean The “Fourth Estate”
Videos/Podcasts of the Day:
Debt Crisis Could Collapse the US Economy in 2023
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 Republicrats 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. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay! Both Parties Support U.S. Capitalism’s Wars! (The Only War the Democrats Opposed was the Civil War!)
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 D. Brandeis Quotes
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. MLK, Beyond Vietnam
Bendib: Freedom Lover
US Increases Dominance as World’s Top Arms Exporter “The impacts of the global arms trade aren’t just about the volume of weapons delivered,” said one expert, citing “a few examples of how U.S. arms deliveries can make the world a more dangerous place.” A Sweden-based research institute published a report (Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2022) Monday showing that the United States accounted for 40% of the world’s weapons exports in the years 2018-22, selling armaments to more than 100 countries while increasing its dominance of the global arms trade.
Biden’s 2024 Funding Proposal is a War Budget and He Is Leading Us to War From Aug. 7, 1789, when it was created, to September 18, 1947, the American people knew that their government had a Department of War and that it had an Army and a Navy for that purpose, both to defend the country against attack, as it did in 1812, and to make war, as it did in the Barbary War of 1801-1805. Since then the US military has engaged in wars over 80 times including in the Civil War. Most of those wars, whether against Native peoples as the expanding US sought their lands, or against Middle Eastern or Asian countries to gain access to their resources.
How It Feels to Be Hungry in the Richest Nation on Earth Why food equity for all should be on everyone’s political agenda. My long-dead father used to say, “Every human being deserves to taste a piece of cake.” Though at the time his words meant little to me, as I grew older I realized both what they meant, symbolically speaking, and the grim reality they disguised so charmingly. That saying of his arose from a basic reality of our lives then — the eternal scarcity of food in our household, just as in so many other homes in New York City’s South Bronx where I grew up. This was during the 1940s and 1950s, but hunger still haunts millions of American households more than three-quarters of a century later.
Chris Hedges: Ukraine’s Death by Proxy Ukraine is a pawn for militarists intent on degrading Russia and ultimately China in a self-defeating quest to ensure U.S. global hegemony. The end of this war, like most proxy wars, will be ugly. There are many ways for a state to project power and weaken adversaries, but proxy wars are one of the most cynical. Proxy wars devour the countries they purport to defend. They entice nations or insurgents to fight for geopolitical goals that are ultimately not in their interest. The war in Ukraine has little to do with Ukrainian freedom and a lot to do with degrading the Russian military and weakening Vladimir Putin’s grip on power. And when Ukraine looks headed for defeat, or the war reaches a stalemate, Ukraine will be sacrificed like many other states, in what one of the founding members of the CIA, Miles Copeland Jr., referred to as the “Game of Nations” and “the amorality of power politics.”
Environment — Ecosocialism of Ecocide!:
The Willow Oil Project Isn’t a Betrayal, Biden Was Never on Our Side Yesterday, the Biden administration approved ConocoPhillip’s enormous $8 billion Willow oil project on federally-owned land in Alaska. If the drilling plan is able to overcome forthcoming legal challenges, the massive oil development could produce 180,000 barrels of crude per day over 30 years. In other words, more CO2 to come. Lots of it. “Approving the Willow Project is an unacceptable departure from President Biden’s promises to the American people on climate and environmental justice,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action. The problem, however, is not that Biden let us down — he was never on our side, to begin with.
Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ Found in Toilet Paper Around the World Research finds waste flushed down toilets and sent to sewage plants probably responsible for significant source of water pollution All toilet paper from across the globe checked for toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” contained the compounds, and the waste flushed down toilets and sent to sewage treatment plants probably creates a significant source of water pollution, new research has found. Once in the wastewater plant, the chemicals can be packed in sewage sludge that is eventually spread on cropland as fertilizer, or spilt into waterways.
Civil Rights Black Liberation:
Public Schools Heavily Rely On Women’s Labor. Why Do They Pay Female Teachers Less? Gender-based wage gaps are ubiquitous in U.S. labor markets, even in occupations where women make up most of the workforce. This dynamic extends to the K-12 educator workforce, where women account for roughly three–quarters of the teaching workforce but make an estimated $5,000 less than men annually, based on a 2019 study using nationally representative data.
Black Student Sues School After Teacher Assaulted Her for Not Reciting Pledge Federal precedent and South Carolina state law stipulate that students are not required to recite the pledge. A15-year-old in South Carolina is suing her school district for violating her civil rights after a teacher assaulted her in the hallway for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Marissa Barnwell, a Black honor roll student at River Bluff High School, was walking to her classroom on November 29, 2022 — her birthday — when a teacher, Nicole Livingston, grabbed her and held her against a wall while the pledge was being recited.
Labor:
Economy:
SVB Collapse Shows the Fragility of the Capitalist Economy This morning, banking shares fell rapidly – not only in the US and not just regional banks, but all over the world – in the aftermath of the collapse of US regional banks, SVB Financial and Signature over the weekend. What caused their collapse and are there wider implic-ations? One of the things that triggered the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is the sustained rise in interest rates. In the period of ultra-low interest rates (a policy adopted to deal with the 2008 recession), banks borrowed massively through the purchase of secure government bonds. Unlike the collapsed crypto investor, FTX, the SVB wasn’t gambling with their depositors money. It was investing its depositors’ money in a manner that would have seemed like the height of responsibility 18 months ago: US government bonds. But when the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates, the value of the bonds went down (as bonds with a higher interest could now be gotten on the open market).
Ellen Brown: The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami On Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators. SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country and its bankruptcy was the second largest in U.S. history, following Washington Mutual in 2008. Despite its size, SVB was not a “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) as defined in the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires insolvent SIFIs to “bail in” the money of their creditors to recapitalize themselves. Technically, the cutoff for SIFIs is $250 billion in assets. However, the reason they are called “systemically important” is not their asset size but the fact that their failure could bring down the whole financial system. That designation comes chiefly from their exposure to derivatives, the global casino that is so highly interconnected that it is a “house of cards.” Pull out one card and the whole house collapses. SVB held $27.7 billion in derivatives, no small sum, but it is only .005% of the $55,387 billion ($55.387 trillion) held by JPMorgan, the largest U.S. derivatives bank.
Two Fed-Supervised Banks Blew Up Last Week; Two More Dropped Over 40 Percent Yesterday; and the Fed Wants to Investigate Itself — Again Last Wednesday, federally-insured Silvergate Bank announced that it was closing shop and liquidating. Its parent’s stock price (Silvergate Capital, ticker SI) had lost over 90 percent of its value over the prior year; it was under a Justice Department investigation for how it moved money for crypto-kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried’s house of frauds; and its depositors were fleeing. Oh – and by the way – its primary regulator was the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Last Friday, California state regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) became the receiver. Its stock price had lost over 80 percent of its market value over the prior year; $150 billion of its $175 billion in deposits were uninsured, either because they exceeded the $250,000 FDIC cap and/or they were foreign deposits. The bank was effectively operating as a Wall Street IPO pipeline in drag as a federally-insured bank. The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco had quietly been bailing it out – to the tune of $15 billion. Oh – and by the way – its primary regulator was the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. And while all of this hubris was occurring, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, Gregory Becker, was sitting on the Board of Directors of his regulator, the Federal Reserve Bank of San FranciscoWorld:
Health, 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 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
We Must Recognize That the Eviction Crisis Is Also a Public Health Crisis The mental health impacts of eviction and the threat of eviction are severe for tenants. For the past several years I’ve worked with a tenants’ rights organization in Austin, Texas, focusing on the intersection of housing and health. Mold and pests are among the most common reasons tenants organize to improve their housing conditions. These both have the potential to cause illnesses, including asthma, allergies and rashes. Tenants also organize for fair housing practices, which include preventing evictions. But as I’ve discovered in my work, unstable housing can negatively impact the mental health of everyone living in the home. Though the symptoms are not as visible, eviction and the threat of eviction also sit at the intersection of housing and health.