Thursday, April 30, 2020

UK CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER - 'WE ARE NOWHERE NEAR THE END OF THIS EPIDEMIC' AS TRUMP URGES PEOPLE BACK TO WORK FOR WALL STREET'S QUARTERLY PROFITS



UK Chief Medical Officer: ‘We Are Nowhere Near the End of This Epidemic’

coronavirus
ALBERTO PIZZOLI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
1:25

Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, has warned that Britain is “nowhere near the end” of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking alongside Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has returned to frontline politics after his own bout with the Wuhan virus left him in intensive care for a spell, the Public Health England (PHE) technocrat issued his warning in an answer to a question from Robert Peston of ITV, who had pointed out that Britain’s death toll was “possibly the worst in Europe”.
Whitty insisted that, while “we must learn lessons at the right point”, it was too early to say how the British government and public health bureaucracy had performed relative to officialdom in other countries.
“We are nowhere near the end of this epidemic,” he said, adding that “there is a very long way to run for every country in the world on this.”
This seemed somewhat at odds with the Prime Minister’s earlier statement that “we are through the peak of this disease” to some critics — although the CMO did also say that Johnson was right when he said the British people were “through the first phase of this”.
Breitbart London has reported on the Prime Minister’s comments in full here

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London


Food banks face supply and volunteer shortages as mass hunger rises in the US
Food banks in the United States are facing a crisis of epic proportions as tens of millions of people across the country are finding themselves in need of aid from food pantries and soup kitchens to stave off hunger. The coronavirus pandemic has brought alongside it a staggering rise in joblessness and wage reductions, driving underfunded charitable food services to the brink due to the explosion in need.
In scenes that recall the long breadlines during the great depression of the 1930s, millions over the past month have been compelled to wait in massive line ups and drive-through food banks to seek emergency food assistance. Major cities such as San Antonio, Las Vegas and Cleveland are witnessing lines up to six miles long at pop-up distribution points, where thousands of recently furloughed and unemployed people are waiting hours for grocery boxes. Now, the shortening of food supplies in food banks is bringing a significant portion of the American population face to face with the very real prospect of starvation.
Demand for food aid is growing against the backdrop of an unprecedented economic and health care crisis. In the United States, the death toll from COVID-19 accounts for more than one-quarter of the global total, surpassing 61,000, and is poised to climb to more than 70,000 next week. US infections have now reached over 1 million, one-third of all infections worldwide.
Cars line up for food at the Utah Food Bank's mobile food pantry at the Maverik Center Friday, April 24, 2020, in West Valley City, Utah. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Since late March, over 27 million people filed unemployment claims, on top of 7 million that had already been unemployed. This is a significant undercount of the number now out of work, with millions ineligible to file since they are independent contractors or undocumented immigrants.
The corporate and financial oligarchy, along with the media and political establishment is exploiting the widespread social suffering sparked by the virus’ spread in a reckless effort to compel workers to risk their lives going back to work under conditions in which the pandemic is showing no signs of slowing down. Health experts have warned that a hasty return to work will result in a second wave, which could cause a return to nationwide lockdowns and business closures on an even greater scale, not to mention an acceleration of the already skyrocketing death toll.
Under the current conditions, Feeding America, which is one of the largest non-profit food bank organizations in the US, is already struggling to maintain its supplies. According to Chief Operating Officer Katie Fitzgerald, its food banks are seeing a 40 percent increase in demand. Officials for the organization are reporting that they are fielding double to quadruple the number of requests for assistance than they have normally had to deal with.
In an interview with CNN earlier this month, Fitzgerald said her organization has suffered a “significant and fast plummet” of meal lending from their retail and supermarket partners. Its donations from food manufacturers total 580 million meals and their inventory has dropped by over half just this month. Due to the decline in donations, Feeding America and many other non-profits have turned to purchasing supplies directly from food manufacturers and distributors, but this may take up to four weeks to reach the hundreds of food banks in the organization’s network.
Inventories for food banks depend mostly on donations from giant supermarket conglomerates such as Walmart and Kroger. But due to the rise of purchases from consumers, supplies for food banks are beginning to diminish rapidly as shelves in retail and grocery stores go empty. As a result, deliveries to food pantries have been vastly reduced, making it nearly impossible to accommodate the flood of newly unemployed clients
Fitzgerald raised concern over the possibility that food banks will not have enough in their stock to feed the growing surge of hunger-stricken people, some of whom are members of the middle class who have never had to use such services. According to one Pennsylvania-based distributor, which supplies more than 40 food banks in the state, the wholesale cost of rice alone has almost tripled and will not be available until June.
Vast sections of the working population have sought meal assistance over the last two months. At pantries in Silicon Valley, home to 74 billionaires, the demand for food has increased by over 50 percent each week. First-timers at these services have ranged from security and cafeteria staff furloughed by tech companies, to teachers and restaurant workers, accounting for half of those needing food. Even more affluent individuals have been forced to seek relief. One operator of Nevada’s Three Square food bank said, “when you see a Lexus in line at 4 a.m. prepared to wait six hours, you know there’s a real need,” in reference to drivers in luxury vehicles queueing for food boxes.
Earlier this month in San Antonio, Texas, a jaw-dropping 10,000 people showed up in their cars to a food distribution drive-through service. The center usually saw 400 people before the pandemic occurred. Much of the semi-truck loads of food were handed out to newly laid-off hospitality staff whose last paycheck had been exhausted, according to the president of the food bank.
On top of dwindling supplies, food banks are confronting a shortage of personnel. Food banks rely on roughly 2 million volunteers to assist in packing and distribution. Most of these individuals are elderly people who are especially vulnerable to getting sick due to coronavirus and have been forced to stay home. This has been the case for communities across the country that have been crushed by rising demand but with minimal hands to process foods. Social distancing regulations have also made it even more difficult for volunteers to coordinate and distribute food to clients
In the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, the number of volunteers dropped dramatically at the initial outbreak, in large part because of statewide social distancing guidelines—which require that workers remain six feet apart—and regular staffers staying home either to self-quarantine or out of fear of contracting COVID-19.
This sudden explosion in need comes under conditions where hunger was already a persistent problem for Americans. A Department of Agriculture report released last year found that 37 million people in the United States were affected by hunger issues at some point in 2018. Households with children are also more likely to experience food insecurity and these households rely heavily on food banks and similar hunger-relief institutions. In 2019, an estimated 40 million Americans received free meals or groceries through a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 pantries, schools, soup kitchens and shelters, according to Feeding America. The majority of these meals were typically given to the working poor, elderly and disabled.
Even as the need grows, food banks across the country have started to close down because of the decrease in volunteer staffing, or they are incapable of acquiring sufficient cleaning supplies to keep work conditions safe. Nearly a third of food pantries nationally have closed in recent weeks, according to the New York City Mission Society. Small food banks in New York City, which has over 162,000 cases of COVID-19 and 12,000 deaths, have closed due to shortages of both volunteers and food.
California, New Jersey, Texas and Washington, DC have seen their food banks shuttered in response to insufficient donations. In Washington, Capital Area Food Bank saw a decrease of 75 percent in donations after just one week. CEO of the organization, Radha Muthiah, told CNBC that the speed of the virus’ spread did not give the non-profit enough time to anticipate the dramatic rise of needy clients. “What typically would take us eight to 12 days once we placed an order for a truckload of food can take up to eight weeks for our food supply to arrive,” Muthiah reported.
In New Jersey, Community Food Bank, the state’s largest nonprofit, lost about 800,000 pounds of bulk food donations in March and April. In Pennsylvania, food banks are spending an extra $1 million a week but are still turning hungry families away. As a testament to the anarchy of capitalist production, food shortages through non-profits have occurred while dairy farms and producers are dumping millions of dollars’ worth of milk into the ground due to the collapse of traditional dairy markets, and poultry farmers are euthanizing chickens and smashing eggs by the tens of thousands.
Grace Klein Community, which operates a pantry service in Birmingham, Alabama, is reporting that it projects to go $3.6 million over budget by August as food clientele and utility costs—electricity, cleaning materials, boxes and overtime—have tripled. Lisa Scales, president of a Pittsburgh food bank, indicated the money spent on food alone has tripled, warning “with so many businesses shutting, we’re concerned community donations won’t sustain this level.”
Fifty-five out of the 550 feeding programs to which Second Harvest, a food bank based in Central Florida, provides food have already shut down due to staffing shortages. In Florida, coronavirus cases have now surpassed 32,000, making it the eighth largest hotspot in the country. The number of Floridians needing assistance has ballooned over the past month as a result of increasing joblessness and the particular difficulty which workers in the state face in getting access to unemployment payments. Second Harvest’s local interactive map that shows food locations is now getting 1,200 clicks a day, which is up from 35 before the pandemic began.
While hundreds of thousands have submitted jobless claims in the state, a large percentage has still yet to see either a stimulus check or unemployment benefits, forcing many into food banks. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) released data showing that, as of last Friday, one in four jobless Florida workers got their claim denied by the state. By Sunday, that number had increased to 40.3 percent. As of Sunday evening, more than 263,000 Florida residents had their claims ruled “ineligible” by the DEO. This is the reality for millions all across the US left without any form of income and still waiting for their much hyped $1,200 stimulus check.
Second Harvest food bank, which is based in Orlando, has been forced to double its meal distributions to 280,000 a day. Donations from local retailers to the organization have dropped to near zero and have forced the non-profit to purchase $350,000 worth of groceries instead of $85,000 for a three-week supply. Organizations like Second Harvest have had to rely on the infusion of supplies from the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program. The federal program, which provides aid to organizations throughout the US, has received just $850 million in two recent congressional stimulus packages, a pittance compared to the trillion-dollar bailouts for the major corporations and banks.
Many food banks, including Second Harvest, have yet to receive any emergency funding authorized by the EFAP, which has caused major alarm that food supplies may begin to drastically diminish in the next few weeks. After noting that some pantries have been forced to turn away hungry and desperate people, the CEO of Second Harvest, Dave Krepcho, told CNN “my concern is that we will see food and funding dwindle” and that the “level of service would diminish considerably.” He warned that tens of thousands of people in the Central Florida area will be placed in a situation where they will have no access to food.
In Louisiana, which has been another major hotspot of the pandemic’s spread, at least one in three people are at risk of hunger, compared with one in five before this crisis, according to Natalie Jayroe, president of South Harvest food bank. “We think it will conservatively cost us $15m for six months,” she revealed in an interview with the Guardian. “In south Louisiana, we’ve been through our share of disasters but this is different.”

Stock markets surge as Fed pledges to continue corporate handouts

The US economy contracted at its fastest pace in the first quarter of this year since the end of 2008 and the onset of the Great Recession brought about by the global financial crisis.
Gross domestic product fell at an annual rate of 4.8 percent for the first three months of the year with indications of much worse to come in the second quarter.
But in another expression of the divorce between Wall Street and the real economy, financial markets celebrated the news—the Dow went up 532 points—because it provided the US Federal Reserve Board with the rationale for funnelling still more money into the markets on top of the trillions of dollars it has already handed out.
Following a two-day meeting of its policy-setting open market committee yesterday, the Fed made clear that its ultra-low interest-rate regime and its program of financial asset purchases, propping up all financial markets—stocks, bonds, municipal debt and corporate bonds—would continue virtually indefinitely.
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
“The Federal Reserve is committed to using its full range of tools to support the US economy in this challenging time,” it said.
The use of the term “economy” is a misnomer. The Fed, together with the Trump administration, is solely concerned with the profits of the major corporations and the hedge fund traders and financial speculators on Wall Street who are raking in money hand over fist in the crisis.
As the reported yesterday, the figure of 26.5 million US workers who have applied for unemployment assistance over the past five weeks is a considerable underestimate. For every 10 people who applied there were another three or four who tried to apply but could not get through and an additional two people who did not try to apply because the process is so onerous.
The situation facing millions of workers, 
forced to try to survive on the pittance 
provided by jobless benefits, or unable to 
even receive it, stands in sharp contrast to the
amount of between $4.2 and $6 trillion made 
available to the corporations and banks 
under “emergency assistance” packages.
Wall Street was particularly heartened by the Fed’s open market committee statement and additional remarks made by its chair, Jerome Powell, at a news conference.
“The ongoing public health crisis will weigh heavily on economic activity, employment, and inflation in the near term, and poses considerable risks to the economic outlook over the medium term,” the official statement said.
The reference to risks over the “medium term” was a signal to the markets that the Fed would continue its unprecedented interventions as far as the eye can see. And the message was received and understood as the market surged.
It was buttressed by Powell. He said that the Fed would move “forcefully, proactively and aggressively” to support the economy and indicated that the administration should provide still further support for corporations.
Powell said that Fed policy was in the “right place” for now, that ultra-low rates would remain for a “good while” and the Fed was not “in any hurry” to withdraw support.
More “direct fiscal support” might be needed in order to “limit long-lasting damage” and it was time to use “the great fiscal power of the United States.” In other words, open the financial spigots to bolster the corporations and Wall Street.
And the representatives of finance capital are expecting it. James McCann, senior economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments, noted that the Fed was “promising to do more if necessary.” While it had made a “brief pause” at its latest meeting to establish the impact of what had already been done, “they cannot afford to rest on their laurels.”
The March quarter figures, while significant, only reflect the start of the effects of the lockdown and social distancing measures, which began to impact in the last three weeks of the month. But they express the speed of the decline.
Personal consumption, which accounts for about 70 percent of the US economy, fell at a rate of 7.6 percent, the biggest drop since the second quarter of 1980 in the midst of a major recession. Spending on services was down by 10.2 percent, the largest fall since quarterly figures began to be collected in 1947.
Spending on software, research and development, capital equipment and building fell at an annual rate of 8.6 percent, deepening the decline in investment that had been evident well before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
All forecasts are for a massive drop in the second quarter. The Labor Department is expected to announce that even the official unemployment rate, which is invariably understated, will reach double digits for the first time in more than a decade.
James Sweeney, chief economist at Credit Suisse, told the Wall Street Journal that there was a “lot more to come” and the US economy was “headed for the largest contraction in GDP since the Great Depression.”
The data and forecasting company IHS Markit expects US GDP to contract at an annual rate of 37 percent from April to June. Following the issuing of the latest GDP numbers, Morgan Stanley economists said they expected the second-quarter contraction would be an annual rate of 38 percent, equivalent to the worst quarterly contraction of the 1930s.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, major manufacturers have warned that “some closed plants never reopen.”
“The impact of COVID-19 on our business has been significantly more severe and chaotic than any cyclical downturn we had envisioned,” the CEO of Caterpillar, Jim Umpleby, said. Other executives have said that the economy was already heading for a downturn before the virus struck and cut demand still further.
The situation in the US is being replicated worldwide. This week, analysts at the McKinsey consultancy firm said that up to 59 million jobs in the UK and the European Union were at risk because of lockdowns resulting from the pandemic—a quarter of all private-sector employment. It warned that EU unemployment could double and was unlikely to return to pre-crisis levels before 2024.
The International Labour Organisation has warned that global unemployment for the most impoverished workers in the so-called informal sector will be much worse than it had previously predicted, and they faced “massive damage” to their livelihoods.
Two weeks ago, the ILO said the fall in working hours in the informal sector would be equivalent to the loss of 195 million jobs. This week it increased that estimate to 305 million jobs.
The situation in the US—the centre of the world economy—is expressive of the basic class forces and interests at work in the capitalist economy as a whole.
Hundreds of millions of American workers face horrific conditions not seen in generations, while the institutions of the state—the Fed and the administration—pull out all stops to save the big corporations and financial parasites and speculators on Wall Street, providing unlimited amounts of money that, one way or another, will be extracted from the labour of the working class.
At the same time, the insanity of the “free market” system is revealed in the sight of long queues at food banks while agricultural producers destroy their products because they cannot find a market for them.
This is the inexorable logic of capitalism, the political economy of profit. The working class must fight for its own independent political economy based on conscious planning in a socialist economy to meet human need.



Consumer Confidence Collapsed in April But Hope Grew Stronger

Handsome man with tools, holding an American Flag, standing against a background of green trees and the rays of the setting sun. View from the back, close-up. Concept of work and employment
iStock / Getty Images
1:53
Consumer confidence in the United States suffered a record plunge in April as the coronavirus wreaked havoc on the economy and threw millions of Americans out of work.
The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell to 86.9 from a downwardly revised 118.8 in March. That is the steepest decline since 1973, when confidence plunged during the oil crisis. It was worse than economists expected.
Not surprisingly, Americans have a very grim view of what is happening in the economy right now. But they unexpectedly turned sunnier about what they expected six months from now.
The Conference Board’s gauge of Americans’ feelings about the current state of the economy plummeted to 76.4 from 166.7. That is the largest decline recorded for this measure.
Americans became much more negative about the labor market. Those who said jobs are “hard to get” rose to 33.6 percent from 13.8 percent. Those who said jobs are “plentiful” dropped to 20 percent from 43 percent.
The gauge of future expectations — what consumers think will happen six months from now— actually improved to 93.8 from 86.8 in March. A huge jump in expectations for the job market indicates that Americans think the economy will be in much better shape when it reopens after the shutdown orders are lifted. The share expecting more jobs six months from now rose from 16.9 percent to 41.0 percent, while those anticipating fewer jobs in the months ahead moved up from 17.6 percent to 20.8 percent.
Americans know the current situation is grim but are confident of better times in the not too distant future.

After the 2008 crisis, the Bush and Obama 

administrations orchestrated the bailout of 

Wall Street, buying up all the bad debts, 

particularly in mortgage-backed securities, 

that had been used as vehicles for an orgy of 

speculation. As a result, social inequality 

increased to record levels. Corporate cash 

hoards rose to $2 trillion. Some $4 trillion 

was funneled into stock buybacks.



Far from being forced to pay for the economic consequences

of the pandemic, the banks and corporations have simply 

been bailed out again, this time on a far larger scale. Once 

again, the crisis is being utilized as an opportunity to 

restructure class relations in the interests of the rich.

The Great Wall Street Heist of 2020

28 April 2020
The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have devastating consequences for the vast majority of the population in the United States. The new month begins on Friday, which means that rents and mortgages will come due for tens of millions of workers who have no income to pay for them.
More than 20 million people have filed for unemployment benefits over the past five weeks. In March, less than 30 percent of those who filed received any benefits. Millions more are ineligible for any assistance.
Millions of people have yet to receive anything, including the $1,200 federal cash stimulus, and are desperately attempting to stave off destitution. Food banks are overwhelmed by demand and are running out of staple goods. According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than nine million people who lost their jobs have also lost their health insurance through April 11, with millions more in the weeks that have followed.
There are, however, two realities, two 
Americas. While the economic destitution of 
workers is being used in an effort to drive 
them back to work over widespread 
opposition, the corporate and financial 
oligarchy has seen its fortunes increase.
Gigantic corporations, many of which have massive cash hoards, are laying off employees while continuing to pay executives. Entertainment giant Disney recently came under public scrutiny over the fact that it has furloughed more than 100,000 workers while maintaining its executive compensation program. But this is the general rule.
US billionaires, since mid-March, have 
increased their wealth by $282 billion. The 
collective fortune of these 614 individuals, 
which totals $3.2 trillion, has been buoyed by 
the continued rise of share values on Wall 
Street, which increased sharply again on 
Monday.
A headline in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel yesterday captured the economic situation: “The death toll in the US is rising—so are the markets.” Noting that while businesses remain shut down and joblessness exceeds by far anything seen in American history, Der Spiegel writes: “So if the fundamental economic data actually offer so little incentive to buy, what is behind the rally? The solution to the riddle has three letters: Fed.”
The Fed—that is, the US Federal Reserve—has made clear that it will do everything in its power to support Wall Street. As a consequence, the markets keep going up. “If you wanted to bet on price losses,” Der Spiegel remarks, “you would have to bet against an institution whose funds are practically infinite.”
Beginning in March, as the Trump administration and the media were downplaying the danger posed by the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Reserve began funneling money into the markets—first by reducing interest rates to zero, then by initiating a raft of programs to buy up assets from banks and corporations, providing them with cash to purchase stocks.
The activity of the Federal Reserve was endorsed unanimously by the US Congress in late March, when it passed the “CARES Act,” which allocated $454 billion to finance up to $4 trillion in asset purchases. Every single senator voted for the CARES Act, including the erstwhile “democratic socialist” from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.
The Fed is spending something on the order of $80 billion every day. The central bank’s balance sheet is expected to increase to as much as $11 trillion, from less than $4 trillion last year and less than $1 trillion before 2008. This would bring the overall value of assets held by the Fed to nearly half the entire annual economic output of the United States.
One should call things by their right names. Terms such as “asset purchases” and “quantitative easing” tend to obscure what is happening. This is plunder, thievery, robbery on an unprecedented scale. Since stock ownership is overwhelmingly concentrated among the rich, it is the rich who are benefiting.
The Great Wall Street Heist of 2020 has been aided and abetted at every stage by the Democratic and Republican parties. The various institutions of the state, including the mainstream media, have exposed themselves as nothing more than the paid hirelings of Wall Street, to put the matter delicately. Others might have more expressive terms.
After the 2008 crisis, the Bush and Obama administrations orchestrated the bailout of Wall Street, buying up all the bad debts, particularly in mortgage-backed securities, that had been used as vehicles for an orgy of speculation. As a result, social inequality increased to record levels. Corporate cash hoards rose to $2 trillion. Some $4 trillion was funneled into stock buybacks.
Far from being forced to pay for the economic consequences of the pandemic, the banks and corporations have simply been bailed out again, this time on a far larger scale. Once again, the crisis is being utilized as an opportunity to restructure class relations in the interests of the rich.
Everything turned over to Wall Street will be paid, in one form or another, by the working class--through austerity, the further destruction of social programs and intensified exploitation. Hence the relentless campaign to return everyone back to work, risking a new wave of the pandemic and the deaths of countless thousands of people.
Such measures, we are told, are necessary to “save the 

economy.” But “the economy,” like the “American people,” is an 

abstraction. “The economy” that has been “saved” is the economy

of the rich, capitalism. Every measure taken has 

been based on protecting the interests of 

the oligarchy at the expense of society. 

Every policy has been guided by class interests.
A socialist response, that is, one based on the interests of the working class, is of an entirely different character. Trillions must be allocated, not to bail out Wall Street, but to implement an emergency program to build up health care infrastructure and provide protective equipment to all essential workers.
The loans and other mechanisms through which the income of workers is earmarked for payments to the banks must be immediately forgiven. Student debt ($1.5 trillion), car loans ($1.3 trillion) and credit card debt ($1.08 trillion) could all be wiped out with the money that has been turned over to Wall Street, with trillions still left over.
All workers must continue to receive their full income for the duration of the pandemic. The highest quality health care must be available to all, free of charge and on a completely equal basis.
There must, moreover, be real assistance to small businesses. The so-called Paycheck Protection Program passed by Congress, ostensibly to aid small businesses, has turned out to be another massive swindle for large corporations, including restaurant chains, hotel conglomerates and hedge funds.
Such actions and other emergency measures to secure the interests of the working class, in the United States and internationally, could not and cannot be secured within the framework of the existing state institutions.
The entire response to the pandemic—from the initial downplaying of the threat to the failure to organize any significant response, the massive handout to Wall Street and the present campaign to force workers back to work even as the pandemic rages—is proof of the Marxist theory of the state. The state is not a neutral body. The financial oligarchy rules. It is their state. The politicians are their politicians. The media is their media.
The logistics, food production, health care, energy, manufacturing and other basic industries must be restructured to meet social needs, under the democratic control of the working class. The massive bailouts of Wall Street must be reversed, with the social resources redirected to securing the financial well-being and health of the working class.
Such policies cannot be realized within the existing political system. They raise the necessity for the revolutionary mobilization of the working class to take political power in its own hands through the establishment of a workers’ government—that is, a government of the workers, by the workers and for the workers—that will implement the socialist policies required to save mankind from disaster.

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