AMERICA'S LOOMING DEPRESSION AS WALL STREET LOOTS AND PLUNDERS AND PREPARES FOR BAILOUTS

Desperation swells among millions of unemployed in the US as layoffs mount and aid dries up

30 September 2020

Over six months after pandemic-induced lockdowns went into effect in the US—before being quickly abandoned by Democratic and Republican governors at the insistence of President Donald Trump and the financial oligarchy—the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression shows no signs of abating.

While the March-April crescendo of job losses of over 11 million has not been repeated, talks of a “V-shaped” recovery in the jobs market have been put to rest as ongoing layoffs in transportation, entertainment and hospitality sectors are adding tens of thousands more to the unemployment rolls every day. The Department of Labor (DOL) reports that 28.4 million workers are currently receiving unemployment benefits or are waiting for approval.

At the same time, small business owners who took advantage of loans offered through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) as part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, are teetering on the brink of collapse as Small Business Administration data revealed this week that less than one percent of the over 5.2 million loans granted through the program have been turned into grants. Since the beginning of the pandemic, an estimated 100,000 small businesses have permanently closed, with many still on the hook for outstanding PPP loans.

The combined economic squeeze on workers and small businesses has led to growing food insecurity and a rise in evictions. Despite the growing indicators of widespread social displacement, hunger, and mental anguish, including 40 states reporting an increase in opioid-related mortality, the US Congress, overwhelmingly comprised of millionaires, many of whom withheld information on the danger of the pandemic to increase their stock portfolios, continues to feign interest in a fifth coronavirus relief bill while accomplishing nothing.

The latest DOL report states that the US unemployment rate stands at 8.4 percent. However, economists estimate the number to be above 11 percent due to the fact that millions of workers have given up on securing employment as demand for work outstrips available jobs, with 2.5 workers per every one job, according to the DOL, for July, the last month data is available.

Despite the coordinated abandonment of any health and safety guidelines as part of the ruling class’s homicidal “back to school” and “back to work” campaign, which has led to a resurgence of the coronavirus cases across the country, millions of people continue to stay at home and spend what little money they have on essentials.

The reduction of travel, and with it, consumer spending, like all aspects of the pandemic, will be another burden the working class will be forced to shoulder. On Thursday, domestic airline carriers American, United and Delta are set to lay off up to 40,000 workers unless more government bailout funds are secured. As part of the CARES Act, the major airlines received $25 billion in government funding on the condition that they would not lay off workers prior to October 1.

The reduction in travel is hitting entertainment sectors particularly hard. The unemployment rate in central Florida, already 15 percent in Osceola County and nearly 12 percent in Orange County, is expected to balloon once the data is released for the month of September following multiple large-scale layoff announcements from several major resorts.

The Swan and Dolphin hotels, which are located at Disney World in Orlando, but not owned by the company, also announced 1,100 layoffs at the beginning of September. Shortly thereafter, SeaWorld confirmed that it would be terminating 1,900 workers at its Orlando location, while Universal Orlando Resort also announced in September that it was extending furloughs for nearly 5,400 workers through “at least” the end of the year.On Tuesday, Disneyworld and Disneyland resorts announced 28,000 layoffs, affecting workers at the California, Florida, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong locations. Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro said in a statement that the “difficult decision” to eliminate thousands of jobs “will enable us to emerge a more effective and efficient operation when we return to normal.” D’Amaro estimated that “67 percent” of those laid off are part-time, meaning they will not be eligible for full unemployment benefits, which in Florida is capped at an insulting $275 a week for 12 weeks.

Audits conducted within the last month in California, Wisconsin, Florida and Nevada reveal dysfunctional call centers in which millions of calls from claimants went unanswered, with backlogs growing day after day. Laid-off workers report calling unemployment offices hundreds of times a day for weeks on end, only to be hung up on or, if they do get through, their issue is not resolved.

In Florida, where last month Republican governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump acolyte, admitted that the unemployment system was designed to pay out the “least number of claims ,” claimants still report not receiving funds even after sending in the requisite documentation.

As of September 18, more than 152,000 Floridians were waiting to be paid, according to the state’s own dashboard, while an estimated two thirds of the state’s unemployment funds have already been depleted, leaving many new applicants without access to funds without new legislation or until next year. DOL data for Florida shows that for the month of April only 36.44 percent of approved first unemployment payments were made within 14 to 21 days after the claim was approved. In May this decreased to 31.7 percent.

For those workers who have managed to get through annoying phone trees and have had their claims successfully processed, the expiration of state unemployment benefits, which is capped at 26 weeks a year in many states, combined with the ending of the Lost Wages Assistance Program (LWA), administered through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, portends more hardship.

While nearly every single US state and territory was approved for the $300 weekly payment meant to last six weeks, at least 15 states will end the program this week, or have already ended it, including: Arizona, California, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Conversely, states such as Michigan that were approved weeks ago to begin distributing funds have yet to send funds to most of those who are eligible, while in Nevada, where the unemployment rate in Las Vegas is above 16 percent, Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) Administrator Elisa Cafferata still does not expect LWA payments to begin depositing into workers accounts for at least “another four to five weeks.”

DETR is currently in the process of phasing out a privately run call center, Alorica, which was awarded a $5 million contract in April to assist with handling the deluge of unemployment claims. However, after months of complaints and a backlog of more than 80,000 unpaid valid claims since March, the state terminated the contract. Cafferata admitted that the department is still “chipping away at the backlog” and claiming to have resolved an estimated 18,161 claims in the last two months, leaving more than 60,000 waiting.

In Wisconsin, a recent analysis from the Legislative Audit Bureau found that fewer than one percent of calls directed to the Department of Workforce Development unemployment call centers between March 15 and June 30 were answered. Approximately 93.3 percent or over 38 million calls placed during that time period were blocked or callers received a busy signal, while roughly 6 percent of callers hung up before reaching someone, leaving only .5 percent of calls answered.

Speaking to a local Fox affiliate, Kathleen Meachem of Appleton, Wisconsin explained the mind-numbing tedium of trying to get through the lines. “I would sit somedays and literally just hit repeat dial to unemployment,” Meachem said. “There were some days that I had 500 calls to them and was unable to get through.”

Last month, Sharon Hillard, Employment Development Director (EDD) for the state of California, told lawmakers that the state had a backlog of 1.6 million claims, which Hilliard estimated would not be resolved “until January 2021.” The state is currently not accepting any more applications to address the backlog and to prevent what it says are “fraudulent claims.”

As in Wisconsin and Nevada, long wait times and unanswered phone calls to EDD have left millions frustrated and without funds. In addition to long wait times, the state’s unemployment website itself was not optimized for mobile devices, forcing millions to access it on a desktop computer, something hard to come by for low-income workers, especially with the pandemic closing down public libraries.

Speaking to the Sacramento Bee, Pearl Jow, a 53-year-old resident of Palm Desert, spoke on the hardships she faces, now that the state will be ending LWA payments next week for her and some 3.2 million people who had been receiving payments. Jow lost her job at a logistics company at the start of the pandemic in March and has been receiving $110 a week in unemployment benefits.

“How am I supposed to cover basic bills on $110 a week?” Bow wondered. “Literally, I’ve been living on oatmeal and peanut butter sandwiches.” Speaking on congressional inaction, Jow remarked, “They act like they have all the time in the world. Twenty-four hours is a life-or-death situation, and no one cares, and no one is listening.”

JPMorgan’s investment arm, which includes its energy group, collects $14 billion annually; in comparison, six months’ worth of fines would amount to a paltry $180 million.

"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  

Likewise, Wall Street is behind Biden’s plan to hugely expand legal immigration levels, beyond already historical highs at 1.2 million green cards and 1.4 million visa workers a year.

Biden has elated Wall Street so much that for the first time in a decade, more financial executives are donating to Democrat candidates than Republicans, the latest Center for Responsive Politics analysis reveals.

 

CNN: ‘All the Big Banks’ on Wall Street Backing Joe Biden Against Trump

SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

28 Sep 20203,632

3:20

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden is raking in Wall Street cash from all the big banks at five times the rate of President Trump, a CNN report admits.

An analysis by CNN found that “all the big banks are backing Biden” against Trump, with the former vice president taking a larger margin of Wall Street donations than even failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

CNN reports:

The securities and investment industry donated just $10.5 million to Trump’s presidential campaign and outside groups aligned with it, according to a new tally by OpenSecrets. It has sent nearly five times as much cash, $51.1 million, to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. [Emphasis added]

That means Trump is losing the fundraising race among Wall Streeters by a slightly greater magnitude than in 2016. During that cycle, former New York Senator Hillary Clinton and groups aligned with her raised $88 million from the securities and investment industry, while Trump took in just $20.8 million. [Emphasis added]

…

But a CNN Business analysis of OpenSecrets research shows that Biden is beating Trump in fundraising from all of America’s big banks — in some cases by wide margins. [Emphasis added]

At the big banks — which saw little-to-no consequences for their role in the 2008 financial crisis — Biden is sweeping up donations from employees by huge margins. At Goldman Sachs, for example, Biden has raised more than $156,000, while Trump has taken less than $12,000.

JPMorgan Chase employees have given three times as much campaign cash to Biden as Trump. Biden has taken nearly $380,000. At Morgan Stanley, Biden has taken more than twice as much as Trump, taking nearly $258,000 from the bank’s employees compared to Trump’s $96,010.

Despite pitching himself as a defender of blue-collar Americans, Biden has not only been widely backed by Wall Street but also by wealthy residents on Park Avenue.

Biden’s campaign has raised over $1 million from donors living on Park Avenue, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, as Breitbart News reported. This is more than eight times the $127,000 raised by the Trump campaign from the same area.

This month, Biden touted Wall Street’s support for his plan to abolish America’s suburbs by seizing control of local zoning laws to construct housing developments and multi-family buildings in neighborhoods. Likewise, Wall Street is behind Biden’s plan to hugely expand legal immigration levels, beyond already historical highs at 1.2 million green cards and 1.4 million visa workers a year.

Biden has elated Wall Street so much that for the first time in a decade, more financial executives are donating to Democrat candidates than Republicans, the latest Center for Responsive Politics analysis reveals.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

JPMorgan’s investment arm, which includes its energy group, collects $14 billion annually; in comparison, six months’ worth of fines would amount to a paltry $180 million.

 "One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  

"JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who was known as Barack Obama’s favorite banker and who has been a major donor to the Democratic Party, centered his annual letter to shareholders on a denunciation of socialism."

 

BANKSTER SOCIALISM

 

Dimon’s bank received tens of billions of dollars in government bailouts and many billions more from the Obama administration’s ultra-low interest rate and “quantitative easing” money-printing policies.  He told his shareholders that “socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption” and “authoritarian government,” and would be “a disaster for our country.”… UNLESS IT IS SOCIALISM FOR BANKSTERS AND WALL STREET!

 

 

 

Trump criticized Dimon in 2013 for supposedly contributing to the country’s economic downturn. “I’m not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle a case and then pays $11 billion to settle a case and who I think is the worst banker in the United States,” he told reporters.

 

Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the Best-Managed Banks'

 

By Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 31 mins ago

 

Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the …

 

Lou Rocco / ABC News

 

Just hours after a top JPMorgan Chase executive retired in the wake of a stunning $2 billion trading loss, President Obamatold the hosts of ABC's "The View" that the bank's risky bets exemplified the need for Wall Street reform.

 

*

JPMorgan Chase investigated for manipulating California energy market

 

By Oliver Richards

23 July 2012

 

The California Independent Systems Operator (CalISO), the nonprofit organization that coordinates the state’s electricity market, has alleged that JPMorgan Chase& Co. manipulated the state’s energy market, resulting in at least $73 million in improper payments—costs passed along to the state’s energy consumers.

 

Global banking system a network of criminality

23 September 2020

 

The great 19th century French writer Honoré de Balzac once noted that behind every great fortune there is a crime. In the 21st century, one would have to say that behind the great fortunes of the world’s major banks there is a network of criminality. This reality is documented in the revelations published over the weekend concerning a small portion of the international operations of the world’s major banks.

Documents from the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, obtained by BuzzFeed News and investigated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, showed that between 1999 and 2017 more than $2 trillion in transactions were flagged as involving possible money laundering or other criminal activities.

But as the investigation revealed, the $2 trillion worth of suspicious transactions was “just a drop in a far larger flood of dirty money gushing through banks around the world.” The files examined in the investigation “represent less than 0.02 percent of the more than 12 million suspicious activity reports that financial institutions filed with FinCEN between 2011 and 2017.”

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that $2.4 trillion in illicit money is laundered through the global banking system each year, equivalent to 2.7 percent of global output, but only 1 percent of the illegal traffic is detected by the authorities.

The banks involved are some of the biggest names in the world, including JPMorgan, HSBC, Standard Charter Bank and Bank of New York Mellon. In some cases, they continued to profit from the dirty money flow even after being previously fined.

Under existing laws, banks are required to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) that point to potential criminal activities. But any conception that this is a method of crime prevention would be completely mistaken. In fact, it is a means of crime facilitation.

As BuzzFeed News noted: “Laws that were meant to stop financial crime have instead allowed it to flourish. So long as a bank files a notice that it may be facilitating criminal activity, it all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal prosecution. The suspicious activity alert effectively gives them a free pass to keep moving the money and collecting the fees.”

In the rare cases where authorities do decide to take action, it involves making a deal in which the bank agrees to pay a fine. But the fine is not imposed on the executives involved. It is paid for by the bank and treated as a minor operating cost, while the bank continues to obtain fees and profits from the dirty money transactions.

It would likewise be a grave mistake to conclude that the criminal money operations are somehow separate from the regular activities of the global financial and banking system. In fact, they are an integral component of them. There is no Chinese wall separating so-called legitimate activities from illegitimate ones.

In 2011, the US Senate report on the 2008 financial crisis revealed that major banks such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank were engaged in what amounted to outright criminal activity in the lead-up to the crisis. This included selling financial products they knew were going to fail, and then making deals to profit from the failure of the same financial products.

No one was even prosecuted, let alone jailed, and in an extraordinary admission to the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2013, President Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, revealed why, essentially acknowledging that criminality was not some extraneous activity, but was deeply embedded in the very foundations of the US and global financial system.

“I am concerned,” he said, “that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them, when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute—if we do bring a criminal charge—it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. …”

A similar situation emerged in 2012. Then-UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne wrote to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner about criminal proceedings against Standard Charter and HSBC. He expressed “concerns” that a heavy-handed approach could have “unintended consequences,” and warned of “contagion.”

The FinCEN files investigation details countless cases where authorities not only turned a blind eye to money-laundering operations, but facilitated them. One of the more egregious examples concerns UK-based HSBC, the largest bank in Europe. In 2012, it admitted it had laundered some $881 million for Latin American drug cartels. The US government deferred criminal charges for five years in return for the payment of a $1.9 billion fine and a pledge by the bank that it would halt such activities.

During the five-year probation period, HSBC continued to shift money from criminal sources, including Russian money launderers, but in December 2017 the government allowed the bank to declare it had “lived up to all of its commitments” and the criminal charges were dismissed.

What the FinCEN files investigation has revealed is that the criminal activities of the major banks do not take place in defiance of government authorities, but with their active cooperation because they are so integral to the entire financial system.

Consequently, the force of the state is not brought against the criminals at the top of the banking system but utilized against those who expose them. There is a direct parallel here with the case of the journalist Julian Assange, now facing extradition to the US and 175 years in jail for exposing the war crimes of US imperialism.

After the US Treasury Department received a series of questions on the FinCEN files, it issued a statement that it was aware that various media outlets intended to publish a series of articles based on “unlawfully disclosed” SARs. It said that “the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States, compromise law enforcement investigations, and threaten the safety and security of the institutions and individuals who file such reports.” It said Treasury was referring the matter to the Justice Department.

Back in the early 1970s, UK Prime Minister Edward Heath, confronted with the exposure of the corruption of the British company Lonhro in Africa, referred to the “unacceptable face of capitalism.” But the passing off of its activities as an “excess”—in order to cover up the collaboration of the British government with Lonhro—cannot be repeated today. The “unacceptable” or “ugly” face of capitalism has become the norm.

This transformation is rooted in the vast changes in the capitalist economy over the past 50 years, above all, the rise of financialization. The accumulation of profit through speculation, the creation of arcane derivatives, share buybacks and other forms of “financial engineering” means there is now a seamless transition from supposedly legitimate to outright criminal activity. They are virtually indistinguishable.

The FinCEN files exposure is yet another devastating refutation of all those who maintain there is some kind of reformist solution at hand. What has been revealed is that all the arms of the state—the financial regulators, the Treasury and the Fed—are facilitators for the decay and rot that lies at very heart of the global financial system.

The banks occupy a central position in the commanding heights of the capitalist economy. Their activities determine the fate of billions of people around the world, wreaking havoc in the pursuit of profit. The case for their expropriation, bringing them into public ownership under democratic control, as the first step in laying the basis for a planned economy based on human need, is overwhelming.

 Joe Biden Exploited S-Corporation Loophole to Avoid Payroll Tax

Alex Wong/Getty

MATTHEW BOYLE

28 Sep 2020Washington, DC1

6:13

The establishment media is all aflutter Monday after a New York Times story over the weekend about incumbent GOP President Donald Trump’s tax records, but it turns out Democrat candidate former Vice President Joe Biden used a series of tax code loopholes to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes over the years.

Back in August, the Wall Street Journal’s Chris Jacobs exposed how the Biden family structured what is called an “S-Corp” to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.

“How the Bidens Dodged the Payroll Tax,” was Jacobs’ headline on Aug. 10.

In it, the Journal details how the Bidens set up an S-Corporation to avoid paying more than half a million dollars in taxes they would have otherwise owed.

“Joe Biden responded to President Trump’s partial suspension of payroll-tax collections with a statement calling it the ‘first shot in a new, reckless war on Social Security,’” Jacobs wrote. He continued: “‘Our seniors and millions of Americans with disabilities are under enough stress without Trump putting their hard-earned Social Security benefits in doubt.’ Mr. Biden’s objections might be more persuasive had he and his wife, Jill, not gone out of their way to avoid funding seniors’ entitlement benefits. According to their tax returns, in 2017 and 2018 the Bidens and his wife Jill avoided payroll taxes on nearly $13.3 million in income from book royalties and speaking fees. They did so by classifying the income as S-corporation profits rather than taxable wages.”

Jacobs continued in his expose by noting the corporation the Bidens established to avoid paying the payroll taxes on millions of dollars in income amounts to more than half a million dollars in taxes that Joe and Jill Biden did not pay.

“According to the Urban Institute, a couple featuring one high earner and one average earner, retiring this year, will have paid a total of $209,000 in Medicare taxes during their working lives,” Jacobs wrote. “The Bidens avoided paying nearly twice that much in Medicare taxes during two years. The maximum payroll tax affected by Mr. Trump’s suspension is $1,984—less than 1/250th of the amount the Bidens avoided in 2017-18. The Bidens didn’t avoid any Social Security tax, which applied only to the first $127,200 of income in 2017 and $128,400 in 2018. But they would under Mr. Biden’s tax plan, which would impose the 12.4% Social Security tax on income over $400,000; the same loophole he used in 2017-18 would shield him from his own tax. And how can Mr. Biden claim to protect Medicare and ObamaCare when he avoided more than $500,000 in taxes that fund the two programs? The media have largely ignored the Bidens’ accounting legerdemain, fixating on Mr. Trump’s tax returns instead. But at least the president isn’t looking to raise taxes on everyone else.”

The Wall Street Journal is hardly the only outlet to illustrate how the Bidens used this tax code loophole of creating an S-Corporation to save themselves from paying hundreds of thousands—perhaps now millions—of dollars in taxes over the years.

CNBC’s Darla Mercado in 2019 wrote about it explaining to her readers how they can use the same loopholes Biden did to avoid paying their taxes.

“The former vice president and 2020 presidential contender and his wife Jill Biden reported about $10 million in income in 2017 from a pair of S-corporations, CelticCapri and Giacoppa,” Mercado wrote in CNBC. “The two entities were paid for the couple’s book deals and speaking gigs. That mean any amounts the Bidens received as a distribution wasn’t subject to the 15.3% combined Social Security and Medicare tax. Here’s how it works. S-corporations pay their employee shareholders in two ways: wages and distributions.The S-corps reported another $3.2 million in income in 2018.”

In other words, on much of the income Joe and Jill Biden generated through the corporations they established to pay themselves—CelticCapri and Giacoppa are the names of the two so-called S-Corporations—they did not have to pay payroll taxes collected to fund Social Security and Medicare.

Those on the left are not happy with the Bidens over the hypocrisy, either. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim in 2019 noted Biden has used Delaware corporation laws to hide his financial information from the American people.

“The Bidens have used their home state’s financial privacy laws to shield his income from public view, by setting up two tax- and transparency-avoidance vehicles known as S corporations,” Grim wrote. “He and his wife Jill Biden called them CelticCapri Corp. and Giacoppa Corp., respectively, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, have reported more than $13 million in profits the previous two years that weren’t subject to specific disclosure or self-employment taxes. As CNBC has described, money Biden made from book deals and speeches flowed into the S corporations and was then remitted to Biden and his wife as ‘distributions’ rather than salary. When money is funneled through an S corporation, the recipient doesn’t owe Social Security or Medicare taxes on it, nor can the source of revenue be traced. (In addition to the distributions, the Bidens drew relatively small salaries from the S Corporations: under half a million dollars, for which they owed self-employment taxes.)”

What’s more, as Ryan Ellis from the Center for a Free Economy wrote in a Washington Examiner op-ed last year, the last budgets from the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administration called for an end to this loophole allowing S-Corporations to avoid payroll taxes.

That means Barack Obama, the former Democrat president of the United States, does not support what Biden has established in these S-Corporations to avoid payroll tax liability on millions of dollars in income.

Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, addresses the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20, 2020. (DNCC via Getty Images)

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