Tuesday, August 25, 2020

SERVANT OF RED CHINA - WITH SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY THROUGH HER PIMP-HUSBAND'S BOTTOMLESS POCKETS!

China’s Champion Dianne Feinstein

Longtime apologist now acts as PRC asset.

  

Back in April, Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt, a Republican, filed a lawsuit charging that Chinese Communist officials are “responsible for the enormous death, suffering, and economic losses they inflicted on the world, including Missourians.”  For Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the  Missouri lawsuit was the problem.

“We launch a series of unknown events that could be very, very dangerous,” said Feinstein in a July 30, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.  “I think this is a huge mistake.” As Feinstein doubtless knows, the Chinese company Build Your Dreams (BYD) , which bagged a $1 billion mask deal with California, is suing Vice Media for a story charging that BYD had links to the Chinese military and forced labor. Feinstein did not say if that lawsuit was a mistake, and possibly launch unknown events that could be very dangerous. On the other hand, she had only praise for the Chinese government.

“Where I live, we hold China as a potential trading partner,” Feinstein said in the hearing. “As a country that has pulled tens of millions of people out of poverty in a short period of time. And as a country growing into a respectable nation among other nations. And I deeply believe that. I’ve been to China a number of times. I’ve studied the issues.” Much of that study, it turns out, has been on location.

“I’ve been coming to China for 31 years, so I’m not a newcomer,” Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal during a 2006 visit to Shanghai. In Beijing, the U.S. Senator explained, “we spent time with Zhu Rongji, the former premier who was a mayor of Shanghai” and “a good friend.”

In 2014, on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Feinstein issued a statement recalling “perhaps even thousands” of demonstrators killed. “I know of no other country that has made as much economic and industrial progress in the last 25 years than China,” Feinstein wrote. “But what this anniversary reminds us is that progress still must be made in the areas of human rights, rule of law and governance.”

The senator has since been rather quiet about any human rights progress China might have achieved, and expressed no second thoughts about China’s membership in the World Trade Organization. That removed the annual congressional review of its record on human rights and weapons proliferation records, a huge win for the Communist regime.

As Rosemarie Ho reported in The Nation, Democrats in general and Feinstein in particular have kept rather quiet about the democratic protesters in Hong Kong. As it happens, Feinstein’s China issues go much deeper. The former San Francisco mayor had a Chinese spy on her staff for some 20 years, and he was much more than her “driver.” As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, the spy even attended Chinese Consulate functions for the senator.

As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.” And the senator “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.” All this, plus a spy on her staff through three election cycles. 

Feinstein was one of the first to cry “racism” over the Wuhan virus that has caused massive damage in the United States and around the world. When one American state attempts to hold China accountable losses in court, Sen. Feinstein calls it dangerous. She “deeply believes” that one of the most repressive regimes in history is a respectable nation.

By contrast, as the San Francisco Democrat said in a June 2 statement, the United States is burdened with “systemic racism in areas ranging from housing to employment to education,” all part of “institutional racism.” Feinstein invoked “President Obama,” to lead the reform process. He has been acting as though still in office.

Obama Defends Mob Rule,” reads the August 3 American Greatness headline. As Conrad Black explains, the 44th president of the United States is uncritical of the violent mobs now terrorizing the country. This “shows how terminally morally and intellectually decayed the Obama-Clinton-Biden Democratic Party has become,” and that is not a stretch.

From House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on down, not a single Democrat has offered the slightest criticism of the Antifa-BLM axis. Instead they call federal officers “stormtroopers” and “secret police,” and support the defunding of police departments. Democrat support for violent mobs sends a signal to another group out to take down the country.

As recent attacks at military bases in Florida and Texas confirm, Islamic terrorists continue their jihad against America and Americans. The death sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has now been overturned. That brought no statement from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who finds fault with a Missouri lawsuit against China.

When a predictable apologist becomes a positive asset for the Communist regime, that could turn out very, very dangerous. If anybody thought the time has finally come for a thorough investigation of California Senator Dianne Feinstein it would be hard to blame them.

WALL STREET PREPARES FOR BANKRUPTCY - WATCH THEM LINEUP FOR BAILOUTS AND SOCIALISM FOR BANKSTERS

Goldman Sachs has said it expects that of the 22 million workers cut from payrolls in the first wave of the pandemic almost a quarter will be permanently axed

 

Signs of emerging crisis in economy and financial system


25 August 2020

As Wall Street continues to surge to record highs—Apple has doubled its market capitalization from $1 trillion to $2 trillion in just two years and the S&P 500 index has surged 50 percent since the mid-March crash—there are clear indications of a crisis building up both in the real economy and the financial system.

Last week, the Financial Times reported that while the market was at a record high, “corporate distress” in the US had never been worse with “large corporate bankruptcy filings” running at a record pace and set to exceed levels reached in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008.

As of August 17, a record 45 companies, each with assets of more than $1 billion, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, compared with 38 in the same period in 2009 and more than double the figure of 19 in the comparable period last year.

It reported that in total 157 companies with assets of more than $50 million have filed for bankruptcy with a lot more expected to follow.

Ben Schlafman, the chief operating officer at New Generation Research, which tracks bankruptcy filings, told the newspaper: “We are in the first innings of this bankruptcy cycle. It will spread far across industries as we get deeper into the crisis.

“It pains me to say it, but bankruptcy is a growth industry in America.”

The Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, said cutting off the $600 per week federal unemployment benefit will push tens of millions into poverty or close to it.

“They won’t have the money to buy billions of dollars worth of goods and services. As a result the entire economy will suffer. Small businesses will continue to suffer the most because they are already precarious.”

Goldman Sachs has said it expects that of the 22 million workers cut from payrolls in the first wave of the pandemic almost a quarter will be permanently axed. In a research note published on Friday and reported on Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs economist Joseph Briggs said that while there was a return to work from temporary layoffs, “other patterns suggest that rehiring prospects for temporarily laid-off workers started to deteriorate in July” and some 2 million workers could remain unemployed well into next year.

Reporting on the situation in Britain, the Financial Times said that accounting, law and investment banking firms were “preparing for a fresh wave of distress in the autumn” when government loan schemes to run out.

Leading insolvency barrister Mark Phillips said: “There are a series of crises looming. The full wave of insolvencies hasn’t even started yet.”

Financial and accounting firms have been involved in efforts to aid companies in restructuring their debt and raise capital to avoid a collapse.

“But the winding down of state support schemes is expected to trigger a large number of insolvency proceedings, as many of these companies run out of cash,” the FT said.

In the major industrial centres of Europe there are fears that after what was described as bounce back from the sharp economic contraction in the spring, the recovery is now starting to slow.

There was a 22.5 percent rise in industrial production across the euro zone in May and June, but this was not enough to compensate for the 28 percent fall in the first two months of the pandemic. Germany’s central bank has reported that euro zone manufacturers are still only operating at 72 percent capacity in July compared to their long-term average of 80 percent.

The car-making industry, which forms a vital component of the German economy, has been hard hit, with predictions that global car sales will fall to 69 million this year compared to 88 million in 2019. The head of Audi has said he does not expect the levels of car production to return to their pre-crisis levels at least until 2022 or 2023.

But even these predictions could be knocked awry in the face of what is clearly a resurgence of the pandemic. In the US, it continues to rage out of control while in Europe there are sharp rises in the number of infections due to the return to work drive of governments amid the push to reopen schools.

Last Friday alone, Spain reported 8000 new COVID-19 infections, with the infection rate rising across the region. In Germany the Robert Koch Institute, the country’s main public health organisation said infections had risen sharply in all of the country’s 16 regions in seven days, describing the situation as “alarming.”

Infections have surged again in South Korea, one of the world’s major industrial and manufacturing centres with an additional 397 cases reported on Sunday, the highest number since the beginning of March.

“Cases are rising in 17 cities and provinces across the nation, and we are now at the verge of a massive nationwide outbreak,” the head of the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Jung Eun-kyeong, told a news briefing on Sunday.

Amid this wave of disease and economic devastation, markets have continued to rise. But there are growing fears that the conditions are building up for a major financial crisis. The market rise has driven the surge in technology stocks, which form a large component of the S&P 500 index and, above all, the supply of cheap money from the Fed.

One indication of the effect of the intervention by the Fed, which has pumped around $3 trillion into the financial system, is the lowering of the yield on US Treasury bonds as a result of the central bank’s purchases of government debt.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond, a benchmark for both US and global financial markets, is now around 0.6 percent, a full percentage point below its level in February. With the yield on government debt now bringing a negative return when inflation is taken into account, this has fuelled a turn to the stock market, gold and corporate debt. This search for a positive return has sparked what has been termed an “everything rally.”

But the rise of the market rests on very shaky foundations as evidenced last week when the minutes of the Fed’s July meeting were published, sending a tremor through Wall Street.

Contrary to many expectations in the market, they showed that the Fed had still not determined into “forward guidance” policy, that is, firm guarantees that there will be no tightening of monetary policy into the indefinite future, including a commitment to purchase bonds to set a cap on bond yields.

With the US government to issue more bonds to finance its debt, this measure is regarded in some quarters as necessary to insure that the increased supply of bonds does not lead to a fall in their price and a consequent rise in interest rates.

Commenting on the massive disconnect between the underlying economy and the stock market, an article in Bloomberg noted that “any number of looming threats could bring the historic rally in US equities to a screeching halt.” They could include conflict over the re-opening of schools, the November election, the conflicts with China or the effects of US monetary policy.

Then there is the issue of the massive increase in corporate debt—more than $1.6 trillion over the past few months. Such is the extent of the debt mountain that Bloomberg reported that an analysis conducted by its intelligence unit revealed that the average below investment-grade firm (or junk-rated company) had debt levels relative to earnings so high in the middle of the year that they would have triggered warnings from bank regulators had they occurred a few years ago.

However, it noted, regulators had dropped those warnings which a few years ago had applied only to a few but which today “could apply to many more.”

Gold has also been part of the “everything rally”—a rise sparked by the search for profit as its price reaches record heights and underlying uncertainty about the stability of the global monetary system as trillions of dollars are created at the press of a computer button by central banks.

While it has been on the rise, the gold price is highly volatile and so sudden downward movement is another factor that could trigger a collapse of the global financial house of cards.

 

BIDEN WAS SELECTED BY BANKSTER-OWNED OBAMA BECAUSE OF HIS LONG HISTORY OF SERVING THE BANKSTERS!

 

Biden backed brutal bankruptcy bill in 2005

By Chris Talgo

In 1999, then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) declared, “I’m not the senator from MBNA.” Apparently, Biden felt it was necessary to clarify that he did not exclusively represent credit card giant MBNA because his constituents were thoroughly confused, based on his track record of being a shill for credit card companies located in the First State.

Then, six years later, Biden inserted his foot directly into his mouth (again) when he championed the notorious (and ill-named) Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). A more appropriate name could have been the Act to Protect Credit Card Companies and Shaft Students and Workers.

In short, BAPCPA was a terrible bill that favored credit card companies, big banks, and millionaires over working-class borrowers. It also is solely responsible for the fact that student loan debt is totally impossible to dismiss -- even after one has declared bankruptcy.

Wait a minute, I thought Joe Biden was the consummate defender and advocate of the working class and oppressed. Far from it. In reality,Biden’s political career of more than four decades was predicated upon protecting the interests of credit card companies. 

And he and his son, Hunter, were compensated handsomely for doing so. According to a 2019 GQ article titled “How Biden Helped Strip Bankruptcy Protection From Millions Just Before a Recession” -- “one of the biggest credit card companies in Delaware, MBNA, hired Joe Biden's son Hunter in 1996. Even after Hunter became a federal lobbyist in 2001, he stayed on at MBNA as a consultant at a fee of $100,000 per year, meaning he was pulling in a six-figure salary at the same time his father was pushing for the industry's top priorities.” Can you say, quid pro quo, Joe?

As if the backroom deals and “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” shenanigans that Biden blatantly engaged in before, during, and after BAPCPA was passed were not bad enough, the bill wrought untold damage among the very people Biden constantly claims to protect.

According to Adam J. Levitin, professor of law at Georgetown University, BAPCPA “was perhaps the most anti-middle class piece of legislation in the past century.” And, as Levitin writes, “Biden used his clout to push for the law’s passage and to defeat amendments to shield servicemembers, women, and children from its harsh treatment. When votes were taken, ‘Middle-Class Joe’ was no friend to the middle class.” It sure seems that Biden abandoned his Lunchbox Joe persona when it came to voting in favor of BAPCPA, not to mention that he strongly supported amendments that made the bill even more hostile to the middle class!

And adding insult to injury, Biden also voted against several amendments that were specifically meant to help several “underprivileged” groups.  As Levitin writes, “He voted against three amendments to ease bankruptcy requirements for consumers whose financial troubles stem from medical expenses. He voted against an amendment that would have helped seniors keep their homes. He voted against exempting servicemembers and widows of servicemembers killed in action from the law’s eligibility restrictions. He voted against an amendment to exempt women whose financial troubles stemmed from deadbeat husbands’ failure to pay child support or alimony. And Biden even voted against an amendment that would have ensured that children of debtors could still be given birthday and Christmas presents. Biden also voted against allowing debtors to pay their union dues during bankruptcy, potentially imperiling their employment and ability to achieve financial rehabilitation.” Could Biden’s voting record on this bill get any worse? Actually, yes.

Not only did Biden strongly oppose BAPCPA amendments aimed to help “disadvantaged” groups, he voted for two giant loopholes that effectively allowed millionaires to shield their assets from collectors after they filed for bankruptcy. What a joke, Joe.

As a senator, Biden vigorously voted for several similar bills. In short, based on his voting record, Joe Biden is not (and never was) a champion of disadvantaged Americans, unless you consider multi-billion-dollar credit card corporations and millionaires “disadvantaged.”

Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.orgis an editor at The Heartland Institute.

 

WE KNOW WHAT OBAMA-HOLDER-BIDEN DID FOR THEIR CRONY BANKSTERS! THEIR CRIME TIDAL WAVE IS NOT OVER AND NONE HAVE GONE TO PRISON!

As a senator, Biden vigorously voted for several similar bills. In short, based on his voting record, Joe Biden is not (and never was) a champion of disadvantaged Americans, unless you consider multi-billion-dollar credit card corporations and millionaires “disadvantaged.”

This year, it’s Mr. Biden. Financial industry cash flowing to Mr. Biden and outside groups supporting him shows him dramatically out-raising the president, with $44 million compared with Mr. Trump’s $9 million.

"The reference to what “Trump’s done” is a fraud, since the both the Democrats and Republicans endorsed, on a nearly unanimous basis, the multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street in March."


"Biden reassured Wall Street and the billionaires, “I’m not looking to punish anyone.”

I’ve also fallen toward a consultant theory of change — or like, a process theory of change. So a lot of people on the left would say that the Hillary Clinton campaign largely ignored economic issues, and doubled down on social issues, because of the neoliberal ideology of the people who worked for her, and the fact that campaigning on progressive economic policy would threaten the material interests of her donors.

Democrats nominate Biden in inane display of political reaction

21 August 2020

The Democratic National Convention concluded Thursday night with the formal acceptance of the party’s presidential nomination by former Vice President Joe Biden, after a final two-hour session that was full of empty clichés, inane rhetoric and nauseating insincerity.

The atmosphere Thursday was more of a religious revival than a political event. There was incessant emphasis on the personal moral superiority of Biden compared to Trump, accompanied by increasingly maudlin testimonials to Biden’s alleged deep concern for children, the downtrodden, and virtually anyone who crossed his path. One former White House official referred to Biden’s “empathy skills,” a phrase which recalls the old wisecrack: “Sincerity—if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

The sheer contempt for the intelligence of the 

population and the viewing audience was 

summed up in Biden’s acceptance speech. His

speechwriters appeared to have been trying 

to cram every possible trite phrase into a 

single 20-minute address.

He ran through a laundry list of promises, from climate change to racism to student debt, none of which the Democratic Party has the slightest intention of actually carrying out. Only two phrases had real meaning.

Biden reassured Wall Street and the billionaires, “I’m not looking to punish anyone.” This sent a message to the financial aristocracy that, while the candidate was compelled to make demagogic attacks on the wealthy for electoral purposes, these would have no lasting consequences. “Nothing will change” for the super-rich, he told a Wall Street fundraiser last year, and that pledge he will keep.

And the former vice president denounced Trump for being too soft on Russia, threatening to hold Vladimir Putin accountable for allegedly paying bounties to Taliban fighters who attacked American troops in Afghanistan. This phony story is just the latest fabrication by the New York Times in its four-year-long campaign to provoke a US war with Russia.

The tone for the convention’s final day was set by the report Thursday afternoon that a group of 73 former national security officials from four Republican administrations were endorsing Biden and denouncing Trump in an open letter to be published in the Wall Street Journal. The list includes an array of militarists and police-state operatives who are responsible for the death of millions of people in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Among the most prominent and most deserving of prosecution for war crimes endorsing Biden are:

·         John Negroponte, with a bloody record from the contra terrorist war against Nicaragua to the occupation of Iraq in the 2000s;

·         Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and secretary of state during the 2003 Iraq War, in which he played a central role in justifying a war based on lies;

·         Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and later CIA director, who oversaw CIA torture programs and domestic spying;

·         Robert Blackwill, deputy director of the National Security Council with responsibility for Iraq war policy in 2003–2004;

·         Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center under the younger Bush; and

·         William Webster, director of the FBI under Reagan and of the CIA under the elder Bush.

The support of these former leaders of the military-intelligence apparatus only underscores the real character of the conflict between the Democratic and Republican parties, the twin political instruments of the American ruling elite.

The Democrats oppose Trump, not because of his tax cuts for billionaires or his attacks on democratic rights and the rights of immigrants and refugees, but rather because of differences over foreign policy related to the Middle East and particularly Russia. An incoming Biden administration would immediately adopt an even more provocative and aggressive anti-Russian policy.

This was underscored in one segment after another of the final day’s program leading up to Biden’s acceptance speech, with military veterans and Republicans brought forward to speak in video segments. The most strident pro-war message came from Senator Tammy Duckworth, who denounced Trump as the “coward in chief” for his alleged capitulation to Putin over the bounties.

As for domestic policy, Biden’s closest political associate, his Senate chief-of-staff Ted Kaufman, who heads the transition team preparing for a future Biden administration, told the Wall Street Journal Wednesday that the rising federal budget deficit would make ambitious spending programs impossible. “When we get in, the pantry is going to be bare,” Kaufman said. “When you see what Trump’s done to the deficit… forget about COVID-19, all the deficits that he built with the incredible tax cuts. So we’re going to be limited.”

The reference to what “Trump’s done” is a 

fraud, since the both the Democrats and 

Republicans endorsed, on a nearly unanimous

basis, the multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall 

Street in March. The coronavirus pandemic—which, as a 

result of the policies of the ruling class, has produced a social and 

economic catastrophe for the American population—has been 

utilized by the ruling elite as an opportunity to loot the public 

treasury. And it is the working class that will be forced to pay.

Despite claims by Bernie Sanders that Biden could become the most progressive president since Franklin Roosevelt, the real policy orientation of a future Biden administration was signaled by the appearance of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who gave the last speech before Biden himself was introduced, pouring scorn on Trump as a poor businessman and incompetent manager. It is the billionaires and the military-intelligence apparatus, not political charlatans like Sanders, who will call the shots if the Democrats win the White House.

Next week will put the ultra-right ravings of the Republican Party and the Trump White House on display. The Democratic Party masquerades as the friend of the workers while doing the bidding of the corporate elite; the Republican Party, under Trump’s direction, is working to develop a fascist movement. Both parties are the enemies of the working class, which must develop and build an independent revolutionary alternative.