America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
JOE BIDEN - I NEED MY WALL STREET GUY JEROME POWELL ON THE FEDERAL RESERVE TO COMFORT MY CRONY BANKSTERS WITH BAILOUTS
THE FEDERAL RESERVE IS NOTHING
MORE THAN WALL STREET'S
WELFARE OFFICE!
Hostile Takeover: Wall Street Assumes Command of Joe Biden Transition Team
Wall Street and the biggest U.S. banks, after spending a fortune to unseat President Trump, are getting key spots in Democrat Joe Biden’s transition team that he has devised before the presidential election is certified.
Many of the big banks with links to Biden transition team members were major donors to the former vice president.
JOE BIDEN SAYS MUCK PROGRESSIVES, I MADE MY DIRTY MONEY SERVING WALL STREET!
“Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.”
“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.”
“He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter. Or to the 40 or so members of the Biden transition who are current or recent lobbyists.”
“During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy exposé about Biden’s foreign policy advisers’ lucrative foray into corporate America. Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official Washington.”
Six months of the Biden administration—A balance sheet
Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order.
His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment.”
When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed. Just months earlier, every city, town, and village in America had seen protests in opposition to police violence.
Biden marked the six-month anniversary with brief remarks presenting American society in glowing terms. “For all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, here’s where things stand,” he said. “Record growth, record job creation, workers getting hard-earned breaks.” He added, “Put simply: Our economy is on the move, and we have COVID-19 on the run.”
Summing up his prognosis, the US president proclaimed: “It turns out capitalism is alive and very well.” The truth is that the policies of the Biden administration have entirely failed to resolve the social crisis in America and they cannot, because they are based on the framework of American capitalism.
The pandemic, far from being “on the run,” is undergoing a new resurgence. Since Biden took office, an additional 225,000 people have died from the pandemic. All indications are that by the winter, with the new surge accompanying the spread of the Delta variant, the death toll under Biden will have exceeded that under Trump.
The policies of the Biden administration have been driven by the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich. This is why, despite occasional criticisms of Trump’s callous and anti-scientific response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has pursued the same policy of restoring corporate profit-making by forcing workers back to work and children back to school as quickly as possible, regardless of the dangers to their lives and health.
Trump’s response to the economic depression that accompanied the onset of the pandemic was to pour trillions into bolstering the banks, hedge funds and corporations, with bipartisan bills like the CARES Act. Biden pursues essentially the same policy, although with less support from the Republicans than the Democrats gave Trump. He boasts of success on the economic front, although seven million fewer workers have jobs today than before the pandemic began, and millions face wage cuts, poverty, eviction and foreclosure.
Only in foreign policy is there a significant shift from Trump to Biden, and this in tactics only, not strategy. Biden has placed more emphasis on the US utilization of NATO and the “Quad,” a de facto alliance with Japan, Australia and India. Significant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus backed Biden against Trump because they sought a more effective mobilization of US power against Russia and China.
And if Biden’s statement that “capitalism is alive and very well” were true, it begs the question: Why is there a mounting fascist threat to American democracy?
In the six months since Biden’s inauguration, the Republican Party has maintained its intransigent opposition to any serious investigation into the events of January 6. Half-hearted Democratic proposals, first for an “independent” bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, then for a bipartisan congressional investigation, have been blocked outright or endlessly delayed.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of the central role played by Trump and his allies in Congress in seeking to carry out a political coup d’état to overturn the results of the election and maintain himself in office. But neither Trump nor his accomplices have even been questioned, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.
Instead, Trump has renewed his agitation against the election, seeking to transform the Republican Party into an openly fascistic movement subordinated to his personal authority. And his supporters in the Republican Party are using their control of state legislatures to enact unprecedented and sweeping attacks on the right to vote.
Biden himself acknowledged something of the reality of the crisis of American capitalism in a speech last week in Philadelphia, when he declared “We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” But he offered no way forward, except to appeal to “my Republican friends in the Congress, states and cities and counties to stand up” against this assault—although they are the very ones carrying it out.
In an effort to prop up illusions in the Democratic Party, the representatives of its “left” wing, portray Biden’s policies in extravagant terms. Last week Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that Biden’s “reconciliation” bill on social spending amounted to “the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the 1930s.” Or, like Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, they express disappointment in what has been achieved so far, but express the hope that “Biden has shown a willingness to think big,” and that additional pressure should be brought to bear on congressional Democrats.
For his part, Biden uses every possible occasion to make clear he has no intention of implementing any measures that challenge the interests of the financial oligarchy, declaring last weekend, “Communism is a failed system, universally failed system. I don’t see socialism as a very useful substitute.”
The truth is that the Biden administration is based on Wall Street and the military, mobilizing behind it sections of the upper middle class through the utilization of identity politics. Well aware of the explosive social conditions developing in America, moreover, the administration supports the union “organization” campaign at Amazon and the PRO Act, to make it easier to install unions at work locations where they otherwise would have difficulty convincing workers to pay dues for the privilege of having their wages and benefits cut.
It is telling that when workers engage in genuine anti-corporate struggles, like the strikes waged by autoworkers against Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia, the supposedly “pro-labor” president falls completely silent. Biden is for the unions, not for the workers, because he correctly sees the unions as an instrument of the US ruling class in policing the working class.
Workers must draw the lessons of six months of the Biden administration. None of the problems confronting the working class, from the disastrous pandemic response to unparalleled levels of social inequality, to the danger of imperialist world war and fascist dictatorship, can be addressed without breaking the grip of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of society.
Jerome Powell’s term as chair of the US Federal Reserve could be summed up as follows: Never in economic history has so much been given so fast to so few.
The trillions of dollars pumped into the financial system by the Fed since March 2020 have sent the stock market to record highs, boosting the wealth of multi-billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to stratospheric heights, as well as lifting the wealth of a host of lesser lights.
Given this record, it is hardly surprising that voices are being raised in political, media and financial circles calling on President Joe Biden to re-appoint Powell when his four-year term expires in February next year.
This week the Financial Times reported that Brad Sherman, a California House of Representatives Democrat, “was saying what many in his party privately believe” when he told the newspaper that Powell should be reappointed for a second term.
Powell was appointed by Trump after he decided not to re-endorse the Obama appointee Janet Yellen, though he described her performance as “terrific.” In the first period of Powell’s term, he had a somewhat rocky relationship with Trump because of the former president’s insistence that he cut interest rates and even resume quantitative easing to ensure that the stock market roared ahead.
In the midst of a brief upturn in the global economy in 2017-18, when growth rates were at their highest since the period before the financial crisis of 2008, Powell embarked on a policy of marginal monetary tightening. In 2018, he lifted interest rates four times by 0.25 percentage point increments and signalled that further rises might come the following year. He also indicated that the Fed would start to wind down its holdings of financial assets at the rate of $50 billion a month.
Wall Street sided with the Trump perspective and pulled Powell back into line. In January 2019, after the worst December for Wall Street since the Great Depression, Powell made clear that further interest rate rises were off the table, and in July of that year he started to cut them.
Having cracked the whip, Wall Street warmed to Powell as a result of his response to the March 2020 near-meltdown of the financial system, when the Fed pumped in $4 trillion--one estimate is that the US central bank was supplying money at the rate of a million dollars a second at the height of the crisis--and stepped forward as the backstop for every financial market, including buying shares for the first time in the Fed’s history.
Since then, the Fed has supplied monetary support in the form of asset purchases of $120 billion a month--more than $1.4 trillion a year--while keeping its base interest rate at near zero. Powell initiated a significant policy shift last December when the Fed decided it would continue its support even if inflation went above its target rate of 2.0 percent.
While leading Democrats have yet to commit to Powell and some have raised criticisms of the loosening of regulations on the banks on his watch, they are leaning in that direction.
In a recent interview with the business channel CNBC, Treasurer Yellen, when asked if she would recommend Powell for a second term, said she would have a “discussion” with Biden about the issue, and made clear that in her opinion, “the Fed has done a good job.”
Meanwhile, there are expressions of support for Powell on Wall Street and in the financial press.
Bloomberg commentator Matthew Yglesias wrote that until recently he had believed Biden should follow the Trump example and replace Powell with a Democrat. But now he had changed his mind and believed “Biden should put an end to speculation as soon as possible and announce another term for Powell.”
“The task of replacing Powell poses great risks with little upside. For now, Biden should put the loose talk to rest and make it clear that Jerome Powell is his man,” he concluded.
Last week, NBC reported on some revealing comments by Mitchell Goldberg, president of the asset management firm ClientFirst Strategy, which no doubt reflected broadly held views on Wall Street.
Powell, he said, was a known quantity, whose policy trajectory aligned with current Wall Street interests. “Powell is respected by market participants for being forthcoming, open minded, and for having a firm grasp of the global economy. Not to mention that investors prefer money printing and patience over tightening monetary policy too early.”
Robert Perli, head of global research at Cornerstone Macro, an economic research firm, made clear in comments to the Financial Times that in his view the reappointment of Powell would be a “safe course” to ensure the continuation of the money flow.
Under conditions of rising inflation, the markets would probably question the ability of a potential new chair to steer the Fed’s monetary policy making body in line with its new framework, and “the result would likely be higher interest rates.”
Powell’s reappointment has also been supported by forces from so-called left leaning elements around the Democratic Party. Last May, the founder and head of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, Dean Baker, said it would be good for the economy if Powell were reappointed and if Biden announced the decision “as soon as possible.”
Baker couched his support in terms of the Fed’s focus under Powell of “running the labour market as hot as possible without triggering inflation.”
The reference to the labour market, however, is a convenient left-sounding cover for the real aim of the Fed’s policy, which is to ensure that the flow of money to Wall Street continues and the mountain of debt and fictitious capital is sustained.
The AFL-CIO has yet to make its position known, but last May, William Spriggs, the chief economist at the AFL-CIO, gave the thumbs up to Powell. “My hope is that he would be reappointed,” he said.
This support is significant, because, as Politico noted in its report on his comments, Spriggs is “often touted on the left as a potential pick to head the central bank.”
Spriggs said people should not “take lightly” how significant the Fed’s pro-worker shift had been under Powell, and “we need a little stability at the Fed” after having gone through four years of Trump.
It is a measure of the perverted nature of what passes for economic analysis and discussion that the Fed’s policy of putting trillions of dollars in the hands of the Wall Street oligarchs should be touted as being pro-worker.
But then, it should be recalled, in understanding the roots of this perversion, that the AFL-CIO and the trade unions as a whole have a material interest in ensuring that the financial markets are sustained by the Fed, because they have become increasingly dependent on the income they derive from their financial investments.
Workers must draw the lessons of six months of the Biden administration. None of the problems confronting the working class, from the disastrous pandemic response to unparalleled levels of social inequality, to the danger of imperialist world war and fascist dictatorship, can be addressed without breaking the grip of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of society.
Six months of the Biden administration—A balance sheet
Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order.
His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment.”
When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed. Just months earlier, every city, town, and village in America had seen protests in opposition to police violence.
Biden marked the six-month anniversary with brief remarks presenting American society in glowing terms. “For all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, here’s where things stand,” he said. “Record growth, record job creation, workers getting hard-earned breaks.” He added, “Put simply: Our economy is on the move, and we have COVID-19 on the run.”
Summing up his prognosis, the US president proclaimed: “It turns out capitalism is alive and very well.” The truth is that the policies of the Biden administration have entirely failed to resolve the social crisis in America and they cannot, because they are based on the framework of American capitalism.
The pandemic, far from being “on the run,” is undergoing a new resurgence. Since Biden took office, an additional 225,000 people have died from the pandemic. All indications are that by the winter, with the new surge accompanying the spread of the Delta variant, the death toll under Biden will have exceeded that under Trump.
The policies of the Biden administration have been driven by the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich. This is why, despite occasional criticisms of Trump’s callous and anti-scientific response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has pursued the same policy of restoring corporate profit-making by forcing workers back to work and children back to school as quickly as possible, regardless of the dangers to their lives and health.
Trump’s response to the economic depression that accompanied the onset of the pandemic was to pour trillions into bolstering the banks, hedge funds and corporations, with bipartisan bills like the CARES Act. Biden pursues essentially the same policy, although with less support from the Republicans than the Democrats gave Trump. He boasts of success on the economic front, although seven million fewer workers have jobs today than before the pandemic began, and millions face wage cuts, poverty, eviction and foreclosure.
Only in foreign policy is there a significant shift from Trump to Biden, and this in tactics only, not strategy. Biden has placed more emphasis on the US utilization of NATO and the “Quad,” a de facto alliance with Japan, Australia and India. Significant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus backed Biden against Trump because they sought a more effective mobilization of US power against Russia and China.
And if Biden’s statement that “capitalism is alive and very well” were true, it begs the question: Why is there a mounting fascist threat to American democracy?
In the six months since Biden’s inauguration, the Republican Party has maintained its intransigent opposition to any serious investigation into the events of January 6. Half-hearted Democratic proposals, first for an “independent” bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, then for a bipartisan congressional investigation, have been blocked outright or endlessly delayed.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of the central role played by Trump and his allies in Congress in seeking to carry out a political coup d’état to overturn the results of the election and maintain himself in office. But neither Trump nor his accomplices have even been questioned, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.
Instead, Trump has renewed his agitation against the election, seeking to transform the Republican Party into an openly fascistic movement subordinated to his personal authority. And his supporters in the Republican Party are using their control of state legislatures to enact unprecedented and sweeping attacks on the right to vote.
Biden himself acknowledged something of the reality of the crisis of American capitalism in a speech last week in Philadelphia, when he declared “We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” But he offered no way forward, except to appeal to “my Republican friends in the Congress, states and cities and counties to stand up” against this assault—although they are the very ones carrying it out.
In an effort to prop up illusions in the Democratic Party, the representatives of its “left” wing, portray Biden’s policies in extravagant terms. Last week Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that Biden’s “reconciliation” bill on social spending amounted to “the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the 1930s.” Or, like Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, they express disappointment in what has been achieved so far, but express the hope that “Biden has shown a willingness to think big,” and that additional pressure should be brought to bear on congressional Democrats.
For his part, Biden uses every possible occasion to make clear he has no intention of implementing any measures that challenge the interests of the financial oligarchy, declaring last weekend, “Communism is a failed system, universally failed system. I don’t see socialism as a very useful substitute.”
The truth is that the Biden administration is based on Wall Street and the military, mobilizing behind it sections of the upper middle class through the utilization of identity politics. Well aware of the explosive social conditions developing in America, moreover, the administration supports the union “organization” campaign at Amazon and the PRO Act, to make it easier to install unions at work locations where they otherwise would have difficulty convincing workers to pay dues for the privilege of having their wages and benefits cut.
It is telling that when workers engage in genuine anti-corporate struggles, like the strikes waged by autoworkers against Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia, the supposedly “pro-labor” president falls completely silent. Biden is for the unions, not for the workers, because he correctly sees the unions as an instrument of the US ruling class in policing the working class.
Workers must draw the lessons of six months of the Biden administration. None of the problems confronting the working class, from the disastrous pandemic response to unparalleled levels of social inequality, to the danger of imperialist world war and fascist dictatorship, can be addressed without breaking the grip of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of society.
More Banks Closing Credit Lines - Economy in Chaos
US banks this week released their second-quarter earnings, showing record second-quarter profits as large sections of the working class continue to struggle to survive on meager unemployment benefits while searching unsuccessfully for well-paying and safe work.
Ultra-loose monetary policies enacted by the Federal Reserve, first under former president Donald Trump and continued under Joe Biden, resulted in major banks Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. posting a combined $42.17 billion profits in the April-June period.
Goldman Sachs reported $5.35 billion in profit for the quarter, double last year’s figures.
Citigroup’s second-quarter profit jumped to $6.19 billion, up from $1.06 billion during the same period last year. Despite the billions “earned,” shares of the company fell by 0.3 percent on Tuesday. Overall, the bank’s share price has increased by 11 percent through Wednesday.
Wells Fargo, which last year agreed to pay $3 billion to settle outstanding civil and criminal charges resulting from a years-long scandal over defrauding customers, posted a second-quarter profit of $6 billion.
JPMorgan also saw its second-quarter profits more than double from last year, reporting $11.9 billion this week, compared to $4.7 billion last year.
Bank of America, the second largest bank in the US, was the only major bank that missed revenue expectations according to analysts cited by the Wall Street Journal. This did not prevent the bank from nearly tripling profits from a year ago, from $3.53 billion to $9.22 billion.
Morgan Stanley reported on Thursday that second-quarter profits rose by 10 percent compared to a year earlier, with a reported profit of $3.51 billion. Investment bank revenue increased by 16 percent to $2.38 billion, while the bank garnered $71 billion in net new assets, triple last year’s second quarter.
The combined $42.17 billion in profits exceeded analysts’ expectations and exceeded last year’s figures by more than $6 billion.
Bank profits were buoyed by the release of billions of dollars in “loan-loss reverses” that the banks had been holding back in case of pandemic-related losses, which never materialized.
Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made clear that the Fed had no intentions of raising interest rates or stopping its monthly purchases of $120 billion in financial assets, despite inflation concerns, which were amplified by the 0.9 percent increase in the consumer price index (CPI) reported in May.
Overall, the year-over-year CPI increase of 5.4 percent is the highest in 13 years, driven by double-digit increases for nearly every single basic consumer item from milk, meat, bread, gas, to used cars and electricity.
The over $42 billion in profits raked in by just six banks in only three months would be enough to pay 210,000 doctors annual salaries of $200,000, or pay some 694,000 teachers an average yearly salary of $60,500, or build 140,000 homes at the cost of $300,000 each. The single quarter in profits from the banks is just $3 billion less than the $45 billion proposed in Biden’s American Jobs Plan to replace all of the lead-pipe service lines in the US.
In addition to banks posting record profits, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, reported a second-quarter profit of $1.38 billion on Wednesday, with a net income of $8.92 per share. The company reported $4.82 billion in revenue for the same period. Assets under management by the firm jumped to a record $9.49 trillion, up from $7.32 trillion the year prior. It will soon become the first company with $10 trillion under management.
By comparison, the 2019 gross domestic product of the United Kingdom was $2.82 trillion, while India’s was $2.86 trillion and Japan’s was $5.08 trillion. The only countries that had a 2019 GDP larger than the assets controlled by BlackRock were the world’s largest economies, the US and China.
Shares of BlackRock’s stock have risen by 26 percent since the beginning of the year, while in the last 12 months the stock has increased by a staggering 64 percent. Demonstrating the parasitic character of the capitalist system, BlackRock reported spending $300 million in the second quarter repurchasing company shares.
While life has never been better for Wall Street shareholders and bank executives, the latest unemployment claims report from the Department of Labor (DOL) shows that the worst economic calamity to hit the working class since the Great Depression is far from over.
The DOL reported that 360,000 new unemployment claims were filed for the week ending July 10, only 26,000 less than last week’s revised total of 386,000. In addition to state claims, over 96,000 federal claims were filed under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, which is set to expire September 6. The PUA program has been a much-needed lifeline for the increasing number of so-called gig and contract workers who would normally be ineligible for state unemployment benefits.
Overall, labor force participation is down nearly 3 percent since February 2020, with some 13.8 million people collecting some form of unemployment through June 26, roughly 11 million more than the pre-pandemic average, but less than half of the 30.59 million that were collecting at this same time last year.
While the combined 456,000 unemployment claims are more than double the pre-pandemic average, this did not stop White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki from boasting on social media Thursday that Biden’s “economic plan is working.”
As part of Biden’s bipartisan “economic plan,” on June 4 Psaki gave the White House’s blessing to right-wing Republican governors to begin ending pandemic-related unemployment benefits, passed in the misnamed American Rescue Plan, months before their slated expiration in September in what the media sickeningly described as a “bold experiment” to blackmail workers into accepting low-paying and dangerous work as the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread in the US.
While there is no talk in the White House or by the Democrats of turning off the money spigot to Wall Street, by the end of July over half of US states will have eliminated unemployment benefits and the federal Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium will expire, putting an estimated 4.2 million adults at risk of eviction in July and August according to an estimate by the Urban Institute.
Joe Biden Boasts of Economic ‘Boom’ as Dow Falls More than 900 Points
President Joe Biden defended his administration’s handling of the economy Monday even as the stock market plunged more than 900 points.
“Our economy has come a long way over the last six months,” Biden boasted. “It can’t slow down now.”
Biden spoke as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 700 points before he began speaking and continued to drop further to a 900 point collapse after he finished.
The president described economic progress in the United States under his presidency as a “boom,” despite continued widespread unemployment and labor shortages.
“We can make this boom we’re experiencing today one that will ensure that all Americans have an opportunity to share in it for years to come,” he said.
When asked about the stock market plunge, Biden noted that the market was still at record high levels.
“Look, the stock market is higher than it has been in all of history — even went down this month,” he said to reporters. “I don’t look at a stock market as a means by which to judge the economy like my predecessor did.”
Biden also defended his planned spending proposals of up to $6 trillion as “sustainable investments with appropriate financing” that would help make the country more productive by providing free child care, elder care, and paid leave to help more Americans enter the labor force.
“That won’t increase inflation. It will take the pressure off of inflation,” Biden said. “Give a boost to our workforce which leads to lower prices in years ahead.”
Biden addressed concerns about economic inflation, arguing the price increases for many goods and services across the country were “temporary.”
“I want to be clear,” he said. “My administration understands if we were to experience unchecked inflation over the long-term, that would pose a real challenge to our economy.”
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