At the same time, the ruling class has utilized
the pandemic to organize a transfer
of trillions of dollars to the financial markets
through the Federal Reserve. The total assets
on the balance sheet of the US central bank
rose this week to more than $6.7 trillion, up
from less than $4 trillion before the pandemic
hit. Every day, the Fed is spending $80 billion
to buy up assets from banks and
corporations to fuel the market rise.
As Breitbart News reported, Hawley detailed in the interview how Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World Order’ agenda and Democrats have helped to create a corporatist economy that disproportionately benefits the nation’s richest executives and donor class.
Depression USA
9 May 2020
Yesterday, the US Labor Department released its April unemployment report, revealing a level of joblessness that is without historical precedent. On the same day, the stock market rose sharply, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing up more than 450 points, or nearly two percent. Wall Street continues not only to
feast on death, as the toll from the coronavirus continues to grow, but to profit from the mass social misery that the pandemic has produced.
The Labor Department report recorded a drop of employment of 20.5 million people. Not only is this the largest monthly collapse in history, it exceeds the previous record more than 10 times over. The official unemployment rate increased from under 4 percent to 14.7 percent, far above anything seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As bad as these numbers are, they significantly underestimate the scale of the social dislocation. The April report is based on estimates calculated during the middle of last month, so they do not take into account the millions of people who have lost their jobs over the last three weeks. Some 33.5 million have filed for unemployment claims since the beginning of state and federal lockdowns seven weeks ago.
According to the report, moreover, 6.4 million additional workers have left the labor force entirely and are not counted as unemployed, bringing the labor force participation rate to its lowest level since 1973. Another 11 million workers reported that they were working part time because they could not find full-time work, an increase of 7 million people since before the pandemic.
When all factors are taken into account, something in the area of one third of the work force is out of work.
Mass joblessness is impacting nearly every sector of the working class. Employment in the leisure and hospitality sector was the most extreme, falling by nearly 50 percent, or 7.7 million people. There were 2.1 million job losses in business and professional services, 2.1 million in retail, 1.3 million in manufacturing and 1 million in construction.
Stunningly, amidst an expanding pandemic, there were 1.4 million job cuts in health care. And under conditions of an enormous social crisis, there were 650,000 job cuts in the social assistance sector.
The report notes, moreover, that mass unemployment has impacted workers of all races and genders. The unemployment rate among adult men soared to 13.0 percent, adult women to 15.5 percent, and teenagers to 31.9 percent. The rate was 14.2 percent for whites, 16.7 percent for blacks, 14.5 percent for Asians and 18.9 percent for Hispanics.
While a large number of the job cuts are categorized as “temporary,” a growing proportion are permanent, as corporations begin to implement
mass layoffs. Indeed, there were two million permanent job losses in April. This, taken by itself, would be the largest increase in unemployment in post-World War II American history.
Tens of millions of workers live paycheck to paycheck and rely on credit cards and other forms of debt to make up for the difference between their income and their expenses. Household debt rose by 1.1 percent in the quarter ending March 31, to $14.3 trillion, a new record. This does not take into account the piling on of debt by tens of millions of people as the economic crisis intensified in April and into May.
With no savings and no government assistance, workers are turning in record numbers to food banks, which are running out of basic goods. A
report by the Hamilton Project earlier this week found that 41 percent of families with children under the age of 12 are experiencing food insecurity—that is, they are unable to afford enough to eat.
The ruling class has no policy to deal with the social catastrophe. On Friday, the Trump administration declared that the jobs that have been destroyed “will be back and they’ll be back soon.” He added that “we’re in no rush” to pass a bill that would provide some assistance. The administration’s top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, said that talks over further “stimulus” measures are “in a lull right now.”
As for the Democrats, while mouthing phrases about additional aid, they are haggling over minor measures that they know will never be passed by Congress. Both parties display a combination of indifference, bewilderment and reaction in the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Their proposals in response to this crisis make the US in the era of Herbert Hoover appear almost philanthropic.
Mass social immiseration is, in fact, a deliberate policy, supported by the entire political establishment. It is aimed at creating conditions in which: 1) the ruling class can force a return to work even as the pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States; and 2) workers will be compelled to accept sharp reductions in wages and benefits and an increase in exploitation to pay for the massive handout to the super-rich.
To pressure workers to endanger their lives by returning to work, the majority of the population is being systematically starved of resources. Six weeks after the passage of the CARES Act—the massive boondoggle to the corporations adopted unanimously by the Democrats and the Republicans—the majority of Americans have not received their $1,200 “stimulus” check.
States are going bankrupt and beginning to implement brutal
austerity measures. A report from the Economic Policy Institute earlier this month found that 50 percent more people are unemployed than have even been able to file for unemployment benefits—the result of overburdened application systems and onerous restrictions. Millions who have filed for benefits have not received anything.
The approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are excluded from receiving any benefits. Millions of workers in the “gig economy,” while supposedly able to qualify for federal assistance, face impossible barriers to obtaining it. In the state of Illinois, for example, these workers will be able to start applying only on May 11, and they will not have any possibility of getting assistance for several weeks thereafter.
At the same time, the ruling class has utilized
the pandemic to organize a transfer
of trillions of dollars to the financial markets
through the Federal Reserve. The total assets
on the balance sheet of the US central bank
rose this week to more than $6.7 trillion, up
from less than $4 trillion before the pandemic
hit. Every day, the Fed is spending $80 billion
to buy up assets from banks and
corporations to fuel the market rise.
The enrichment of the oligarchy through rising share values is premised on mass impoverishment and an intensification of the exploitation of the working class. The profits and wealth of the corporate-financial elite have been saved at the expense of society.
Two agendas stand opposed to each other. One is the defense of the financial oligarchy, which means both an expansion of the pandemic, with all the horrific consequences this will bring, and a further immiseration of the population. The other agenda is that of the working class, which wants to fight the pandemic, save lives and defend the interests of the vast majority of the population.
The fight against the pandemic is not just a medical question. It is a political struggle to mobilize the working class against the Trump administration, the entire political establishment and the capitalist system it defends.
THE BUSH CRIME FAMILY HAS BEEN ASSOCIATED
WITH EVERY WAVE OF WALL STREET PLUNDER FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS.
THEY STARTED TWO WARS TO PROTECT THEIR SAUDIS
PAYMASTERS (WHO DO YOU THINK FUNDED THE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY?) AND HAVE SABOTAGED
OUR BORDERS AND HOMELAND SECURITY FOR ENDLESS HORDES OF ‘CHEAP’ LABOR.
As Breitbart News reported,
Hawley detailed in the
interview how Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World
Order’ agenda and Democrats have helped to create a corporatist economy that
disproportionately benefits the nation’s richest executives and donor class.
House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret
Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties
Audible Audiobook – Abridged
How did the Bushes, America's most powerful
political family, become gradually seduced by and entangled with their Saudi
counterparts?
Why did the Bush administration approve the secret airlift of
140 Saudis, including two dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden, just after
September 11? Did one of the Saudi royals on the planes have any advance
knowledge of the attacks?
What specifically chosen words did George W. Bush say on
national television during the 2000 election campaign to trigger Muslim
support? How did Saudi-funded Islamic groups propel Bush to victory in Florida,
thus winning him the presidency?
The answers to these questions
lie in a largely hidden relationship between the House of Bush and the House of
Saud that began in the mid-1970s. An amazing weave of money, power, and
influence, it takes place all over the globe and involves war, covert
operations, and huge deals in oil and defense industries. But, most
horrifyingly of all, the secret liasion between these two great families helped
trigger the Age of Terror and give rise to the tragedy of 9-11.
Reviewed in the United
States
Verified Purchase
This book will test you.
When you wonder aloud why Congress doesn’t get anything done, foreign wars
continue without reason and deficits are so high, most are unable to see the
cause. Unger doesn’t explain it all but he explains the relationship between
money and power better than any book I’ve read to date.
The storyline of the book takes you through how the rich Saudi ruling class and
really a group of Texan oilmen bonded over business. When you read about the
genesis of the relationship in the 70s during the first part of the book, it
looked merely like the cozy insider-only type of stuff that is common in the
fabric of corporate America and most human relationships.
But the nuance Unger uncovers with his hawk-like ability to pull minutiae from rivers
of source material outlines a darker agenda. His fact finding mission lays bare
a Saudi elite trying to nudge the levers of power in Washington. And with this
insight, Unger explains the nearly invisible pattern in which money buys powers
in America. Unger’s work uncovers so many conspicuous connections amongst so
many smart, ambitious men that coincidence is ruled out as the cause.
Complicity makes the case here as well as any outsider like Unger can.
But the circumstantial nature of this book cannot be completely swept away.
Unger has grokked the nefarious nature of this relationship but is missing the
proverbial smoking gun. There is no ipso facto ‘A funded B which lead to C
relationship’ outlined in the book. The closest we get to this as a reader is
when the Bin Laden family and other Saudi royals are ferried out of the country
while the FAA has all airspace on lockdown, a fascinating story that makes the
TSA’s security theatre we endure at every airport comically irksome.
Recommending this book is easy, but to whom I would make that recommendation is
difficult. If you sometimes watch/read the news with an open mind and wonder,
“How did we get to this place?”, then I’d put this book on your list. If you’re
knowledge of the middle east and current events is low, try paying attention to
that news first, watch for the patterns and then read this to learn the
connections. Most importantly though, any citizen trying to understand the ways
in which money buys power in the modern nation-state needs to read this book.
Josh Hawley: Abolish the World Trade Organization in Wake of
Coronavirus
Samuel
Corum/Getty Images
5 May 2020414
3:45
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) says the
World Trade Organization (WTO) should be abolished in the wake of the Chinese
coronavirus.
In an op-ed for the New York Times, Hawley credits
the WTO with helping to empower “China’s rise” while weakening American
workers:
BLOG: BUSH'S VISION OF
'NEW WORLD ORDER' HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING BUT HIS CARLYLE
GROUP/HALLIBURTON WAR MACHINE AND SAUDIS BIG OIL WHICH HIS FAMILY STARTED TWO
WARS AGAINST THE IRAQIS TO ADVANCE.
But in the early 1990s, with America’s
principal adversary gone, Western policymakers were in a messianic frame of
mind. President George H.W. Bush promised a “new world order” of “open
borders, open trade … and open minds,” a new international system based on
liberal values to bring peace to the world. He and other internationalists
wanted a new economic system to match. [Emphasis added]
…
Take the World Trade Organization. Its
mandate was to promote free trade, but the organization instead allowed some
nations to maintain trade barriers and protectionist workarounds, like China,
while preventing others from defending themselves, like the United
States. Foreign agriculture won concession after concession, while
American farmers struggled to get fair access to markets.Meanwhile, the W.T.O.
required American workers to compete against Chinese forced labor but did
next to nothing to stop Chinese theft of American intellectual property and
products. [Emphasis addd]
Under the W.T.O.’s auspices, capital and
goods moved across borders easier than before, no doubt, but so did jobs. And
too many jobs left America’s borders for elsewhere. As factories closed,
workers suffered, from small towns to the urban core. Inflation-adjusted,
working wages stagnated and upward mobility flatlined. [Emphasis added]
Enough is enough. The W.T.O. should
be abolished, and along with it, the new model global economy. The quest
to turn the world into a liberal order of democracies was always
misguided. It always depended on unsustainable American sacrifice and
force of arms. And its companion economic order has, in a similar vein,
succeeded mostly in weakening American workers and industry. [Emphasis added]
The U.S., Hawley writes, ought to “seek
new arrangements and new rules” to restore the nation’s economic sovereignty —
which includes returning to the economic system before the WTO’s creation,
where reciprocal trade “protected our national interests and the nation’s
workers.” Hawley writes:
That means returning production to this
country, securing our critical supply chains and encouraging domestic
innovation and manufacturing. It means striking trade deals that are truly
mutual and truly beneficial for America and walking away when they are not. It
means building a new network of trusted friends and partners to resist Chinese
economic imperialism.
Since the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted and China entered the World Trade Organization
(WTO), nearly five million American manufacturing jobs have
been eliminated from the American
economy — 3.4 million of which are due
to U.S. free trade with China. The mass elimination of working- and
middle-class jobs and depressed U.S. wages due to NAFTA and China’s entering
the WTO have coincided with a more than 600 percent increase in trade deficits.
Of the 3.4 million American jobs lost
due to free trade with China, about 2.6 million — or about three-fourths — were
lost in the crippled manufacturing industry. U.S. trade deficits with China
have eliminated American jobs in all 50 states.
John Binder is a
reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Bush
Center Slams Trump: We Want More Migration
3 May 202022
7:11
The
economics director at President George W. Bush’s advocacy center slammed
President Donald Trump’s popular, pro-American immigration policy.
The May 1 slam came just before Bush posted a May 2 video urging
national unity in the coronavirus crash that has pushed more than 25 million
Americans out of jobs.
“The most important thing to
remember in this is that we don’t want [Trump’s] temporary policy to become
permanent immigration policy,” economic director Laura Collins said a video
posted on the center’s Twitter account. She continued:
We know immigrants are good for the economy. We know they’re
good for our culture. We know they’re in this fight with us together, and we’re
going to meet them working with us side by side in any recovery after the
pandemic is over.
Trump’s April 22 immigration
policy says the
economic needs of American employees are more important than the immigration
preferences of foreigners. His policy temporarily trims the annual inflow of
legal immigrants and directs agencies to review visa worker programs in 30
days.
Polls show the
public — including recent immigrants — is overwhelmingly aligned with Trump in prioritizing
jobs for Americans over welcomes for legal immigrants.
The visa worker programs targeted by
Trump are extremely important to the Fortune 500. In response, the companies’
lobbyists and progressives allies have quickly launched a hard-nosed lobbying campaign and a soft-focus PR campaign to
protect the programs and mass migration.
Congress now accepts 1 million legal immigrants per year.
It also allows companies to keep roughly 2 million cheap and
complaint foreign visa-workers in U.S. jobs. The 2 million workforce includes
roughly 1.5 million foreign white-collar visa workers, plus roughly 400,000
foreign blue-collar guest workers, in professional or seasonal jobs needed by
roughly 26 million unemployed Americans.
Collins touted the corporate PR campaign, dubbed #AllofUs, in
her video slamming Trump’s pro-employee policy.
“The stated objectives of this executive order were to preserve
medical supplies in a pandemic for American immigrants already here and to
preserve job openings in any recovery for American workers that can be first in
line,” Collins said her video posted May 1.
She continued:
Unfortunately, this executive order is not going to accomplish
either of those objectives.
First of all, the virus affects all of us equally. It doesn’t
care who we are, or where we’re from. Current travel restrictions and
quarantine protocols in place, protect us from viral spread regardless of where
we’re from. And so there’s not really a need to prevent more people from coming
in in terms of slowing down viral spread. We know the virus is here and it’s
spreading. And what we’re doing is working.
However, Collins’ main focus is the economic worry that Trump’s
reform may permanently reduce the unending inflow of foreign workers,
consumers, and renters preferred by CEOs and investors. She said:
We know immigrants are good for the economy. We know immigrants
don’t compete with native-born Americans for jobs. And we know that before the
pandemic, there were millions of unfilled jobs in the United States.
If we assume that in any recovery, all those jobs come back,
every American that wants a job will have the ability to fill the jobs that
were there. We’re still going to have shortages and we’re going to need
immigrants there to help fill those jobs.
We simply don’t have a labor force at full employment, big
enough to fill all the jobs in the economy.
Immigrants — like the birth of Americans’ children — help grow
the economy. They expand the labor force, boost retail sales, spike real estate
values, fuel the stock market, and expand the number of companies. A growing
economy can be good for all — but it is especially good for wealthy people who
can invest in company stocks.
Yet every annual wave of immigrants also causes much economic
harm to the roughly 220 million Americans (and recent legal immigrants) who
work for a living, or who are educating themselves to take jobs in a few years.
Every new wave of legal immigrants
and illegal migrants competes for existing jobs and force down Americans’
wages. The arrivals also expand poverty, reduce pressure on investors to buy productivity-boosting machines, drive up the price of good housing, and add congestion to K-12
schools and universities.
Over the last 30 years, since George Bush’s father signed a 1990 bill roughly doubling
immigration, the government’s massive inflow of immigrants has kept
Americans wages almost flat (until 2018) and so has turbocharged the U.S. stock
market.
The establishment’s immigration policy has worked with free
trade to shift much wealth from middle-class employees and the heartland states
towards the stock market and the major coastal cities.
Trump was elected in 2016 to help reverse the establishment’s
economic policy.
Since 2017, he has mostly stopped illegal migration, and
he pushed wages up for blue-collars in 2018 and 2019. He has also trimmed legal
immigration, and his April 22 policy sets the stage for incremental,
significant reductions in the visa worker programs, such as the little-known
B-1 and OPT visa programs.
Business lobbies strongly oppose reductions in immigration and
visa workers.
Collins’ pro-migration views reflect George W. Bush’s
pro-business leaning and his 2001 push to allow U.S. employers to bypass Americans
and instead hire any willing workers from anywhere on the globe. The 2001 Twin
Towers attack stopped Bush’s “Any Willing Worker” plan.
Collins insisted, “We know immigrants don’t compete with
native-born Americans for jobs.”
But the Center for Immigration
Studies reported in August 2018:
If immigrants “do jobs that Americans won’t do”, we should be
able to identify occupations in which the workers are nearly all foreign-born.
However, among the 474 separate occupations defined by the Department of
Commerce, we find only a handful of majority-immigrant occupations, and none
completely dominated by immigrants (legal or illegal). Furthermore, in none of
the 474 occupations do illegal immigrants constitute a majority of workers.
For example, companies provide the reward of green cards to
roughly 50,000 foreign visa-workers each year after those foreign workers have
taken technology jobs from Americans via the H-1B and other visa programs.
Exclusive–Jeff Sessions: Why Bring Foreign Workers to U.S. When
30,000,000 Americans Are Jobless?
12,
4 May 20204,746
3:07
United
States Senate candidate Jeff Sessions says there is no shortage of American
labor, calling out lawmakers and their “corporate friends” for supporting a
continued flow of foreign workers to the U.S. to take jobs in the midst of mass
unemployment.
In an
exclusive interview with Alexander Marlow on SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Sessions
said it is critical that lawmakers defend the interests of unemployed Americans
who have been laid off due to forced business closures spurred by the Chinese
coronavirus crisis.
LISTEN:
“We have 30
million unemployed … We don’t have jobs in the United States,” Sessions said.
“There are no jobs now. We’ll lay off more people this week then we did last
week.”
“Why would
we bring in foreign workers to take jobs when we don’t have jobs for the
American people,” Sessions asked. “What theory is it that they’re operating
under when they try to justify such a policy position? It’s certainly not in
the interest of the American people. It’s in the interest of their corporate
friends and some ideology that they adhere to … so I do think that it’s time
for this Congress to deliver on its promises that the president made in the
campaign.”
Sessions
said more Republican lawmakers must be stepping up to the plate to take on
China, holding the communist regime accountable for wrecking the U.S. economy.
A select committee in the House and Senate, Sessions said, ought to be formed
to determine the truth behind China’s role in spreading the coronavirus to the
world.
“Where are
the rest of the Republicans? Where are they? I mean this is a big issue,”
Sessions said. “This party owes it to the American people to defend our
interests — American interests. And I don’t think there’s been near enough
action.”
“I would
think the first thing we need to do is to rally the people who understand the
significance of this and have what I call for, is a select committee to study
this pandemic and how it started,” Sessions continued. “We did that after the
attack on Pearl Harbor … where House and Senate appoint select members of
congress … and the charge is what did China know and what did they do, when did
they act on it or not, and did they lie about it? The world needs to know.”
As Breitbart
has reported, existing U.S. legal immigration law
greatly benefits China. Visa programs such as the EB-5 visa for wealthy foreign investors, the F-1 student visa, and J-1
visas allow about 180,000 Chinese nationals to enter the country every year
in addition to the 60,000 to 70,000 Chinese nationals who secure green cards
annually.
There are
nearly 500,000 Chinese students in the U.S. in
any given year — more than any other nation — taking seats in university
classrooms and looking to eventually obtain Optional Practical Training (OPT)
authorization to take entry-level jobs in white-collar professions.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart
News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Josh Hawley: GOP Must Defend
Middle Class Americans Against ‘Concentrated Corporate Power,’ Tech
Billionaires
JOHN BINDER
The
Republican Party must defend America’s working and middle class against
“concentrated corporate power” and the monopolization of entire sectors of the
United States’ economy, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) says.
In an interview on The Realignment podcast,
Hawley said that “long gone are the days where” American workers can depend on
big business to look out for their needs and the needs of their communities.
Instead, Hawley explained that increasing
“concentrated corporate power” of whole sectors of the American economy —
specifically among Silicon Valley’s giant tech conglomerates — is at the
expense of working and middle class Americans.
“One of the things Republicans need
to recover today is a defense of an open, free-market, of a fair healthy
competing market and the length between that and Democratic citizenship,”
Hawley said, and continued:
At the end of the day, we are trying
to support and sustain here a great democracy. We’re not trying to make a
select group of people rich. They’ve already done that. The tech billionaires
are already billionaires, they don’t need any more help from government. I’m
not interested in trying to help them further. I’m interested in trying to help
sustain the great middle of this country that makes our democracy run and
that’s the most important challenge of this day.
“You have these businesses who for
years now have said ‘Well, we’re based in the United States, but we’re not
actually an American company, we’re a global company,'” Hawley said. “And you
know, what has driven profits for some of our biggest multinational
corporations? It’s been … moving jobs overseas where it’s cheaper … moving your
profits out of this country so you don’t have to pay any taxes.”
“I think that we have here at the
same time that our economy has become more concentrated, we have bigger and
bigger corporations that control more and more of our key sectors, those same
corporations see themselves as less and less American and frankly they are less
committed to American workers and American communities,” Hawley continued.
“That’s turned out to be a problem which is one of the reasons we need to
restore good, healthy, robust competition in this country that’s going to push
up wages, that’s going to bring jobs back to the middle parts of this country,
and most importantly, to the middle and working class of this country.”
While multinational corporations
monopolize industries, Hawley said the GOP must defend working and middle class
Americans and that big business interests should not come before the needs of
American communities:
A free market is one where you can
enter it, where there are new ideas, and also by the way, where people can
start a small family business, you shouldn’t have to be gigantic in order to
succeed in this country. Most people don’t want to start a tech
company. [Americans] maybe want to work in their family’s business, which
may be some corner shop in a small town … they want to be able to make a
living and then give that to their kids or give their kids an option to do
that. [Emphasis added]
The problem with corporate
concentration is that it tends to kill all of that. The worst thing about
corporate concentration is that it inevitably believes to a partnership with big
government. Big business and big government always get together, always.
And that is exactly what has happened now with the tech sector, for instance,
and arguably many other sectors where you have this alliance between big
government and big business … whatever you call it, it’s a problem and it’s
something we need to address. [Emphasis added]
Hawley blasted the free
trade-at-all-costs doctrine that has dominated the Republican and Democrat
Party establishments for decades, crediting the globalist economic model with
hollowing “out entire industries, entire supply chains” and sending them to
China, among other countries.
“The thing is in this country is
that not only do we not make very much stuff anymore, we don’t even make the
machines that make the stuff,” Hawley said. “The entire supply chain up and
down has gone overseas, and a lot of it to China, and this is a result of
policies over some decades now.”
As Breitbart News reported,
Hawley detailed in the
interview how Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World
Order’ agenda and Democrats have helped to create a corporatist economy that
disproportionately benefits the nation’s richest executives and donor class.
The billionaire class, the top 0.01
percent of earners, has enjoyed more than 15 times as much
wage growth as the bottom 90 percent since 1979. That economy has been
reinforced with federal rules that largely benefits the wealthiest of
wealthiest earners. A study released last month
revealed that the richest Americans are, in fact, paying a lower tax rate than
all other Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for
Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.