Category Archives: State Crime

Nationwide Uprising Against Failed State Triggered By Police Killings

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By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Source: CounterCurrents.org

The nationwide uprising sparked by the murder of George Floyd and other recent racially-motivated events is a response to the bi-partisan failed state in which we live. It comes in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic and the largest economic collapse in the US in more than a century. These three crises have disproportionately impacted people of color and added to longterm racial inequality and injustice.

Black Lives Matter erupted six years ago when a police officer shot and killed Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. Since that time, police have murdered approximately 1,100 people every year. The response of the government at all levels to the crisis of police killings has been virtually nonexistent. While people seek to avenge the death of George Floyd, the problems are much deeper and the changes needed are much broader.

The Root Of The Problem Is A Failed State

During the COVID19 pandemic, millionaires and billionaires have been bailed out by the government with trillions of dollars while working people were given a pittance of $1,200 per person and a short term increase in unemployment benefits for the more than 40 million people who have lost their jobs. Many workers who provide essential services have had to continue to work putting themselves and their communities at risk.

Urgently needed healthcare is out of reach for millions with no or skimpy health insurance resulting in people dying at home or not going to the hospital until their illness became serious. For this and other reasons, COVID19 is disproportionately impacting communities of color.

Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report puts the mass revolt in the context of the long history of white supremacy that has existed since Africans were brought to the United States. Chattel slavery was enforced by the earliest form of policing, with the first formal slave patrol created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. After the Civil War and a brief period of Reconstruction where African people could participate in civic life, Jim Crow followed with white racists, often allied with Southern police, inflicting terrorism against the Black population through lynchings and other means. Black people were arrested for laws like vagrancy and then punished by being forced to work picking cotton or other jobs. This new form of slavery continues as inmates are forced to work for virtually no pay in prisons, are leased out to dangerous jobs like meat processing, or are used as scabs.

George Floyd’s murder enraged people who have seen too many deaths as a result of police violence. The murder in broad daylight with cameras filming and scores of witnesses showed the impunity of police who are used to not being held accountable for their violence. During the uprising, police have used extreme violence and targeted people with cameras and the media even saying they were the problem.

The root of the problem is a failed state that does not represent the people and has a deep history of racism and inequality that are being magnified by the current crises. The failure to respond to these crises is resulting in an ungovernable country as the social contract has been broken.

Lawlessness among the wealth class, corruption of politicians by campaigns financed by the wealthiest with payoffs to their children and relatives has set the stage for no respect for the law. As one protester exclaimed, “Don’t talk to us about looting, you are the looters. You have been looting from black people. You looted from the Native Americans. Don’t talk to us about violence, you taught us violence.”

The Failed State Cannot Reform Itself

George Floyd’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” echoed the same words of Eric Garner, who was killed six years ago by a New York police officer. Although there were protests then, not much has changed. The system failed to respond.

Failure starts at the top. There have been years of inaction at all levels of government. The New York Times reports “The administration has largely dismantled police oversight efforts, curbing the use of federal consent decrees to overhaul local police departments. Mr. Barr has said that communities that criticize law enforcement may not deserve police protection, and Mr. Trump has encouraged officers not to be ‘too nice’ in handling suspects.”

Trump poured gasoline on the current fire with incendiary rhetoric promising ‘looting leads to shooting’ echoing racists of the past and promising to send in the US military if Democrats can’t stop the uprising. Trump has put the military on alert to deploy to civilian protests. He maintains power by dividing people praising armed protesters who demanded reopening the economy despite the pandemic and calling unarmed protesters against police violence “thugs”.

On Friday, the White House locked down on security alert because of protests. Trump responded by calling for MAGA protesters to come to the White House. They did not come but protests at the White House have continued to increase.

Both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for the current rebellion. Joe Biden has described himself as a ‘law and order’ Democrat from the beginning of his career. He was the primary architect of the federal mass incarceration of Black people and helped add hundreds of thousands of police with militarized equipment to urban communities. He courts police unions that defend killer cops. And Biden opposed the integration of schools.

The failure of leadership continues at the state and local levels with politicians closely tied to the Fraternal Order of Police, which aggressively defends police who kill civilians. Every city can point to a series of police killings with no prosecutions or acquittals and few convictions. Minneapolis is a city with a long history of race-based police violence. Indeed, violence against Indigenous peoples led to the formation of the American Indian Movement.  Tne Intercept summarizes some of the cases:

  • In 2015, the police killed Jamar Clark a  24-year-old black man. Protests lasted two weeks but led to no prosecution.
  • In 2016, Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black motorist, was killed in a Minneapolis suburb. More than two weeks of protest followed and two years later the officer was acquitted.
  • In 2017, Justine Ruszczyk, a 40-year-old white woman, approached a Minneapolis police car to report a sexual assault. The police officer, Mohamed Noor, who shot and killed her was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and her family was awarded a record $20 million settlement.
  • In 2018, body camera footage showed Minneapolis police chasing Thurman Blevins, a 31-year-old black man, and shooting him to death. Prosecutors refused to file charges against the officers who killed Blevins.

Protests have led to some changes but they haven’t solved the problem. Money has been spent on body cameras, which have rarely had any impact. Similarly, training on de-escalation and racial sensitivity has made little difference.

Over the last six years, cities have increased funding for police departments at the expense of health, education, and other underfunded urban programs. Rather than providing people with necessities, the government has relied on controlling neglected communities with an occupying police force. Some of the police are even trained by the Israeli occupiers.

Even in the midst of a pandemic and economic collapse, the government cannot give people access to healthcare, protect their jobs, suspend their rents or control food prices. As Rosa Miriam Elizalde writes in her comparison of the United States to Cuba, the difference is a matter of values. The United States government spends more than 60 percent of the discretionary budget on weapons and war. It should be no surprise that the government acted more quickly to suppress people with militarized police, thousands of National Guard troops, and curfews than it did to protect their lives when the pandemic and recession started.

Reform Is Not Enough: Defund The Police, Give Communities Control, Build Alternatives To Police

The country must look more deeply at policing. Retired police major, Neill Franklin, the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership told the Intercept, “We need a new paradigm of policing in the United States. It needs to be completely dismantled and reconstructed, not changing a policy here or there.”

The Minneapolis group, Reclaim the Block, wrote a statement calling on the city council to defund the police department. Last week, they made four demands of their city council:

  1. Never again vote to increase police funding.
  2. Propose and vote for a $45 million cut from MPD’s budget as the city responds to projected COVID19 shortfalls.
  3. Protect and expand current investment in community-led health and safety strategies.
  4. Do everything in their power to compel MPD and all law enforcement agencies to immediately cease enacting violence on community members.

This is an agenda that makes sense for cities across the country. A growing movement demands the defunding of police departments. It is evident that the way to reduce police violence is to fund alternative non-law enforcement approaches to conflict resolution, safety strategies, and mental health as well as investing in neglected communities.

Another growing movement calls for democratic community control of the police where communities elect a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC). The critical difference between this and Civilian Police Boards is that the Accountability Council is democratically elected not appointed by the police chief or politicians who are allied with the police. Neill Franklin urges a national database of officers terminated for misconduct so they will not be hired by other police departments.

The New York Times reports that “in 2012, the civilian board in Minneapolis was replaced by an agency called the Office of Police Conduct Review. Since then, more than 2,600 misconduct complaints have been filed by members of the public, but only 12 have resulted in an officer being disciplined.”  The most severe censure was only a 40-hour suspension. Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd, has at least 17 misconduct complaints, none of which derailed his career, in nearly two decades with the Minneapolis Police Department.

Chauvin was involved in the fatal shooting in October 2006 when Senator Klobuchar was Minneapolis’ district attorney. Rather than prosecuting Chauvin, she sent the case to a grand jury that declined to indict Chauvin. In 2011, Chauvin was involved in a high-profile shooting of a Native American. He was placed on administrative leave but was reinstated to the force when no charges were brought. If democratic community control of the police were in place, it is highly likely Chauvin would have been removed as a police officer and George Floyd would still be alive.

Support for change is growing. Bus drivers refused to transport arrested protesters for the police in Minneapolis and New York. Payday Report wrote transit union leaders nationwide are instructing members not to cooperate with police in arresting protesters. And Universities are dropping their contracts with the Minneapolis Police Department.

Protests continue nationwide. Thus far escalating police violence and the use of the National Guard has failed to stop them. The government may use the military, although by law there are restrictions on that. There will be efforts to pacify the protests by political leaders and non-profits who will try to take over the leadership. These must be rejected.

To achieve the changes we need, people must stay in the streets and connect the problems we face to the demand for systemic changes. We will need to support each other as many are doing by distributing food and providing medical care, jail support and legal representation. We urge people to meet in assemblies to discuss what their goals are, their vision of how communities could be organized differently and what actions they can take.  We need to build confidence in each other that we can work together for the future we want. That is how we will get there.

 

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are directors of Popular Resistance

The Giant Virus in the Room: Corporate Vaccine Makers Need More Pandemics, to Grow

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By Dady Chery

Source: News Junkie Post

As drug makers prepare to make a killing on supposed vaccines against COVID-19, it is important, particularly for those who consider vaccines to be a wise investment today, or those whose retirement savings might get invested in such vaccines without their knowledge, to reflect on the fact that corporations are themselves viruses that can only make money for their investors by growing. The way they will grow is by making more vaccines for yet more pandemics. The new pandemics might come of their own accord, or they might get a little nudge.

A road map from those in the shadows

The public has lately been assaulted with relentless announcements about this or that supposed vaccine going into phase I or II clinical trial and the promise that vaccines — if we would only let enough different ones get developed sufficiently rapidly and without oversight — will free us from masks and social distancing. According to an American Enterprise Institute “road map” by people that include former FDA commissioners Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan, social distancing restrictions will only be lifted when tools to mitigate the risk of disease – including a vaccine — become available. There you have it. If you should ever want to stop cowering with a mask on your face, shake hands with a new acquaintance, dance with friends and strangers, blow a kiss or flirt more outrageously with somebody, you’ll need to get a vaccination license. The people who have mandated this aren’t even currently in government. They are private individuals who have retreated to think tanks from which to issue their decrees.

The global threat to health isn’t a coronavirus

The public health departments of cities, states, or countries have not been those to call for vaccines. Instead, global public health appears to have been hijacked by a supposed non-profit foundation called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), with the Orwellian motto, “New vaccines for a safer world.” One might well ask: “safer for whom?” CEPI was hatched in a one-hour discussion on the sidelines of Davos 2016 between Bill Gates, Wellcome Trust Foundation Director Jeremy Farrar, the CEOs of six major vaccine manufacturers (Glaxo Smith Kline, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, Takeda, and Pfizer), the Prime Minister of Norway, and supposedly 15 other individuals.

Representatives of Germany, India, and Japan are supposed to have attended that meeting, although Prime Minister Angela Merkel had declined the invitation that year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not there, nor was any Japanese head of state. The goal of this cabal, in which elected heads of states are obviously subordinate to Bill Gates and Big Pharma, is not merely to make vaccines and lots of money, but also to deregulate vaccine manufacture on a global scale and control the world by controlling global public health. In this scenario, the United Nations’ WHO, which receives 75 percent of its funds from big pharmaceutical companies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is merely the arm of CEPI that will tie vaccine adoption by developing countries to various kinds of Western aid. The WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanon, began to enjoy the Gates Foundation’s generosity when he was a Minister of Health in Ethiopia who embraced the foundation’s agenda. The WHO Assistant Director General, Bruce Aylward, who may be the real power in the organization, previously worked for Gates’ supposed polio eradication program. Make no mistake: CEPI intends to be to global health what the WTO is to global trade.

The agenda is military, and it is global

CEPI has already raised over $750 M: a sum that commands a lot of influence. It is well entwined with the militaries of various countries. For example CEPI’s CEO, Richard Hatchett, was the Director for Biodefense Policy on the White House Homeland Security Council in 2005-2006, Associate Director for Radiation Countermeasures Research and Emergency Preparedness at NIAID in 2005-2011; and Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) in 2011-2016. BARDA is a division of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. Several CEPI-financed vaccine projects enjoy support from BARDA, the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), or the U.S. Military HIV Research Program.

In January 2020, CEPI announced that it would finance three consortiums to develop vaccines against COVID-19. Its alliance with these consortiums, however, predates this announcement in several cases. For example, as far back as April 2018, CEPI provided $56 M to a company called Inovio to get vaccine candidates against the SARS-Cov-2 relative, MERS-CoV, to Phase II trials; Inovio’s main collaborator is the Chinese company, Beijing Advaccine Technology. In January 2019, CEPI provided $10.6 M to a consortium involving the University of Queensland and public/private sector partners in Australia, the US, and Asia to develop a new approach called “molecular clamp” for designing vaccines. In Dec 2019, CEPI gave $8.4 M to Imperial College London, UK, to test an RNA vaccine in animals and also get it to Phase II trials. The researchers at Imperial College boast about the fact that they began to test their vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 in animals in February 2020! Recall that the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence only became known on January 10, 2020. In this context, it is also interesting that Imperial College is the home of the fear mongering and disgraced Neil Ferguson, with the too pretty and too married social merging mistress.

The FDA’s vaccine fast track

The road to FDA approval has been smoothed for CEPI’s partners and, unsurprisingly, they have been first to move their putative vaccines to clinical trials. As a rule, the FDA has put the projects of CEPI’s pet companies on a “fast-track” designation, which allows them to be green-lighted to the next phase before they have even completed the preceding one. Consider for example the biotechnology company, Moderna. It has received an undefined sum from CEPI, plus around $483 M from BARDA, as well as funds from DARPA. The appeal of this company to pencil and paper want-to-be-scientists, like Bill Gates and various military types, is that its approach, or “platform,” for vaccine manufacturing could potentially be used to make many other vaccines. But this approach is also potentially dangerous, because it involves the introduction of viral mRNA into cells, and this alone might start an adverse immune reaction. The viral mRNA is then supposed to direct production of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on the surface of the vaccinated person’s cells for some undefined period of time. This kind of vaccine was not even tested in animals before Moderna was allowed to begin its phase I trial in mid-March with 45 healthy human volunteers. Even more extraordinary, six weeks later the company filed for permission to go on to a phase II trial with 600 volunteers. Its application was approved, even though the phase I trial requires months of follow up that are not yet done. The company’s stock has skyrocketed as it has made one promise after another of accelerated schedules and massive scale up of its vaccine production.

Inovio is on a similar trajectory. The phase I trials on its putative SARS-CoV-2 vaccine started on April 3. The company is injecting people with milligram amounts of DNA and then zapping them with a proprietary device, to get the DNA into their cells. It has not defined how the DNA carrying the spike protein information will be guided to the nucleus. If the DNA stays elsewhere in the cells, where it does not belong, it might be mistaken for a virus and start an adverse immune response. If it goes to the nucleus, it may integrate into the cells’ DNA in random places, potentially causing cancers.

The mainstream takes dictation

The mainstream media, which is as lazy as it is scientifically illiterate, has contented itself with the republication of gee-whiz, oh-wow press releases, and the publication of reports sometimes explicitly written by the vaccine manufacturers or their partner foundations. Such reports also appear, not as full-length peer-reviewed articles, but as short commentaries in the summary and editorial pages of serious science journals like Science and Nature. The association of those planted reports with prestigious journals gives them, not only a veneer of credibility but also an automatic amplification by popular science magazines. The reports have generally focused on the marvelous promise of the supposed vaccines and their inevitable manufacture in massive quantities. In fact, 18 years after the original SARS-CoV, which is the closest relative of the COVID-19 agent, no vaccine has successfully been developed against that virus, and many of these so-called new vaccine efforts are actually recycled failed SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV projects.

The real state of knowledge about the immune system

What the news media do not say, and probably could not say with any confidence, is that the mammalian immune system is still poorly understood. Had most media people attended a BIO101 class, there would be great skepticism in the news about the sudden proliferation of newfangled vaccines and the massive human experiment being organized to test them.

The following is a quote from a scholarly review published in Nature Immunology in December 2014:

“The only currently licensed and generally available vaccines against respiratory viruses are for influenza virus, and even these are suboptimal. The paucity of vaccines is due in part to the only limited understanding of immune responses that can provide protection against respiratory viral infection: in many cases, even fundamental correlates of protection have yet to be accurately defined, and the most appropriate antigens to which vaccines should be targeted remain unknown. Animal models are generally imperfect guides to human disease, and the populations at highest risk of severe infections (i.e., young children and elderly adults) are the most difficult to study. In addition, vaccines are often less effective in those with immature or senescent immune systems.”

The next quote is from a commentary on a peer-reviewed article published on May 13, 2020 in Nature 581: 316.

“This discovery elevates TASL to membership of an exclusive circle of… adaptor proteins… of which the other members are TRIF, MAVS, and STING. These four proteins together control the type I interferon response induced by nucleic-acid sensing, a picture that has now been completed with the discovery of TASL as the missing… adaptor of TLR7, TLR8 and TLR9 signaling.”

My translation: only this week, one of the four major players in the early human immune response was discovered! It is a newly characterized protein called TASL that becomes activated when an infected cell senses the presence of genetic material from a virus in a cellular compartment where it should not be. This helps to explain an important part of the immune response that until now has baffled scientists.

The early fight against an infection: a situation that can escalate

A reasonable analogy to a viral infection might be a Columbine-like threat, where a band of murderous fascists take over a high school. Let us say, for good measure, that this particular group wears a specific and recognizable kind of uniform and tattoo. The high school itself is automatically set up to detect the invasion and to call 911. Cells in the lung do the equivalent with proteins called Toll Like Receptors (TLR). These proteins sound the alarm when they recognize genetic material, like DNA or viral RNA, in compartments outside of the nucleus, where it is not supposed to be: a situation that indicates presence of a pathogen. In the cells, some of these compartments are called endosomes or endolysosomes. In our high school, the first responders would be the local police. In the lungs, which do contain their own local immune cells, this would be called the interferon or antiviral response. If this response is successful, as it often is in healthy people, nothing more needs to be done: end of story.

But suppose some of the fascists manage to evade the police and take over several other schools in the same area. The police might then call in SWAT teams with snipers, machine guns, and tear gas grenades; or even police units with bomb robots. The innate, or local, immune system has the equivalent of all of these. It involves SOS signals to the adaptor proteins noted in the above quotation, and the permission from each one for the next step in the escalation. The bomb robots in this case, would be analogous to an inflammation response that destroys not only the viruses but also much of the lung. Obviously, you would want to exhaust every option before using bomb robots in schools that have a few crazies and a lot of students. But suppose the crazies manage to block the police communication to the SWAT teams, then what do you do? Coronaviruses, including the agent of COVID-19, i.e. SARS-CoV-2, can achieve an analogous block of communication during exceptionally heavy initial infections, or infections of the elderly and people with other medical conditions like diabetes, respiratory problems, or cardiovascular disease. What I have just described, with a minimum of immunology jargon, is called the initial innate immune response. In this context, innate means local, i.e. in the lungs.

Vaccines are not the answer

The serum antibodies we all know about are produced as part of a later response, called the adaptive immune response. It happens in those who manage to keep intact and functional a sophisticated route of communication during the attack. The resulting counterattack is not only broad but also specifically tailored to neutralize the invading virus. Furthermore, we maintain a memory of the response. This would be the equivalent of an FBI database with detailed descriptions of the crazies and their tattoos so that they might immediately be recognized, should they appear again in months to years. The only problem is: they can change uniforms and tattoos. All vaccines are based on inducing this later response, which is supposed to prime an individual to resist an attack. But vaccines, however sophisticated the supposed approach or platform, are almost always designed to recognize only a single feature of the invading pathogen. As if one learns to recognize a tattoo on a fascist and nothing more. But suppose the tattoo is removed or changed? In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the target is the spike protein, or sometimes a piece of it. It so happens that the spike protein is also the most variable part of the virus.

Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of disease: A bon entendeur, salut!

A massive human experiment is underway to test potential vaccines. Nearly everything that can be put into a human will be injected into those volunteers who are more terrified of COVID-19 than the vaccine makers or the military. Their menu will include: the inactivated SARS-CoV-2; mutated, or attenuated, versions of SARS-CoV-2 (intra-nasally); SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein; pieces of the spike protein, large and small; harmless bacteria that have been redesigned to make the spike protein; harmless viruses that have been redesigned to make the spike protein; virus-like particles that can present the spike protein on their surface; circular DNA that codes for the spike protein; linear DNA that codes for the spike protein or part of it; mRNA that codes for the spike protein; modified mRNAs; and even an RNA that codes for the spike protein as well as another protein that will make more of the RNA and spike protein, ad infinitum. As a rule, the manufacturers have not even disclosed which exact version of the spike protein they plan to use for the vaccination attempts. Indeed, some companies have disclosed nothing but their intent to conduct clinical trials.

One possible result of attempted vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2 that should give anyone pause is an Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) of disease. In other words, it is possible that attempted vaccinations might prime a previously healthy person for a life-threatening inflammation response on the next encounter with a coronavirus. So far, the only company that reports even having checked for ADE is Sinovac Biotech, a Chinese company that is collaborating with a US partner on an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. The phenomenon of ADE is well established as a possible outcome of attempted vaccination against viruses. A famous instance was a late 1960s vaccine trial in children using inactivated Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which resulted, not only in a failure to protect but also in 2 deaths, and a severe respiratory disease in 80 percent of the children that required hospitalization on their subsequent exposure to the virus. ADE has been observed in mice and other animals supposedly immunized against SARS-CoV with an inactivated virus. Recall that SARS-CoV is the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, compared to the supposedly vaccinated people, it is highly possible that the unvaccinated or never previously exposed individuals will fare better in a subsequent coronavirus outbreak.

Hydroxychloroquine bites back

The new adaptor protein, called TASL, described for the first time this week, was discovered to bind to another protein called Solute Carrier 15A4 (SLC15A4). SLC15A4 has long been known to be necessary for lupus and other autoimmune diseases. Now we know that the reason for this is probably because the TASL-SLC15A4 interaction is the path that leads to inflammation. Remember the robot-bomb option in the previous section? That’s the one! As it happens, the reason hydroxychoroquine (HC) has worked for decades against lupus disease is because HC is known to interfere with inflammation, but the details were unknown. SLC15A4 is also important for maintaining the acidity of the endosome, which HC is known to de-acidify to some degree. The antibiotic azithromycin has also been reported to reduce the acidity of endosomes, thus compounding this effect of HC. As a result, when the virus goes to the endosome to develop, it finds that this compartment is insufficiently acidic; it gets stuck there and is ultimately destroyed. So hydroxychloroquine, an inexpensive and long-used drug, counters coronavirus infections in two crucial and quite general ways: it damages the virus and also keeps the immune response from going dangerously overboard. Given the connection of SLC15A4 to lupus disease, it is astonishing that the authors of the new paper did not test HC’s effect on their system containing TASL. But much is open to revision when one wants to publish in Nature. That piece of the puzzle will surely materialize. But timing is everything, and it’s no wonder that the vaccine makers are in such a rush.

For the record

The biggest populations of human subjects for vaccine trials have in the past been brown and black children from countries like India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mexico, and Haiti. The scale of the current project is so massive, however, that even the citizens of Western countries must be preyed upon. In this regard, it certainly helps to keep everyone terrified. The biggest market for vaccines used to be the US Army, but that may change. Besides, a cowed and sick general public should be far more manageable, as climate change events exacerbate stressors like displacement and hunger. The greater the number of epidemics and vaccine-associated diseases, the greater the boon will be for pharmaceutical companies, and the faster they will grow. I write for the record. Those of you who participate in this enterprise or invest in it can no longer say that you did not know what was being done. The rest of you on the sidelines can still change this dystopian future, but the window of opportunity is narrowing fast.

Editor’s Notes: Dr. Dady Chery is an Associate Professor of Biology, Co-Editor-In-Chief of News Junkie Post, and the author of We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation.  

 

From Soft to Hard Fascism: “Get In Your House Right Now!”

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By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Another Day in the Empire

There can no longer be any doubt—America is now a full-blown fascist state. In the past, authoritarian fascism was kept reserved in the shadows, largely out of the public eye, but in a remarkably short period of time it has emerged from the darkness to show its fangs and snarl menacingly at the people, many of them cowed and dutifully following irrational orders from on high.

As the following video demonstrates, state violence is not directed exclusively at rioters and Antifa goons pretending to be anarchists (most would be unable to define the term) as they loot, burn, and attack the media and innocent bystanders. Violence is used to frighten and intimidate the real enemies of the state—the American people, or those who casually and defy the COVID lockdown and others peacefully protesting murder at the hand of a psychopathic cop.

Fortunately, the woman in the video was not seriously injured. She wasn’t looting Target or burning down Walmart. The woman made the mistake of venturing out on the porch of her home, her private property, and for this crime, she was shot with a paintball by a member of a “state militia” (now federalized).

The social fabric is coming apart at the seams. First mandatory lockdowns, state-imposed impoverishment, followed by an unfolding Greatest Depression as a result of a shutdown economy, and now social unrest, violence, theft, and arson in two dozen large cities across the country.

If this degree of violence and destruction is possible centered around the death of a single man, imagine what will happen when millions of people are in desperate straits, unemployed, many evicted, and homeless. It will not be simply police stations that go up in flames. It will be statehouses.   

However, the American people have demonstrated repeatedly they are gullible and easily steered into dead-end diversions pumped up and hyped 24/7 by a corporate propaganda media. The Trump hatefest and political polarization—worse than any in recent memory—will no doubt go by the wayside as millions of Americans face the “new normal” envisioned by their masters—a standard of living in rapid freefall, soon to crash on the rocks. None of this is happenstance or coincidental.

Most Americans may not have protested the endless wars and criminal economic scams of the ruling elite (mostly due to decades of incessant propaganda), but they will raise their voices and fists when they are unemployed for months on end, evicted from homes and apartments, have their cars repossessed, and are confronted with hunger, want, and homelessness.

In order to enforce the latest manifestation of psychopathic neoliberalism and predatory crony capitalism, the state will depend on steroid-headed soldiers and cops to frighten and intimidate the people.

It may be paintballs today, but tomorrow it might be live ammo.

Re-Opening the Economy Won’t Fix What’s Broken

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Re-opening a fragile, brittle, bankrupt, hopelessly perverse and corrupt “normal” won’t fix what’s broken.

The stock market is in a frenzy of euphoria at the re-opening of the economy. Too bad the re-opening won’t fix what’s broken. As I’ve been noting recently, the real problem is the systemic fragility of the U.S. economy, which has lurched from one new extreme to the next to maintain a thin, brittle veneer of normalcy.

Fragile economies cannot survive any impact with reality that disrupts the distortions that are keeping the illusion of “growth” from shattering. For the past two decades, every collision with reality cracked the illusion, and the “fix” was to duct-tape the pieces together with new extremes of money-creation, debt, risk and speculative excess.

While the stock market has soared, the real world falls apart. If your region needs a new bridge built, count on about 20 years to get all the “stakeholders” to agree and get the thing actually built. Count on the cost quintupling from $500 million to $2.5 billion. Count on corners being cut as costs skyrocket, so those cheap steel bolts from China that are already rusting before the bridge is even finished? Oops. Replacing them will add millions to the already bloated budget.

Want to add a passenger stop on an existing railroad line? Count on 20 years to get it done. The complexity thicket of every regulatory agency with the power to say “no” basically guarantees the project will never get approved, because every one of these bureaucracies justifies its existence by saying “no.” Sorry, you need another study, another environmental review, and so on.

Need a new landfill? I hope you started the process 15 years ago, so you’ll get approval in only five more years. Every agency with the power to say “no” will stretch out the approval, so they have guaranteed “work” for another decade or two.

Did your subway fares double? Was the excuse repairing a crumbling system? Did the work get done on budget and on time? You must be joking, right? All the fare increase did was cover the costs of skyrocketing salaries, pensions and administrative costs. Repairs to the tracks and cars– that’s extra. Let’s float a $1 billion bond so nobody have to tighten their belts, and have riders pay for it indirectly, through higher taxes to pay the exorbitant costs of 20 years of interest on the bond.

Have you been thrown off your bicycle by the giant potholes in the city’s “bike lanes”? The city reluctantly admits that these streets that haven’t been maintained for decades–yes, decades. The city once paid for street maintenance out of its general budget, but alas, that’s been eaten up by skyrocketing salaries, pensions and administrative costs, so now we need to float $100 million bond to fund filling potholes. If all goes according to plan (ha-ha), we should be able to re-pave the streets that have been crumbling for 20 years in… the next 20 years.

These real-world examples are just four of thousands of manifestations of a broken system. Rather than make tough choices that drain power and wealth from vested interests, we simply borrow more money, in ever increasing amounts, to keep the entrenched interests and elites happy.

There are two “solutions” in the status quo: dump the debt on taxpayers or on powerless debt-serfs–for example, college students. (See chart below of the $1.6 trillion that’s stripmining student debt-serfs.) Who benefits from selling all the municipal bonds, bundled student loans, etc. to investors starving for a yield above 0.1%? Wall Street, of course.

The problem is that while debt has soared, productivity and earned income have stagnated. The statistical narrative has been ruthlessly gamed to hide the erosion of living standards, but even with the bogus “low inflation” of official statistics, wages for the bottom 95% have stagnated for decades.

Measures of productivity have also been gamed to mask the ugly reality that the vast majority of the U.S. economy is stagnating under the weight of interest payments on debt, mal-investments in speculative gambles, higher junk fees and taxes, crushing regulatory compliance, high costs imposed by monopolies and cartels and a well-cloaked decline in the quality of just about everything the bottom 95% uses or owns.

What little productivity gains have been made have been skimmed by the top 5%. Coupled with the Federal Reserve’s single-minded goosing of the one signaling device it controls, the stock market, the top 0.1% in America own more wealth than the bottom 80%.

If productivity stagnates and winners take all, the wages of the bottom 95% cannot rise. Real wealth is only created by increases in the productivity of labor and capital; everything else is phantom wealth.

The only way stagnant incomes can support more debt is if interest rates decline. Presto, the Fed dropped interest rates to near-zero a decade ago. Of course you and I can’t actually borrow millions for 0.1%; that privilege is reserved for financiers and other financial parasites and predators.

Debt-serfs were able to refinance their crushing mortgages to save a few bucks, and so they can afford to 1) take on more debt and 2) pay higher taxes to fund the ballooning public debt.

Every one of these extremes has increased the systemic fragility of the American economy. This fragility is reflected in the impoverishment of the bottom 95%, the thin line between solvency and bankruptcy, the decay of public trust in institutions run for the benefit of entrenched interests, and the quickening erosion of America’s social contract.

Re-opening a fragile, brittle, bankrupt, hopelessly perverse and corrupt “normal” won’t fix what’s broken.

 

The Covid-19 Chronicles: USA

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By Gunnar Ulson

Source: Land Destroyer

The US is claimed to be hardest hit by Covid-19 with, at the time of writing, over 80,000 deaths attributed to the virus. The nation is also suffering from socioeconomic disaster as lockdowns have driven millions of Americans into not only unemployment, but predictable poverty and hunger as a result.

The crisis has been pounced upon by special interests to help propel various sociopolitical and economic agendas rather than confront and overcome the crisis, leading many to suspect the crisis itself has been deliberately overblown.

Health Impact

At face value the US would seem to be hit by an unprecedented health crisis. Hysteria spread by the mass media focusing on the numbers of infected and dead are provided to a panicked public without context.

Indeed, over 80,000 people have so far died with infections at nearly 1.5 million (confirmed).

Yet a quick look at basic statistics provided by the US government’s own Center for Disease Control (CDC) shows that Covid-19’s impact on human health including total deaths has not even surpassed recent flu season burdens. For example, according to the CDC’s website, the 2017-2018 flu season (running from December 2017 to March 2018) left anywhere between 46,000 to 95,000 dead.

Deaths attributed to Covid-19 have been recorded for 2 full months longer with questionable methods used to attribute Covid-19 as the cause for death.

The death rate has been reported at anywhere between 1% to as high as 5% to 6%. Missing from these seemingly concerning numbers is the fact that widespread testing has not been undertaken. The few instances where it has been done has shown that the number of infected is many times higher than official reports. This means that the death rate is much lower and more comparable to the annual flu than any sort of novel and particularly dangerous pathogen.

Testing in California and New York have revealed that in these states alone millions are likely to have been infected by Covid-19 and simply showed little to no symptoms.

A CBS article titled, “Study shows 13.9% of people tested in New York state have coronavirus antibodies, Cuomo says,” admits:

New York’s first survey of coronavirus antibodies shows that 13.9% of those tested in the state had coronavirus antibodies in their system, meaning they have contracted and recovered from the virus, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Thursday. That suggests that 2.7 million people have been infected statewide.

In other words, there are likely more people infected in New York state alone than infected nationwide according to “official” reports.

If information regarding how widespread Covid-19 actually is and how dangerous it is or isn’t, is not accurate, how can the United States formulate appropriate measures to respond to the outbreak?

Measures

Despite what appears to be nothing more than a bad cold or flu, the US has ground its society to a halt with lockdowns and social distancing measures.

“Non-essential” occupations have been encouraged to work from home or to not work at all. The food and beverage industry for example, the second largest employer in the United States, has been ground to a halt with employees furloughed for what has now been weeks or even months. Many of these employees do not expect to return to work until at least June.

In Los Angeles, county officials have extended “stay at home” measures for another 3 months meaning that people will have been shut in for nearly half a year if and when in late August people are allowed to return to their normal lives!

Social distancing is being enthusiastically enforced by police around the nation. In New York City, in order to “protect” people, those not practicing social distancing have been beaten, tased and even arrested. The physical and legal damage done “saving” the public from Covid-19 appears to be more extreme than the actual threat of Covid-19 itself.

Since most New Yorkers (and most people around the entirety of the United States) likely have been infected by the virus anyway, social distancing and lockdowns are more of a psychological exercise than one of isolating the pathogen and stopping its spread, an exercise aimed at addressing public panic, but public panic deliberately fuelled by the media and the government.

Socioeconomic Impact

For the United States, a nation’s whose economy was already in steep decline and losing ground to emerging economies around the globe, most notably China, these lockdowns amount to a self-inflicted mortal wound no conceivable plan of action can reverse.

Had Covid-19 been the deadly pathogen many may believe it is owed to mass media misinformation, the United States stood ill-prepared for it. This was not merely the doing of the current US administration, but a problem known for well over a decade with US presidents from George Bush Jr. to Barack Obama to current US President Donald Trump taking turns ignoring it.

The New York Times reported that things like ventilator shortages were known for at least 13 years and instead of rectifying the problem, large biomedical corporations were allowed by the US government to buy out small contractors tasked with fixing the shortage and ending programs to develop cheap ventilators in order to maintain artificial scarcity and the high prices (and profits) associated with it.

While Covid-19 appears to be far less dangerous than claimed by the mass media, the impact of measures taken by the US government and local state governments has created what is a disaster now being compared to the Great Depression.

Rather than rectifying it by simply rolling back lockdowns and social distancing measures, or even finding ways to aid the millions left unemployed, special interests are taking turns exploiting the crisis by blaming political opponents or even international competitors (like China). They are also looking for ways to cash in, with America’s deeply corrupt pharmaceutical industry being the most prominent example already teeing up massive profiteering by offering “vaccines” to solve Covid-19 fears.

The US, rather than uniting and overcoming whatever Covid-19 actually is, be it a pathogen or an unprecedented wave of widespread panic, has instead allowed itself to become divided and distracted, as well as exposed to the very worst sort of socioeconomic predators lurking amid America’s economic and political landscape.

It is difficult to predict what will happen in the weeks, months and even years to come regarding the state of America socioeconomically considering just how widespread and deep the damage being done now is. A nation as large as the United States plunging so quickly has never historically boded well for that nation nor the world it finds itself free falling in. The US already faced many challenges regarding its decline both at home economically and abroad geopolitically.

Covid-19 has simply exposed and accelerated the process, compounding an already uncertain future with a new degree of damage, danger and desperation.

Get Ready for an Unacceptable New Normal

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephenLendman.org

At times like now, ideas lying around dormant on the shelf become reality.

Economic and other crisis conditions are times when most people can be convinced to accept unacceptable policies they’d likely reject otherwise.

During and after 2008-09 economic crisis conditions, Americans were brainwashed to accept force-fed austerity, frozen wages, and loss of benefits when economic stimulus and other government help were needed.

Economic recovery was for the nation’s privileged class exclusively. 

Ordinary Americans experienced protracted hard times that may become much worse today looking ahead, the same true in other Western societies.

In his 1995 book titled, “The Rotten Heart of Europe,” noted euro expert Bernard Connolly said the following: 

“The true story of the ERM (Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism) has been one of duplicity, skullduggery, conflict; of economic harm done to every country and in the caste interests of the elite; of the distortions of economic logic and the dilution of political accountability,” adding:

“The implication is that increasing globalization of economic activity and mobility of production has been purposely implemented in such a way as to render already destroyed ‘nation-state(s)’ meaningless entit(ies) in economic terms.”  

Protracted “austerity will lead to social unrest” in Europe, the US or elsewhere. Hard times are fertile ground for revolutions and fascist dictatorships.

Censorship is the new normal in the US and West — speech, press, and academic freedoms at risk. Without them all other rights are threatened.

Social and conventional media, Google, and other tech giants are complicit in a campaign to suppress content conflicting with the official narrative.

Controlling the message is the hallmark of totalitarian rule. Anything conflicting with the official narrative on vital issues is considered “inauthentic behavior.”

The US already is a police state. Is martial law the next shoe to drop? Will Trump declare it if current conditions worsen?

While not included in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 9 mentions suspension of habeas, saying the following:

“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

Will Trump invoke “public safety” or another pretext to take this action?

Article 1, Section 8 empowers Congress to call “forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

The US military and National Guard are today’s “militia.”

Martial law suspends civil rule, replacing it with military authority under the president as commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces — including the National Guard when activated.

During the Civil War, Lincoln assumed dictatorial powers.

He suspended the Constitution and habeas corpus, forcefully closed courts, arbitrarily ordered arrests, conscripted US citizens without congressional consent, and closed newspapers opposing his policies.

His Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free a single slave. He wanted them deported at war’s end to maintain America as a white supremacist society.

History taught in the US at all levels of education conceals the nation’s dark side.

What happened before can happen again by presidential diktat.

According to Constitutional Law Professor Bruce Ackerman, US presidents can institute policies by executive orders, military orders, national security and homeland security presidential directives, along with other ways of circumventing Congress and the courts.

They wage illegal wars without Security Council and congressional authorization.

White House lawyers justify the unjustifiable. “They serve as authoritative judges for the executive branch, providing a legal framework for millions of civilian and military personnel as they implement executive decrees,” Ackerman explained.

Checks and balances don’t work, new ones needed, he stressed — enforced to restrain executive power-grabbing.

Following Japan’s December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, Hawaii, not a US state at the time, was placed under martial law.

After Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, martial law was declared in New Orleans.

Throughout US history, it’s been imposed by federal or state authorities numerous times on the pretext of public safety, restoring order, or another reason.

Will Trump impose it if the US economy is reopened too soon, as apparently planned, and COVID-19 outbreaks increase greatly?

Will larger-scale outbreaks than already if occur be used as a pretext for hardening police state rule, including suspension of the Constitution and imposition of martial law?

Most of the population is locked down. Will Trump by presidential diktat order the extrajudicial arrest and indefinite detention of targeted individuals on the phony pretext of public safety and security?

This type harshness is what fascist tyranny is all about.

Is it coming ahead to the US full-blown in the form of presidential national emergency powers? 

The USA Patriot Act was written before 9/11. Is other draconian legislation on the shelf — ready to be rolled out by congressional action or presidential decree?

Is America the way it was pre-COVID-19, warts and all, to be replaced by hardened rule?

If COVID-19 abates and more greatly flares up this summer or fall will November elections be suspended or cancelled?

Whatever may unfold ahead most likely was planned by the nation’s ruling class.

It happened pre-and-post-9/11. It may be happening again now for ill, not good — including draconian mass surveillance more intensive than before, along with other police state policies.

Is a dystopian future coming for ordinary Americans, resisters subject to harsh repercussions — constitutional rights declared null and void?

What’s unthinkable may be planned and inevitable. 

Virus of Mass Destruction

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Medical personnel arrive to perform COVID-19 coronavirus infection testing procedures at Glen Island Park, Friday, March 13, 2020, in New Rochelle, N.Y. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

By CJ Hopkins

Source: Consent Factory, Inc.

There comes a point in the introduction of every new official narrative when people no longer remember how it started. Or, rather, they remember how it started, but not the propaganda that started it. Or, rather, they remember all that (or are able to, if you press them on it), but it doesn’t make any difference anymore, because the official narrative has supplanted reality.

You’ll remember this point from the War on Terror, and specifically the occupation of Iraq. By the latter half of 2004, most Westerners had completely forgotten the propaganda that launched the invasion, and thus regarded the Iraqi resistance as “terrorists,” despite the fact that the United States had invaded and was occupying their country for no legitimate reason whatsoever. By that time, it was abundantly clear that there were no “weapons of mass destruction,” and that the U.S.A. had invaded a nation that had not attacked it, and posed no threat to it, and so was perpetrating a textbook war of aggression.

These facts did not matter, not in the slightest. By that time, Westerners were totally immersed in the official War on Terror narrative, which had superseded objective reality. Herd mentality had taken over. It’s difficult to describe how this works; it’s a state of functional dissociation. It wasn’t that people didn’t know the facts, or that they didn’t understand the facts. They knew the Iraqis weren’t “terrorists.” At the same time, they knew they were definitely “terrorists,” despite the fact that they knew that they weren’t. They knew there were no WMDs, that there had never been any WMDs, and still they were certain there were WMDs, which would be found, although they clearly did not exist.

The same thing happened in Nazi Germany. The majority of the German people were never fanatical anti-Semites like the hardcore N.S.D.A.P. members. If they had been, there would have been no need for Goebbels and his monstrous propaganda machine. No, the Germans during the Nazi period, like the Americans during the War on Terror, knew that their victims posed no threat to them, and at the same time they believed exactly the opposite, and thus did not protest as their neighbors were hauled out of their homes and sent off to death camps, camps which, in their dissociative state, simultaneously did and did not exist.

What I’m describing probably sounds like psychosis, but, technically speaking, it isn’t … not quite. It is not an absolute break from reality. People functioning in this state know that what they believe is not real. Nonetheless, they are forced to believe it (and do, actually, literally, believe it, as impossible as I know that sounds), because the consequences of not believing it are even more frightening than the cognitive dissonance of believing a narrative they know is a fiction. Disbelieving the official narrative means excommunication from “normality,” the loss of friends, income, status, and in many cases far worse punishments. Herd animals, in a state of panic, instinctively run towards the center of the herd. Separation from the herd makes them easy prey for pursuing predators. It is the same primal instinct operating here.

It is the goal of every official narrative to generate this type of herd mentality, not in order to deceive or dupe the public, but, rather, to confuse and terrorize them to the point where they revert to their primal instincts, and are being driven purely by existential fear, and facts and truth no longer matter. Once an official narrative reaches this point, it is unassailable by facts and reason. It no longer needs facts to justify it. It justifies itself with its own existence. Reason cannot penetrate it. Arguing with its adherents is pointless. They know it is irrational. They simply do not care.

We are reaching this point with the coronavirus narrative. It is possible that we have already reached it. Despite the fact that what we are dealing with is a virus that, yes, is clearly deadly to the old and those with medical conditions, but that is just as clearly not a deadly threat to the majority of the human species, people are cowering inside their homes as if the Zombie Apocalpyse had finally begun. Many appear to believe that this virus is some sort of Alien-Terrorist Death Flu (or weaponized Virus of Mass Destruction) that will kill you the second you breathe it in.

This is not surprising at all, because, according to the official narrative, its destructive powers are nearly unlimited. Not only will it obliterate your lungs, and liquidate all your other major organs, and kill you with blood clots, and intestinal damage, now it causes “sudden strokes in young adults,” and possibly spontaneous prostate cancer, and God knows what other medical horrors!

According to all the “scientists” and “medical experts” (i.e., those that conform to the official narrative, not all the other scientists and medical experts), it is unlike any other virus that has ever existed in the history of viruses. It certainly doesn’t follow the typical pattern of spreading extensively for a limited period, and then rapidly dying down on its own, regardless of what measures are taken to thwart it, as this Israeli study would seem to indicate.

Also, “we have no immunity against it,” which is why we all have to remain “locked down” like unruly inmates in a penitentiary until a vaccine can be concocted and forced onto every living person on earth. Apparently, this mandatory wonder vaccine will magically render us immune to this virus against which we have no immunity (and are totally unable to develop immunity), which immunity will be certified on our mandatory “immunity papers,” which we will need to travel, get a job, send our kids to school, and, you know, to show the police when they stop us on the street because we look like maybe we might be “infected.”

Germany (where I live) is way out in front of this. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the federal government plans to introduce a coronavirus “immunity card” as part of its “Infection Protection Law,” which will grant the authorities the power to round up anyone “suspected to be contagious” and force them into … uh … “quarantine,” and “forbid them from entering certain public places.” The Malaysian authorities have dispensed with such niceties, and are arresting migrant workers and refugees in so-called “Covid-19 red zones” and marching them off to God knows where.

Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot … the germ and chemical warfare researchers at DARPA (i.e., the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have developed some new type of fancy blood test that will identify “asymptomatic carriers” (i.e., people who display no symptoms whatsoever). So that will probably come in handy … especially if the “white supremacists,” “Red-Brown extremists,” and “conspiracy theorists” keep protesting the lockdown with their wives and kids!

And these are just the latest additions to a list of rather dystopian examples of the “brave new normal” official narrative that GloboCap is rolling out, right before our very eyes (which the OffGuardian editors have streamlined here and here, and which continues on Twitter). It’s all right there in black and white. They aren’t hiding the totalitarianism … they don’t have to. Because people are begging for it. They are demanding to be “locked down” inside their homes, forced to wear masks, and stand two meters apart, for reasons that most of them no longer remember.

Plastic barriers are going up everywhere. Arrows on the floor show you which way to walk. Boxes show you where to stand. Paranoid Blockwarts are putting up signs threatening anyone not wearing a mask. Hysterical little fascist creeps are reporting their neighbors to the police for letting their children play with other children. Millions of people are voluntarily downloading “contact tracing applications” so that governments and global corporations can monitor their every movement. In Spain, they bleached an entire beach, killing everything, down to the insects, in order to protect the public from “infection.” The Internet has become an Orwellian chorus of shrieking, sanctimonious voices bullying everyone into conformity with charts, graphs, and desperate guilt-trips, few of which have much connection to reality. Corporations and governments are censoring dissent. We’re approaching a level of manufactured mass hysteria and herd mentality that not even Goebbels could have imagined.

Meanwhile, they’re striking the mostly empty “field hospitals,” and the theatrical “hospital ship” is now gone, and despite their attempts to inflate the Covid-19 death count as much as humanly possible, the projected hundreds of millions of deaths have not materialized (not even close), and Sweden is fine, as is most of humanity, and … just like there were no WMDs, there is no Virus of Mass Destruction.

What there is, is a new official narrative, the brave new, paranoid, pathologized “normal.” Like the War on Terror, it’s a global narrative. A global, post-ideological narrative. It’s just getting started, so it isn’t yet clear how totalitarian this show will get, but, given the nature of the pilot episode, I am kind of dreading the rest of the series.

Why Assets Will Crash

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

This is how it happens that boats that were once worth tens of thousands of dollars are set adrift by owners who can no longer afford to pay slip fees.

The increasing concentration of the ownership of wealth/assets in the top 10% has an under-appreciated consequence: when only the top 10% can afford to buy assets, that unleashes an almost karmic payback for the narrowing of ownership, a.k.a. soaring wealth and income inequality: assets crash.

Most of you are aware that the bottom 90% own very little other than their labor (tradeable only in full employment) and modest amounts of home equity that are highly vulnerable to a collapse of the housing bubble. (The same can be said of China’s middle class, only more so, as 75% of China’s household wealth is in real estate, more than double the percentage of wealth held in housing in U.S. households.)

As the chart illustrates, the top 10% own 84% of all stocks, over 90% of all business equity and over 80% of all non-home real estate. The concentration of ownership of assets such as vintage autos, collectibles, art, pleasure craft and second homes in the top 10% is likely even greater.

The more expensive the asset, the greater the concentration of ownership, as the top 5% own roughly 2/3 of all wealth, the top 1% own 40% and the top 0.1% own 20%. In other words, the more costly the asset, the narrower the ownership. (Total number of US households is about 128 million, so the top 5% is around 6 million households and the top 1% is 1.2 million households.)

This means the pool of potential buyers is relatively small, even if we include global wealth owners.

Since price is set on the margins, and assets like houses are illiquid, then we can anticipate all the markets for assets owned solely by the wealthy to go bidless–yachts, collectibles, vacation real estate–because the pool of buyers is small, and if that pool gets cautious due to a drop in net worth/unearned income, there won’t be any buyers except at the margins, at incredible discounts.

As we know, in a neighborhood of 100 homes currently valued ar $1 million each, when a desperate seller accepts $500,000, the value of the other 99 homes immediately drops to $500,000.

Since few of the current bubble-era asset valuations are supported by actual income fundamentals, then the sales price boils down to a very small number of potential buyers and what they’re willing to pay.

Houses have a value based on rent, of course, but rents will drop very quickly for the same reason: prices are set on the margins. The most desperate landlords will drop rents and re-set the rental market from the margins. If demand plummets (which it will as people can no longer afford rents in hot urban markets once they lose their jobs), then vacancies will soar and rents will crash as a few desperate landlords will take $1200/month instead of $2500/month.

Due to the multi-year building boom of multi-family buildings in hot job markets (which inevitably leads to an over-supply once the boom ends), there are now hundreds of vacancies where there were once only a few dozen, and thousands where there were previously only hundreds.

As millions of wait staff, bartenders, etc. who made good money in tips find their jobs have vanished, all the urban hotspots will see mass out-migration: Seattle, Portland, the S.F. Bay Area, L.A., NYC, Denver, etc. as demand for rentals will evaporate and rents will be set on the margins by the most desperate landlords. Everyone holding out for the previous bubble-era rent will have $0 income as their units are vacant.

Tech start-ups and Unicorns are melting like ice cubes in Death Valley, and tech-sector layoffs are already in the tens of thousands. This wave of highly paid techies losing their jobs will become a tsunami, further reducing the pool of people who can afford rents of $2,500 to $3,000 for a studio or one-bedroom apartment.)

The concentration of ownership generates a self-reinforcing feedback that further depresses prices: since the top 10% own most of the assets of the nation, they are most prone to a reversal of “the wealth effect.” As their assets soared in value, the top 10% felt wealthier and more confident in future gains, enabling them to borrow and spend freely on second homes, pleasure craft, new vehicles, collectibles, luxury travel, etc.

Once even one class of assets plummets in value–for example, the recent decline in the stock market– the wealth effect reverses and the top 10% feel poorer and less confident about future gains, and thus less enthused about borrowing and spending. The demand for other costly assets quickly evaporates, further reducing the wealth of the “ownership class,” which further reduces their desire and ability to buy bubble-era assets.

The high-priced assets owned by the top 10% will be the assets least in demand due to their high cost and potential for enormous losses: nothing loses value faster in a recession that narrowly owned assets such as vintage cars, art, vacation homes, yachts, etc.

Once assets start sliding in value, the reverse wealth effect quickly dries up demand for all asset classes with narrow ownership. Since these assets are illiquid–that is, the market for them is thin, with buyers few and far between–the prices are set by a very shallow pool of buyers and desperate sellers.

Consider a pleasure craft that retails new for $120,000. In the boom era of rising stocks and housing, a used boat might fetch $65,000. But as the wealth of the small pool of households able to buy and maintain a costly craft evaporates, the number of qualified buyers evaporates, too.

The seller might be aghast by an offer of $35,000 and reject it angrily. Six months later, he’s praying someone will take it off his hands for $15,000, and in another six months, he’ll accept $500 just to get out from underneath the insurance, slip-rental and licencing fees.

This is how it happens that boats that were once worth tens of thousands of dollars are set adrift by owners who can no longer afford to pay slip fees, and vacation homes are abandoned and auctioned off for overdue property taxes: the market for these luxuries dries up and blows away, i.e. goes bidless–there are no buyers at any price.

Once housing and real estate valuations fall, that will trigger a decline in the value of all other costly, narrowly owned assets, which will reinforce the reverse wealth effect.

This is the systemic payback for concentrating ownership of assets in the hands of the few: when their bubble-era priced assets plummet in value, the bottom falls out of all assets with narrow ownership. The price of superfluous assets such as boats, vintage cars, collectibles, art and vacation homes can quickly fall to a fraction of bubble-era valuations, destroying much of what was always fictional capital.

(For more on the intrinsic fragility of a system that concentrates ownership in the hands of the few, please read Our Inevitable Collapse: We Can’t Save a Fragile Economy With Bailouts That Increase Fragility May 1, 2020.)

The Federal Reserve reckons it can “save” the bubble-era valuations of junk bonds by being the “buyer of last resort,” but it will end up being the “only buyer,” effectively making the system even more fragile and prone to collapse.

The public will eventually have to decide if the nation’s central bank should be bailing out assets owned by the financial elite while the upper-middle class watches its assets collapse in value.