Majorityrights News > Category: Economics & Finance

Schools and universities have already been closed.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the closure of all UK pubs, restaurants, cinemas and gyms as part of coronavirus containment measures. Britain has almost 4,000 confirmed cases. The real number can be much higher as testing has been limited. Government scientists say the virus is spreading quickly across London and many people have ignored advice to stay home.

The Fed’s Baffling Response to the Coronavirus Explained

Man wearing mask in front of New York Stock Exchange buildingA man taking precautions amid the coronavirus outbreak walks past the New York Stock Exchange. (Mark Lennihan / AP)

Ellen Brown for TruthDig.Org 9 Mar 2020:

When the World Health Organization announced on Feb. 24 that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points, or 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, the Federal Reserve on March 3 slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in its first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off.

Exasperated commentators on CNBC wondered what the Fed was thinking. They said a half-point rate cut would not stop the spread of the coronavirus or fix the broken Chinese supply chains that are driving U.S. companies to the brink. A new report by corporate data analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet calculates that some 51,000 companies around the world have one or more direct suppliers in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus. At least 5 million companies globally have one or more tier-two suppliers in the region, meaning that their suppliers get their supplies there; and 938 of the Fortune 1,000 companies have tier-one or tier-two suppliers there. Moreover, fully 80% of U.S. pharmaceuticals are made in China. A break in the supply chain can grind businesses to a halt.

So what was the Fed’s reasoning for lowering the fed funds rate? According to some financial analysts, the fire it was trying to put out was actually in the repo market, where the Fed has lost control despite its emergency measures of the last six months. Repo market transactions come to $1 trillion to $2.2 trillion per day and keep our modern-day financial system afloat. But to follow the developments there, we first need a recap of the repo action since 2008.

Repos and the Fed

Before the 2008 banking crisis, banks in need of liquidity borrowed excess reserves from each other in the fed funds market. But after 2008, banks were reluctant to lend in that unsecured market, because they did not trust their counterparts to have the money to pay up. Banks desperate for funds could borrow at the Fed’s discount window, but it carried a stigma. It signaled that the bank must be in distress, since other banks were not willing to lend to it at a reasonable rate. So banks turned instead to the private repo market, which is anonymous and is secured with collateral (Treasuries and other acceptable securities). Repo trades, although technically “sales and repurchases” of collateral, are in effect secured short-term loans, usually repayable the next day or in two weeks.

The risky element of these apparently secure trades is that the collateral itself may not be reliable, because it may be subject to more than one claim. For example, it may have been acquired in a swap with another party for securitized auto loans or other shaky assets — a swap that will have to be reversed at maturity. As I explained in an earlier article, the private repo market has been invaded by hedge funds, which are highly leveraged and risky; so risk-averse money market funds and other institutional lenders have been withdrawing from that market. When the normally low repo interest rate shot up to 10% in September, the Fed felt compelled to step in. The action it took was to restart its former practice of injecting money short-term through its own repo agreements with its primary dealers, which then lent to banks and other players. On March 3, however, even that central bank facility was oversubscribed, with far more demand for loans than the subscription limit.

The Fed’s emergency rate cut was in response to that crisis. Lowering the fed funds rate by half a percentage point was supposed to relieve the pressure on the central bank’s repo facility by encouraging banks to lend to each other. But the rate cut had virtually no effect, and the central bank’s repo facility continued to be oversubscribed the next day and the following. As observed by Zero Hedge:

This continuing liquidity crunch is bizarre, as it means that not only did the rate cut not unlock additional funding, it actually made the problem worse, and now banks and dealers are telegraphing that they need not only more repo buffer but likely an expansion of QE [quantitative easing].

The Collateral Problem

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute; author of thirteen books including “Web of Debt”, “The Public Bank Solution” and her latest, “Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.”

As financial analyst George Gammon explains, however, the crunch in the private repo market is not actually due to a shortage of liquidity. Banks still have $1.5 trillion in excess reserves in their accounts with the Fed, stockpiled after multiple rounds of quantitative easing. The problem is in the collateral, which lenders no longer trust. Lowering the fed funds rate did not relieve the pressure on the Fed’s repo facility for obvious reasons: Banks that are not willing to take the risk of lending to each other unsecured at 1.5% in the fed funds market are going to be even less willing to lend at 1%. They can earn that much just by leaving their excess reserves at the safe, secure Fed, drawing on the Interest on Excess Reserves it has been doling out ever since the 2008 crisis.

But surely the Fed knew that. So why lower the fed funds rate? Perhaps because it had to do something to maintain the façade of being in control, and lowering the interest rate was the most acceptable tool it had. The alternative would be another round of quantitative easing, but the Fed has so far denied entertaining that controversial alternative. Those protests aside, QE is probably next after the Fed’s orthodox tools fail, as the Zero Hedge author notes.

The central bank has become the only game in town, and its hammer keeps missing the nail. A recession caused by a massive disruption in supply chains cannot be fixed through central-bank monetary easing alone. Monetary policy is a tool designed to deal with demand — the amount of money competing for goods and services, driving prices up. To fix a supply-side problem, monetary policy needs to be combined with fiscal policy, which means Congress and the Fed need to work together. There are successful contemporary models for this, and the best are in China and Japan.

The Chinese Stock Market Has Held Its Ground

While U.S. markets were crashing, the Chinese stock market actually went up by 10% in February. How could that be? China is the country hardest hit by the disruptive COVID-19 virus, yet investors are evidently confident that it will prevail against the virus and market threats.

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By MARK DUELL FOR DAILY MAILONLINE, 6 March 2020:

Britain is now facing a ‘recession’ as first coronavirus death on UK soil sends markets in panic with FTSE 100 opening 1.85% down at 6,581 - wiping off gains made during the week

London FTSE100 index major companies loses 124 points, 1.85% to 6,581

Frankfurt DAX30 sheds 1.8% to 11,735, Paris CAC40 drops 1.8% to 5,264

Milan’s major stock index FTSE-Mib also goes down 3.1% to 20,890 points

Hong Kong & Shanghai stocks also tanked overnight amid economic fears.

European stock markets including the FTSE 100 sank further this morning as traders feared that the coronavirus crisis could plunge Britain into recession.

London‘s benchmark index of major companies lost 124 points or 1.85 per cent to 6,581 today after Britain recorded its first death from the infection.

It also comes as a top investment bank warned coronavirus could push the UK to the brink of recession in the coming months.

In eurozone, Frankfurt DAX30 shed 1.8% to 11,735 points and ParisCAC 40 dropped 1.8% to 5,264, compared with yesterday’s closing levels.
       
TODAY: London’s FTSE 100 of major companies lost 124 points or 1.85 per cent to 6,581 today
       
THIS WEEK: The FTSE fell this morning, wiping out the gains it had seen so far this week
       
PAST FORTNIGHT: The FTSE has plunged since the virus sparked a worldwide rout last week

Meanwhile Milan’s major stock index the FTSE-Mib went down 3.1 per cent to 20,890 points as Italy continues to face the biggest outbreak in Europe so far.

In Asia, Hong Kong and Shanghai stocks also tanked as the coronavirus crisis overshadows government and central bank moves to limit economic impact.

Global markets hit by another wave of panic selling as fears…

for the FTSE 100 erased the index’s gains from earlier this week, with export-heavy companies now having lost more than £175million in value since the epidemic sparked a worldwide rout last week.

Cruise operator Carnival dropped 4.2 per cent to its lowest level since 2012, a day after its Grand Princess ocean liner was barred from returning to its home port of San Francisco on virus fears.

Britain said an older person with underlying health problems had succumbed to the flu-like virus yesterday, while the number of infections jumped to 115.

In company news, drug maker AstraZeneca fell 1 per cent after it said its treatment for a form of bladder cancer failed to meet the main goal of improving overall survival in patients in a late-stage study.

Top investment bank Goldman Sachs analysts has warned coronavirus could push the UK to the brink of recession in the coming months.

They say the outbreak will cause a ‘substantial’ near-term hit to economic growth, decimating the tourism industry and slashing leisure spending as Britons stay indoors.

It will cause a headache for new Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who is due to present his first Budget next week.

But analyst Sven Jari Stehn said: ‘The Budget may now focus on measures to safeguard public health than a broad-based expansion of spending.’

Goldman Sachs expects the economy to be flat in the first three months of 2020 and to contract by 0.2 per cent between April and June.

I believe the Greeks and Romans (for example) were more inventive than he is giving them credit for, but Ryan Faulk is offering specificatory structures (an Alternative Hypothesis) which can work against bad will arguments proffered from the international liberalism of Marxists and Cultural Marxists.

However, that is one of the limitations to the I.Q. and genetics sort of rebuts - the main utility that they have is against bad will and rather stupid arguments.

We are defending our race (genus European) and its species (ethnicities), not I.Q. or even the accomplishments of I.Q. per se. True, the products of our genius are not only an added benefit, but crucial to our survival. However, ethnonationalism protects these differences.

It is primarily bad will arguments that will need to be defended against when it comes to populating functions among our ethnostates that may require an I.Q. argument to rebut a stupid objection; e.g., if someone were to say that their retarded son should be allowed to engineer a high-rise building.

On the other hand, if a black person, or a Jewish person has a higher I.Q. than your son or your daughter, should you then say that they are a fit replacement, your new child?

This is Luke Ford level absurdity.

It is like a magic trick or a card trick to distract attention from the fact that we are defending species, human ecologies, not a single variable.

Objectivist arguments in lieu of relative racial group interests can disingenuously serve to distract from aspects and doings - other than a blindered, narrow view of merit - that have had Jewish hegemony in niche power and influence as profound ever - a fact they wish to distract from as their qualitative, relative ethnocentric difference is of a different tribe who are largely indifferent where not antagonistic to our group interests.

Naturally we don’t want our positive attributes dragged down, to amplify malfunction, but again, I.Q. rebuts are largely limited to staving-off bad will, typically stupid arguments.

And you can see the danger in Faulk’s argument, that he may be isolating one group or area of Europeans; whereas ethnonationalism would serve to protect those distinctions anyway, while not running the risk of throwing under the bus and perhaps even creating antagonism rather than crucial allies among other parts of Europe which may be more a necessary part of our systemic function and survival than he realizes in addition to being perhaps more talented than he realizes.

Finally, the I.Q. and genetics rebut can indeed be used in bad will itself against social justice and to further supremacism, imperialism, exploitation as opposed to ethnonationalism and its coordination. If these arguments are not made judiciously and with the wisdom of ecological thinking (facilitated by ethnonationalism), they can generate unnecessary antagonism within and from without our genus; thus increasing the difficulty of maintaining our group systemic homeostasis, not reducing it.

The immigration floodgates are closing

MintPressNews.com: February 10th, 2020

By Alan Macleod

After refusing to sign a pledge of allegiance to the state of Israel, the state of Georgia shut down a media literacy conference featuring journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin at Georgia Southern University. Martin had recently released a documentary critical of the Israeli government called “Gaza Fights for Freedom.” Now she is suing the state, claiming the decision is a violation of the First Amendment. Along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), today she filed a federal free speech lawsuit against the university system of Georgia.

Martin was dismayed by the university’s decision: “This censorship of my talk based on forced compliance to anti-BDS laws in Georgia is just one level of a nationwide campaign to protect Israel from grassroots pressure. We must stand firmly opposed to these efforts and not cower in fear to these blatant violations of free speech,” she said.

Abby Martin
✔
@AbbyMartin
After I was scheduled to give keynote speech at an upcoming @GeorgiaSouthern conference, organizers said I must comply w/ Georgia’s anti-BDS law & sign a contractual pledge to not boycott Israel. I refused & my talk was canceled. The event fell apart after colleagues supported me

8,013
2:49 AM - Jan 11, 2020
3,013 people are talking about this

Twenty-eight states have already mandated loyalty pledges to Israel as a means to outlaw dissent. But in December, President Trump passed legislation effectively criminalizing the Boycott Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement that aims to put pressure on the Jewish state through economic action, along the lines of the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa. The law mandates that any public institution would be subject to losing all funding if the government deems that they are not doing enough to stamp out anti-Semitism, which, it explicitly states, includes any criticism of the Israeli government. In December, MintPress reported that the British government under Boris Johnson is planning to introduce similar legislation.

“The hyperbolic notion that conservatives are the ones being persecuted on college campuses has made blatant censorship campaigns against people for criticism of Israel, or other progressive protests, go completely ignored,” Martin wrote:

CAIR’s Legal Defense Fund Senior Litigation Attorney Gadeir Abbas said,

“There is no place where free speech is more important than on campus. And this attempt to suppress Abby’s views ­– denying students, academics, and others from hearing her lecture – is as brazen as it is illegal. In adopting this anti-BDS law, Georgia has prioritized the policy preferences of a foreign country over the free speech rights of Americans, like Abby, who speak on this state’s college campuses.”

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Mexico Is Showing the World How to Defeat Neoliberalism

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute; author of twelve books including “Web of Debt” and “The Public Bank Solution.”

By Ellen Brown for TruthDigOrg, 6 Feb 2020:

While US advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press conference on Jan. 6, he said the neoliberal model had failed; private banks weren’t serving the poor and people outside the cities, so the government had to step in.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) has been compared to the United Kingdom’s left-wing opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, with one notable difference: AMLO is now in power. He and his left-​wing coalition won by a landslide in Mexico’s 2018 general election, overturning the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that had ruled the country for much of the past century. Called Mexico’s “first full-fledged left-wing experiment,” AMLO’s election marks a dramatic change in the political direction of the country. AMLO wrote in his 2018 book “A New Hope for Mexico,” “In Mexico the governing class constitutes a gang of plunderers…. Mexico will not grow strong if our public institutions remain at the service of the wealthy elites.”

The new president has held to his campaign promises. In 2019, his first year in office, he did what Donald Trump pledged to do — “drain the swamp” — purging the government of technocrats and institutions he considered corrupt, profligate or impeding the transformation of Mexico after 36 years of failed market-focused neoliberal policies. Other accomplishments have included substantially increasing the minimum wage while cutting top government salaries and oversize pensions; making small loans and grants directly to farmers; guaranteeing crop prices for key agricultural crops; launching programs to benefit youth, the disabled and the elderly; and initiating a $44 billion infrastructure plan. López Obrador’s goal, he says, is to construct a “new paradigm” in economic policy that improves human welfare, not just increases gross domestic product.

The End of the Neoliberal Era

To deliver on that promise, in July 2019 AMLO converted the publicly owned federal savings bank Bansefi into a “Bank of the Poor” (Banco del Bienestar or “Welfare Bank”). He said on Jan. 6 that the neoliberal era had eliminated all the state-owned banks but one, which he had gotten approval to expand with 2,700 new branches. Added to the existing 538 branches of the former Bansefi, that will bring the total in two years to 3,238 branches, far outstripping any other bank in the country. (Banco Azteca, currently the largest by number of branches, has 1,860.)

Digital banking will also be developed. Speaking to a local group in December, AMLO said his goal was for the Bank of the Poor to reach 13,000 branches, more than all the private banks in the country combined.

At a news conference on Jan. 8, he explained why this new bank was needed:

There are more than 1,000 municipalities that don’t have a bank branch. We’re dispersing [welfare] resources but we don’t have a way to do it.  ...People have to go to branches that are two, three hours away. If we don’t bring these services close to the people, we’re not going to bring development to them…

They’re already building. I’ll invite you within two months, three at the most, to the inauguration of the first branches because they’re already working, they’re getting the land … because we have to do it quickly.

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The Corporation – Feature, Documentary