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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar20/tides-reverse3-20.html

Pandemic Pandemonium: The Tides of Globalization and Financialization Reverse

In terms of consequential trends, the pandemic is not a cause, it's an accelerant of shifts already under way before the emergence of Covid-19. Put another way, the tide had already reversed, but now it's visible to all.

The twin drivers of neoliberal inequality, globalization and financialization, are now ebbing, much to the dismay of central banks and the elites that neoliberalism's golden twins enriched at the expense of everyone else.

Globalization ceased expanding some time ago, as diminishing returns set in. The low-hanging fruit had long been picked, and Wall Street's relentless arbitrage of labor costs, environmental laxity and corrupt governance had long since stripped the globalization tree not just of fruit but of bark and foliage.

Wall Street's equally relentless commoditization of assets, debt and leverage had also reached diminishing returns, unsurprising as financialization is the core driver of globalization's ruthless exploitation.

While the conventional media has long focused on offshoring of jobs and factories, the truly monumental profits were raked in by commoditizing assets, debt and leverage on a global scale.

Thus guaranteed-to-default subprime mortgages were deceptively bundled as "low-risk" securities and sold to pension funds in Norway in 2008, this being a mere tip of the iceberg of fictional capital sold off to marks and rubes globally.

The collateral is gone, baby--if there was anything other than fictional collateral to start with. All those collateralized debt obligations (CLOs), neatly bundled auto loans, junk debt based on illusory future returns from fracking companies--it's all gone, and the bagholders are looking to the central banks to bail them out by buying all the putrid sewage of financialization.

The problem with financialization, of course, is that it creates no real goods or services. It is nothing but an elaborate skimming of value produced by others, a looters' paradise that siphons most of the gains into the hands of a few financial puppet-masters.

Globalization's gains were also sluiced into the hands of the few, while neoliberalism's propaganda machine spewed the bogus benefits of globalization: cheaper jeans and TVs, and toasters that might last a year if you're lucky. The nation's essential industries were sent overseas with one goal and one goal only: maximize profits for corporate insiders, their political lapdogs and the top 5% who own most of the shares.

The pandemic has done nothing but knock down the brightly painted facade, revealing the decayed, rotted shack of reality. Globalization and financialization always served one goal: maximizing the profits of the few, by any means available, at the expense of the many.

Now that the collateral is gone and the tree of globalization has been stripped bare, there's nothing left to exploit except the unlimited largesse of predatory finance's best buddies, central banks.

Only chumps, rubes and marks think they can get something for nothing, yet here we are, rubbing our hands with glee at the Fed's trillions in free money. Yee-haw, free money for everyone, but especially for the most exploitive and predatory of financialization's looters.

Sorry, but there is no free lunch. Every dollar of the Fed's freshly printed trillions will eventually be taken out of the purchasing power or collateral of the holders of Federal Reserve currency.

Just as the way of the Tao is reversal, the tides of globalization and financialization have reversed. Central banks are shoveling sand against the tide, and in their hubris-soaked delirium, already declaring victory.

Central bank free money doesn't create collateral or creditworthy borrowers, and without those foundations, the decayed, rotted shack will collapse. The pandemic has released a tightly coiled pandemonium that will play out in the years ahead.

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/27/all-the-craziest-things-about-america-are-being-highlighted-by-this-virus/

All The Craziest Things About America Are Being Highlighted By This Virus

“Corona is a black light and America is a cum-stained hotel room,” comedian Megan Amram colorfully tweeted a couple of weeks ago. Her observation has only grown more accurate since.

The corporate cronyism of America’s political system has been highlighted with a massive kleptocratic multitrillion-dollar corporate bailout of which actual Americans are only receiving a tiny fraction. Instead of putting that money toward paying people a living wage to stay home during a global pandemic, the overwhelming majority of the money is going to corporations while actual human beings receive a paltry $1,200 (which they won’t even be getting until May at the earliest) at a time of record-smashing unemployment.

America’s capitalism worship has been highlighted with Wall Street Journal headline “Dow Soars More Than 11% In Biggest One-Day Jump Since 1933” running at the exact same time as “Record Rise in Unemployment Claims Halts Historic Run of Job Growth — More than 3 million workers file for jobless benefits as coronavirus hits the economy“. Stocks are booming, Amazon is surging, and mountains of wealth are being transferred to sprawling megacorporations, while actual human beings are terrified of what the future holds.

America’s joke of a healthcare system is being highlighted as uninsured COVID-19 patients are racking up $35,000 medical bills and even insured COVID-19 patients are looking at out-of-pocket expenses in excess of $1,300. Combine this with the millions of Americans getting thrown off of employer-provided health insurance and you’re looking at a huge number of people who will avoid getting tested and avoid treatment as much as possible. Both heads of America’s two-headed one-party system have spent decades forcefully creating this dynamic.

America’s income and wealth inequality is being highlighted in a nation suffering from all of the above problems while most Americans were already unable to afford a mere $1,000 emergency expense. A one-time $1,200 payment to a population already stretched that thin guarantees that millions will be plunged into crushing debt and destitution in a nation with a historically unprecedented billionaire class raking in even more unearned wealth.

The insanity of America’s war machine has been highlighted as awareness grows during a global health emergency that government military spending negatively impacts government healthcare spending and the US has the most bloated military budget on the planet. Now as journalist Max Blumenthal explains this war machine’s escalating hostility toward China is causing Americans to needlessly die of the virus.

America’s fake political system has been highlighted as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee completely vanished for a week and then returned to deliver an embarrassing string of befuddled interviews upon his return, reminding the nation once again that the Democrats are running an actual, literal dementia patient for the most powerful elected office in the world. Biden will of course be running against an incoherent reality TV star who only last week decided that the virus is indeed a real problem which needs to be seriously addressed, and who now already wants to begin rolling back the inadequate measures his administration implemented far too late. The debates between two men who don’t understand what they’re doing and can’t string a sentence together between them will soon be broadcast around the world for all of civilization to behold.

America’s lying mass media are being highlighted with propagandistic lines that would make Kim Jong Un blush, like The New York Times claiming today that “the American medical system is unsurpassed and its public health system has a reputation as one of the finest in the world”. We can safely expect US media to get even more demented as they expands their hysteria-inducing new cold war propaganda campaign against Russia to China as well.

America’s murderous sanctions machine has been highlighted as the US continues ramping up its economic warfare against Iranian civilians, with thousands already dead and potentially millions to follow due to Tehran’s inability to access necessary equipment, medicine and resources during the pandemic. The Trump administration has not eased the sanctions during the outbreak, and has in fact added to them, because killing Iranian civilians has always been the goal. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has gone on record to say that the objective is to make Iranian civilians so miserable and desperate that they overthrow their own government.

So basically everything crazy about America is being amplified to absurd caricatures of its own insanity and highlighted for everyone to see. There’s a lot of ugliness coming out into the light as a result of this virus, which may end up being one of its few perks for everyone. As they say of both viruses and governments, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

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https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-senates-coronavirus-relief-package-must-be-stopped/

The Senate's Coronavirus Relief Package Must be Stopped!

The Senate’s $2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package is not fiscal stimulus and it’s not a lifeline for the tens of millions of working people who have suddenly lost their jobs. It’s a fundamental restructuring of the US economy designed to strengthen the grip of the corrupt corporate-banking oligarchy while creating a permanent underclass that will be forced to work for slave wages. This isn’t stimulus, it’s shock therapy.

Who can survive on $1,200 for one, two or three months time? And what happens to the millions of people who paid no taxes last year? Are they supposed to scrape by on nothing? Congress knows that most households live paycheck to paycheck. With no savings how will they pay the rent, the electric bill, the phone and the cable? Congress is quibbling over an extra $600 per month unemployment for those who are lucky enough to get it, when most people are just trying to figure out how they’re going to survive, how they’re going to pay the mortgage, when they’ll be able to go back to work, and whether their job will still be there when this nightmare is finally over?

Did you know that “if you don’t already have direct-deposit information on file with the IRS from previous tax returns, you won’t get the emergency funds for up to 4 months”? That means millions of people will have zero income for 4 months! What will become of them? Where will they go? Who will provide them with shelter and food? Shouldn’t congress be asking these questions?

And what happens to the 50% of the American people who had less than $400 saved before the crisis hit? What happens to them when they fall between the cracks and lose their apartments, lose their jobs, and lose their ability to maintain their tenuous standard of living? These people will never regain their financial footing. Never. It’s a death sentence. We’re going to see an explosion of homelessness, drug addiction, depression, alcoholism, suicide and crime unlike anything this country has ever seen before. Are the imbeciles in congress so blind that they can’t see that they’re condemning a large part of the population to permanent, inescapable, grinding poverty and desperation? Can’t they see that?

Do you understand why this bill is being rushed through congress?

It has alot to do with the falling stock market but more precisely with the hundreds of corporations that have been hawking bonds to gullible investors who thought they were buying the debt of responsible, well-managed companies that used the money to improve their product-line, train workers, or build new factories. But instead, greedy CEOs have been using the money to buy shares in their own companies to boost executive compensation and reward shareholders. It’s a multi-trillion dollar scam that blew up in their faces causing a complete freeze-over in the corporate bond market. That’s what’s really going on, there’s a massive credit crunch that has a stranglehold on the bond market and there are only two ways to fix the problem:

Let the failing corporations default and pick up the pieces after the dust settles or…
Launch a major $4.5 trillion bailout for busted corporations that drove their companies off a cliff.

Those are the two choices. Naturally Treasury Secretary Mnuchin chose the latter which suggests that the real motive for giving working people the $1,200 checks was simply to divert attention from the massive trillion dollar bailout to teetering corporations. That’s the real objective of the so-called fiscal stimulus bill. It’s another giant welfare check for the plutocrats.

The centerpiece of the new legislation is a provision for $425 billion giveaway to big business. The New York Times explains what is going on in a recent article. Here’s an excerpt:

“Republican senators have suggested creating a fund of $425 billion at the Treasury Department that the Fed could use to back emergency lending facilities — which would enable such programs to grow far beyond that scale.

Because the Fed cannot take on substantial credit risk itself, the Treasury Department backs its emergency lending, using money from a fund that contains just $95 billion. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday suggested that the new money in the Republican bill could be leveraged by the Fed to back some $4 trillion in financing.

“We do have limited amounts of money we’re using before Congress passes this bill, so we’re not waiting on Congress,” Mr. Mnuchin said in an interview on CNBC on Monday. “As Congress gives us the authority, we’ll be increasing the facilities substantially.” (“The Fed Goes All In With Unlimited Bond-Buying Plan”, New York Times)

What does it mean?

It means that Mnuchin is transforming the US Treasury into a hedge fund. That’s what it means. It means that the Treasury is going to use the $450 billion that is obliquely allocated in the emergency bill, to create a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV)–which is a sleazy, off-balance sheet operation that is used to conceal underhanded bookkeeping, that will leverage up by 10x (which means that the Fed will use the $450 billion to borrow tens times more than the original amount or $4.5 trillion) that will be stealthily used to bail out underwater corporations, financial institutions and, yes, banks. (Note–The fairy-tale about “well capitalized banks” is pure bunkum. These guys have serious exposure through “sponsored repo” which is lending to hedge funds via the repo market.) The Fed has already created one SPV for the Commercial Paper market under the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) which is supposed to be used to mitigate volatility in global currency markets, not for bailing out failing corporations. It’s a complete misuse of funds. Unfortunately, targeted suspension of the Sunshine Act will prevent the public from figuring out who is getting money in what amount and for what purpose. This whole scam has been carefully worked out right down to legal provisions preventing transparency.

By the way, Mnuchin’s personal bio is worth reviewing. According to Senator Ron Wyden:

“Mr. Mnuchin’s career began in trading the financial products that brought on the housing crash and the Great Recession. After nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs, he left in 2002 and joined a hedge fund….

“In early 2009, Mr. Mnuchin led a group of investors that purchased a bank called IndyMac, renaming it OneWest. OneWest was truly unique. While Mr. Mnuchin was CEO, the bank proved it could put more vulnerable people on the street faster than just about anybody else around.

“While he was CEO, a OneWest vice president admitted in a court proceeding to ‘robo-signing’ upward of 750 foreclosure documents a week…between 2009 and 2014, a period during which the bank foreclosed on more than 35,000 homes. ‘Widow foreclosures’ on reverse mortgages – OneWest did more of those than anybody else. The bank defends its record on loan modifications, but it was found guilty of an illegal practice known as ‘dual tracking.’ One bank department tells homeowners to stop making payments so they can pursue modification, while another department presses on and hurtles them into foreclosure anyway.” (“Stimulus Bill: The Fed and Treasury’s Slush Fund Is Actually $4 Trillion”, Wall Street on Parade)

Does that sound like someone who can be trusted in the distribution of $4.5 trillion in government funds?

The media is not even trying to hide the sordid details of what’s going on behind the scenes. Take a look at this excerpt from an article at Bloomberg:

“The Federal Reserve could now have as much as $4.5 trillion to keep credit flowing and make direct loans to U.S. businesses through the massive coronavirus stimulus bill being considered by U.S. lawmakers. The bipartisan agreement, which still needs to be passed by the Senate and House and signed into law by President Donald Trump, will include $454 billion in funds for the Treasury to backstop emergency actions by the Fed to support the U.S. economy, Senator Patrick Toomey said on Wednesday.

The central bank will work with the U.S. Treasury to use that money as a backstop against credit risk as it supports markets for corporate and short-term state and local debt, while also loaning directly to large and medium-sized businesses….

“It is a very, very big thing; it is unprecedented,” the Pennsylvania Republican told reporters Wednesday on a conference call, adding it was an opportunity to lever up “the unlimited balance sheet of the Fed.”

Toomey’s comments suggest Fed facilities could be expanded with the new funds, in effect doubling the Fed’s current $4.7 trillion balance sheet if necessary. On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the bill would provide up to $4 trillion in liquidity through broad-based lending programs operated by the Fed.” (“Fed’s Anti-Virus Lending Firepower Could Reach $4.5 Trillion”, Bloomberg)

Toomey is an idiot! Can’t he see what’s going on? Why does he say: “This is a very, very big thing.”… “an opportunity to lever up “the unlimited balance sheet of the Fed”??? Doesn’t he know that the US Treasury has now accepted full liability and credit risk for the Fed’s emergency bailout operations. Does he like the idea that the American people will now be on the hook for the CEOs who blew up their own companies to fatten their own bank accounts?? That’s what this means. Readers should parse these articles very carefully, word by word, phrase by phrase. The ugly truth is spelled out in black and white. Here’s the key phrase in the Times article:

“Because the Fed cannot take on substantial credit risk itself, the Treasury Department backs its emergency lending.”

And here’s the key phrase in the Bloomberg article: “The central bank will work with the U.S. Treasury to use that money as a backstop against credit risk as it supports markets for corporate and short-term state and local debt, while also loaning directly to large and medium-sized businesses.”

There it is: Credit risk, credit risk, credit risk. Who assumes the credit risk for this $4.5 trillion dollar giveaway??

The American taxpayer. Look: The Fed has always had the ability to print as much money as it chooses. (Remember: “Unlimited QE”??) So why did the Fed need to link-up with the Treasury for this operation?

Because the Fed is unwilling to accept the credit risk. Who will ultimately be accountable for all the bad bets and worthless bonds that are being downgraded as we speak? Who is going to mop up the trillions in red ink created by crooked, scheming, cutthroat corporations (and their financial counter-party accomplices) who plundered their companies for the sole objective of enriching themselves and their shareholders?

Who?

The US Treasury backed by the American taxpayer.

This is really the endgame. Wall Street has subsumed the US Treasury and turned it into a massively leveraged hedge fund that is controlled by an unscrupulous charlatan who made his bones evicting families from their homes during the worse economic slump since the Great Depression.

We’re truly fu**ed.

....

Too late, the elites are off and running with the most gargantuan fraudulent looting spree the world has ever seen. They know the world economies will be crashing, disaster capitalism at its best. In the meantime meaningless token handouts for the masses, and now from the mainstream media, crickets about the bailout since it passed. Unlimited QE or anything else attempted will not save the human species from the dire repercussions of its history of actions.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54075.htm

Our leaders are terrified. Not of the virus – of us

You can almost smell the fear-laden sweat oozing from the pores of television broadcasts and social media posts as it finally dawns on our political and media establishments what the coronavirus actually means. And I am not talking about the threat posed to our health.

A worldview that has crowded out all other thinking for nearly two generations is coming crashing down. It has no answers to our current predicament. There is a kind of tragic karma to the fact that so many major countries – meaning major economies – are today run by the very men least equipped ideologically, emotionally and spiritually to deal with the virus.

That is being starkly exposed everywhere in the west, but the UK is a particularly revealing case study.

Dragging their heels

It emerged at the weekend that Dominic Cummings, the ideological powerhouse behind Britain’s buffoonish prime minister Boris Johnson, was pivotal in delaying the UK government’s response to the coronavirus – effectively driving Britain on to the Italian (bad) path of contagion rather than the South Korean (good) one.

According to media reports at the weekend, Cummings initially stalled government action, arguing of the coming plague that “if that means some pensioners die, too bad”. That approach explains the dragging of heels for many days, and then days more of dither that is only now coming to a resolution.

This was 2 weeks ago. 1000s had already died all around the world, the WHO was already begging government’s to enforce distancing & to “test test test.” This gross negligence by the Johnson’s gov should never be forgotten nor forgiven.

Cummings, of course, denies ever making the statement, calling the claim “defamatory”. But let’s dispense with the formalities. Does anybody really – really – believe that that wasn’t the first thought of Cummings and half the cabinet when confronted with an imminent contagion they understood was about to unravel a social and economic theory they have dedicated their entire political careers to turning into a mass cult? An economic theory from which – by happy coincidence – they derive their political power and class privilege.

And sure enough, these hardcore monetarists are already quietly becoming pretend socialists to weather the very first weeks of the crisis. And there are many months more to run.

Austerity thrown out

As I predicted in my last post, the UK government last week threw out the austerity policies that have been the benchmark of Conservative party orthodoxy for more than a decade and announced a splurge of spending to save businesses with no business as well as members of the public no longer in a position to earn a living.

Since the 2008 financial crash, the Tories have cut social and welfare spending to the bone, creating a massive underclass in Britain, and have left local authorities penniless and incapable of covering the shortfall. For the past decade, the Conservative government excused its brutalist approach with the mantra that there was no “magic money tree” to help in times of trouble.

The free market, they argued, was the only fiscally responsible path. And in its infinite wisdom, the market had decided that the 1 per cent – the millionaires and billionaires who had tanked the economy in that 2008 crash – would get even filthier rich than they were already.

Meanwhile, the rest of us would see the siphoning off of our wages and prospects so that the 1 per cent could horde yet more wealth on offshore islands where we and the government could never get our hands on it.

“Neoliberalism” became a mystifying term used to reimagine unsustainable late-stage, corporate capitalism not only as a rational and just system but as the only system that did not involve gulags or bread queues.

Not only did British politicians (including most of the Labour parliamentary party) subscribe to it, but so did the entire corporate media, even if the “liberal” Guardian would very occasionally and very ineffectually wring its hands about whether it was time to make this turbo-charged capitalism a little more caring.

Only deluded, dangerous Corbyn “cultists” thought different.

Self-serving fairytale

But suddenly, it seems, the Tories have found that magic money tree after all. It was there all along and apparently has plenty of low-hanging fruit the rest of us may be allowed to partake from.

One doesn’t need to be a genius like Dominic Cummings to see how politically terrifying this moment is for the establishment. The story they have been telling us for 40 years or more about harsh economic realities is about to be exposed as a self-serving fairytale. We have been lied to – and soon we are going to grasp that very clearly.

That is why this week the Tory politician Zac Goldsmith, a billionaire’s son who was recently elevated to the House of Lords, described as a “twat” anyone who had the temerity to become a “backseat critic” of Boris Johnson. And it is why the feted “political journalist” Isabel Oakeshott – formerly of the Sunday Times and a regular on BBC Question Time – took to twitter to applaud Matt Hancock and Johnson for their self-sacrifice and dedication to public service in dealing with the virus:

Be ready. Over the coming weeks, more and more journalists are going to sound like North Korea’s press corps, with paeans to “the dear leader” and demands that we trust that he knows best what must be done in our hour of need.

Saved by the bail-outs

The political and media class’s current desperation has a substantive cause – and one that should worry us as much as the virus itself.

Twelve years ago capitalism teetered on the brink of the abyss, its structural flaws exposed for anyone who cared to look. The 2008 crash almost broke the global financial system. It was saved by us, the public. The government delved deep into our pockets and transferred our money to the banks. Or rather the bankers.

We saved the bankers – and the politicians – from their economic incompetence through bail-outs that were again mystified by being named “quantitative easing”.

But we weren’t the ones rewarded. We did not own the banks or get a meaningful stake in them. We did not even get oversight in return for our huge public investment. Once we had saved them, the bankers went right back to enriching themselves and their friends in precisely the same manner that stalled the economy in 2008.

The bail-outs did not fix capitalism, they simply delayed for a while longer its inevitable collapse.

Capitalism is still structurally flawed. Its dependence on ever-expanding consumption cannot answer the environmental crises necessarily entailed by such consumption. And economies that are being artificially “grown”, at the same time as resources deplete, ultimately create inflated bubbles of nothingness – bubbles that will soon burst again.

Survival mode

Indeed, the virus is illustrative of one of those structural flaws – an early warning of the wider environmental emergency, and a reminder that capitalism, by intertwining economic greed with environmental greed, has ensured the two spheres collapse in tandem.

Pandemics like this one are the outcome of our destruction of natural habitats – to grow cattle for burgers, to plant palm trees for cakes and biscuits, to log forests for flat-pack furniture. Animals are being driven into ever closer proximity, forcing diseases to cross the species barrier. And then in a world of low-cost flights, disease finds an easy and rapid transit to every corner of the planet.

The truth is that in a time of collapse, like this decade-long one, capitalism has only “magic money trees” left. The first one, in the late 2000s, was reserved for the banks and the large corporations – the wealth elite that now run our governments as plutocracies.

The second “magic money tree”, needed to deal with what will become the even more disastrous economic toll wrought by the virus, has had to be widened to include us. But make no mistake. The circle of beneficence has been expanded not because capitalism suddenly cares about the homeless and those reliant on food banks. Capitalism is an amoral economic system driven by the accumulation of profit for the owners of capital. And that’s not you or me.

No, capitalism is now in survival mode. That is why western governments will, for a time, try to “bail out” sections of their publics too, giving back to them some of the communal wealth that has been extracted over many decades. These governments will try to conceal for a little longer the fact that capitalism is entirely incapable of solving the very crises it has created. They will try to buy our continuing deference to a system that has destroyed our planet and our children’s future.

It won’t work indefinitely, as Dominic Cummings knows only too well. Which is why the Johnson government, as well as the Trump administration and their cut-outs in Brazil, Hungary, Israel, India and elsewhere, are in the process of drafting draconian emergency legislation that will have a longer term goal than the immediate one of preventing contagion.

Western governments will conclude that it is time to shore up capitalism’s immune system against their own publics. The risk is that, given the chance, they will begin treating us, not the virus, as the real plague.

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https://srsroccoreport.com/the-energy-disaster-kicking-into-full-gear-world-is-totally-unprepared-for-whats-ahead/

THE ENERGY DISASTER KICKING INTO FULL GEAR: World Is Totally Unprepared For What’s Ahead

There’s more evidence finally surfacing in the media of the dire energy predicament the world is now facing. The negative ramifications of peak oil and the falling EROI were going to hit the world economy within the next 2-5 years, but the global contagion has sped up the process considerably. Unfortunately, the world will never return back to the energy consumption and GDP growth experienced in 2019. I believe the peak of unconventional oil production has finally arrived… FOREVER.

Here are a few highlights describing the ongoing ENERGY DISASTER taking place
U.S. Bakken Oil Production Peaked Oct 2019 While Setting A New Record In Wastewater Production

According to Shaleprofile.com, the Bakken’s production peaked in October 2019 at 1,506,358 barrels per day (bd) and fell to 1,462,025 bd in December. When the data comes out for Mar-Apr-May, I believe that Bakken’s oil production will begin to drop off considerably.

Furthermore, even without the global virus destroying oil demand, the Bakken was going to peak shortly due to a key indicator… a tremendous increase in the amount of associated wastewater production. Surging wastewater production is a bad sign signaling reservoir depletion. Using the data from the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, the Bakken is now producing nearly 1.5 barrels of wastewater for each barrel of oil:

In January 2016, the Bakken was producing 115% more wastewater than oil, but that has surged to 149% during January 2020. While oil production increased by 8.2 million barrels (per month) since January 2016, wastewater surged by an additional 23.2 million barrels (per month).

The Death of the Bakken has finally arrived. Due to the collapse in U.S. oil consumption, I see a huge decline in Bakken oil production over the next three quarters.
Oil Plunges After IEA Hints Russia, Saudis Would Need To Completely Halt Production To Balance The Market

This was an article on Zerohedge that stated the following:

This echoes what Goldman’s commodity analysts wrote overnight, warning that “global isolation measures are leading to an unprecedented collapse in oil demand which we now forecast will fall by 10.5 mb/d in March and by 18.7 mb/d in April” or nearly the 20mb/d forecast by the IEA. As Goldman sumamrizes, “a demand shock of this magnitude will overwhelm any supply response including any potential core-OPEC output freeze or cut.”

I believe the IEA’s forecast for a decline of 18.7 million barrels per day (mbd) in April will be grossly understated. It will likely fall 25-30+ mbd by April. Interestingly, the IEA – International Energy Agency shows that global Jet fuel demand will fall about 2 mbd. However, with U.S. commercial air traffic down 90%, Unprecedented Collapse: U.S. Airline Traffic Currently Just 10% Of Normal, I see global Jet fuel consumption down at least 4+ mbd in April, double the IEA’s figure.

Now, it seems as if the IEA believes Wall Street’s forecast that there will be a “V-Shaped Recovery,” (hence, the v-shaped oil chart) and everything will be back to normal by the end of the year. I highly doubt it. Also, I find it quite interesting that the IEA hints that the Saudi’s and Russia need to halt all production to balance the market? Really? What about the United States?? Why isn’t the U.S. included in these figures??
MORE BULL SHYTE: U.S. Calling on Saudis to Halt Plan to Unleash Record Oil Supply

With the United States now the largest oil producer in the world, why are Oil Company CEO’s and politicians calling for Saudi Arabia to halt oil supply? It’s quite simple.. the U.S. has the most expensive and unsustainable oil supply in the world. If we go by FACTS and not hype or political grandstanding, the U.S. Shale oil industry has increased oil production growth FIVE TIMES more than Saudi Arabia over the past decade:

With the United States oil production growth of 84% versus 16% for Saudi Arabia, why should the Saudi’s cut production?? Furthermore, the Saudi’s have been selling their oil at a discount, $25 a barrel. Unfortunately, U.S. WTIC crude now trading at $22.84 and North Dakota Light Sweet fetching a lousy $14.25, where’s the REAL PROBLEM taking place???

You got it… these super-low oil prices are GUTTING the entire U.S. Shale Oil Industry… backward, forward, upside-down and inside-out… LOL. Thus, U.S. politicians are desperate because the notion of “Energy Independence” and the “Dollar Dominance” comes under severe pressure.
The Destruction Of the Global Oil Industry Is Disastrous For The Highly-Leveraged Debt-Based Financial System

As I watch the POOR SLOB ANALYSTS on CNBC trying to make a case that the market has hit bottom, I wonder if they have any idea about the tremendous amount of carnage taking place in the MAIN DRIVER of the economy… the Global Oil Industry.

Not a chance… so, while we have to continue listening to these Wall Street Clowns, they don’t realize that their occupation is no longer necessary.

WALL STREET IS DEAD… it just doesn’t know it yet.

I have mentioned several times in articles and youtube videos that it wouldn’t take much of a decline in the global oil supply to take down the Highly Leveraged Debt-Based Financial System. Unfortunately, what we got with this global contagion is TEN TIMES WORSE. Thus, the global financial system is now in the process of disintegrating right before our eyes in glorious 3D Widescreen Technicolor, even with the Fed and Central Banks intervention.

All the Central Banks can do at this point is to KEEP THE TERMINAL PATIENT ALIVE a bit longer. We have no idea what the world looks like when 20-25% of oil production is lost. This will totally destroy the U.S. Treasury Market that is based upon growing oil supplies to remain viable.

Have you have ever thought about how a 30 Year U.S. Treasury gets repaid??? You need 30 years of global growth to allow that 30-year U.S. Treasury to be paid back. These Treasuries aren’t just PAPER CERTIFICATES.. they are based on a business model of growth. And growth is based upon oil production growth. Thus, a 20-25% decline in global oil production will DESTROY the Stock and Bond Markets while Wall Street continues to regurgitate the V-SHAPED RECOVERY or a RETURN TO NORMALCY by next year.

Again, these poor slobs have no idea of what’s ahead.

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https://schiffgold.com/peters-podcast/peter-schiff-coronavirus-is-exposing-the-truth-about-the-economy/

Coronavirus Is Exposing the Truth About the Economy

It wasn’t long ago that all of the pundits were telling us that the economy was strong. As a result, a lot of people seem to think that once the coronavirus situation is resolved, the economy will quickly go back to normal. In his podcast Friday, Peter Schiff said that’s not going to happen. The coronavirus is actually going to reveal that the “great” economy was an illusion — a big, fat, ugly bubble that has now been popped.

US stocks ended a very volatile week down again on Friday. The Dow Jones shed another 913 points and has now lost all of the gains made during the Trump presidency. On the week, the Dow dropped over 4,000 points. It was the worst week ever in terms of a drop in points. On a percentage basis, it was the worst week since the 2008 financial crisis.

In his podcast Friday, Peter Schiff said this looks an awful lot like a financial crisis even though everybody keeps saying it’s not a financial crisis.

The difference is this is a bigger financial crisis than the one we had in 2008.”

In fact, March is on track to be the worst percentage drop in the US stock market in one month since 1932.

That was the depression. And you know, it’s not a coincidence that the market is behaving today the way it behaved in a depression. Because we’re entering another one. Only this is going to be much worse. It’s going to be an inflationary depression. … This is not your great-grandfather’s depression.”

The conventional wisdom is that everything will be fine once we get through the coronavirus shutdown. Meanwhile, the government can keep us all afloat with bailouts.

This is so laughable and shows how little people understand basic economics.”

Peter raises the key question: where is the money going to come from to pay everybody? Of course, it will be created out of thin air. The Federal Reserve will once again monetize the debt. In the process, its balance sheet is going to explode. Once this is over, how can the central bank possibly shrink that balance sheet and say “it’s business as usual?” How are we going to let interest rates rise when there is all that debt? Keep in mind, we are already up to our eyeballs in government, corporate and personal debt thanks to the easy money policies of the Fed after the 2008 crisis.

The only alternative will be to leave all of those assets on the Fed’s balance sheet. As we saw a couple of years ago, the Fed wasn’t able to normalize rates or shrink its balance sheet after the Great Recession. It certainly won’t be able to this time. In other words, the central bank will have to permanently monetize the debt. But that raises another question.

What is going to happen to the US dollar when this liquidity squeeze is over? If we can’t withdraw that liquidity, then the dollar is going to completely implode.”

Peter used a WWII analogy. After the war, taxes remained high and the government was able to eventually pay off all the debt. This time, the government is trying to promise sacrifice without pain. It doesn’t work that way.

There is a difference between real credit that comes from savings and the fake credit that the Federal Reserve conjures into existence just by creating money. There’re no resources that are made available to the government. There’s just inflation. You’re just printing money. Everybody is still operating under the delusion that the money we print has real value. And they keep going back to the idea that everything is going to be fine. We just have to make the sacrifice and they don’t realize that the sacrifices we made in World War Two were completely different. It’s not a sacrifice if everybody gets bailed out. The sacrifice is when you don’t get bailed out; you have to deal with it yourself.”

The key thing to understand is that even if the coronavirus is quickly controlled, everything is not going to go back to normal. Everybody thinks we had a great economy before the coronavirus started spreading around the world.

But it wasn’t. It was a bubble. And the coronavirus pricked the bubble. And that doesn’t mean that after the coronavirus problem is over the bubble just magically relates. It’s not going to happen. There’s no way to reflate this bubble. The bubble has popped. It’s because we didn’t have a viable economy before the pin pricked the bubble, that’s why we’re not going to have a recovery when the pin is gone. Once this whole house of cards comes tumbling down — it’s down.”

Peter said this is going to expose the US economy for what it was – an illusion.

The coronavirus is going to expose the truth. It’s going to be laid bare for everybody to see. So, it’s not going to be fine when this is over, even if it is over soon.”

In this podcast, Peter also explains why the dollar is rising now, but why we are on the cusp of a dollar crisis.

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http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/this-is-why-people-all-over-america-are-scared-to-death-of-being-tested-for-the-coronavirus

This Is Why People All Over America Are Scared To Death Of Being Tested For The Coronavirus…

How would you feel if you received a bill for more than $34,000 after being tested and treated for the coronavirus? This pandemic is showing the entire world that the U.S. healthcare system is deeply, deeply broken, and there is no way that we can continue to go on like this. If coronavirus testing is quick, inexpensive and widely available all over the rest of the globe, why can’t that be the case here too? Democrats and Republicans have been fighting about fixing our healthcare system all the way back to the 1990s and they haven’t gotten the job done. Now we have a system that is a complete and utter embarrassment, and it is about to be overwhelmed by the greatest public health crisis that any of us have ever seen.

Even under normal circumstances, most Americans are deathly afraid to go to the hospital because of what it will cost.

I have written about this numerous times before, but not even I would have imagined that getting tested and treated for coronavirus would cost more than $34,000…

A woman in the United States says she was billed $34,927.43 after being tested and treated for the coronavirus, Time magazine reports.

When Danni Askini first came down with the symptoms of the virus — shortness of breath, a fever, a cough and migraines — she was told by a doctor to go to the emergency room. There, she was told she had pneumonia and could go home. She visited the emergency room two more times as her symptoms persisted and worsened before she was finally tested for the coronavirus. Three days later her results showed she had COVID-19.

How in the world is it possible for a bill to get that high?

As Danni pointed out, she now owes the hospital more than she paid for both of her college degrees.

Sadly, she is going to be far from alone. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, coronavirus victims all over America are going to get hit with extremely high medical bills…

A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the average cost of COVID-19 treatment for someone with employer insurance—and without complications—would be about $9,763. Someone whose treatment has complications may see bills about double that: $20,292. (The researchers came up with those numbers by examining average costs of hospital admissions for people with pneumonia.)

What this means is that if even a single member of your family catches the virus it could instantly wipe you out financially, and this is especially true if you do not have health insurance.

Congress has passed a bill which will now cover the cost of coronavirus testing, but the bad news is that “it doesn’t do anything to address the cost of treatment”…

Public health experts predict that tens of thousands and possibly millions of people across the United States will likely need to be hospitalized for COVID-19 in the foreseeable future. And Congress has yet to address the problem. On March 18, it passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which covers testing costs going forward, but it doesn’t do anything to address the cost of treatment.

For those that catch the virus, and officials are warning that will eventually be most of us, treatment is going to cost far, far more than testing will.

You may think that you will just tough things out at home, but if this virus hits you hard enough you will either go to the hospital or you will die.

For a moment, I would like for you to consider what a medical worker in Louisiana is saying about the patients that he is treating…

“With our coronavirus patients, once they’re on ventilators, most need about the highest settings that we can do. About 90% oxygen, and 16 of PEEP, positive end-expiratory pressure, which keeps the lung inflated. This is nearly as high as I’ve ever seen. The level we’re at means we are running out of options.

“In my experience, this severity of ARDS is usually more typical of someone who has a near drowning experience — they have a bunch of dirty water in their lungs — or people who inhale caustic gas. Especially for it to have such an acute onset like that. I’ve never seen a microorganism or an infectious process cause such acute damage to the lungs so rapidly. That was what really shocked me.”

Many coronavirus victims have described being in a state where they constantly feel like they are drowning.

And this medical worker in Louisiana says that there is a really good reason for that, because the severe cases that he is treating are “essentially drowning in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so full”…

“When someone has an infection, I’m used to seeing the normal colors you’d associate with it: greens and yellows. The coronavirus patients with ARDS have been having a lot of secretions that are actually pink because they’re filled with blood cells that are leaking into their airways. They are essentially drowning in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so full. So we’re constantly having to suction out the secretions every time we go into their rooms.”

For the moment, there are still enough ventilators in the U.S. for everyone, but we are still in the very early chapters of this pandemic.

Over in Europe, many hospitals are already being completely overwhelmed. In Italy, one doctor is reporting that patients over the age of 60 are now being refused access to artificial respiratory machines…

Peleg said that, from what he sees and hears in the hospital, the instructions are not to offer access to artificial respiratory machines to patients over 60 as such machines are limited in number.

When things get bad enough, doctors are going to have to make choices about who lives and who dies here too.

It is hoped that the measures that are being taken all over the nation will start to slow down the spread of this virus.

But millions of Americans continue to go to work each day, and many of them simply can’t afford not to work.

In fact, it is being reported that many delivery drivers continue reporting for work each day even though they are clearly very sick…

An increasing number of the workers sorting those boxes, loading them into trucks and then transporting and delivering them around the country have fallen sick.

They have coughs, sore throats, aches and fevers — symptoms consistent with the coronavirus. Yet they are still reporting for their shifts in crowded shipping facilities and warehouses and truck depots, fearful of what will happen if they don’t.

So the next time a delivery truck comes to your home, you may want to keep your distance.

We have never seen anything like this before. The entire western world is shutting down simultaneously, and it is being estimated that nearly a billion people are now under lockdown orders…

Close to one billion people worldwide were confined to their homes on Saturday as the global coronavirus death toll shot past 11,000 and US states rolled out lockdown measures already imposed across swathes of Europe.

The pandemic has completely upended lives across the planet, restricting movement, shutting schools and forcing millions to work from home.

Needless to say, this is going to be absolutely devastating for the economy.

If you can believe it, Morgan Stanley is now projecting a 30 percent decline in U.S. GDP on an annualized basis during the second quarter…

We now see 1Q GDP dropping by 2.4% as economic activity has come to a near standstill in March, followed by a record-breaking drop of 30.1% in 2Q. We estimate that March will also mark the first drop in nonfarm payrolls, down 700k. We expect a record-high unemployment rate, averaging 12.8% in 2Q.

We assume sharp declines in areas of consumer discretionary spending like travel, dining out, other services and motor vehicle spending among others. This will leave a large hole in consumer spending in 2Q, when we expect real personal consumption expenditures to contract at a 31% annualized pace.

And the president of the St. Louis Fed is being even more pessimistic…

In an interview with Bloomberg, the president of the St. Louis Fed, predicted that U.S. unemployment rate may hit 30% in the second quarter because of shutdowns to combat the coronavirus, coupled with an unprecedented 50% drop in US GDP. That would be an outcome worse not only than every prior war the US has (officially) waged, but more than twice as dire as the worst days of the Great Depression.

It sure didn’t take much to plunge the U.S. into a horrifying economic depression.

Two months ago, everything seemed just fine to most people.

But now financial markets are crashing, workers are losing jobs at an unprecedented rate, and many of the businesses that are now being closed down will never open again.

Fear of the coronavirus has collapsed “the everything bubble”, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning…

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54054.htm

Death by Virus and Internal Contradictions

The epidemic reveals the stark truth, that the US dismantled and privatized its public health system, to fatten the pockets of the oligarchy and render working people more helpless and dependent.

The nation that considers itself to be the apex of capitalist achievement on planet Earth turns out to have no health care system worthy of the name – a testament to the sucking moral vacuum at America’s imperial, white settler colony core. A lowly virus – a form of being that exists at the very border between “life” and “not-life” – has revealed the world’s superpower as butt-naked and very much afraid.

“The system…is failing. Let’s admit it,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on March 14 at a White House briefing. Fauci’s outfit is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and its Epidemic Intelligence Service. But this vast alphabet soup of agencies could not find enough coronavirus testing kits to cope with an outbreak in the tiniest Pacific island micro-state -- much less a nation of 330 million. As of March 11, the U.S. had tested only 7,000 people – in the most ad hoc and scientifically unproductive manner imaginable. By March 17, the total national count stood at 54,087 tests given, with 5,723 positive and 90 recorded deaths. But the pattern of testing is everywhere inadequate and in some states all but non-existent, ranging from 12,486 tested persons in Washington, the second-hardest hit state, to only 146 tested persons in Georgia. All 146 tested Georgians are also listed as infected, which indicates that Georgia only tests people that show up very sick at its hospitals. New York, with the highest number of infected, had only tested 7,206 people as of early this week, with a relatively high percentage of them infected.

These are not statistics of a failing health care system, but of a country that has no system – the conclusion reached by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. “The dirty little secret, which will soon become apparent to all, is that there is no real public health system in the United States,” wrote Reich in his Newsweek column. “America is waking up to the fact that it has almost no public capacity to deal with it. Instead of a public health system, we have a private for-profit system for individuals lucky enough to afford it and a rickety social insurance system for people fortunate enough to have a full-time job.”

There are no buttons for the Centers for Disease Control to push in response to the epidemic, because decades of corporate duopoly privatization has hollowed out the U.S. public health sector, so that it barely functions on good days. Even the Veterans Administration hospital system, the closest thing the U.S. has to “socialized” medicine on the British model, has been forced by corporate members of Congress to outsource much of its services to for-profit companies and cut in-house treatment capacity to the bone. This is the “creative destruction” that the oligarchs who own the U.S. brag about -- their great contribution to civilization. Thus, local, state and federal officials must resort to calling on the Army Corps of Engineers to build the needed hospital beds from the ground up, while the epidemic rages, citing the U.S. military experience with ebola in West Africa. If that is the rationale, then the U.S. should also call on Cuba for rescue from the coronavirus, since Havana sent 256 doctors, nurses and other health professionals to provide direct care to ebola victims – while the U.S. military refused to touch even one sick African.

Poor Bernie Sanders. Had the epidemic struck a month earlier, it would have provided a ghastly mass education on the non-existent state of the U.S. public health system, presumably resulting in landslide support for the Medicare-for-All advocate. But then, maybe not. When U.S. realities are filtered through a monopoly corporate media lens, truth becomes as scarce as the hospital beds, ventilators and protective gear that is missing from the public health sphere. The Black political (misleadership) class, which is wholly answerable to one of the corporate parties responsible for systematically destroying public health care, would still have endorsed the oligarchs' champion, Joe Biden, as instructed – and then blamed the epidemic on Trump. However, as Robert Reich noted, “the system would be failing even under a halfway competent president.” Competence can’t provide beds, kits, gear, equipment, medicines and doctors and nurses that don’t exist.

Not soon enough, but very shortly, much of the nation will learn more than they ever wanted to about the pathology of late stage, “Race to the Bottom” capitalism, under the most stressful circumstances of curfew, economic panic, and mass sickness and death. Just as there is no public health system because the Lords of Capital grew fatter through the wholesale privatizing of health services, so have these same oligarchs prospered from the unrelenting assault on the rest of the social safety net, and from the imposition of the “shit job,” “gig” economy. The goal of the austerity regime and “gig” employment is to make working people so insecure, so desperate, that they will accept any job, at any wage, under any conditions and schedule. To achieve this capitalists’ nirvana, the state must be stripped of the tools that previous generations created to provide working people with healthier and more economically secure lives. These are the same tools that are missing, thanks to privatizing capitalist stooges like Joe Biden, now that the epidemic has hit.

There are now no easy buttons to push to force employers to pay workers that obey civil authorities’ instructions to stay home, or to compel private medical corporations to forego anticipated profits by turning over their inventories and facilities to the State, for the sake of the common good. Therefore, corporate politicians, from Trump down, are proposing one-time payouts of cash for the commoners, in addition to the usual trillions in bailouts and gifts to corporations and banks. In the absence of a real system of labor regulation enforcement, or an unemployment compensation structure that could actually reach most of the working population, “helicopter money” is the quickest and best that the corporate-owned state can do. More importantly, the one-off payouts leave no trace of a safety net behind, once the epidemic is over. The “Race to the Bottom” can resume under calmer circumstances (the Lords of Capital dearly hope).

Of course, that assumes the stock market was reacting to the global spread of coronavirus when it lost the most points in history this month, rather than unraveling of its own contradictions. It appears to many observers that late stage capitalism -- and its protective armor, U.S. imperialism – are suffering from multiple crises, and deeply sick. The price of Texas crude has dropped to about $25, a symptom of a profound slowdown in the world economy. The capitalist “crisis of legitimacy” may have passed the point of no-return, as the Corporate State proves daily that it cannot perform the basic function of protecting the lives of its citizens. And those citizens have become aware that the oligarchs – their rulers -- are the vectors of mass insecurity, sickness and death. President Trump, through his Department of Housing and Urban Development, has suspended all evictions and foreclosures until the end of April -- a move that candidate and president Barack Obama refused to make, at the height of the 2007-08 crisis. If even “the worst president in history” takes such a step, the Democratic “opposition” will find it difficult to resist much more comprehensive demands from its “base” – with or without an active Sanders “movement.” The austerity “Race to the Bottom” regime may become a casualty of the coronavirus.

Meanwhile China, the society that presents the largest threat to U.S. world domination, appears to have pulled itself out of health crisis through the exertions of its amazing command economy. The Chinese have delivered 10,000 coronavirus kits to Poland and are “airlifting masks, respirators and other critical supplies” to Italy to make up for Germany and France’s refusal to provide these vital medical goods to their European Union partner. Just as China pulled the planet out of the Great Recession, it may also emerge even stronger from the Coronaviris crisis.

“Aunty” Maxine (Waters) and “Uncle” Jim (Clyburn) can rally frightened Black voters around Biden and other corporate servants, but they cannot save the system from its internal contradictions. The Black Misleaders’ days are also numbered, along with their masters.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54057.htm

Covid-19 has taken away bread and circuses, laying bare the true American empire

Regular Americans can no longer numb themselves with sports and gluttony, freeing them to clearly see the malignantly craven ruling class that exploits and despises them. If only they would open their eyes to reality.

Anyone who has eyes to see can clearly make out that America is an addled empire in steep decline that is firmly entrenched in its bread-and-circuses stage. This has been brought into clear focus due to Covid-19. Since there is now a shortage of bread, as supermarket shelves are bare, and the distraction of the circus of sports has been indefinitely removed from the culture, Americans are left with little to distract them from cold, hard reality.

With no brawls or ballgames to watch, and the fear of potential hunger gnawing at their bloated bellies and brains, and with social distancing leaving them isolated with little but their thoughts as company, Americans will now find it harder and harder to ignore the truth about their country and its deplorably corrupt media, financial, government, education and health care systems, that is staring them in the face.

As the old adage goes, crisis reveals character, and the coronavirus contagion is a crisis of epic proportions that is revealing America to be utterly devoid of any redeeming character whatsoever.

If America were a sane, healthy, and rational country this would be a great opportunity for change to occur...alas, it is not. America is an insane, unhealthy and irrational nation, and so any genuine change is inconceivable.

For example, this crisis has once again revealed the house of cards that is the smoke and mirrors American economy. The American economy has long been rigged through financialization, where stock buybacks and accounting shenanigans inflate the stock market but create nothing of substance for the masses except the illusion of prosperity. Here in America the economy long ago stopped working for regular folks, as evidenced by the fact that despite productivity soaring, for the last forty years wages have remained stagnant, while the cost of living has escalated.

The American Way has devolved into a bizarre reverse-Robin Hood world, where the rich steal from the poor and keep it for themselves. Proof of this is that this Covid-19 crisis will undoubtedly be used, just as the 2008 collapse, as a way for the malicious narcissists in Washington, Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms to come together to assure that all their losses are socialized and their profits privatized. Casinos, cruise lines, airlines, hotels and others are already lining up — including of course the scoundrels on Wall Street — for their taxpayer-funded handout.

Bailing out working- and middle-class Americans, though, is an absolute non-starter for the ruling elite. The upper crust will throw around vacuous catch phrases, like the deliciously ironic “moral hazard,” to make their argument, which is pretty rich considering the vermin on Wall Street and their cronies on Capitol Hill are so morally bereft, it is a hazard to all humanity.

Coronavirus is not nearly as deadly as the cancerous corruption that is endemic in our oligarchic corporatocracy. For proof of that look no further than Nancy Pelosi’s emergency “sick pay” bill, that exempts companies of over 500 employees from paying sick pay — and has a boatload of special exemptions for businesses below that threshold — which leaves all but 20% of workers eligible for benefits. The holes in Pelosi’s bill are bigger than the gaping void where her brain and soul should be.

This corruption of the elites is bipartisan, as evidenced by two Republican Senators, Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler (who is married to Jeffrey Sprechter, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange), who allegedly took advantage of classified briefings on the impending severity of coronavirus in late January and early February to pull off some slick insider trading maneuvers so they could cash in before the public had any clue what was coming. Both, of course, deny any impropriety.

The egregious economic divide in America is further highlighted by the Covid-19 debate over whether to close schools amidst the crisis. The reason this debate raged on well past the rational time to act is that our education system is not a system of learning but rather a glorified daycare and food delivery service.

Proletarian parents are unable to stay home and raise their kids anymore because it now takes two parents — usually working multiple jobs — to make less equivalently than what one working parent did forty years ago.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, 70% of all students are below the poverty line and rely on the school system for the majority of their meals. In the wealthiest country on the planet, that is absolutely disgraceful. The virus of structural economic inequality is a much more long-term and deadly problem than coronavirus, and the ruling class and their shameless lackeys in the press, have no interest in ever honestly addressing or acknowledging it.

The corporate whores in Congress and the White House (of both parties) also gleefully inform Americans that universal, single-payer health care, which every other industrialized nation in the world already has, is a pipe dream and impossibility.

They tell us they could never ever pay for something so decadent and luxurious as health care, but then they magically pull $1.5 trillion out of their gold-plated assholes in order to stave off a collapse of their own making. It is amazing how the Lords of Finance can make money miraculously appear in order to get things done when it is their exorbitant wealth on the line, and not ordinary Americans’ health and wellbeing.

Coronavirus is a crisis that is revealing the ugly truth about America and the malignant character of its ruling class. The crisis is going to get worse before it gets better, but it eventually will get better. America, on the other hand, will only get much worse, with no hope that it is ever going to get better.

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http://edwardcurtin.com/the-coronavirus-is-not-the-plague-it-is-us/

The Coronavirus Is Not the Plague: The Plague Is US

“Two categories of propaganda must be distinguished. The first strives to create a permanent disposition in its objects and constantly needs to be reinforced. Its goal is to make the masses ‘available,’ by working spells upon them and exercising a kind of fascination. The second category involves the creation of a sort of temporary impulsiveness in its objects. It operates by simple pressure and is often contradictory (since contradictory mass movement are sometimes necessary).” – Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society

The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus’ great 1947 novel, The Plague, is a warning to us today, but a warning in disguise. When he died sixty years ago at the young age of forty-six, he had already written The Stranger, The Fall, and The Plague, and had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The outward story of The Plague revolves around a malignant disease that breaks out in a town that is quarantined when the authorities issue a state of emergency. After first denying that they have a problem, the people gradually panic and feel painfully isolated. Death fear runs rampant, much like today with the coronavirus. The authorities declare martial law as they warn that the situation is dire, people must be careful of associating, especially in groups, and they better obey orders or very many will die. So the town is cordoned off.

Before this happens and the first signs that something is amiss emerge, the citizens of the town of Oran, Algeria remain oblivious, for they “work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich.” Bored by their habits, heavily drugging themselves with drink, and watching many movies to distract themselves, they failed to grasp the significance of “the squelchy roundness of a still-warm body” of the plague-bearing rats that emerge from their underworld to die in their streets. “It was as if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of their secret humors; thrusting up to the surface the abscesses and pus-clots that had been forming in its entrails.” To them the plague is “unthinkable,” an abstraction, until all their denials are swept aside as the truth emerges from the sewers and their neighbors and families die from the disease.

“Stupidity has a way of getting its way;” the narrator, Dr. Rieux tells us, “as we should see if we were not always so wrapped up in ourselves …. plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”

The American people are wrapped up in themselves. Nor do they recognize the true rats. They are easily surprised; fooled would be a better word.

Camus uses a physical plague to disguise his real subject, which is the way people react when they are physically trapped by human rats who demand they obey orders and stay physically and mentally compliant as their freedom is taken from them.

The Plague is an allegorical depiction of the German occupation of France during World War II. Camus had lived through that experience as a member of the French Resistance. He was a writer and editor of the underground Resistance newspaper Combat, and with his artist’s touch he later made The Plague a revelatory read for today, especially for citizens of the United States, the greatest purveyor of the plague of violence in the world.

We are all infected with the soul-destroying evil that our leaders have loosed upon the world, a plague of killing that is now hidden behind the coronavirus fear that is being used to institute tight government controls that many will come to rue in the months ahead, just as happened after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Coronavirus is a perfect cover-story for the occupation of the public’s mind by a propaganda apparatus that has grown even more devious over the past 19 years.

Ask yourself: Where is the news about U.S. military operations in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, etc.? There is none in the corporate mainstream media, and little in the alternative media as well. Have those operations ceased? Of course not. It’s just that the news about them, little that it was, has disappeared.

Now it is all about us and the coronavirus panic. It is about how many of us might die. It is about stocking toilet paper. For the rich, it is about getting to their second or third houses where they can isolate themselves in splendor. As I write, 150 or so Americans are said to have died of Covid-19, and by the time you will read this the number will have climbed, but the number will be minuscule compared to the number of people in the U.S.A. and those numbers will be full of contradictions that few comprehend unless, rather than reacting in fear, they did some comprehensive research.

But arguments are quite useless in a time of panic when people are consumed with fear and just react.

For we live in plague time, and the plague lives in us. But to most Americans, Covid-19 is the plague, because the government and media have said it is. Like the inhabitants of Oran, the United States is “peopled with sleep walkers,” pseudo-innocents, who are “chiefly aware of what ruffled the normal tenor of their lives or affected their interests.” That their own government, no matter what political party is in power (both working for “deep-state,” elite interests led by the organized criminals of the CIA), is the disseminator of a world-wide plague of virulent violence, must be denied and divorced from consensus reality.

That these same forces would use the fear of disease to cow the population should be no surprise for those who have come to realize the truth of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the anthrax attacks that followed, both of which were used to justify the endless “wars on terror” that have killed so many around the world. It is a shock for so many people who can’t countenance the thought that their own government could possibly be implicated in the death of thousands of U.S. citizens and the release of the deadly anthrax, which we know came from a U.S. lab and was carried out by a group of inside government perpetrators.

When it comes to the plague-stricken deaths visited on millions around the world for decades by the American government, this must be denied by diverting attention to partisan presidential politics, and now the coronavirus that engenders fear, loathing, and a child-like tendency to believe Big Brother. The true plague, the bedrock of a nation continually waging wars through various means – i.e. bombs and economic and medical sanctions, etc. – against the world, disappears from consciousness. As U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albrecht said to 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl in 1996 when Stahl asked her if the U.S. sanctions on Iraq that had resulted in the death of 500,000 Iraqi children were worth it: “We think the price is worth it.”

For “decent folks must be allowed to sleep at night,” says the character Tarrou sarcastically; he is a man who has lost his ability to “sleep well” since he witnessed a man’s execution where the “bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist.” He awakens to the realization that he “had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people.” He loses any peace he had and vows to resist the plague in every way he can. “For many years I’ve been ashamed,” he says, “mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn.”

The rats are dying in the streets. They are our rats, diseased by us. They have emerged from the underworld of a nation plagued by its denial. Unconscious evil bubbles up. We are an infected people. Worry and irritation – “these are not feelings with which to confront plague.” But we don’t seem ashamed of our complicity in our government’s crimes around the world. For decades we have elected leaders who have killed millions, while business went on as usual. The killing didn’t touch us. As Camus said, “We fornicated and read the papers.” He knew better. He warned us:

It’s a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it’s still more wearying to refuse to be it. That’s why everybody in the world looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness.

Yet the fight against the plague must go on. Tarrou puts it thus:

All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, as far possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can’t judge if it’s simple, but I know it’s true. You see, I’d heard such quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people’s heads enough to make them approve of murder; and I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language. So I resolved always to speak – and to act – quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on the right track.

These days, I keep thinking of an incident that occurred when I was a young investigator of sexually transmitted diseases, working for the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare through the Public Health Service as an epidemiologist. My job was to track down sexually transmitted diseases by finding links of sexual contacts. One day I went to interview and take a blood sample from a poor woman who had been named as a sexual contact. I knocked on her door on the third or fourth floor of a walkup apartment building. She looked through the peep hole and asked who it was and I told her my name and what government agency I represented. I could tell she was very wary, but she opened the door. She stood there naked, a very heavy woman of perhaps 300 pounds. She nonchalantly welcomed me in and I followed her as she padded down the hall where she took a housecoat off a hook and put it on.

There is, as you know, an old tale by Hans Christian Anderson called “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Although the emperor parades around naked, the adults make believe he is clothed. Only a child sees the obvious. I was a 23-years-old naïve young man at the time of this unforgettable incident, but it echoes in my mind as a reminder to myself that perhaps that woman was unconsciously teaching me a lesson in disguise. The year was 1967, and when I went out to get into my government car with federal license plates, a white man in a white shirt in a white car in a poor black neighborhood, a hail of bricks rained down toward me and the car from the roof opposite. I quickly jumped in and fled as the ghettos were exploding. Soon the National Guard would be called out to occupy them.

Intuition tells me that although the emperor has no clothes and a vast PSYOPS occupation is now underway, too many are too grown-up to see it.

It’s an old story continually updated. Like The Plague.

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/22/hollywood-celebrities-are-psyops-wrapped-in-human-skin/

Hollywood Celebrities Are Psyops Wrapped In Human Skin

CNN recently trotted out Hollywood actor Sean Penn to give the nation expert advice on how to deal with a novel virus pandemic.

Did they do this because we live in a meaningless, godless universe where madness reigns and everything is chaos? Close, but no. They wanted Penn to explain to the public that it would be wonderful if the US military were deployed inside US borders to deal with the pandemic, because the US military is the greatest humanitarian force on planet Earth.

“There is no greater humanitarian force on the planet than the United States military,” Penn said. “The logistical skills, commitment to service, their care for the people. It’s really time to give the military the full breadth command and control of this operation. I wouldn’t blink, I would have put command and control in their hands a month ago, certainly today.”

The US military is in fact one of the least humanitarian forces on this planet, second only to malaria-laden mosquitos (and even that’s debatable). No other force is circling the globe murdering people in countless undeclared military entanglements and bullying the world into complying with the interests of a nationless alliance of plutocrats and opaque government agencies at the expense of ordinary humans everywhere. They are the exact opposite of a humanitarian force on this planet.

Medical staff are a force for humanitarianism on this planet right now. Grocery store clerks are a force for humanitarianism on this planet. The US military are the armed thugs of a metastatic globe-sprawling empire run by sociopaths.

Don’t say “Thank you for your service” to veterans whose only contribution to humanity has been helping to murder people for imperialist fossil fuel control agendas and Raytheon profit margins. Say “Thank you for your service” to your local cashier. To do the former is to participate in a cruel collective propaganda operation which only encourages more young people to hurl their bodies into the gears of the US war machine in search of the respect and honor you’re displaying, while to do the latter is to thank someone for actually providing a crucial service to human beings.

The malfunction in Penn’s mind is the result of many malignant factors, but among them is the fact that people who rise to fame and fortune naturally experience a gravitational pull toward elitist echo chambers which cultivate narratives that favor the status quo which gave rise to their fame and fortune. You have a hard time hanging out with normal people because most of them don’t treat you normally anymore, so you find yourself spending time with other rich and famous people, and with people who have a vested interest in the rich and famous.

This dynamic naturally fosters an environment where celebrities are eager to believe positive stories about the system which favors them, and where narrative managers are eager to circulate those stories among influential voices. This is why, with very few exceptions, the closest you’ll ever get to seeing a Hollywood celebrity express an anti-establishment opinion is one of them saying “Fuck Trump” at the Tony Awards. It’s also why every few weeks you’ll see some celebrity tweet something disgusting and then go into a meltdown when thousands of ordinary people react with revulsion; they don’t have ordinary people in their lives giving them feedback on what’s normal anymore, all they have is the elitist echo chamber.

This echo chamber is what led a group of self-quarantining celebrities to believe it would be an awesome idea to share a video compilation where they all badly sing lines from John Lennon’s “Imagine” from inside their mansions with a world full of people who’ve been laid off from their jobs and are terrified for their futures. The figuratively and literally tone-deaf video was universally panned and people have been mocking it on social media ever since its release, which probably would have come as a surprise to the celebrities themselves since nothing in their insulated day-to-day lives would have told them they could all be collectively rejected with such disgust.

The celebrity “Imagine” project was spearheaded by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who as an IDF veteran would not have required any Hollywood echo chambering to have undergone deep psychological programming in favor of the empire. Gadot, who famously came under fire for publicly cheerleading the 2014 Gaza massacre, first shared the video on Instagram with the caption “We are in this together, we will get through it together. Let’s imagine together. Sing with us.”

Memesters have of course been having fun with this.

Then you’ve got celebrities like Rob Reiner, who just tweeted “No more fucking around. We’re standing on a precipice. Time to consider a Federal lockdown.”

Reiner is one of the more ham-fisted of the right-wing Democrats who we first saw promoting Russia hysteria, then working against the Sanders campaign, and are now promoting drastic totalitarian measures from their high-profile platforms. If you still hadn’t seen these people for what they are yet, you should definitely be seeing them now.

It is an absolute guarantee that powerful people will use this pandemic to advance authoritarian measures which they have no intention of rolling back once the pandemic is over. They are working to do this currently. This is not a possibility, this is an absolute certainty.

While it does appear necessary to collectively use self-quarantining and social distancing to avoid crashing our healthcare systems and needlessly killing millions of people, we need to make sure we slam on the brakes long before we yield any more ground to the authoritarians than they’ve already shored up over the years. And we need to loudly shout down any celebrities who try to tell us otherwise.

Hollywood is a giant propaganda mill which when it isn’t cranking out movies which are literally funded and controlled by the US war machine is putting on spectacular ninety-minute “The imperialist world order is perfectly sane and capitalism is totally working” infomercial presentations. It is an arm of cultural control which is unrivaled by anything else in this world, so of course it has powerful forces at work within it ensuring status quo loyalism.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world, and Hollywood celebrities are psyops wrapped in human skin. May our collective disgust with them continue to grow.

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https://srsroccoreport.com/u-s-oil-price-collapse-u-s-economic-collapse/

U.S. OIL PRICE COLLAPSE = U.S. ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

The oil price collapse is a bad omen for much worse things to follow. The global contagion is impacting the U.S. economy and the domestic oil industry far greater than I realized just two weeks ago. As I try to allow my analysis to “Catch Up” to the gravity of the situation, my new forecast of the U.S. economy and oil industry is quite dire indeed.

I don’t say this to panic anyone, but to provide a more “realistic and pragmatic” view of where we go from here over the next few weeks and months. The rapid collapse in the U.S. oil price suggests BIG TROUBLE ahead for the domestic shale oil industry. While the low oil price is causing havoc in the shale industry, it’s only one component of the overall equation.

Today, oil consumption in the United States has already declined significantly due to the lockdown of many cities and areas in the country. However, this is just the first stage of the crisis. My gut tells me that U.S. oil consumption is likely down 25-30% already… maybe more. But, as state and federal governments continue to lockdown additional cities, we may see upwards of 40-50% drop-off in oil consumption. It sounds outlandish, but we have to start considering the FACTS.

Here is the U.S. oil price collapse over the past five weeks:

During the week of February 18th, the oil price closed at $53.38. Four weeks later, the price fell 58% to $22.63… as of the close Friday. Analysts, investors, and the public don’t seem to understand just how much oil demand destruction is taking place. According to the EIA, U.S. Energy Information Agency, the United States consumed 21.5 million barrels per day (mbd) of oil products as of March 13th. Now, we don’t consume all of that amount domestically, some supply is exported.

From the EIA’s recent update, the U.S. oil refining industry supplied 16.1 mbd of gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel… but 2.2 mbd were exported. Thus, my back of the napkin calculation suggests that U.S. domestic consumption of these three petroleum products was about 14 million mbd. If we assume 25-30% of gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel consumption is already cutback, that’s already a loss of about 4 mbd, or it will be shortly.

We have to keep an eye on the U.S. petroleum stocks over the next few weeks and month, but at some point, domestic demand destruction will eventually force the oil industry to cut back on production because… THERE WILL BE NO PLACE FOR THE OIL TO GO!!

I don’t believe most analysts realize just how quickly U.S. oil production will decline, NOT DUE TO THE LOW PRICE, but because the market won’t need it. This is by far the MOST DAMAGING factor for the U.S. Shale Oil Industry. Back in early 2016, when the oil price fell briefly to the $20s, the U.S. Shale Oil Industry cut back on CAPEX and new wells. However, as the oil price recovered, shale companies started to increase CAPEX spending, additional wells, and production. This time around will be much different because the present DECLINE is not due to the low oil price, but the MASSIVE DESTRUCTION in demand.

The next chart shows how quickly U.S. Shale oil production can decline if no new wells are added:

U.S. shale oil production at the end of 2018, not including 2019’s production, fell from 7.3 mbd to 3.9 mbd in just ELEVEN MONTHS!! LOL. That is the natural decline rate of U.S. shale oil. Thus, if the industry added NO NEW WELLS in 2019, the shale oil industry would have lost 3.4 mbd.

The next chart is my estimate of where U.S. shale oil production could fall by the end of Q2 2020:

I believe U.S. shale oil production could likely collapse 2-3+ mbd by the end of Q2 2020 (June 30th). Again, there just won’t be any place for all this oil supply to go if the United States continues to lockdown or even declare martial law. Already, the airlines have cut back flights at least 30-40%, and that will increase during Q2 2020. I see the biggest declines in Gasoline and Jet Fuel consumption. Because we still need to move food, goods, and products around, truck traffic will remain pretty robust even though we are going to see a decline in overall semi-tractor truck traffic.

I can tell that U.S. domestic gasoline consumption is down drastically because the wholesale RBOB price closed at 61 cents today (Friday). Less than a month ago, wholesale gasoline was trading at $1.72. If we add federal and state taxes along with the gas station profit, we are going to see $1.20-$1.30 a gallon in most cities shortly. One of my followers sent me a Facebook image of 99 cents in Kentucky… ALREADY!!

Honestly, the speed to which the entire Global Economy and Financial System collapsed has taken me by surprise. But, all we can do is try to react to what is taking place and prepare accordingly. I now see the U.S. oil price falling to the low $10s… MAYBE EVEN LOWER to the SINGLE DIGITS. Why? Because the massive demand destruction will continue to gut the oil spot price until the industry curtails production.

Even though President Trump announced that the U.S. Government would start buying oil to fill the SPR – Strategic Petroleum Reserve, there are only approximately 70 million barrels of storage remaining. If domestic consumption continues to fall by 5+ mbd, that would only take 12 days of buying to fill the SPR. So, if you start doing some simple math… WE ARE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE, and I believe the market still hasn’t caught on yet.

Unfortunately, even if this virus spread peaks and declines in the next 2-3 months, the ECONOMIC & FINANCIAL DAMAGE will already have been done. We don’t come back from this one....

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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar20/repricing3-20.html

The Global Repricing of Assets Can't Be Stopped

The financial elites are pushing a narrative that asset prices, sales and profits will all return to January 2020 levels as soon as the Covid-19 pandemic fades. Get real, baby. Nothing is going back to January 2020 levels. Rather than the "V-shaped recovery" expected by Goldman Sachs et al., the crash in asset prices will eventually gather momentum.

Why? It's simple: for 20 years we've over-invested in speculative bubbles and squandered borrowed money on consumption and under-invested in productivity-increasing assets. To understand why the market value of assets will relentlessly reprice lower--a process sure to be interrupted with manic rallies and false dawns of hope that a return to speculative good times is just around the corner--let's start with the basics: the only sustainable way to increase broad-based wealth is to boost productivity across the entire economy.

That means producing more goods and services with less capital, less labor and fewer inputs such as energy.

Rather than boost productivity, we've lowered productivity via mal-investment and by propping up unproductive sectors with immense sums of borrowed money--money that accrues interest.

The poster child for this dynamic is higher education: rather than being pushed to innovate as costs skyrocketed, the higher education cartel passed its inefficiencies and bloated cost structure onto students, who have paid for the bloat with $1. 6 trillion in student loans few can afford. (See chart below.)

As for Corporate America squandering $4.5 trillion on stock buybacks (Wolf Richter)-- the effective gains on productivity from this stupendous sum is not just zero--it's negative, as the resulting speculative bubble suckered in institutions and individuals who'd been stripped of safe returns by the Federal Reserve's low-interest-rates-forever policy.

What could that $4.5 trillion have purchased in terms of increasing the productivity of the entire economy? Considerably more than the zero productivity generated by stock buybacks.

The net result of uneven gains in productivity and the asymmetric distribution of whatever gains have been made is stagnant wages for the bottom 90% and rising costs for everyone. Those of us who are self-employed or owners of small businesses know that healthcare insurance costs have been ratcheting higher by 10% or more annually for years.

Whatever gains in health that have been purchased with the additional trillions of dollars poured into the healthcare cartels have been offset with declining life spans, soaring addictions to opioids and numerous broad-based declines in overall health.

The widespread addiction to smartphones and social media have deranged and distracted millions, crushing productivity while greatly increasing loneliness, insecurity and a host of social ills.

Two dynamics define the economy in the 21st century:

1. We have substituted debt-driven speculation for productive investment

2. We have substituted debt for earnings

This is why the repricing of speculative-bubble assets can't be stopped: debt-driven speculation is not a sustainable substitute for investing in increasing productivity, and debt-fueled consumption masquerading as "investment" is not a sustainable substitute for limiting consumption to what we earn and save.

All bubbles pop, period. Once Corporate America's credit lines are pulled and its revenues and profits plummet, the financial manipulation of stock buybacks will end. That spells the end of the 12-year bull market in stocks.

As the tide of speculative mania ebbs and confidence wanes, the world's housing bubbles will all pop, and the $1.4 million bungalows will drift back down to their Bubble #1 highs around $400,000, and perhaps even drop from there.

As for collectibles and other play-things of the super-wealthy: the bids will soon vanish and yachts will be set adrift to avoid paying the dock fees.

SC208-10

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/this_is_a_test_how_will_the_constitution_fare_during_a_nationwide_lockdown

This Is a Test: How Will the Constitution Fare During a Nationwide Lockdown?

“It takes a remarkable force to keep nearly a million people quietly indoors for an entire day, home from work and school, from neighborhood errands and out-of-town travel. It takes a remarkable force to keep businesses closed and cars off the road, to keep playgrounds empty and porches unused across a densely populated place 125 square miles in size. This happened … not because armed officers went door-to-door, or imposed a curfew, or threatened martial law. All around the region, for 13 hours, people locked up their businesses and ‘sheltered in place’ out of a kind of collective will. The force that kept them there wasn’t external – there was virtually no active enforcement across the city of the governor's plea that people stay indoors. Rather, the pressure was an internal one – expressed as concern, or helpfulness, or in some cases, fear – felt in thousands of individual homes.”—Journalist Emily Badger, “The Psychology of a Citywide Lockdown”

This is a test.

This is not a test of our commitment to basic hygiene or disaster preparedness or our ability to come together as a nation in times of crisis, although we’re not doing so well on any of those fronts.

No, what is about to unfold over the next few weeks is a test to see how well we have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly we’ll march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance we offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

Most critically of all, this is a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

Here’s what we know: whatever the so-called threat to the nation—whether it’s civil unrest, school shootings, alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19—the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state.

This coronavirus epidemic, which has brought China’s Orwellian surveillance out of the shadows and caused Italy to declare a nationwide lockdown, threatens to bring the American Police State out into the open on a scale we’ve not seen before.

If and when a nationwide lockdown finally hits—if and when we are forced to shelter in place— if and when militarized police are patrolling the streets— if and when security checkpoints have been established— if and when the media’s ability to broadcast the news has been curtailed by government censors—if and when public systems of communication (phone lines, internet, text messaging, etc.) have been restricted—if and when those FEMA camps the government has been surreptitiously building finally get used as quarantine detention centers for American citizens—if and when military “snatch and grab” teams are deployed on local, state, and federal levels as part of the activated Continuity of Government plans to isolate anyone suspected of being infected with COVID-19—and if and when martial law is enacted with little real outcry or resistance from the public—then we will truly understand the extent to which the government has fully succeeded in recalibrating our general distaste for anything that smacks too overtly of tyranny.

This is how it begins.

The coronavirus epidemic may well be a legitimate health concern, but it’s the government’s response to it that worries me more in the long term.

Based on the government’s track record and its long-anticipated plans for instituting martial law (using armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems) in response to a future crisis, there’s good reason to worry.

This is not a government with a rosy view of the future.

To the contrary, the government’s vision of the future is particularly ominous if a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command is anything to go by.

Obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request, the training video titled “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity” provides a chilling glimpse of what the government expects the world to look like in 2030, a world bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

Add health contagions to the mix, and we’re arrived there, ten years ahead of schedule.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset and the way its views the citizenry. Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution and the rights of the citizenry: nothing at all.

In typical fashion, the government seems to consider the Constitution only when forced to do so. It complies with the dictates of the Constitution even less frequently. Indeed, the government’s efforts to systematically lock down the nation and shift us into martial law have not been stymied one iota by the restraints imposed upon it by the Constitution: when it’s not bulldozing its way through the Fourth Amendment, the government just sidesteps it (with the help of the courts).

So what should you expect if the government decides to declare a national state of emergency and institute a nationwide lockdown?

More of the same of what we’ve been seeing in recent years.

After all, like the proverbial boiling frogs, the government has been gradually acclimating us to the specter of a police state for years now: Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls. Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that only a militarized government can alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

It’s happening already.

The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that called on the government to subject right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance.

Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons, including hollow point bullets, for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.

And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats. Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.

We have made it way too easy for the government to lockdown the nation.

Consider that it was seven years ago when the city of Boston was locked down while police carried out a military-style manhunt for suspects in the 2013 Boston Marathon explosion.

Six years ago, the city of Ferguson, Missouri, was locked down, with government officials deploying a massive SWAT team, an armored personnel carrier, men in camouflage pointing heavy artillery at the crowd, smoke bombs and tear gas to quell citizen unrest over a police shooting of a young, unarmed black man.

Five years ago, the city of Baltimore was put under a military-enforced lockdown after civil unrest over police brutality erupted into rioting. More than 1,500 national guard troops were deployed while residents were ordered to stay inside their homes and put under a 10 pm curfew.

Three years ago, it was Charlottesville, Va., population 50,000, that was locked down while government officials declared a state of emergency and enacted heightened security measures tantamount to martial law, despite the absence of any publicized information about credible threats to public safety.

Fast forward to the present moment, with the world on the verge of a possible coronavirus pandemic, and growing numbers of Americans are already voluntarily sheltering in place in an effort to avoid falling ill.

For those like myself who have studied emerging police states, the sight of any American city placed under martial law—its citizens essentially under house arrest (officials used the Orwellian phrase “shelter in place” in Boston to describe the mandatory lockdown), military-style helicopters equipped with thermal imaging devices buzzing the skies, tanks and armored vehicles on the streets, and snipers perched on rooftops, while thousands of black-garbed police swarmed the streets and SWAT teams carried out house-to-house searches—leaves us in a growing state of unease.

Watching the events of the various lockdowns unfold, I couldn’t help but think of Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering’s remarks during the Nuremberg trials. As Goering noted:

It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

It does indeed work the same in every country.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much for the American people to be terrorized into compliance by the government’s latest and greatest scare tactic, even if it means being stripped of one’s constitutional rights at a moment’s notice.

This continual undermining of the rules that protect civil liberties has far-reaching consequences on a populace that not only remains ignorant about their rights but is inclined to sacrifice their liberties for phantom promises of safety.

It may be that we’ve already gone too far down this road. However, don’t let this latest “crisis” cause you to panic to such an extent that you relinquish your fundamental right to make decisions for yourself and your loved ones and willingly surrender what remains of your freedoms.

This too shall pass.

Remember, a police state does not come about overnight.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, no matter how it starts, with a questionable infringement justified in the name of safety or a nationwide lockdown to guard against a global pandemic, it always ends the same: by pushing us one step closer to a future in which the government has all the power and “we the people” have none.