Following the financial crisis of 2008-2009, Central Banks around the world, including the US Federal Reserve lowered interest rates drastically, and the biggest multinational corporations on earth took advantage of this, borrowing huge amounts of money. So much money that corporate debt reached $19 trillion by the end of last year. Anyone who was paying attention made the prediction that the corporate debt bubble was going to burst very soon, and it would be a financial catastrophe such that it would dwarf the global meltdown 12 years ago. Even the IMF has been saying for months that the end is near because corporate debt was grotesquely high.
When these mega-companies took on the loans, officially, they were supposed to go to boost the economy, create more jobs, spur innovation, and so forth. But instead, they used massive amounts of that money to buy back shares of their own companies, thereby raising share prices, giving CEOs and shareholders inflated, over-valued stocks, from which they derived obscenely high dividends. But everyone knew the party was coming to an inevitable end, and that it would end in Apocalyptic slaughter. When Christine Lagarde is actually telling companies what they are doing is going to end in tears, it’s like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas telling Robert DeNiro to slow down. They knew their share values were artificially high (they had made them that way), and they knew they were going to drop, sooner rather than later, and they knew the only profitable option was to start selling the shares themselves while the values were still high. Of course, doing this would predictably cause the stocks to plummet shortly thereafter, triggering a mammoth market crash.
Timing is everything
Enter, Coronavirus, the ultimate Ex Machina. By end of February panic about the outbreak was already snowballing in the US as infections had been discovered throughout the country. Selling began. By the beginning of March, the first American died and there were mounting cases of confirmed infections. Within a week, 20 were dead. Events were being cancelled, and the Stock Market was, yes, dropping. Ohio declared a state of emergency on March 9, and Wall Street experienced the biggest fall in history. The crash was not caused by Coronavirus, it was covered by it. Corporations that had used loans to buy back stocks, accumulating trillions of dollars in debt in the process, in order to inflate share values, triggered the most historic collapse Wall Street had ever seen by selling off their shares amidst the growing uncertainty and fear of the Covid19 pandemic, which would then be blamed for the crash.
‘The wealthiest 1% are the real victims in all this’
Before the unprecedented free fall on Wall Street, the IMF had warned that 40% of the corporate debt in 8 leading countries would be “impossible to service” if there were a downturn half as serious as the one that occurred in 2008. Read that again, and you will understand that what these debtor corporations did from the end of February to early March was the equivalent of burning down their own house to collect the insurance money. Except, with the Coronavirus, there was an already existing panic about a mad arsonist in the neighbourhood.
It was the Central Banks and Federal Reserve pumping “liquidity” into the market after 2008 that created the unsustainable debt, as well as the opportunity to inflate share prices and reap the dividends; and what immediately followed the crash of 2020? The injection of $1.5 trillion in loans to pump “liquidity” back into the market.
Today, Christine Lagarde, who has since left the IMF and become head of the European Central Bank, announced that the ECB would “buy government and company debt across the eurozone”, because, after all, the corporate robber barons are the hardest hit by the crisis.
The Coronavirus’ usefulness for the self-enrichment, broadening and consolidation of power and control by the 1% has only barely been tapped. You may have noticed that the most rapidly taken actions by governments around the world ostensibly to respond to the pandemic, prioritized and benefited larger corporations and provided almost nothing for the general population except restrictions.
In Germany, for example, the government announced a bailout package for businesses and banks “of an unlimited sum.” At least €500 billion will be provided to the banks and biggest corporations to help them cope with the Coronavirus crisis. Only the largest companies are being favoured, while others are sidelined. For instance, loans from the state-controlled Bank of Reconstruction were previously available to businesses with an annual turnover of up to €500 million, but by some trick of logic, the threshold has been increased to €2 billion, in the wake of the virus. Meanwhile, the only assurance Angela Merkel could offer the public was that she believed 70% of them would likely get infected, and she promptly sealed the borders, banned religious services, and ordered the closure of nonessential businesses. A full lockdown is anticipated.
In the UK, corporations are jockeying for positon to collect taxpayers’ money to fortify their profits, with the airline industry calling for a £7.5 billion bailout. Sir Richard Branson, hailed this “unprecedented level of support.” Meanwhile, his company, Virgin Atlantic obliged workers to take eight weeks “unpaid leave” and said all his employees could otherwise accept “voluntary redundancy.”
Meanwhile, testing for Covid19 in the UK has completely stopped, with the public being strongly advised to just stay home if they feel sick. Some 20,000 British troops are now on standby for domestic deployment to “fight the Coronavirus”; though how they will identify their incorporeal enemy without testing taking place, is anyone’s guess.
In country after country, big business is cushioned to help them cope with the trauma of the pandemic, and the population are dismissed to their homes, most often without paid leave.
The recommendations of the World Health Organisation are ignored in favour of one or another form of martial law, and medical services are increasingly overburdened as the virus inevitably spreads to the most vulnerable. The WHO never advised travel bans, and travel bans have been imposed; they did not advise mass lockdowns, and mass lockdowns are imposed; they recommend early detection through readily accessible testing, and testing is abandoned; they recommend isolation of confirmed carriers of the virus, and contact tracing, and normal daily life for the entire society is shut down instead.
No, the responses of governments around the world do not demonstrate concern and care for their citizens, but indifference. What we are seeing is a wholesale power grab and suppression of the population writ large, with policies that will have the absolutely predictable result of impoverishing hundreds of millions of people, with the lower class undoubtedly suffering the most harm. Small to medium sized companies will fall by the wayside, and the population will be drowned in debt, while the strongest, most powerful companies will reap unprecedented bailouts, tax cuts, incentives, cash injections, and increased freedom to eliminate workers.
At the same time, the broad stroke “preventative” measures will continue to leave the most vulnerable segments of the public at risk and in competition for medical care with younger, less critical patients; with at least one result being that European countries and the United States will reduce their obligations to pay pensions and social security to the elderly and disabled, who will be the first to perish.
The prevailing acceptance of the state’s justification for “medical martial law” will likely mean that it is a justification that will be accepted on an ongoing basis, literally leaving society to be plundered while we are locked in our homes – if we still have homes.