By Ernst Wolff.
The corona crisis has entered its second phase in the last few days.
In the first phase we have seen how politicians and authorities have not taken the problem seriously, played it down and failed to prepare us all in any way for a pandemic, despite urgent warnings from doctors and scientists. In the second phase, we are now experiencing a mixture of headlessness, hysterical overreactions and boundless incompetence.
At first glance, all this may seem chaotic, but it has method. Those who make the effort to trace the powers involved here will learn a great deal about the role of politics in parliamentary democracy.
When the virus appeared, started to spread slowly and began to become a disruptive factor for the economy, the main interest of the financial elite was to continue to drive the financial markets to ever new heights – as in the past 11 years – and to maintain without disturbance the enrichment orgy of the last few years. Politicians have given them strong support in this by downplaying and trivializing the approaching pandemic – without any consideration for the fact that tens of thousands of people were gradually infected, several thousand died and serious scientists urgently warned against downplaying.
But then it became apparent that the pandemic would take on unprecedented proportions and would cause existential hardship for the economy and financial markets. Politicians reacted by radically changing course and switching from the pacification and appeasement mode to a completely hysterical overdrive mode.
Why? Because it became clear that the financial elite is in serious trouble and that this time they need an even greater redistribution from the bottom to the top than in 2007/08. Therefore, it became urgent to distract the public from the fact that the biggest and most ruthless financial gamblers, with the help of the central banks, are once again digging into all our pockets – to an unimaginable extent.
Last week the US Federal Reserve promised Wall Street loans amounting to 1.5 trillion US dollars to offset the losses. A few days earlier, the White House had asked the Senate for 2.5 billion to combat the Corona crisis. The ratio between health measures for the welfare of the population and cash injections to clean up the most unscrupulous speculators in the financial casino was as high as 1:600 in the USA last week.
But that is not everything. All over the world, since the crisis of 2007/08, trillions and trillions have been created out of nothing by central banks and made available to ultra-rich investors at low or zero interest rates. At the same time, however, social spending has been drastically reduced as a result of austerity policies, and health care systems have been radically dismantled and in some cases completely destroyed. There is currently not a single country worldwide that is adequately prepared for a pandemic.
And even that is not all, because the collapse of the financial markets is just in its early phase. When the derivatives bubble explodes – and that will happen in the next few days or weeks – there will be no holding back. Then even 1.5 trillion dollars will no longer be enough, then the financial giants declared “too big to fail” will need much higher sums – and will certainly receive them.
As soon as this happens, however, things will become extremely precarious for both politicians and the financial elite. After all, it is already foreseeable that the collapse of the healthcare systems under the coming flood of patients will make the people increasingly aware of the double standards being applied here: Huge sums of money for the financial elite and pitiful alms for the health of the majority of people.
For this reason, politicians are currently preparing for a considerably worse scenario than most people are aware of: the completely excessive restriction of civil rights, the closure of borders and the ever-increasing involvement of the military are not intended to contain the coronavirus and thus protect the health of the population, but to prepare for civil war-like conditions. In view of the complete collapse of the economy and the financial system that lies ahead of us, the occurrence of these conditions is unavoidable.
To put it in somewhat clearer terms: we can expect banks to close and supply and retail chains to be disrupted in the near future, resulting in an undersupply of the population. Since more than 80 percent of the people are currently completely unprepared, many will soon be without money and food. The consequence: looting, protests and uprisings will occur. The political antidote: police and military operations on the basis of emergency decrees.
If, despite this information, anyone still holds on to the idea that politicians and authorities are basically well intentioned with all of us, a look at the World Health Organization WHO is recommended. This suborganisation of the United Nations has in recent weeks avoided announcing a pandemic at all costs. Why?
Because in recent years the World Bank has issued pandemic bonds to the financial elite worth around 100 billion dollars:
Pandemic bonds, also known as catbonds, can be purchased for amounts of 250,000 US dollars or more, pay between 8 and 11 percent interest and are subject to the following conditions: In the event of a pandemic outbreak, investors lose their entire investment because the bond is then to be used to alleviate the pandemic consequences in poor countries.
How much these poor countries are close to the WHO’s heart could already be seen with the Ebola epidemic: At that time, not a single cent was paid to poor countries despite the fact that the outbreak did not reach the necessary number of victims.
No wonder, then, that this time the WHO has been twisting like a worm for weeks to announce the arrival of the pandemic. Whether even a small fraction of the money received will ever reach the health care systems of poor countries is justifiably doubtful.
The lesson to be learned from the developments of the past days and weeks is plain and simple and can be summarized in one sentence: The role of politics in parliamentary democracy is not to serve the people and protect them in emergencies, but solely to help the financial elite to maintain their power and to increase their already immeasurable prosperity – if necessary, in defiance of all basic ethical and humanitarian values and through measures which the world has so far only known from military regimes and fascist dictatorships.
+++
Thanks to the author for the right to publish the article.
+++
Picture reference: joel bubble ben / shutterstock
+++
KenFM strives for a broad spectrum of opinions. Opinion articles and guest contributions do not have to reflect the views of the editorial staff.
+++
Support us with a subscription: https://steadyhq.com/de/kenfm
+++
You like our program? Information about further support possibilities here: https://kenfm.de/support/kenfm-unterstuetzen/
+++
Now you can also support us with Bitcoins.
BitCoin address: 18FpEnH1Dh83GXXGpRNqSoW5TL1z1PZgZK
Kommentare (0)