https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btG8JLNc8Xs
Friday, April 30, 2021
Police Make MULTIPLE Arrests After Judge Denies Andrew Brown Bodycam Release to the Public
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIEHtIOij6I
One week after fatal accident killed crane operator Terry Garr, millwright dies of COVID-19 at Sterling Stamping Plant
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/28/ssp-a28.html
Our reporters
a day ago
One week after the death of crane operator Terry Garr at Stellantis' Sterling Stamping Plant north of Detroit, the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter has learned that another worker, millwright Mark Bruce, has passed away from COVID-19. Multiple sources confirmed the death to a reporting team during a shift change on Tuesday afternoon.
Sterling Stamping, the largest automotive stamping plant in the world, saw its largest one-month surge in new infections in March, with 28 confirmed cases, up from one in the entire month of February. This coincided with a record-breaking surge in cases throughout the state of Michigan, driven primarily by school reopenings. The Autoworker Newsletter had previously learned of severe cases in the plant which required hospitalization, but this is the first confirmed death in plant.
Sterling Stamping workers (WSWS Media)
While United Auto Workers Local 1264 has run several death notices of autoworkers and their family members over the last two months, it has yet to report on Bruce's death. One worker said the UAW and the company were concealing information about outbreaks of COVID-19 in the plant. He said he knew Mark Bruce for a long time. “Mark died of COVID last Friday and nothing is being said about it. I only learned about it because another worker texted me.
“We’re getting notices, sometimes seven times a week, about new COVID cases. But they aren’t saying where and what workers could have been exposed.”
Nationwide, the UAW has helped management impose a blackout on infections and deaths in the auto plants in order not to instill “panic.” This prevents workers who are potentially exposed to the deadly virus from taking the necessary measures to protect themselves, co-workers and family, ensuring even more infections and death. In addition to covering up infections, management is penalizing workers who contract the virus or stay home with symptoms, thus encouraging workers to report to the job when they are sick.
Amid widespread anger over the death of Garr, crushed to death during a die staging at the end of his shift last week, the UAW went into damage control on Tuesday, announcing a token, one minute of silence each shift to honor Garr on April 28, Workers Memorial Day.
While workers want to know the truth about the circumstances which led to his death, in a statement posted on the UAW Local 1264 Facebook page at the plant, LaShawn English, the local president, offered prayers and condolences but no new information on the tragedy. Neither did English outline what steps the UAW is taking to investigate Garr’s death or encourage workers with information to come forward.
While United Auto Workers Local 1264 has run several death notices of autoworkers and their family members over the last two months, it has yet to report on Bruce's death. One worker said the UAW and the company were concealing information about outbreaks of COVID-19 in the plant. He said he knew Mark Bruce for a long time. “Mark died of COVID last Friday and nothing is being said about it. I only learned about it because another worker texted me.
“We’re getting notices, sometimes seven times a week, about new COVID cases. But they aren’t saying where and what workers could have been exposed.”
Nationwide, the UAW has helped management impose a blackout on infections and deaths in the auto plants in order not to instill “panic.” This prevents workers who are potentially exposed to the deadly virus from taking the necessary measures to protect themselves, co-workers and family, ensuring even more infections and death. In addition to covering up infections, management is penalizing workers who contract the virus or stay home with symptoms, thus encouraging workers to report to the job when they are sick.
Amid widespread anger over the death of Garr, crushed to death during a die staging at the end of his shift last week, the UAW went into damage control on Tuesday, announcing a token, one minute of silence each shift to honor Garr on April 28, Workers Memorial Day.
While workers want to know the truth about the circumstances which led to his death, in a statement posted on the UAW Local 1264 Facebook page at the plant, LaShawn English, the local president, offered prayers and condolences but no new information on the tragedy. Neither did English outline what steps the UAW is taking to investigate Garr’s death or encourage workers with information to come forward.
Sterling Stamping
A preliminary report from the Michigan Occupational and Health Administration (MIOSHA) indicates Garr was staging a die, which was lifted by a crane. However, the die was not aligned with the locating pins.
While standing between the die and the press, the crane operator maneuvered the die onto the bolster pin. "The misalignment of the hoist to the center point of the die caused the die to swing to the home position, resulting in the die striking the crane operator," the report said. Garr was transported to an area hospital, where he later died, according to Sterling Heights police.
A full report from MIOSHA may take months to produce, according to the Macomb Daily, which originally reported on the preliminary findings.
A worker who contacted the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter in the wake of the accident suggested the tragedy had been caused by management pressuring die setters to “disregard safety over production.” The fatal accident was due, the worker wrote, because of “Management being in a hurry and pressur[ing] die setters to hurry up and get a job done that management assigned towards the end of shift.”
While Bruce and Garr died of different causes, the common factor in both deaths is management's determination to maintain production in the teeth of the pandemic. While Stellantis, like the other major auto companies, has been forced to idle much of its production due to a global chip shortage, the company is determined to keep Sterling Stamping Plant, which produces critical body panels for much of the company's North American assembly plants at all costs.
Across the street at Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, which produces the company's best-selling and highly profitable Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck, production workers have been on forced over time for most of the year, and skilled trades are working on a brutal new 12 hour day, 7 days per week work schedule.
During a shift change on Tuesday, workers said that the death of Garr coming at the time of surging COVID-19 infections underscored the fact that workers take their lives in their own hands every day they come in to work. “We are signing up for risk every day we work here,” one said.
Said another, “I’ve heard from other workers who said when the plant manager first heard about the accident, he asked if Garr was wearing a hard hat when he was killed, as if that would have saved him.
Other than that, “we haven’t heard anything. Maybe he was working alone when he shouldn’t have been. Maybe they were rushing him to finish a job. All I know is that it is being covered up and we’re not being told anything.”
The situation at Sterling Stamping underscores the urgent need for a four-week national shutdown of production, a demand raised in a statement by the Autoworker Rank-and-File Safety Committee Network. This is not only necessary to prevent new infections spreading outward from plants into surrounding communities, but to put an end to the reckless and dangerous regime of speedup and overtime imposed by management with the support of the UAW.
A veteran worker at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant commented, “Last March, workers stopped the line and that saved lives. We did it out of pure fear. We were afraid for our lives and the lives of our families, and we were asking, ‘Doesn’t anybody hear us?' Six workers have died at Warren Truck and the company and the union did nothing. The UAW are management’s spies and muscle. They are totally corrupt and in cahoots with the bosses.
“Workers getting killed in the plant and dying from COVID is like going back to the immigrant garment workers who were killed in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. It took a lot of tragedies before things changed. Today, there are tragedies and there are no improvements. Now we have two entities against us, the UAW and the company.”
We urge workers to support the call by Sterling Heights Assembly Rank-and-File Safety Committee Sunday for a full and independent investigation of the circumstances surrounding the death of Terry Garr. For more information contact autoworkers@wsws.org .
A preliminary report from the Michigan Occupational and Health Administration (MIOSHA) indicates Garr was staging a die, which was lifted by a crane. However, the die was not aligned with the locating pins.
While standing between the die and the press, the crane operator maneuvered the die onto the bolster pin. "The misalignment of the hoist to the center point of the die caused the die to swing to the home position, resulting in the die striking the crane operator," the report said. Garr was transported to an area hospital, where he later died, according to Sterling Heights police.
A full report from MIOSHA may take months to produce, according to the Macomb Daily, which originally reported on the preliminary findings.
A worker who contacted the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter in the wake of the accident suggested the tragedy had been caused by management pressuring die setters to “disregard safety over production.” The fatal accident was due, the worker wrote, because of “Management being in a hurry and pressur[ing] die setters to hurry up and get a job done that management assigned towards the end of shift.”
While Bruce and Garr died of different causes, the common factor in both deaths is management's determination to maintain production in the teeth of the pandemic. While Stellantis, like the other major auto companies, has been forced to idle much of its production due to a global chip shortage, the company is determined to keep Sterling Stamping Plant, which produces critical body panels for much of the company's North American assembly plants at all costs.
Across the street at Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, which produces the company's best-selling and highly profitable Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck, production workers have been on forced over time for most of the year, and skilled trades are working on a brutal new 12 hour day, 7 days per week work schedule.
During a shift change on Tuesday, workers said that the death of Garr coming at the time of surging COVID-19 infections underscored the fact that workers take their lives in their own hands every day they come in to work. “We are signing up for risk every day we work here,” one said.
Said another, “I’ve heard from other workers who said when the plant manager first heard about the accident, he asked if Garr was wearing a hard hat when he was killed, as if that would have saved him.
Other than that, “we haven’t heard anything. Maybe he was working alone when he shouldn’t have been. Maybe they were rushing him to finish a job. All I know is that it is being covered up and we’re not being told anything.”
The situation at Sterling Stamping underscores the urgent need for a four-week national shutdown of production, a demand raised in a statement by the Autoworker Rank-and-File Safety Committee Network. This is not only necessary to prevent new infections spreading outward from plants into surrounding communities, but to put an end to the reckless and dangerous regime of speedup and overtime imposed by management with the support of the UAW.
A veteran worker at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant commented, “Last March, workers stopped the line and that saved lives. We did it out of pure fear. We were afraid for our lives and the lives of our families, and we were asking, ‘Doesn’t anybody hear us?' Six workers have died at Warren Truck and the company and the union did nothing. The UAW are management’s spies and muscle. They are totally corrupt and in cahoots with the bosses.
“Workers getting killed in the plant and dying from COVID is like going back to the immigrant garment workers who were killed in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. It took a lot of tragedies before things changed. Today, there are tragedies and there are no improvements. Now we have two entities against us, the UAW and the company.”
We urge workers to support the call by Sterling Heights Assembly Rank-and-File Safety Committee Sunday for a full and independent investigation of the circumstances surrounding the death of Terry Garr. For more information contact autoworkers@wsws.org .
Capitalism prepares to fight wars, not the pandemic
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/28/pers-a28.html
Andre Damon
a day ago
Last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread from country to country, working people responded to each new outbreak of the disease, first in China, then Italy, then America, with sympathy and expressions of solidarity.
Workers around the world cheered the doctors of Wuhan and the nurses of Bergamo. Doctors corresponded with their international colleagues, sharing the latest knowledge and tips to save the lives of patients entrusted to them. And scientists closely collaborated across national borders to ascertain the origins of the disease, sequence its genome, and aid the development of vaccines.
U.S. Air Force F-35 stealth fighter jets drop bombs over the Korean Peninsula, South Korea. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP)
But the world’s governments had other ideas. Last year, as more than 3 million people lost their lives amid a raging pandemic, governments around the world spent a record sum, nearly $2 trillion, on weapons and preparations for war.
Even though global economic output declined by 4.4 percent—the greatest economic collapse since World War II—military spending around the world surged by 2.6 percent.
The United States, the global leader in deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, with 587,000 and counting, is also by far the world’s greatest military spender. The US increased its arms spending by 4.4 percent last year, to $870 billion, more than the next 10 countries combined.
The US military is throwing around money with reckless abandon. Every branch of Washington’s bloated nuclear weapons program, from intercontinental ballistic missiles, to supersonic stealth bombers and nuclear missile submarines, is being rebuilt and expanded from the ground up. Perhaps most dangerously of all, the United States intends to double military spending in the Asia-Pacific region, using the money to ring the Chinese coastline with land-based ballistic missiles stationed in Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.
The US government’s spending on the military massively dwarfed all emergency federal spending on health care and vaccinations since the start of the pandemic. The CARES Act, passed in March of 2020, included only a few tens of billions of dollars in emergency health care spending, while the American Rescue Plan passed under current President Joe Biden was just one-eighth the annual US military budget for spending on emergency health care measures.
All the world’s imperialist countries are massively expanding their military spending. Leading the pack is Germany, whose aggressive quest for world domination helped trigger two world wars. Germany’s military spending increased by 5 percent last year and is up by nearly a third over the past decade.
France and Britain each increased their spending by 2.9 percent, significantly more than the global average.
The governments of the United States, France, Germany and the UK have all rejected the closure of non-essential businesses to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that society cannot afford these critical life-saving measures.
French President Emmanuel Macron declared that the population would have to “learn to live with” the virus. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in rejecting lockdowns, insisted that the alternative was better: to “let the bodies pile up in their thousands.” In the United States, claiming that mass infection would lead to a faster economic recovery, Trump administration officials declared, “We want them infected.”
But while claiming that containing the pandemic is too expensive, capitalist governments all over the world found $2 trillion for their armed forces and arms manufacturers.
The fight against the pandemic is by its very nature a global struggle. In its statement for the International Online May Day Rally, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) explained:
The emergence of new variants where the pandemic is spreading, potentially resistant to vaccines, demonstrates that the pandemic cannot be eradicated in any single country unless it is eradicated globally. National competition between the capitalist powers has blocked a globally coordinated response to the pandemic. Now the life-saving vaccine is being hoarded by the dominant capitalist countries and used as an instrument in their geopolitical intrigues.
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a ferocious eruption of nationalism, xenophobia, and militarism by capitalist governments and ruling elites around the world.
Former US President Donald Trump called the COVID-19 pandemic the “Chinese virus” and “Kung flu.” The Biden administration is continuing Trump’s efforts to demonize China, falsely claiming that Beijing is responsible for a cover-up and implying that the disease was a biological weapon created in a laboratory. As a result of these efforts to demonize China, racially motivated violent attacks against Asian Americans have surged over the past year.
The massive and record financing of the means of destruction and death, when what is necessary is a globally coordinated emergency program to save lives, exemplifies the historically outmoded and bankrupt character of the entire capitalist order.
In its criminal indifference to human life, in its efforts to desensitize the population to mass death from the pandemic, the ruling elites are at the same time seeking to prepare the population for the horrific consequences of world war.
All over the world, however, a different axis for politics and social organization is emerging. Workers are engaged in a wave of strikes and struggles in opposition to the subordination of all social and economic life to the enrichment of the capitalist oligarchy.
To unify these struggles and develop a counteroffensive against the homicidal policies of governments controlled by the capitalist ruling elites, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) statement called for the formation of an International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. The IWA-RFC will fight to unify workers throughout the world against all efforts to pit worker against worker, nation against nation.
The development of a powerful counteroffensive must be connected to the building of a socialist leadership in the working class. The fight against militarist violence, as with the fight against the pandemic, is at the same time a fight against the capitalist system and the oligarchy it serves. We urge all of our readers to join this effort and register to attend the International May Day Rally today.
But the world’s governments had other ideas. Last year, as more than 3 million people lost their lives amid a raging pandemic, governments around the world spent a record sum, nearly $2 trillion, on weapons and preparations for war.
Even though global economic output declined by 4.4 percent—the greatest economic collapse since World War II—military spending around the world surged by 2.6 percent.
The United States, the global leader in deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, with 587,000 and counting, is also by far the world’s greatest military spender. The US increased its arms spending by 4.4 percent last year, to $870 billion, more than the next 10 countries combined.
The US military is throwing around money with reckless abandon. Every branch of Washington’s bloated nuclear weapons program, from intercontinental ballistic missiles, to supersonic stealth bombers and nuclear missile submarines, is being rebuilt and expanded from the ground up. Perhaps most dangerously of all, the United States intends to double military spending in the Asia-Pacific region, using the money to ring the Chinese coastline with land-based ballistic missiles stationed in Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.
The US government’s spending on the military massively dwarfed all emergency federal spending on health care and vaccinations since the start of the pandemic. The CARES Act, passed in March of 2020, included only a few tens of billions of dollars in emergency health care spending, while the American Rescue Plan passed under current President Joe Biden was just one-eighth the annual US military budget for spending on emergency health care measures.
All the world’s imperialist countries are massively expanding their military spending. Leading the pack is Germany, whose aggressive quest for world domination helped trigger two world wars. Germany’s military spending increased by 5 percent last year and is up by nearly a third over the past decade.
France and Britain each increased their spending by 2.9 percent, significantly more than the global average.
The governments of the United States, France, Germany and the UK have all rejected the closure of non-essential businesses to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that society cannot afford these critical life-saving measures.
French President Emmanuel Macron declared that the population would have to “learn to live with” the virus. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in rejecting lockdowns, insisted that the alternative was better: to “let the bodies pile up in their thousands.” In the United States, claiming that mass infection would lead to a faster economic recovery, Trump administration officials declared, “We want them infected.”
But while claiming that containing the pandemic is too expensive, capitalist governments all over the world found $2 trillion for their armed forces and arms manufacturers.
The fight against the pandemic is by its very nature a global struggle. In its statement for the International Online May Day Rally, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) explained:
The emergence of new variants where the pandemic is spreading, potentially resistant to vaccines, demonstrates that the pandemic cannot be eradicated in any single country unless it is eradicated globally. National competition between the capitalist powers has blocked a globally coordinated response to the pandemic. Now the life-saving vaccine is being hoarded by the dominant capitalist countries and used as an instrument in their geopolitical intrigues.
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a ferocious eruption of nationalism, xenophobia, and militarism by capitalist governments and ruling elites around the world.
Former US President Donald Trump called the COVID-19 pandemic the “Chinese virus” and “Kung flu.” The Biden administration is continuing Trump’s efforts to demonize China, falsely claiming that Beijing is responsible for a cover-up and implying that the disease was a biological weapon created in a laboratory. As a result of these efforts to demonize China, racially motivated violent attacks against Asian Americans have surged over the past year.
The massive and record financing of the means of destruction and death, when what is necessary is a globally coordinated emergency program to save lives, exemplifies the historically outmoded and bankrupt character of the entire capitalist order.
In its criminal indifference to human life, in its efforts to desensitize the population to mass death from the pandemic, the ruling elites are at the same time seeking to prepare the population for the horrific consequences of world war.
All over the world, however, a different axis for politics and social organization is emerging. Workers are engaged in a wave of strikes and struggles in opposition to the subordination of all social and economic life to the enrichment of the capitalist oligarchy.
To unify these struggles and develop a counteroffensive against the homicidal policies of governments controlled by the capitalist ruling elites, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) statement called for the formation of an International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. The IWA-RFC will fight to unify workers throughout the world against all efforts to pit worker against worker, nation against nation.
The development of a powerful counteroffensive must be connected to the building of a socialist leadership in the working class. The fight against militarist violence, as with the fight against the pandemic, is at the same time a fight against the capitalist system and the oligarchy it serves. We urge all of our readers to join this effort and register to attend the International May Day Rally today.
US Fed a “long way” from withdrawing massive financial support for Wall Street
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/29/feda-a29.html
Nick Beams
7 hours ago
The US Federal Reserve this week again emphasised it is a “long way” from withdrawing the massive financial support that has fuelled the rise of Wall Street and asset prices over the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic, transferring hundreds of billions of dollars into the hands of the corporate and financial elites.
The Fed’s commitment to continued support—the purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities at the rate of $120 billion per month and the maintenance of the base interest rate at virtually zero—came despite it upgrading the outlook for the US economy and signs that inflation is starting to rise.
Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, speaks at a press conference on April 28, 2021. (Source: CSPAN)
The Fed’s policy-making committee said that “amid progress on vaccinations and strong policy support, indicators of economic activity and employment have strengthened.” It noted that inflation had risen but said this was largely due to “transitory factors.”
This was to allay concerns in some sections of the financial markets that rising inflation numbers would bring a tightening of the Fed’s monetary policy.
In his opening remarks to a press conference following the two-day policy meeting, Fed chairman Jerome Powell indicated that recent price rises would not impact on its accommodative measures.
“Readings on inflation have increased and are likely to rise somewhat further before moderating,” he said. They were due to one-time effects, such as upward pressure on prices as the economy re-opened.
Powell emphasised that the Fed would maintain its present policies until maximum employment was achieved and inflation expectations were “well-anchored” at 2 percent.
“We expect to maintain an accommodative stance of monetary policy until these employment and inflation outcomes are achieved,” he said, noting that a “transitory rise in inflation above 2 percent this year would not meet this standard.”
In a further reassurance to financial markets that the Fed was not yet even thinking about tapering its support, Powell said: “The economy is a long way from our goals, and it is likely to take some time for substantial further progress to be achieved.”
The first question in the Q&A session of Powell’s press conference was whether it was time to start talking about tapering. Powell replied that “it is not time yet” and the Fed would let the public know well in advance when it was time to have that conversation, which would begin “well in advance of any actual decision to taper our asset purchases.”
There is nervousness in financial markets and within the Fed itself that Wall Street has become so dependent on the outflow of cheap money that any winding back could bring a repeat of the “taper tantrum” of 2013 that saw significant turbulence in response to indications that the quantitative easing program, initiated after the 2008 financial crisis, could start to be eased.
But there are also concerns that if the Fed does not start to prepare markets for some withdrawal of support, then it may have to sharply tighten monetary policy if inflation starts to rise faster than expected.
One questioner referred to the concerns raised by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and others that things may “get out of hand” with the Fed’s new policy stance and there would be a repeat of the 1960s when “inflation got out of control.”
Powell said there were “many, many differences” and one-time price increases as a result of the economy re-opening were not likely to lead to persistently higher inflation into the future. However, if the Fed saw inflation moving above 2 percent in a persistent way then, “no one should doubt that in the event we would be prepared to use our tools.”
In light of the collapse of the family investment firm Archegos Capital, Powell was asked whether the Fed did not see that multiple banks had large exposures to the firm and if not why not?
Powell provided no clear answer, saying the major banks that had a big risk position with Archegos were not aware that others were in the same position. He said there was “risk management breakdown at some of the firms” and the Fed was looking into it.
He claimed that the Archegos risks were “not systemically important or were not of the size that they would have really created trouble for any of those institutions.”
The Archegos collapse may not have posed the same risk as the downfall of Lehman Brothers in 2008, but it was a clear indication of the growing instability of the financial system as a result of the cheap money policies of the Fed and other central banks globally.
The losses from Archegos have been significant. Further data released this week show the total losses incurred by some of world’s major banks exceed $10 billion.
Credit Suisse has taken a total hit of $5.5 billion. The Japanese financial firm Nomura, which flagged losses of $2 billion last month, increased that estimate to $2.85 billion earlier this week, resulting in its worst quarterly performance since the financial crisis of 2008. The Swiss bank UBS lost $861 million, Morgan Stanley $911 million and the Mitsubishi finance arm took a hit of $300 million.
As the Wall Street Journal noted, the losses of more than $10 billion “make it one of the worst trading incidents in recent years.”
A question on financial stability and whether the Fed and other regulators should think about extending their oversight saw Powell venture into an area which has been largely passed over—the significance and implications of the March 2020 financial crisis that led to the support provided to the financial markets ever since.
The crisis took the form of a freeze in the market for US Treasury bonds, supposedly the most liquid market in the world, the basis of the global financial system, which is regarded as a “safe haven” in times of financial turbulence.
Powell remarked that at the beginning of the pandemic crisis “there was such a demand for selling Treasurys, including by foreign central banks, that really the dealers couldn’t handle the volume. And so what was happening was the market was really starting to lose function, and … that was a really serious problem which we had to solve through really massive asset purchases.”
But more than a year on, the US Treasury and the Fed are nowhere nearer to fully understanding what took place nor what to do to prevent a recurrence of this or a similar event, as indicated by Powell’s somewhat jumbled concluding comments on the subject.
“And you know,” he said, “we’d like to see if there isn’t something we can do … do we need to build against that kind of extreme tail risk, and if so what would that look like?”
The Fed’s policy-making committee said that “amid progress on vaccinations and strong policy support, indicators of economic activity and employment have strengthened.” It noted that inflation had risen but said this was largely due to “transitory factors.”
This was to allay concerns in some sections of the financial markets that rising inflation numbers would bring a tightening of the Fed’s monetary policy.
In his opening remarks to a press conference following the two-day policy meeting, Fed chairman Jerome Powell indicated that recent price rises would not impact on its accommodative measures.
“Readings on inflation have increased and are likely to rise somewhat further before moderating,” he said. They were due to one-time effects, such as upward pressure on prices as the economy re-opened.
Powell emphasised that the Fed would maintain its present policies until maximum employment was achieved and inflation expectations were “well-anchored” at 2 percent.
“We expect to maintain an accommodative stance of monetary policy until these employment and inflation outcomes are achieved,” he said, noting that a “transitory rise in inflation above 2 percent this year would not meet this standard.”
In a further reassurance to financial markets that the Fed was not yet even thinking about tapering its support, Powell said: “The economy is a long way from our goals, and it is likely to take some time for substantial further progress to be achieved.”
The first question in the Q&A session of Powell’s press conference was whether it was time to start talking about tapering. Powell replied that “it is not time yet” and the Fed would let the public know well in advance when it was time to have that conversation, which would begin “well in advance of any actual decision to taper our asset purchases.”
There is nervousness in financial markets and within the Fed itself that Wall Street has become so dependent on the outflow of cheap money that any winding back could bring a repeat of the “taper tantrum” of 2013 that saw significant turbulence in response to indications that the quantitative easing program, initiated after the 2008 financial crisis, could start to be eased.
But there are also concerns that if the Fed does not start to prepare markets for some withdrawal of support, then it may have to sharply tighten monetary policy if inflation starts to rise faster than expected.
One questioner referred to the concerns raised by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and others that things may “get out of hand” with the Fed’s new policy stance and there would be a repeat of the 1960s when “inflation got out of control.”
Powell said there were “many, many differences” and one-time price increases as a result of the economy re-opening were not likely to lead to persistently higher inflation into the future. However, if the Fed saw inflation moving above 2 percent in a persistent way then, “no one should doubt that in the event we would be prepared to use our tools.”
In light of the collapse of the family investment firm Archegos Capital, Powell was asked whether the Fed did not see that multiple banks had large exposures to the firm and if not why not?
Powell provided no clear answer, saying the major banks that had a big risk position with Archegos were not aware that others were in the same position. He said there was “risk management breakdown at some of the firms” and the Fed was looking into it.
He claimed that the Archegos risks were “not systemically important or were not of the size that they would have really created trouble for any of those institutions.”
The Archegos collapse may not have posed the same risk as the downfall of Lehman Brothers in 2008, but it was a clear indication of the growing instability of the financial system as a result of the cheap money policies of the Fed and other central banks globally.
The losses from Archegos have been significant. Further data released this week show the total losses incurred by some of world’s major banks exceed $10 billion.
Credit Suisse has taken a total hit of $5.5 billion. The Japanese financial firm Nomura, which flagged losses of $2 billion last month, increased that estimate to $2.85 billion earlier this week, resulting in its worst quarterly performance since the financial crisis of 2008. The Swiss bank UBS lost $861 million, Morgan Stanley $911 million and the Mitsubishi finance arm took a hit of $300 million.
As the Wall Street Journal noted, the losses of more than $10 billion “make it one of the worst trading incidents in recent years.”
A question on financial stability and whether the Fed and other regulators should think about extending their oversight saw Powell venture into an area which has been largely passed over—the significance and implications of the March 2020 financial crisis that led to the support provided to the financial markets ever since.
The crisis took the form of a freeze in the market for US Treasury bonds, supposedly the most liquid market in the world, the basis of the global financial system, which is regarded as a “safe haven” in times of financial turbulence.
Powell remarked that at the beginning of the pandemic crisis “there was such a demand for selling Treasurys, including by foreign central banks, that really the dealers couldn’t handle the volume. And so what was happening was the market was really starting to lose function, and … that was a really serious problem which we had to solve through really massive asset purchases.”
But more than a year on, the US Treasury and the Fed are nowhere nearer to fully understanding what took place nor what to do to prevent a recurrence of this or a similar event, as indicated by Powell’s somewhat jumbled concluding comments on the subject.
“And you know,” he said, “we’d like to see if there isn’t something we can do … do we need to build against that kind of extreme tail risk, and if so what would that look like?”
North Carolina judge refuses to release body-cam footage of police killing of Andrew Brown Jr.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/29/poli-a29.html
Chase Lawrence
7 hours ago
North Carolina judge Jeff Foster refused Wednesday to release the body-camera footage of the police killing of Andrew Brown Jr., agreeing with prosecutors to delay making the footage public for at least 30 days. The only release scheduled was to the family and one lawyer in 10 days under the condition that they do not release it to the public.
The lawyer for the police argued that the shooting was justified, and the argument, accepted by the judge, was that he did not want body-camera footage shown until a possible trial of the officers who killed Brown. Seven officers involved in the shooting have been placed on leave, but no criminal charges have yet been brought against them.
Mario Gonzalez is restrained by Alameda police officers on April 19 in a video from an officer's body-worn camera. (Alameda Police Department)
Brown, a 42-year-old African American father of 10, was shot and killed by deputies from the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office serving a drug search warrant around 8:30 a.m. on April 21 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. A private autopsy ordered by Brown’s family found that he was shot five times, with four of the shots hitting his right arm and one shot to the back of the head killing him. The official autopsy has not been released.
Members of Brown’s family were shown just 20 seconds of redacted footage that omitted officers’ faces on Monday. The family’s lawyer who was authorized to view the footage said that the footage showed Brown was executed while sitting in his car with his hands “firmly on the wheel” when deputies began shooting.
Hundreds of residents of Elizabeth City, population 18,000, have been protesting in the streets since the killing of Brown and demanding that the body-camera footage from the shooting be released to the public. Democratic mayor Bettie J. Parker ordered an 8 p.m. curfew Tuesday in response to the protests, and the city and surrounding county are under states of emergency. Six protesters were arrested for curfew violations as militarized riot police confronted peaceful protesters Tuesday night.
Nearly 200 people protested peacefully, chanting, “No charges, no peace!” and “Release the tape! The real tape! The whole tape!” When police began arresting people following the curfew, protesters shouted, “Shame on you!”
Democratic governor Roy Cooper has called for a special prosecutor to investigate Brown’s death and the FBI has launched a civil rights investigation as well, indicating the extent to which the ruling class is concerned over the outrage sparked by the killing.
The only footage that is publicly available was obtained by a local news channel via a Freedom of Information Act Request. The footage from the city’s camera shows deputies arriving in the back of a pickup with tactical gear. The deputies immediately dismounted once in the driveway of Brown’s home, can be heard yelling to Brown to “put your hands up!” then open fire almost as quickly as they dismounted. Afterwards, video shows Brown’s car riddled with bullets with the back window of the car blown out and bullet holes through the remaining windows.
The operation echoes the US-supported, trained and armed paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala and Afghanistan, or the death squads in the Philippines who murder poor people under the pretext of an antidrug crackdown.
Benjamin Crump, who has taken many high-profile cases of African Americans killed by the police including Brown’s, claimed, “This has become a constant sight across America, the evolution of policing that’s now terrorizing communities of color,” framing police violence as a purely racial problem, despite its impact on workers and poor people of every race and ethnicity. Crump has been criticized by the family of victims of police violence, such as Samaria Rice and Lisa Simpson, who called on him and others affiliated with Black Lives Matters to “stop monopolizing and capitalizing off our fight for justice and human rights.”
Alameda, California
Body-camera footage of the death of Mario Arenales Gonzalez was released on Tuesday. Gonzalez was killed in Alameda County, California by being pinned with his body and face to the ground for five minutes in the same way that George Floyd was. Gonzalez became unresponsive while held down by the police and was later declared dead at the hospital. The killing took place on April 19, 2021, one day before the conviction of former Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of Floyd.
Police were responding to two separate calls about a man who was loitering in a park. The body-camera footage shows Gonzalez struggling to answer basic questions made by the officer, trailing off at points or abruptly changing topics. While the questions are being asked, before the confrontation he can be seen accidentally dropping objects out of his hands while fidgeting with a comb. During this, the officer can be heard requesting another police unit to the scene.
Once the other officer is present, they ask if Gonzalez has an ID to which he cannot answer.
What follows in the footage is extremely disturbing. The officers force Gonzalez’s hands behind his back and ram him into the ground. One officer is asking Gonzalez questions as he is slowly killed by the other officer who aggressively drives his knee and then elbow into Gonzalez’s back, as Gonzalez cries out in pain while also answering the officers’ questions. Three officers were on him at this point, telling him to “stop resisting.” One of the officers asks if they should roll him over on his side with another denying this, saying, “I don’t want to lose what I got.” This continues up until the point that Gonzalez goes limp, after which an officer states that “he’s gone unresponsive.” Shortly thereafter an officer states that “he has no pulse” and they attempt to resuscitate him with CPR.
At no point did Gonzalez portray any aggressive behaviors towards the officers. The footage exposes as a lie the initial Alameda police report that claimed that after officers attempted to detain Gonzalez “a physical altercation ensued.”
Gonzalez’s brother Gerardo Gonzalez said at a press conference Tuesday that “Alameda police officers murdered my brother.”
The lawyer for the family, Julia Sherwin, explained, “His death was completely avoidable and unnecessary,” and that “Drunk guy in a park doesn’t equal a capital sentence.”
The three officers involved in the killing, Eric McKinley, Cameron Leahy, and James Fisher, have been placed on administrative leave.
Chicago, Illinois
Body-cam footage of the killing of 22-year-old Anthony Alvarez by a Chicago Police Department (CPD) officer, which shows that he was gunned down as he was running from police, was released Wednesday. The killing came just days after another CPD officer shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo while the latter’s hands were in the air.
The police have not said whether Alvarez was suspected of a crime. What can be seen from video in the early morning of March 31 is that Alvarez was walking away from a gas station with some bags when a CPD SUV came around the corner. Alvarez dropped his bags and started running. After that the video shows Alvarez running away from the police into a residential area, tripping, getting back up and then the police officer raising his gun and shooting Alvarez as he ran. After being shot in the back, Alvarez asks, “Why are you shooting me?” to which the officer responded, “You had a gun.”
The officer who shot Alvarez attempted to handcuff him while he was bleeding on the ground, yelling “Cuff him! Cuff Him!” with his partner insisting that he be rendered aid. Alvarez was later pronounced dead at Illinois Masonic Medical Center.
After the exposure of the 2014 police murder of Laquan McDonald, the United States Department of Justice found that CPD officers “engage in tactically unsound and unnecessary foot pursuits, and that these foot pursuits too often end with officers unreasonably shooting someone—including unarmed individuals.”
Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot was apologetic towards the police, telling reporters ahead of the release of the video of Alvarez’s killing: “I understand, having investigated many of these shootings, that officers are in many instances called upon to make split-second decisions, particularly in instances like this one where there’s a gun.”
Brown, a 42-year-old African American father of 10, was shot and killed by deputies from the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office serving a drug search warrant around 8:30 a.m. on April 21 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. A private autopsy ordered by Brown’s family found that he was shot five times, with four of the shots hitting his right arm and one shot to the back of the head killing him. The official autopsy has not been released.
Members of Brown’s family were shown just 20 seconds of redacted footage that omitted officers’ faces on Monday. The family’s lawyer who was authorized to view the footage said that the footage showed Brown was executed while sitting in his car with his hands “firmly on the wheel” when deputies began shooting.
Hundreds of residents of Elizabeth City, population 18,000, have been protesting in the streets since the killing of Brown and demanding that the body-camera footage from the shooting be released to the public. Democratic mayor Bettie J. Parker ordered an 8 p.m. curfew Tuesday in response to the protests, and the city and surrounding county are under states of emergency. Six protesters were arrested for curfew violations as militarized riot police confronted peaceful protesters Tuesday night.
Nearly 200 people protested peacefully, chanting, “No charges, no peace!” and “Release the tape! The real tape! The whole tape!” When police began arresting people following the curfew, protesters shouted, “Shame on you!”
Democratic governor Roy Cooper has called for a special prosecutor to investigate Brown’s death and the FBI has launched a civil rights investigation as well, indicating the extent to which the ruling class is concerned over the outrage sparked by the killing.
The only footage that is publicly available was obtained by a local news channel via a Freedom of Information Act Request. The footage from the city’s camera shows deputies arriving in the back of a pickup with tactical gear. The deputies immediately dismounted once in the driveway of Brown’s home, can be heard yelling to Brown to “put your hands up!” then open fire almost as quickly as they dismounted. Afterwards, video shows Brown’s car riddled with bullets with the back window of the car blown out and bullet holes through the remaining windows.
The operation echoes the US-supported, trained and armed paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala and Afghanistan, or the death squads in the Philippines who murder poor people under the pretext of an antidrug crackdown.
Benjamin Crump, who has taken many high-profile cases of African Americans killed by the police including Brown’s, claimed, “This has become a constant sight across America, the evolution of policing that’s now terrorizing communities of color,” framing police violence as a purely racial problem, despite its impact on workers and poor people of every race and ethnicity. Crump has been criticized by the family of victims of police violence, such as Samaria Rice and Lisa Simpson, who called on him and others affiliated with Black Lives Matters to “stop monopolizing and capitalizing off our fight for justice and human rights.”
Alameda, California
Body-camera footage of the death of Mario Arenales Gonzalez was released on Tuesday. Gonzalez was killed in Alameda County, California by being pinned with his body and face to the ground for five minutes in the same way that George Floyd was. Gonzalez became unresponsive while held down by the police and was later declared dead at the hospital. The killing took place on April 19, 2021, one day before the conviction of former Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of Floyd.
Police were responding to two separate calls about a man who was loitering in a park. The body-camera footage shows Gonzalez struggling to answer basic questions made by the officer, trailing off at points or abruptly changing topics. While the questions are being asked, before the confrontation he can be seen accidentally dropping objects out of his hands while fidgeting with a comb. During this, the officer can be heard requesting another police unit to the scene.
Once the other officer is present, they ask if Gonzalez has an ID to which he cannot answer.
What follows in the footage is extremely disturbing. The officers force Gonzalez’s hands behind his back and ram him into the ground. One officer is asking Gonzalez questions as he is slowly killed by the other officer who aggressively drives his knee and then elbow into Gonzalez’s back, as Gonzalez cries out in pain while also answering the officers’ questions. Three officers were on him at this point, telling him to “stop resisting.” One of the officers asks if they should roll him over on his side with another denying this, saying, “I don’t want to lose what I got.” This continues up until the point that Gonzalez goes limp, after which an officer states that “he’s gone unresponsive.” Shortly thereafter an officer states that “he has no pulse” and they attempt to resuscitate him with CPR.
At no point did Gonzalez portray any aggressive behaviors towards the officers. The footage exposes as a lie the initial Alameda police report that claimed that after officers attempted to detain Gonzalez “a physical altercation ensued.”
Gonzalez’s brother Gerardo Gonzalez said at a press conference Tuesday that “Alameda police officers murdered my brother.”
The lawyer for the family, Julia Sherwin, explained, “His death was completely avoidable and unnecessary,” and that “Drunk guy in a park doesn’t equal a capital sentence.”
The three officers involved in the killing, Eric McKinley, Cameron Leahy, and James Fisher, have been placed on administrative leave.
Chicago, Illinois
Body-cam footage of the killing of 22-year-old Anthony Alvarez by a Chicago Police Department (CPD) officer, which shows that he was gunned down as he was running from police, was released Wednesday. The killing came just days after another CPD officer shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo while the latter’s hands were in the air.
The police have not said whether Alvarez was suspected of a crime. What can be seen from video in the early morning of March 31 is that Alvarez was walking away from a gas station with some bags when a CPD SUV came around the corner. Alvarez dropped his bags and started running. After that the video shows Alvarez running away from the police into a residential area, tripping, getting back up and then the police officer raising his gun and shooting Alvarez as he ran. After being shot in the back, Alvarez asks, “Why are you shooting me?” to which the officer responded, “You had a gun.”
The officer who shot Alvarez attempted to handcuff him while he was bleeding on the ground, yelling “Cuff him! Cuff Him!” with his partner insisting that he be rendered aid. Alvarez was later pronounced dead at Illinois Masonic Medical Center.
After the exposure of the 2014 police murder of Laquan McDonald, the United States Department of Justice found that CPD officers “engage in tactically unsound and unnecessary foot pursuits, and that these foot pursuits too often end with officers unreasonably shooting someone—including unarmed individuals.”
Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot was apologetic towards the police, telling reporters ahead of the release of the video of Alvarez’s killing: “I understand, having investigated many of these shootings, that officers are in many instances called upon to make split-second decisions, particularly in instances like this one where there’s a gun.”
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