Opposition mounts at the University of Michigan as COVID-19 outbreaks emerge on campus

Jesse Thomas

The University of Michigan reported on Thursday that a cluster of COVID-19 cases had been confirmed in South Quad Residence Hall, primarily on the sixth and eighth floors.

The outbreaks were reported just one day after a nearly two-week-long strike by the University of Michigan’s Graduate Employee Organization (GEO), a subsidiary of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), was shut down with the ramming through of a sell-out contract that did not seriously address any of the student demands.

The graduate student instructors were striking against the reckless reopening policies of the administration that many students felt would almost certainly lead to an outbreak on the campus. Their COVID-19-related demands included a universal right to work remotely, improved testing and contact tracing, care subsidies for parents and caregivers, a $2,500 unconditional emergency grant and rent freezes.

The possibility that the university administration delayed the public announcement of the cases until after the strike was officially smothered cannot be discounted.

Stockwell Hall on the central campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (Credit: Michael Barera/CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons)

An article published Thursday by the Michigan Daily, the student-run campus newspaper, shared a memo written by the Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) department on the outbreak. The letter was addressed only to the sixth- and eighth-floor residents of the South Quadrangle dormitory and reported that as of September 17, there had been 19 confirmed positive COVID-19 cases in South Quad.

The memo went on to note that the majority of the cases were found to be “connected,” meaning that their origin was known and the outbreak presumably isolated, but that three cases on the sixth floor had not yet been “associated” and “have no known source of exposure.”

The memo declared that students should “only leave when necessary to obtain food or to attend in-person classes if no remote option is available while wearing a face covering.”

The memo also stated that “due to increased testing for athletes, they can also leave to attend their athletic events.” The university has taken every measure necessary to ensure that resumption of sports. In fact, last week as the university was preparing the shutdown of the GEO strike, it announced that the campus was bringing back the football program, which generated $122 million in profits in 2019.

The Michigan Daily also reported that Susan Ringler-Cerniglia, public information officer for the Washtenaw County Health Department, refused to say if this was the first cluster on campus. Instead, she replied that there has been “a steady but not large number of cases related to the campus.”

South Quad is centrally located near the heart of the campus. The building is a short walk from the Harold T. and Vivian Shapiro undergraduate library, as well as the “Diag,” the main plaza that extends foot traffic to all areas of the campus and the surrounding town. It occupies a ground area of roughly 40,000 square feet and spans vertically approximately 10 floors.

According to the university housing department’s website, the dormitory building is home to an estimated 1,170 students and also includes a dining center, café, and laundry room, multiple group study rooms, music practice studios, and several recreational facilities.

The report by the Michigan Daily notes that statistics given by the university’s online system, the “Maize & BluePrint” dashboard, contradict the EHS briefing, lagging behind in its official reporting of the known number of confirmed positive cases. While the EHS memo tallies the current positive case count in South Quad at 19, the system only reported 13 as of Monday.

An undergraduate student spoke anonymously to the WSWS about another recent series of positive cases occurring in Stockwell Hall, which lies just a mile to the northeast of South Quad: “Our first case was a while ago and we got an email from EHS. Then another [student] who tested positive was in my hall and…texted the hall group ‘chat’ right away. The next day we got an email from EHS that there were two new cases in Stockwell…and one was an unrelated case from another floor.”

The student continued, “I think the administration should start testing the entire student body that is living in Ann Arbor twice a week, like what they’re doing at UIUC [the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]. That way, we have a better chance of allowing students to stay on campus while also catching as many cases as possible. Some people…said that [University of Michigan President Mark] Schlissel essentially said that testing everyone here twice a week is scientifically impossible, but clearly it’s not.”

As the WSWS has reported, despite the University of Illinois’ implementation of twice-per-week testing—which has itself been a stray from the norm in universities reopening across the country— there have still been over 1,900 positive COVID cases, primarily among undergraduate students, on the UIUC campus.

In addition to calling for mass testing, the student also decried the administration’s hypocritical policy of blaming student parties for infection outbreaks while deciding to continue with the resumption of the college football season: “The university is sending some mixed signals with sports reopening. … [A] couple of weeks ago they posted a meme on Twitter saying that parties of 26 are bad but parties of 25 are ok. …”

A post on the Twitter account belonging to a group representing striking campus dining hall workers revealed an additional outbreak, which the worker claims was suppressed by management: “I was told in secrecy that there was a confirmed case in [redacted]. I was never directly addressed by a supervisor. There were lots of secret conversations going on around me among different managers/supervisors.”

The report continues: “A few people had been contacted by tracers so I knew for sure that the rumor was true. I know they can’t disclose who tested positive, but not being informed that there was a confirmed case in my own workplace made me feel blind-sided. That’s information I should know about to gauge whether I feel safe enough to continue working or not.”

The worker went on to note that “many coworkers” and even supervisors were not wearing adequate PPE: “They’re wearing the cheap cloth masks that the university provided that’s been proven to be insufficient. I am not safe working there and students are not safe eating here.”

Trenten “Trent” Ingell, a junior at the university’s College of Literature, Science and Arts, told our reporters that the university needs to “implement a much more robust testing capacity, which prioritizes those who could actually be severely affected by the virus: student workers, older faculty, custodial staff, people with pre-existing conditions and with immunodeficiencies.”

Trent also commented on the decision to push forward with college sports: “They should certainly not have football this semester, that’s very clear, and their decision to restart was motivated only by profit and PR and it is unnecessarily putting student-athletes in a position of increased exposure.”

Trent explained that he felt the official statistics for the school may be low because it has been up to the ResStaf to log the cases themselves. Trent said he felt that these students should not be held responsible by the Housing Department to administer the public health of the residences: “If they do intend to have the dorms open for the rest of the semester they should hire medical and public health professionals that can provide testing and immediate attention to residents.”

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 outbreaks on the Ann Arbor campus were entirely predictable and preventable.

College and university campuses along with K-12 schools throughout the US have emerged as central battlegrounds in the fight to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. In this struggle, teachers, students, faculty, and staff stand on one side, fighting for an end to the reckless policies of in-person learning, for resources to be allocated for safety measures and online learning, and for policies based on science, that put life over profit.

As was recently demonstrated so sharply through the University of Michigan Graduate Student Instructor strike, the university administrations, the corporate-controlled trade unions and both the Democrats and Republicans stand on the other side, fighting to keep corporate profits flowing.

Youth and students on the frontlines of the pandemic in the US endure low paid, unsafe jobs and endless financial struggle

Melody Isley

As the United States surpasses 7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 200,000 deaths, the population is only just beginning to feel the effects of the pandemic.

With the pandemic triggering an economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression, the American ruling class has taken advantage of workers’ economic anxieties to push for a deadly return to school, and the reckless return to work that will endanger millions of people regardless of ethnicity or age. Every day, millions of essential workers are put at risk, most of them young people.

Universities have prioritized their finances over student safety by allowing millions of students to resume on-campus instruction and take up residence in dormitories. This has led to hundreds of outbreaks across the US, and will prove to have countless tragic and deadly consequences.

In Southern California, for example, San Diego State University’s president decided to counter criticisms by claiming a “plague of parties” continues to cause the university’s rising daily case count, with 802 positive students as of September 19.

Instead of shouldering any responsibility for putting students in harm’s way, administrators and politicians across the country echo these sentiments, blaming students for rising cases, and making ineffective cosmetic adjustments to their policies, attempting to tame negative headlines and relieve them of liability.

This week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, released an insulting “public relations” video starring “certified young person” Paul Rudd via Twitter.

Resembling a “Saturday Night Live” skit, Rudd paints the picture that youth are indifferent to wearing masks, using “hip and funny” slang in a rap music style sequence. The supposedly comedic video breaks down to Rudd yelling at the supposed audience of young people to “just wear a mask, it’s not that hard; people are dying. It’s preventable. I shouldn’t have to make it fun.”

Cuomo shared this video, now with almost 8 million views on Twitter, in order to blame young people for the pandemic, and draw attention away from his own disastrous handling of the COVID-19 crisis. New York state has the highest death count in the US and Cuomo has received pushback from teachers and students over his drive to reopen schools in New York City and across the state.

It is the hope of Governor Cuomo, and politicians and bureaucrats like him, that by blaming students and young people for the worsening pandemic, that they can avoid accountability. Similarly, in July, President Donald Trump, incorrectly blamed protests and young people for a spike in cases—conveniently ignoring his own reckless rhetoric regarding masks and ignoring many states’ premature reopening at the start of the summer.

The ruling class would like Americans to think that the virus is being spread due to students’ immaturity— blaming their ‘ not yet developed prefrontal cortex’ and their penchant to have irresponsible parties and gatherings.

The fact of the matter is, however, that the ruling class and US policymakers are at fault for the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans and tens of millions losing their jobs. Students who have contracted COVID-19 are not to blame, and neither is their supposed party-going. Students and young people are, in fact, vulnerable to the disease because they are forced to work due to arbitrarily being categorized as “essential workers.”

Those under 30 are the most likely to be low-paid ‘essential’ workers—including health care workers, those in retail and food service, agriculture workers and your local barista. Essential workers are almost guaranteed to be exposed to the virus either from the public, or their coworkers.

Many of these workers report unsafe conditions and fear for their own health and safety, and for their loved ones that they could unknowingly expose to the virus. They report their employers not providing PPE, allowing social distancing, or proper cleaning supplies and protection from the public. Many workers confront customers who can effectively ignore mask-wearing requirements and employers that do not give hazard pay and health care benefits. The majority fear loss of pay or retribution of some kind if they request time off or cannot return to work due to health reasons, leading many to continue working while unknowingly ill.

The WSWS spoke to Mazee, a 25-year-old worker in Kansas City. Mazee works two different bartending jobs and was recently let go from her third job as a waitress. Mazee has an autoimmune disease but is compelled to work as she is the only source of income for her family, including her immunocompromised mother. She is constantly battling anxiety and depression, and her savings have been wiped out health care costs—as she has no health insurance and has been forced to shoulder those costs.

On her jobs, Mazee says she wishes the public knew what essential workers are going through. Echoing many fearful and struggling workers, Mazee explained, “It’s hard to find people who care, we’re called essential, but we’re replaceable. There’s always someone else forced to sacrifice their health to their job.” Exhausted and at risk, Mazee is nonetheless forced to work in unsafe conditions to survive.

Lynda, a 29-year-old worker from San Diego, told the WSWS that she was working two jobs at the start of the year, at a bar and at a coffee shop. Because of the pandemic she lost her main source of income as the bar shut down permanently, and she was forced to pick up more hours at a local coffee chain.

Like many workers, Lynda feels she is not provided adequate protection from her employer and is scared to take time off or call out sick or fears looming costs like her car breaking down, or potential eviction from her apartment.

In a sentiment close to many working people, Lynda expressed frustration with the impossible tasks she has faced under the capitalist system and since joining the workforce after the 2008 financial crisis: “There’s no way to get up. It’s endless crises since I started work when I was 17. I don’t know how to fix this. … They tell me ‘just work hard,’ but I work for $13 an hour. I can’t make more than that. Even with so much time, working for 12 years at all kinds of jobs, and I can’t get out.”

Inequality, wage stagnation and economic hardship of all kinds plague every worker; however, young workers and students are the most vulnerable to the economic challenges of the pandemic. For most workers in the United States, an unexpected expense of $500 would be catastrophic.

Workers have not recovered since the 2008 recession, and will now face an even greater challenge in the coming years with the COVID-19 depression. Many young people are burdened with astronomical student debt, and endure low wages and high expenses, like health care, that keep them in constant financial distress.

While Millennials became the largest working generation, with every member being of working age, the number employed fell by 16 percent this spring as the US economic output collapsed.

Gen Z, largely those just coming of age, have yet to even attempt to grow their savings or establish themselves in the workforce. This youngest generation will bear the brunt of the historic economic struggles to come, and will largely become trapped in low-paying, easily exploitable work as they face fewer job opportunities and greater debt than their elders.

The COVID-19 crisis presents an unprecedented challenge to all people, but especially those who are on the front lines. The younger generations already experienced the highest levels of stress, clinical anxiety and depression, in recent memory.

The ruling class is targeting victims of the pandemic in order to distract workers and the public from the fact that the self-interest of the financial elite has already cost the world nearly 1 million lives and the livelihoods of millions more. At every level, officials are attempting to find a scapegoat, and a distraction, from their homicidal negligence. The ruling class would like younger workers and students to be assaulted by the effects of the crisis for years to come, while also taking the blame. Workers everywhere are being sacrificed in order to build up the wealth of the ruling class and maintain their power.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the crises facing young people and workers are not an unpredictable act of the universe, but a foreseeable consequence of the capitalist system that is based on the exploitation of the working class, creating a society based on historic levels of inequality. Hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been avoided had the ruling elite warned the public back in January when they were made aware of the COVID-19 threat, but the crisis has been profitable for the financial oligarchy who sees a silver lining payday from mass deaths of the elderly and pensioners.

Masses of youth and workers are becoming politically aware, and a revolutionary struggle is appearing as the only path forward to guarantee that lives will be placed before profits. Workers and youth alike must unite together in the United States and internationally in the fight against the homicidal policies of the ruling class and join in the revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system.

US escalates military intervention in Syria

Bill Van Auken

The US has significantly escalated its military presence in northeastern Syria in response to growing friction with Russian forces deployed in the same area and in apparent preparation for carving out a US-backed “autonomous” zone controlling Syria’s major oil fields.

On Friday, the US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees American military operations throughout the Middle East, announced the deployment of half a dozen Bradley fighting vehicles along with roughly 100 troops to operate them. The Pentagon is also beefing up radar installations in the area and increasing patrols by fighter jets and attack helicopters in a bid for control of the region’s airspace.

While the US military’s announcement made no mention of Russia, the purpose of the deployment is clear. The actions were designed to “ensure the safety and security of Coalition forces,” Centcom spokesman Captain Bill Urban said in a statement, adding that Washington “does not seek conflict with any other nation in Syria, but will defend Coalition forces if necessary.”

The deployment is ostensibly a response to an incident at the end of last month in which four US troops were injured in a collision between US and Russian armored vehicles near Syria’s northeastern triple border with Turkey and Iraq. Washington accused the Russian military of “unprofessional” conduct and a violation of “de-confliction protocols,” while Moscow charged that the US forces provoked the incident, attempting to block a previously announced Russian patrol.

On the same day that the Pentagon announced the escalation of the illegal US military occupation in Syria, Trump repeated his semi-coherent explanation of US policy in the country, telling a White House press conference: “We are out of Syria other than we kept the oil. I kept the oil. We have troops guarding the oil. Other than that, we are out of Syria.”

US military forces have been concentrated in Syria’s northeastern governorates of Deir ez-Zor and Al-Hasakah, the center of Syria’s oil production. While the official rationale for the occupation is the continuation of the 2014 intervention launched against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), the reality is that US troops are there to deny the Syrian government access to energy resources that are desperately needed for the country’s reconstruction after nearly a decade of armed conflict.

Washington is continuing a regime change policy it initiated in Syria in 2011 with the CIA’s arming and funding of Al Qaeda-linked militias in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have lost their lives and millions have been displaced by fighting. The US is maintaining a regime of sanctions against Damascus that is tantamount to a state of war, condemning the Syrian population to poverty and hindering the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, the Trump administration has handed exploitation of the oil fields—via a deal signed with the Pentagon’s Kurdish proxy ground forces and overseen by Centcom—over to a hastily formed US oil company, Delta Crescent Energy, whose principal partners are a right-wing Republican former ambassador and an ex-Delta Force officer and Fox News contributor.

In an apparent bid to formalize US control of the oil-producing area by means of a colonial-style carve-up, Washington’s special envoy on Syria James Jeffrey arrived on September 20 at a US military base in Hasaka to oversee unity talks between two rival Syrian Kurdish factions, the Kurdish National Council in Syria (ENKS) and the Kurdish national unity parties (the largest of which is the PYD, the political arm of the YPG militia, the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Pentagon’s proxy military force).

The aim of the talks is the formation of a Kurdish “autonomous authority” to serve as a political facade for a permanent US military occupation of the Syrian oil-producing region. This initiative also has the backing of the Macron government in France.

The move has heightened tensions with both Russia, which backs the Assad government, and Turkey, which has repeatedly intervened in Syria to prevent the formation of an autonomous Kurdish entity. It regards the US proxies in the YPG militia as a branch of the PKK Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey, labeled by both Ankara and Washington as a terrorist organization.

Trump green-lighted the Turkish military intervention in October of last year, which pushed Kurdish forces back from the Syrian-Turkish border. At the time, Trump demagogically claimed he was bringing all of the US troops in Syria “home,” only to reverse himself after a firestorm of criticism from within the US military and intelligence apparatus, declaring troops would remain behind to “take the oil.”

There are also mounting tensions between Russia and Turkey over the Turkish military occupation of Idlib province in northwestern Syria and its backing of anti-government Islamist militias there. Russian jets reportedly carried out multiple airstrikes in Idlib on Sunday, targeting camps of the Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose dominant faction is the former Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda.

Talks between Ankara and Moscow broke down recently over Russia’s demand that Turkey reduce its presence in Idlib, estimated at some 10,000 troops, and cede control of the strategic M4 highway to the Syrian government. Instead, Turkey has dispatched even more armored vehicles to the area.

The conflicting interests and objectives of the US, Russia and Turkey, which all have significant military assets deployed in close proximity to each other in Syria’s north, are a powder keg that can be set off by any miscalculation or provocation.

US military aggression in Syria is joined with the relentless US campaign against Iran, the closest ally of Damascus, which has taken its latest form in Washington’s invoking of the “snapback” of United Nations sanctions that were suspended with the 2015 nuclear accord between Tehran and the world’s major powers. All of the other signatories to the agreement, including Washington’s erstwhile European allies, the UK, France and Germany, have rejected this attack, insisting that the US has no standing to invoke the sanctions, having unilaterally abrogated the agreement in 2018. Nonetheless, Washington has announced a set of new unilateral anti-Iranian sanctions and is threatening secondary sanctions against countries trading with Iran.

The threat of an eruption of US militarism in Syria, against Iran or in Eastern Europe or the South China Sea has only been intensified by the global coronavirus pandemic and the social, economic and political crisis gripping American capitalism.

The Trump administration’s embarking upon a new war as an “October Surprise” designed to shock the electorate in advance of the presidential election—or create the pretext for martial law—is a real and present danger. If it were to do so, it would be able to count on the complicity and support of the Democratic Party, which has repeatedly criticized the administration from the right as being too soft on Russia and China, in particular over the recent armored car sideswiping incident in Syria.

The threat of a new war, with the potential of triggering a global nuclear conflagration, cannot be answered within the framework of the electoral contest between Trump and Biden. It requires an independent strategy of the working class, based upon the class struggle, and guided by a revolutionary socialist and internationalist program.

Spike in Canada’s COVID-19 infections exposes criminality of back-to-work, back-to-school drive

Roger Jordan

Over the past two weeks, COVID-19 infections have surged across Canada. The dramatic rise in cases, which in some provinces are now more than three times higher than in August, is the direct product of the ruling elite’s criminal back-to-work and back-to-school policies, which are aimed at guaranteeing corporate profits regardless of the cost in human lives.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, recorded 425 cases on Monday, its highest daily tally in three-and-a-half months. This followed over 400 cases being registered on both Friday and Saturday. Reflecting the fact that the virus is now spreading out of control, authorities in Ontario have conceded repeatedly for several weeks that they are unable to determine the origin of around 50 percent of the new infections.

Around two thirds of current infections are among those under the age of 40, confirming that the government’s reopening of the economy is chiefly to blame. Over 400 people under the age of 20 are currently infected, many of whom are no doubt school children. Two Ontario schools have already been forced to shut down in-person classes, less than two weeks after they reopened for the first time in six months.

The virus is also reaching into the political establishment, with both Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet testing positive in recent days.

Responding to the rapidly deteriorating situation, Ontario’s right-wing premier, Doug Ford, held a press conference Saturday, where he sought to blame the population at large for the looming disaster. He complained about “wild parties” and lax adherence to social distancing regulations, as he announced that private gatherings will henceforth be limited to 10 people indoors and 25 people outside. However, the government remains adamant that it will not limit school class-sizes or the number of workers in factories and other congested workplaces.

Neighbouring Quebec, which was the epicentre of the pandemic last spring with over 5,500 of Canada’s 9,200 deaths, is also experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases, with 587 new infections announced Monday. More than 400 infections were recorded on both Saturday and Sunday, forcing the province’s right-wing Coalition Avenir Quebec government to announce new restrictions on gatherings in Montreal and Quebec City.

Quebec’s director of public health, Horacio Arruda, who played a leading role in enforcing the reopening of schools in late August, said Monday, “We are in the second wave. The situation is serious. The virus is everywhere in Quebec.”

But like the Ontario Conservative government, Quebec Premier Francois Legault and his CAQ government are determined to press forward with their reckless drive to “reopen” the economy, and especially the schools, so that parents can be forced to return to the job and resume producing profits for big business.

The politicians’ claim that the resurgence of cases is the result of irresponsible behaviour on the part of the population is a slanderous lie. While a small minority of people disregard social distancing and other public health measures, they are akin to petty thieves when compared to the real criminals in the political establishment, who early on declared their support for a premature reopening of the economy and a policy of effectively letting the virus run rampant.

In late April, for example, Legault asserted that “herd immunity,” i.e. allowing the virus to infect 70 percent or more of the population, is “the best way out of the current pandemic.” Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu had earlier told Canadian Press that pursuing a policy of “herd immunity” is not necessarily a bad thing.

Canada’s chronically under-resourced public health system, which has been ravaged by decades of savage austerity, is proving totally inadequate to cope with the rise in cases. Test centres across the country, but especially in Ontario, have been overwhelmed, with wait times routinely extending to six and even eight hours.

Back in July, the federal government set a target of 200,000 tests per day. Two months later, the provinces have failed to get even a third of the way there, with only between 60,000 and 65,000 tests currently being administered daily.

The threat of a dramatic rise in deaths is made all the more likely by the fact that nothing has been done by the political establishment to prepare Canada’s dilapidated hospitals and provide overstretched health care workers with the additional resources that they need to successfully combat the pandemic. Yesterday, for example, the Globe and Mail reported the Ontario government has failed to act on the recommendations that infectious-disease specialist made in a June report “to build infection prevention and control measures inside the province’s long-term care facilities.”

Medical professionals have borne the brunt of this callous and calamitous handling of the pandemic. The Canadian Institute for Health Information revealed in a report released earlier this month that as of late July, almost 20 percent of coronavirus infections in Canada were among health care workers, well above the international average.

The crisis in health care is also creating serious problems in the treatment of other health issues. On Saturday, the pediatric section of the Ontario Medical Association launched a petition protesting the lack of any preparation to ensure the distribution of flu vaccines to children ahead of the onset of the flu season. “We … would like to express our urgent concerns regarding an imminent crisis in influenza vaccination,” states the petition. “Right now, Public Health seems to expect the status quo from years past, when individual doctor’s offices and scattered flu clinics gave flu vaccines.”

While health and critical social services have been forced to get by on shoe-string budgets, Canada’s wealthy and super-rich have never had it so good. According to a recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada’s wealthiest 20 billionaires have seen their combined wealth rise by a staggering $37 billion in the six months since the beginning of the pandemic. On the other hand, the latest labour force statistics showed that 1.1 million fewer Canadians were employed than prior to the pandemic, and a further 713,000 were still employed but have lost more than half of their income.

Galen Weston, who owns Canada’s largest grocery store chain, Loblaws, has seen his family’s wealth increase by $1.6 billion to $10.8 billion during the pandemic. This was no doubt helped by Weston’s decision in June to rob the mostly low-paid and part-time grocery store clerks of the $2 per hour pandemic bonus instituted in late March.

Fourteen hundred workers at Dominion Foods, a subsidiary of Loblaws in Newfoundland, are about to enter their fifth week of strike action in pursuit of higher wage increases and job security. In a tentative contract, endorsed by Unifor, but decisively rejected by rank-and-file Dominion workers, Loblaws offered them a meager $1 per hour wage increase stretched over three years.

The ever-deepening social chasm between the capitalist elite and the vast majority of the population is the outcome of the policies pursued by the entire political establishment. During March and April, the principal concern of the federal Liberal government and the entire opposition, from the Conservatives to the New Democrats, was to ensure an unprecedented bailout of the big banks and financial oligarchy. Under Trudeau’s supervision, over $650 billion was funneled by the government, the Bank of Canada, and various Crown agencies into the financial markets, the banks, and big business to prop up the fortunes of the rich and super-rich.

As soon as the bailout was complete, a reckless campaign spearheaded by the Trudeau government and endorsed by the trade union bureaucracy and corporate-controlled media was unleashed to force working people back to unsafe working conditions. The social crisis created by the government’s miserly $2,000-a-month Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) payments was exploited to this end, with many workers left with no choice but to risk infecting themselves and their family members if they wished to avoid financial ruin.

A key plank of the back-to-work drive is the reopening of schools, which has already proven to be an accelerant in the pandemic’s resurgence. The goal of Trudeau’s Liberals, the right-wing provincial governments, and of the trade unions, which have refused to organize any opposition among teachers to the reopenings, is to ensure that children can return to the classroom so that their parents are “free” to be ruthlessly exploited to boost corporate profits.

The next stage in the reopening of the economy will begin with the Trudeau government’s Throne Speech tomorrow, which will outline a series of pro-corporate measures designed to boost the “competitiveness” of Canadian capitalism. Newly installed Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, fresh from slashing financial aid to laid-off workers last month by 20 percent, has spent recent weeks consulting with Canada’s six large banks and trade unions to craft the ruling elite’s class war agenda.

While Trudeau initially made public declarations about his government taking an “entirely different direction” to promote social equality and fight climate change, this inevitably proved to be hollow “progressive” spin. Faced with a sustained campaign by the banks, big business, and corporate media demanding his government rein in social spending and ensure any economic stimulus measures focus on boosting “growth” and “competitiveness,” Trudeau and Freeland have bent over backwards to demonstrate they have gotten the message. Freeland has boasted of her consultations with former Liberal Finance Minister and Prime Minister Paul Martin, who presided over the largest social spending cuts in Canadian history during the 1990s. Asked at a press conference last week what her approach would be on spending, Freeland declared, “We understand the value of wise and prudent fiscal management. Canada has benefited from that approach in the past.”

Whistle-blowers speak out as German authorities cover up coronavirus cases at schools and day-care centres

Martin Nowak & Gregor Link

By the end of the summer holidays, hundreds of teaching and care facilities in Germany had been infected. But the school and health authorities, as well as the federal and state governments, with the support of the trade unions, are doing everything in their power to continue the life-threatening policy of opening schools for regular operations and to cover up outbreaks.

A report in Der Spiegel quoted a letter from a Hamburg teacher to the German Education and Science Union (GEW) saying, “The number of suspected cases has increased in the last week and children were sent home in scores every day. It is not known whether any of these were tested at all, and which of them were positive, as there was no obligation to inform the public.”

Another writes, “Since Monday, an upper school pupil has also been affected, who is in hospital and has to be ventilated with a severe course of the illness. It is depressing for everyone when a fellow pupil is fighting for his life. For days on end. The outcome is still unclear.”

Pupil Moritz is on his way to the first day at his new school in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Der Spiegel also reports the case of Theodor-Heuss-Realschule in Dortmund, where there had been a positive coronavirus case a fortnight ago. On the instructions of the authorities, the school management had only sent those sitting adjacent to the infected pupils into domestic quarantine. Further information was not provided by the authorities. Der Spiegel continued, “In the new school year, several schools across Germany had to close down completely or individual classes and years were sent into quarantine. How many schools nationwide are affected is not recorded statistically by the authorities.”

In the fight against the pandemic and for full transparency concerning the infection process, however, educators are also confronted with the trade unions themselves. A recent survey the GEW (education sector union) showed that more than 70 percent of their members felt “not sufficiently protected” from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, and a majority were in favour of the compulsory wearing of masks in the classroom. Der Spiegel summarises the GEW’s position, which has always vehemently rejected compulsory mask-wearing in class, by saying that a further closure of schools “must be avoided if possible.”

Patrizia*, an after-school teacher from a large city in Baden-Württemberg, in an interview with the World Socialist Web Site, drew a stark picture of the consequences of the ruthless opening of schools in regular operation which highlights the “back-to-work” policy of the ruling elites in every country.

“I am working at an integration institution, a so-called ‘focal point school’ with over 300 children from socially deprived families, 98 percent of whom depend on bonus cards. Originally, we were 22 caregivers in the after-school care centre.” Due to the catastrophic understaffing, Patrizia’s facility, a small, old all-day school with a separate after-school care building, had already served notice of the overload staff faced in the past, but the provider then only hired a single replacement teacher, who is currently on sick leave.

“The provider’s own employees regularly resign because it is far too much to do for one person,” explained Patrizia. In the meantime, three of her colleagues have suffered burn-out. “Many other colleagues belong to the risk group and have therefore been given time off or with doing office work from home. This means that we are currently only nine educators in total.” When Patrizia’s team recently decided to shorten the opening hours so as not to have to fully cover late and early duty, the school authorities immediately intervened. Such an emergency measure, it was said, was “not legal” because “the parents had paid for the child-care relationship.”

With an average of 33 children per employee, there can be little conception of a “child-care relationship.” But the same devastating shortages, Patrizia notes, prevail in every corner of the institution. “There is a total lack of hygiene! We do not even have an active cleaning service. If we educators didn’t disinfect the tables in between times, nothing would be cleaned at the moment—not even the toilets. As a result of coronavirus, the school management has, for the first time, seriously checked whether there is enough soap in the toilets. Because we only received two fabric masks per person from the provider, I had to buy an FFP2 mask at my own expense.”

Protection against aerosols—the most important form of spreading the coronavirus—is also not guaranteed. “In our classrooms, a plexiglass panel hangs in front of the teacher’s desk and there are stickers on the floor to help keep social distance, but this is impossible due to the lack of staff.” The teachers are not allowed to use the FFP2 mask. For the same reason, says Patrizia, there is also a mixing of the different groups of children, despite the sometimes time-delayed breaks.

As the World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly stated, under these conditions—which prevail at institutions throughout Germany and Europe—schools and day-care centres become veritable breeding grounds for the coronavirus. The politically criminal role played by the school and health authorities of the federal states in covering up new infections, intimidating critical educators and enforcing regular operations against all warnings and resistance was already evident at Patricia’s facility immediately after the summer holidays during the first days of classes last week.

“On the Monday after the school holidays, there were suspicious cases because positive cases were reported in several families, but since the parents concerned were still waiting for their test results at that time, all children had come to school. On Tuesday, four children were indeed confirmed to be infected.”

After a joint consultation with her colleagues and the school management, Patrizia went home feeling “run ragged.” “The school refuses to react,” she reports, “the headmistress reports false data to the health authority and keeps quiet about the mixing of the children’s groups, which is a consequence of the lack of staff. Only the ‘formally’ responsible teachers and group educators are to be quarantined, although, in reality, we all come into contact with different groups every day. A colleague of mine has strong symptoms. I have also had myself tested.”

Patrizia and her colleagues explicitly pointed out to the school management that all teachers are to be considered contacts of infected persons. However, although they jointly refused to put further children and colleagues in danger with their regular presence under these conditions, a general quarantine was only granted after a member of staff personally presented herself to the health authorities and described the real situation.

“Meanwhile, the teachers in our facility continue to work as they are and do not go into quarantine,” she added. “If the authorities and the school management had had their way, we would not have been quarantined either. At the same time, the isolation period itself has been reduced to a few days, so that all staff were expected back to work as of Monday. “In my opinion, the health authorities are not working properly. They do not look at the situation on the ground at all. I don’t think they have ever heard of aerosols.”

After her courageous move, Patrizia and her colleagues were confronted with fierce accusations from the school management and some parents. “The psychological strain on us is immense,” she said, “I give us two weeks, then we can have ourselves committed. If we do nothing, it will go on forever. The bad thing is that it’s the same all over Baden-Württemberg. We are not allowed to talk to the press, we are not allowed to make political statements. It’s in our employment contract and there has already been trouble because of it.”

Given the policy of deliberately underfunding educational institutions for decades, the refusal of the responsible health authorities to conduct mass testing and their reluctant implementation of quarantine measures, Patrizia concluded, “I think the whole thing is politically intended, the coronavirus cases ‘must not be’.”

This assessment is now being confirmed by more and more parents and educators from all over Germany. Sandra*, whose son attends a grammar school in Bochum, told the WSWS about her fight against the cover-up by the school and health authorities.

“This is now the fourth infected person at our grammar school,” she says, “but lessons are still going on. The health department even refuses to register contact persons correctly. They are simply not documented unless the people affected or the schools name them by name. The newly formed team at the health authority works without a contact address, without a telephone number, without an email address and without a face. This opaque ‘secret team’ is now in charge of research and policymaking, but is allowed to remain completely out of the public eye.”

Sandra herself is a qualified social education worker and social worker and worked in schools before the pandemic began. “As it turned out, in the meantime, my son has had contact with children of an affected age group. He has ambiguous symptoms but was not named [as a contact person] by the school, so it is not recorded. When I asked the city council, they sent me a kind of standard letter with ostensibly personal passages.”

In the letter, excerpts of which Sandra published in a Facebook group, it says that her son is “not subject to any contact category and no further action needs to be taken.” Although Sandra is free to have her symptomatic child “tested for coronavirus via a general practitioner,” the health insurer “cannot judge” whether “a test is covered by health insurance.” In general, Sandra should best “do nothing.”

If her son became infected, Sandra said, she now had written proof that the authorities considered “no further measures” to be “necessary” to prevent infection and mass outbreaks. “If my son has coronavirus—as the test will show—he may be treated as a ‘school infector’ instead of someone infected by the school.

Meanwhile, the paediatrician refused to “charge the test to the health insurance company,” because “my son does not have coronavirus, because otherwise, the health authority would have carried out the test.” And this even though it had been the health insurance company that had referred her to “a general practitioner” for a test in the first place.

The cover-up of coronavirus cases in schools and day-care centres makes it clear that the governments at state and federal level and authorities are in no way concerned about the welfare of the child. They want to keep childcare open at all costs to avoid absenteeism and to secure the profits of the corporations. Action committees for safe education are being founded all over the world to combat this policy of death. We call on readers to register now and tell us about their own experiences.

* We have changed Patrizia and Sandra’s names at their request.

Johnson government says COVID-19 infections could hit 50,000 per day as pandemic spins “out of control”

Robert Stevens

Coronavirus infections could reach 50,000 a day within weeks, with 200 deaths a day by November, Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser to the Johnson government, warned yesterday.

Whitty and Vallance gave a televised address, following discussions with Cabinet ministers over the weekend. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to chair a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee today followed by a cabinet meeting. He is then expected to make a televised policy speech on the COVID-19 crisis.

Britain's prime Minister Boris Johnson, centre, Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty, left, and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance speak at a press conference at Downing Street on March 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, Pool)

Following the statements of Whitty and Vallance, the UK’s chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland moved the COVID-19 alert level from Level 3 to Level 4, stating “After a period of lower COVID cases and deaths, the number of cases are now rising rapidly and probably exponentially in significant parts of all four nations.” Level 4 means the virus “is in general circulation; transmission is high or rising exponentially.” The only level above this, Level 5, is described “as level 4 and there is a material risk of health care services being overwhelmed. Another 4,368 new infections and 11 deaths were recorded, with the number of cases requiring hospital ventilation in England doubling in eight days to 154.

Johnson has spent months lying that the pandemic was under control and “on a downward slope” to justify a disastrous reopening of the economy and schools. Whitty and Vallance have now admitted this has resulted in an exponential spread of the virus.

Citing the Office for National Statistics, Vallance said, “it’s now estimated that roughly 70,000 people in the UK have COVID infection and that about 6,000 people per day are getting the infection.” He added, “At the moment we think that the epidemic is doubling roughly every seven days. If that continues unabated, and this continues doubling every seven days, then what you see ... is that by mid-October you would end up with 49,000 new cases per day.”

This level of infection would be expected to lead to about “200-plus deaths per day” a month after that, Vallance warned. This level of death was first seen on March 26, as the pandemic took hold with deaths soon rising to more than 1,000 a day soon after.

Slide used by Vallance and Whitty showing the Covid-19 infections in the UK rising to nearly 50,000 based on the current trajectory (source gov.uk)

Vallance showed a slide pointing to the enormous growth in infections in Spain and France. He stated “that increase in case numbers has translated into an increase in hospitalisations. As the hospitalisations have increased … you will see that … not unexpectedly, deaths are also increasing. So there is a simple message from this slide: Which is as the disease spreads, as it spreads across age groups, we expect to see increase in hospitalisations and unfortunately those increases in hospitalisations will lead to increase in deaths.”

Addressing claims that the virus has mutated and is no longer as deadly as it once was, Vallance stated, “The virus has genetically moved a bit but it has not changed in terms of its propensity and its ability to cause disease and to cause death.”

Vallance, an early advocate of a “herd immunity” strategy, conceded that only an estimated 8 percent of the population had been infected and that antibodies for those who develop them can fade over time—with reports of people being re-infected. Therefore, the majority of the population remain susceptible.

A further graph showed infections as they affected age groups. Vallance said, “The lowest increase has been in children and in the population aged 70 to 79 but in every age group we’ve seen an increase.” Vallance asked rhetorically, “Could that increase be due to increased testing? The answer is no … The proportion of people testing positive has increased even if testing stays flat.”

Slide used by Vallance and Whitty showing the surge in Covid-19 cases among age groups since the economy was reopened in July (source gov.uk)

In March, the Johnson government was the first to state openly that herd immunity was its policy, with Vallance declaring that the infection of tens of millions was “desirable.” What has driven government policy from the outset was not the health of the population, but how to restore the profits of the corporations.

After Vallance had laid out the perilous situation, Whitty said, “Ministers making decisions … have to walk this very difficult balance. If we do too little this virus will go out of control and we get significant numbers of increased and indirect deaths but if we go too far the other way, then we can do damage to the economy…”

Neither Vallance nor Whitty made any attempt to explain why there was a resurgence of the coronavirus across Europe and in the UK. But the slides they referred to all showed the resurgence started from July, as the Johnson government and its counterparts reopened the economy. As Vallance said when introducing the rise in infections among all age groups, “what we see from July as we look at increases in cases per 100,000 of population, is an increase which has occurred over August and has increased into September.”

Vallance, Whitty, Johnson, et al know full well that it was the government ending of the lockdown and social distancing that has led to the explosion of coronavirus. Infections are taking place in the thousands at workplaces, on the public transport network, in schools, and will soon sweep through universities. By Monday evening, the number of schools recording infections had reached 1,439, with a poll revealing that 82 percent of school across England (around 20,000) have sent pupils home to self-isolate because they cannot get a coronavirus test.

The government’s propaganda is now centred on blaming the population, particularly the younger generation, for the spread of COVID. Last week it introduced, along with draconian fines, a “rule of six”—under which groups of six or more people are not allowed to gather. This will do nothing of substance to curtail the spread of COVID-19. It is as much of a fraud as the local lockdowns introduced in many parts of the country that are all porous and have done nothing to stop the spread of the disease. Yesterday, four more areas of Wales were put under lockdown, meaning around 13.5 million people in the UK live under local restrictions.

The failure of such partial measures is designed to encourage the sentiment that nothing could be done to halt the spread of coronavirus and that we must all learn to live with it.

The rampant spread of the disease was the inevitable product of the rush to open the economy in July and August, with the government doing nothing to develop a systematic, mass track and trace system over the last nine months. All its efforts were instead aimed at ensuring the handover of hundreds of billions to the corporations in bailout funds while granting them access to free money by ramping up the printing of money via quantitative easing.

The government faces no opposition to its the murderous herd immunity policy within the political establishment and a compliant media. As COVID-19 cases surge, the BBC has come forward as the unvarnished mouthpiece for the Johnson government. On Monday BBC New s published an article, “COVID: Is it time we learnt to live with the virus?” by health correspondent Nick Triggle. The message was clear. It’s time to get used to the idea of people dying from the disease.

Triggle proceeds to cite only scientists opposed to lockdown:

“Prof. Carl Heneghan, the head of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, [who] says the current situation is ‘utter chaos’ with a constant stream of new restrictions and schools sending whole year groups home when just one person tests positive.” Triggle writes falsely, “All this at a time when the level of infection is still very low,” adding, “This, Prof. Heneghan says, is the consequence of trying to suppress the virus. Instead, he argues we should accept it is here to stay and try to minimise the risks, while balancing that against the consequences of the actions we take.”

Triggle then quotes “Prof. Robert Dingwall, a sociologist and an adviser to the government,” who “believes the public may well be now at the stage where it is ‘comfortable’ with the idea that thousands will die from COVID just as they are that they die of flu.”

The article concludes under a subhead: “What about herd immunity?” with Triggle citing Oxford University scientist Sunetra Gupta’s support for a herd immunity strategy. “This is how we have always managed viruses,” Gupta says.

Disparaging the clear majority of scientists and health professionals critical of the government, Triggle writes that Dingwall “believes it is only a particular element of the public health and scientific leadership who worry about driving down the infection level …”

Report documents criminality and corruption at heart of global banking system

Barry Grey

An explosive report published Sunday by BuzzFeed News documents the role that major US and international banks knowingly play in laundering and circulating trillions of dollars in dirty money from terrorist organizations, drug cartels and assorted international financial criminals.

The report is an unanswerable indictment not only of the banks, but also of Western governments and regulatory agencies, which are fully aware of the banks’ illegal but highly lucrative activities and tacitly sanction them.

BuzzFeed writes that its investigation demonstrates “an underlying truth of the modern era: The networks through which dirty money traverses the world have become vital arteries of the global economy. They enable a shadow financial system so wide-ranging and so unchecked that it has become inextricable from the so-called legitimate economy. Banks with household names have helped to make it so.”

The front page of the FinCen website (Credit: Fincen.gov)

The report continues: “Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees.

“Money laundering is a crime that makes other crimes possible. It can accelerate economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine democracy, and destabilize nations—and the banks play a key role. ‘Some of these people in crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all over the world,’ said Martin Woods, a former suspicious transactions investigator for Wachovia.’”

The report goes on to explain that “even after they were prosecuted or fined for financial misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon continued to move money for suspected criminals.”

The extensive report is based on more than 21,000 “suspicious activity reports” (SARs) filed by some of the world’s biggest banks with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, between 1999 and 2017. FinCEN makes its database of SARs available to more than 450 law enforcement and regulatory agencies across the United States.

What BuzzFeed calls the “FinCEN Files” were leaked to the news outlet more than a year ago. It has since been combing through them, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which coauthored the report.

BuzzFeed News notes that it also shared the SARs with more than 100 other news organizations in 88 countries. The report, titled “Dirty Money Pours into the World’s Most Powerful Banks,” includes only a small and redacted sample of the news outlet’s hoard of suspicious activity reports.

The US government maintains a policy of total secrecy in relation to the SARs, refusing to release them even in response to Freedom of Information requests. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department issued a statement declaring that the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime. In an obvious attempt at intimidation and threat of prosecution, the statement added that the matter was being referred to the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General.

The initial response of the American corporate media has been to bury or entirely ignore the BuzzFeed revelations. Monday’s print edition of the New York Times carried a report on page eight of its business section. The print editions of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal made no mention of the exposé.

The report is based on more than 22,000 pages of documents concerning over 10,000 subjects and involving more than 170 countries and territories. Nearly 90 banks and other financial institutions are included in the institutions that submitted the SARs.

JPMorgan Chase, the biggest US bank, recorded the highest total value of transactions listed in the FinCEN Files: $514 billion, based on 107 suspicious activity reports. (Its CEO, Jamie Dimon, was at one time known as “Obama’s favorite banker.”)

Deutsche Bank accounts for the highest number of SARs, 982, with a total value of $1.3 trillion.

The other banks on the top 10 list are Bank of New York Mellon, British-based Standard Chartered, Barclays, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank.

One report, filed by JPMorgan in August, 2014, lists over $355 billion in suspicious activity relating to more than 100,000 wire transfers “sent, received or transferred” over the course of a decade by MKS, a Swiss-based company that trades in precious metals.

At least 25 of the people named as subjects in the SARs have appeared on Forbes ’ list of billionaires in 2018, 2019 or 2020.

The findings featured in the BuzzFeed report include:

● Standard Chartered moved money on behalf of Al Zarooni Exchange, a Dubai-based business that was later accused of laundering cash on behalf of the Taliban.

● HSBC’s Hong Kong branch allowed WCM777, a Ponzi scheme, to move more than $15 million even as the business was being barred from operating in three states. Authorities say the scheme stole some $80 million from investors, mainly Latino and Asian immigrants. The firm’s owner used the funds to buy two golf courses, a mansion, a 39.8-carat diamond and mining rights in Sierra Leone.

● Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, American Express and other financial firms processed millions of dollars in transactions for Viktor Khrapunov, the former mayor of Kazakhstan’s most populous city, even after Interpol issued an order for his arrest. Khrapunov fled to Switzerland and was later convicted in absentia on charges including bribe-taking and defrauding the city.

A separate piece by NBC News presents evidence that JPMorgan, Bank of New York Mellon and other banks helped move more than $150 million for companies tied to the North Korean regime.

In other words, the biggest US and international banks have made countless millions in profits serving as money-launderers for terror outfits such as the Taliban and governments of so-called “rogue countries” such as North Korea—with the knowledge and tacit approval of the governments of the US and other major powers—even as these same governments were waging or threatening war against the targeted terrorist organizations and overseas regimes.

The BuzzFeed report describes the cynical rationale behind the formality of banks filing SARs, which, for the most part, are never even read by the staff of FinCEN. Over the past decade, the number of SARs filed by major banks has sharply increased, indicating a growth of money laundering and other illegal activities on behalf of criminal clients. Over the same period, the staff of FinCEN has shrunk by 10 percent.

Banks are legally required to file an SAR with FinCEN if they suspect a transaction might be linked to illegal activity. Large banks file tens of thousands of such reports every year. In 2017, 19 large banks filed a total of 640,000 suspicious activity reports, according to a study by the Bank Policy Institute, a lobbying group.

But as the BuzzFeed report explains: “So long as a bank files a notice that it may be facilitating criminal activity, it all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal prosecution. The suspicious activity alert effectively gives them a free pass to keep moving the money and collecting the fees.”

In its article on the FinCEN Files report, the New York Times noted that JPMorgan wired money to banks in Switzerland, Lebanon and Nigeria on behalf of a convicted money launderer, reported the transactions to British and American authorities, and continued doing business with the client. The Nigerian government is now suing the bank in British court.

This collusion between gangster bankers and capitalist government regulators is a continuation of longstanding policy. In 2012, the Obama administration refused to criminally prosecute Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC, after it acknowledged laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Among the bank’s major clients was the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, which is known for dismembering its victims and publicly displaying their body parts.

That was in keeping with the policy of the US government of shielding top bankers from any accountability for illegal activities, including those that led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and ushered in what at that time was the deepest slump since the Great Depression. To this day, not a single leading executive of a major bank has been prosecuted, let alone jailed, for fraudulent activities that led to the destruction of millions of jobs and the decimation of working class living standards in the US and around the world.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time:

Here, in a nutshell, is the modern-day aristocratic principle that prevails behind the threadbare trappings of “democracy.” The financial robber barons of today are a law unto themselves. They can steal, plunder, even murder at will, without fear of being called to account. They devote a portion of their fabulous wealth to bribing politicians, regulators, judges and police—from the heights of power in Washington down to the local police precinct—to make sure their wealth is protected and they remain immune from criminal prosecution.