ECB to step up intervention as European banks face rise in non-performing loans

Nick Beams

The president of the European Central Bank (ECB) Christine Lagarde has again indicated that its provision of ultra-cheap money is likely to be stepped up and will extend long into the future as the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across Europe and banks face a significant rise in non-performing loans.

Delivering the keynote address to the ECB’s annual central bank forum, held online this year, Lagarde said all sectors of the economy “need to have confidence that financing conditions will remain exceptionally favourable for as long as needed—especially as the economic impact of the pandemic will now extend well into next year.”

Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB, speaking at the European Parliament earlier this year (Credit: AP Photo/Jean-François Badias)

The ECB has already purchased more than €640 billion of bonds under its €1.35 trillion pandemic emergency purchase program (PEPP). It has also lent almost €1.5 trillion to banks through its targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO) at interest rates as low as minus 1 percent.

Both programs are expected to be extended at least until the end of next year with a further €500 billion to be added to the PEPP.

In her address, Lagarde took a swipe at critics of the program from within sections of the financial establishment, particularly in Germany, who have complained that the ECB program is keeping companies alive that should be allowed to go under.

Concerns about “zombification” or “impeding creative destruction” were misplaced and policies that protected viable businesses until activity could return to normal would assist productive capacity, not harm it, she said.

Lagarde warned that even if the second wave of the pandemic proved to be less intense than the first, it posed no less a danger to the economy and its effects could even be worse. If the pandemic was regarded not just as a one-off event then “we could see more lasting changes in behaviour than during the first wave.”

“Demand weakness and economic slack are weighing on inflation, which is expected to remain in negative territory for longer than previously thought,” she said.

The language of ECB pronouncements is always somewhat convoluted because while its real concern is the stability of the banking and financial system, under the terms of its mandate it has to present its actions as being necessary to return inflation to a target of near to 2 percent.

And concerns over financial stability remain ever-present under conditions where the pandemic continues to spread.

They were voiced in a comment published in the Financial Times at the end of last month by Andrea Enria of the supervisory board at the ECB.

He noted that while anecdotally, only a small fraction of loan repayments had shown signs of distress with expiration of moratoria on bank loans in some EU countries, the economic outlook was uncertain. Enria warned, “We cannot rule out a weak recovery with a significant build-up of bad loans.

“The European Central Bank estimates that in a severe but plausible scenario non-performing loans at euro area banks could reach €1.4 trillion, well above the levels of the 2008 financial and the 2011 EU sovereign debt crises.”

Enria called for the establishment of asset management companies, known as “bad banks,” which takeover non-performing loans (NPLs), saying that when they were used after crises bank balance sheets were cleared up more quickly.

He commented that vast amounts of taxpayer money were used in the aftermath of the financial and sovereign debt crises, “but Europe was ineffective is using consolidation to remove excess capacity and foster a radical refocusing of business models. The result today is a fragile banking system, with rock bottom equity market valuations.”

Enria did not elaborate on the reasons for this, but they lie in the competitive conflict between European and US banks. European banks, having plunged into the orgy of speculation in American financial markets leading to the crisis of 2008, sought to cover up the extent of the hit they had taken lest it weaken their position vis à vis their rivals which had been bailed out by the US government. Consequently, they were in a weakened position when the pandemic struck.

Enria called for an integrated European response rather that a “plethora of uncoordinated national initiatives” under conditions where “EU banks are segmented along national lines, making them less efficient and more fragile.”

Indicating the conflicts within the administration of the European financial system, the call from the ECB for a system of “bad banks” was rejected by Elke König, the chair of the Single Resolution Board (SRB), the EU agency charged with winding down failing lenders, in an interview with the Financial Times earlier this month.

However, she warned that banks had to do “intensive work” to sort out viable from unviable entities and that there was “misalignment” within the present system.

The SRB was set up following the sovereign debt crisis of 2011–2012 but, as the Financial Times noted, with the risk of a surge in non-performing loans it was “still working with an incomplete system of EU bank-crisis rules which must operate over a patchwork of different national arrangements.”

König warned that non-performing loans would start to show up in the first and second quarters of next year and said her message to the banks was “be aware NPLs are coming and the best thing to do is address them early… That is the best thing we can do for the time being, and then it is steering through the fog.”

In other words, the key regulators have no clear plan to deal with a crisis, the conditions for which are building up.

And, if the actions of Deutsche Bank are anything to go by, the major banks are determined that nothing should stand in the way of their pursuit of profit, no matter what the risks.

The Financial Times carried a report on Monday that the major German bank had rejected a request from the ECB, made in the summer, that it suspend part of its leveraged finance operations because it was not properly monitoring risks in that area.

The ECB defines high levels of leverage as where the total debt, including unwithdrawn credit lines, exceeds six times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.

Leveraged finance is a major part of Deutsche Bank’s business generating €1.2 billion in revenues in the year to September, a rise of 43 percent year on year.

Thumbing its nose at the ECB, Deutsche Bank declared that it was “impractical” to carry out the request, which was non-binding according to the report.

Another area of concern is the purchases of government bonds by major banks. According to a report by S&P Global Ratings in September, European banks held €1.6 trillion of home-country government bonds at the end of June, an increase of 15 percent from the end of February. Purchases have been taking place at a rate seven times faster than over the same period in 2019.

The concern here is that the large holdings of government debt can set off a so-called “doom loop” if there is a sell off of bonds, due to worsening conditions in the economy of the country that has issued them, resulting in a hit to banks’ balance sheets and a further worsening of the economic downturn.

This was the situation that developed in the European sovereign debt crisis of 2011–2012, which was only brought under control when ECB president Mario Draghi committed the central bank to do “whatever it takes.”

At present, the general view is that “this time it’s different” because the increase in bond-buying by the banks is the result of the extraordinary situation created by the pandemic.

But such views ignore one of the central features of the pandemic experience—that this apparent accident was a trigger event, which has intensified contradictions building up within the capitalist financial system over the antecedent period.

Australian Royal Commission covers up causes of aged care crisis

Clare Bruderlin

The Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recently held its final hearing, at which 124 recommendations were submitted by the counsel assisting the commission. A final report is due by 26 February 2021.

The royal commission was announced in September 2018 by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in an attempt to defuse public anger over ongoing reports of the abuse, neglect and malnourishment of elderly residents at aged care facilities. It follows 18 previous inquiries into aged care held since 1997, many of whose recommendations have still not been implemented.

A number of the Royal Commission’s hearings were held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic which swept through aged care facilities, particularly in the most populous states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria.

The recommendations, none of which are enforceable or mandatory, are predominately administrative measures for the creation of new committees and commissions which do not directly deal with improving the quality of aged care services. They include a new aged care act, a minimum staff time quality and safety standard, compulsory registration of personal care workers, the establishment of an independent pricing authority to determine aged care costs and an independent Australian Aged Care Commission.

The commission proposed that the government report to Parliament by no later than 1 December 2020 on the implementation of the recommendations. This is also not enforceable.

The commission heard over 10,000 submissions from aged care residents and their families, staff, aged care providers and government agencies over two years. They detail the catastrophic conditions in aged care including widespread malnutrition, dehydration, untreated sores and infections and social isolation. Submissions also highlighted the increasing rate of young people in aged care and growing wait times for home care packages.

Counsel assisting admitted: “[N]one of these many problems is revealed for the first time by this Royal Commission. In the last 20 years, there have been repeated reviews of aspects of the aged care system, many of which addressed recurring problems. While we acknowledge that governments are not obliged to adopt all recommendations of a review, they have tended to respond with piecemeal reforms to aspects of the aged care system, which have not resolved the underlying problems. There have also been instances of significant delay in addressing or implementing important and urgent recommendations arising from reviews.”

These “piecemeal reforms” have, in fact, meant governments relinquishing responsibility in aged care by handing over the wellbeing and lives of hundreds of thousands of the elderly to private corporations.

Reports, studies and surveys initiated by the Royal Commission found that government-run residential aged care services out perform those operated by both private for-profit and not-for-profit approved providers on many quality measures. Despite this, the privatisation of aged care has been accelerated over decades by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments.

Ninety one percent of aged care facilities are privately owned, either by corporations (41 percent) or so-called “not-for-profits,” principally charities and churches (50 percent) making this a multibillion-dollar industry. Just nine percent are government owned.

A report presented to the Royal Commission found that in a survey of 391 residents, the biggest concern raised was understaffing (46.7 percent), including unanswered call bells, high rates of staff turnover and agency staff not knowing the residents and their needs.

Despite the proposal for a meagre increase in the minimum staff time allocated to care for each patient and the establishment of staff-patient ratios, the only staffing figure recommended was one registered nurse per facility for morning and afternoon shifts. Depending on the size of the facility that could translate to one nurse to care for hundreds of aged residents.

The counsel assisting the commission recommends that “From 1 July 2022, the minimum staff time standard should require approved providers to engage registered nurses, enrolled nurses, and personal care workers for at least 215 minutes per resident per day for the average resident, with at least 36 minutes of that staff time provided by a registered nurse.”

This is little change from the average amount of care that residents currently receive, no change to the amount of care received from a registered nurse and no recommendation for time with allied health professionals.

A report submitted to the Royal Commission in 2019 found that per day, aged care residents receive just 188 minutes of care with 36 minutes of care by registered nurses, 8 minutes by allied health professionals and 144 minutes by personal care assistants.

Compared to international standards, Australian aged care staffing was substantially below that of other comparable countries. Only 2 percent of Australian aged care residents are in homes that meet the 22 minutes of allied health services per day recommended in the British Columbia system. Just 7 percent of Australian aged care residents receive the 56 minutes of care per day by qualified nursing staff mandated in Germany.

The counsel assisting recommends that the federal government fund an increase to the Basic Daily Fee by $10 per resident per day to pay for living needs “including nutrition.” While this was described as an “urgent need for action,” it is only proposed to be implemented by July 1, 2021.

Submissions from the public showed that despite the extraction of 85 percent of the fortnightly pension from every resident in aged care, the average amount spent on food in these facilities is $6.08 per resident per day. The Australian single aged pension is $944.30 per fortnight, 85 percent of which amounts to $802.66. Of this a total of $85.12 per resident per fortnight is expended on food covering three meals a day and morning and afternoon tea.

The Royal Commission was informed that facilities would opt for finger food platters because they were “low-risk,” cheap and did not require a chef to prepare, and that some meals could be repeated up to three or four times in order to reduce costs. This explains why malnutrition is so prevalent in these facilities.

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in March this year, has exacerbated and starkly exposed the decades-long crisis in aged care. There have been 2,049 cases of COVID-19 recorded among aged care residents and at least 685 have died, meaning a 30 percent death rate among those infected. This toll makes up around 75 percent of all fatalities in Australia, one of the highest rates in the world. Over 1,700 staff have also been infected.

Despite this, the Royal Commission stated that it would not be conducting a “full inquiry” into the COVID-19 aged care outbreaks. Instead, a single hearing was dedicated to submissions on the impact of the pandemic on aged care and a special report released.

The fact that the health departments of both NSW and Victoria, acting under the direction of Liberal and Labor state governments, refused to allow COVID-19 infected patients to be transported to hospital for treatment contributed to the high death rate. The commissioners left such callous decision-making intact.

The report declared: “Now is not the time for blame. There is too much at stake. We are left in no doubt that people, governments and government departments have worked tirelessly to avert, contain and respond to this human tragedy.”

In the recent 2020 federal budget, which was passed with the support of the Labor Party, no additional funding was allocated to aged care. By contrast, the budget was a bonanza for the rich, with $50 billion in tax cuts, wage subsidies and incentives for big business and the wealthiest individuals.

This is in line with the approach by state and federal governments since the outbreak of the pandemic. Their priority is profit not the preservation of life. They have funneled more than $400 billion dollars into the coffers of big business, in the form of wage subsidies, “support” packages and cheap loans.

Meanwhile, Australian governments rejected expert medical advice in April, which outlined a policy aimed at eliminating coronavirus transmission, claiming that this would be too costly. It is ordinary people, particularly the elderly and the most vulnerable who have ultimately paid the price with their lives.

Health minister warns: Ukraine on the verge of coronavirus “catastrophe”

Jason Melanovski

Ukraine is on the verge of a coronavirus “catastrophe,” according to its health minister. The country continues to report daily records of new infections with cases reaching over 10,000 for the first time this month since the start of the pandemic.

Speaking to parliament last week, health minister Maksym Stepanov warned that “the situation quickly turns from difficult to catastrophic. We need to prepare for the inevitable—it is impossible to easily pass the second wave.”

As cases have spiked in recent months, the Eastern European country of approximately 40 million has been forced to reintroduce limited lockdown measures that were eased in May after the initial rush of COVID-19 cases ebbed last spring.

Cases throughout the country have been steadily rising since September. In October, Stepanov stated that the government would enforce stricter lockdown measures if new cases rose to 11,000–15,000. According to Stepanov, Ukraine’s medical system would simply be unable to cope with a daily rate of 20,000 new infections, a rate it is quickly approaching as temperatures drop and people are forced to spend more time indoors.

Image shared by a patient in Kharkov with the Kupiansk Novosti, source: Telegram channel of Kupiansk Novosti

Indicative of the country’s worsening state of COVID-19 infections, President Volodomyr Zelensky announced on Monday that he himself had tested positive for the virus and would be entering self-isolation. Zelensky’s wife spent several weeks in the hospital last June after contracting the virus.

Despite the deaths of nearly 9,000 Ukrainian citizens and a country on the verge of a medical “catastrophe,” Zelensky has publicly displayed an unserious attitude towards the pandemic. In June, he told the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda that he had considered purposely contracting the virus just to prove to people “it’s not the plague.”

While the millionaire former television star Zelensky will undoubtedly receive the best medical care available, contracting the virus is deadly serious for the vast majority of working class Ukrainians who are forced to seek treatment from the country’s impoverished medical system.

Speaking to Bloomberg News last week, Pavlo Kovtonyuk, the head of the health care economics department at the Kyiv School of Economics, reported that despite being aware that the country may be hit with an influx of new cases come fall, little preparation had been carried out by the Zelensky government. “There was very little preparation to set up hospitals, equipment and to provide training for medical personnel ahead of the autumn wave,” Kovtonyuk noted. He added, “slow test processing makes it difficult to trace contacts and to properly isolate infected people.”

To make matters worse, Bloomberg reported that just 13 percent of the country’s $2.3 billion coronavirus fund went to the Health Ministry for hospital equipment, testing and ventilators, while more than four times that was used for road construction and maintenance.

Image shared by a patient in Kharkov with the Kupiansk Novosti, source: Telegram channel of Kupiansk Novosti

As a result of the influx of newly infected COVID-19 patients into an unprepared medical system, the nation’s hospital capacity has already reached 67.2 percent and there are currently no regions remaining in the country where capacity is below 50 percent.

With infection rates climbing, Ukrainian medical workers are already working under highly stressful conditions with limited resources.

This week, photos taken by a COVID-19 patient being treated for the virus near the eastern city of Kharkiv circulated on social media, highlighting the horrid conditions of Ukrainian hospitals. According to the patient who sent the photos by cell phone to Kupiansk News, “… a nurse asked me for a syringe, because an old lady was in the next room and she injected her with the same syringe for 5 days until the needle bent. All because the old lady didn’t have money for new syringes. The nurses received 6,000 syringes a month and there were not enough of them. We had one nurse for 60 people.”

A large number of Ukrainian hospitals in rural areas have been forced to close in recent years due to the austerity measures introduced since the 2014 US-backed coup. As a result of the pro-market reforms first introduced by the former American-born health minister Ulyana Suprun, the country now finds itself lacking both hospitals and medical workers to deal with the pandemic.

Despite the rapidly worsening situation, the Ukrainian government has hesitated to enforce stricter measures so as not to endanger the country’s worsening economy. On Wednesday, the government approved a nationwide quarantine that would only be effective on the weekend and will last until the end of the year.

In addition to the deteriorating medical situation, the pandemic has further impoverished what is already Europe’s poorest country.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the pandemic is pushing the country into a deep recession and may force over 9 million Ukrainians into poverty. The report also noted that “more than 80 percent of households have lost income, and over 40 percent have at least one family member who has lost a job since the beginning of the pandemic.”

Workers Party pushes back-to-school campaign amid warnings of second COVID-19 wave in Brazil

Eduardo Parati

Workers Party (PT) and Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) state governments in Brazil’s Northeast region are showing once again that they have no significant differences with the essential response to the coronavirus pandemic by fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and the rest of the right-wing parties in Brazil: implementing a de facto herd immunity policy.

In October, Ceará’s deputy state governor, Izolda Cela of the Democratic Labour Party (PDT), pointed to a series of coronavirus-related issues in returning to school (means of transporting students, staffing, school infrastructure). She went on to state that the decision for the gradual reopening of the private schools was correct because the simultaneous reopening of the public school system could have provoked “a rigorous demand for health care,” effectively admitting the surge in cases and deaths that would follow the return.

Students in a socio-educational center in the state of Ceará, Brazil (Credit: George Braga, SEDUC Ceará)

On October 1, the PT state governor, Camilo Santana, announced that the offer of in-person classes would be increased in the metropolitan region of Ceará’s capital, Fortaleza, which is the most populous center of Brazil’s Northeast.

Ceará’s state government had already authorized in-person classes in the 44 municipalities of the metropolitan region starting in September. In the following month, it authorized reopening for all middle school students with reduced capacity (35 to 50 percent), all senior high school classrooms (35 percent) and an increase in capacity of preschool to 75 percent. In-person teaching was also re-started for 739 inmates in socio-educational centers and prisons. Local public schools in the capital of Fortaleza had already been declared closed until 2021, but the city authorized the reopening of private schools for middle school students last week.

As of Tuesday, just in Fortaleza, 27 schools had already reported confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases to the Ceará Health Department (Sesa). Sesa did not disclose the numbers in each school and declared that no school had been closed by the state Health Surveillance after the reports of contagion.

In the state of Piauí, Governor Wellington Dias of the PT announced the return of high school seniors in September, postponing the return of the other students until 2021.

In the state of Bahia, governed by Rui Costa, also of the PT, the state health secretary declared that the return to classes for higher education would take place on Nov. 3, and for high schools two weeks later. Costa said at a press conference: “We are monitoring and evaluating this [return] along with the decision of other states. Today, we are closer ... to the return to schools.” Even as he admitted that the low rate of cases is nothing but “an assumption,” he affirmed that the drop in the number of deaths would allow the reopening “within [safety] protocols.”

Maranhão’s state governor, Flávio Dino of the PCdoB, had declared a return to school for July, at the height of the wave of cases and deaths in Brazil, following the same policy as right-wing state governments. In the face of enormous opposition from teachers and parents, with positive tests of private school students being reported, the state government canceled the return to classes in the state’s public school system. In October, Dino promoted the policy of herd immunity, declaring that he would conduct a serological inquiry to verify the “collective immunity” of the population.

The lie of an alleged concern for workers during the pandemic in the states governed by the PT and PcdoB, supposedly counterposing support for science to the herd immunity policies of the federal government of Jair Bolsonaro, was completely exposed by the admission—on the same day that the health secretary of Bahia announced a return to classes—that there existed a state of public calamity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Ceará and Bahia.

The back-to-school campaign is driven by the capitalists’ need to force workers back into workplaces. Fortaleza had registered a fall of 84.5 percent in the monthly enrollment of beginners in the state school system between March and October. In São Paulo, the number of public student school enrollments between January and September fell by 94 percent compared to last year, underlining a trend in school dropout rates. In the first half of the year, a very high number of dropouts was recorded, connected to financial pressures on poor families, with school-age family members sent out to work to make up for the loss of income during the pandemic.

The Northeast is one of the regions most affected by poverty and social inequality. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), 42 percent of people living in Ceará are below the poverty line, classified as those living on between US$36 and US$105 per month. The entire region suffers from similar poverty rates, with 53 percent living under these conditions in the state of Maranhão, the highest number in the Northeast. In 2017, more than a third of the entire Brazilian population did not have access to sewage systems and the figure was a staggering 91.7 percent for the population of Piauí.

Ceará faces one of the most devastating impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. It is the state with the third highest number of deaths, despite being eighth in terms of population, with 8.843 million inhabitants. It had recorded 9,416 deaths as of Tuesday. This corresponds to a mortality rate of 103.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the country.

In some regions of Ceará, the weekly average for new cases increased by more than 50 percent during the month of October, while deaths increased more than 30 percent. Last Saturday, the IntegraSUS system registered for the first time in four months more than a thousand cases per week in Fortaleza.

The ruling elite is implementing the same murderous policies throughout the country. At the end of last month, Infogripe, an Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) group, stated that 10 Brazilian capitals show signs that the spread of the virus is once again on the rise. So far, Brazil has registered roughly 5.8 million confirmed cases and 165,000 COVID-19 deaths, trailing only the United States in fatalities.

In São Paulo’s capital, a 48.7 percent increase in hospitalizations was reported over the past two weeks. The state governor, João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), has been touting an early vaccine since the middle of the year for political gain. He was accompanied by the director of the state Coronavirus Contingency Center, João Medina at a press conference on Monday, where Medina said: “There wasn’t a real lockdown during the first wave and there shouldn’t be one in this second moment, because the increase in the number of cases shouldn’t be sufficient to saturate the health system the way it’s organized now.”

On October 22, the Scientific Committee of the Northeast Consortium issued an alert about the possibility of the second wave of COVID-19 reaching the region in the next few months. In the report, the committee points to the advent of the region’s high season, with the arrival of tourists from Europe, and this month’s municipal elections as major factors threatening an increase in cases and deaths. The reopenings and the precarious conditions faced by the majority create the perfect conditions for a new and even more deadly surge.

The serious risks posed by a second wave did not prevent the Brazilian educators’ trade union from covering up for Governor Camilo Santana’s policy in Ceará, while suppressing and diverting teachers’ opposition. Following the same line as unions throughout the country, the APEOC (Union of Teachers and Servants of Education and Culture of the State and Municipalities of Ceará), linked to the PT-controlled CUT union federation, filed a public civil action requesting that in-person learning remain suspended for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, the union is organizing a series of meetings for this year’s wage negotiations, in which they are using the slogan “Enough Bolsonaro/Do it Camilo.”

Last week, the APEOC declared that it would send Santana a proposal for the end of the school year calendar, at the same time that it declared its opposition to the policy of reopening schools being carried forward by the governor.

The following day, the union’s president, Reginaldo Pinheiro, met with Fortaleza’s 2020 mayoral candidates to announce the inauguration of an online education platform. During the meeting, he expressed the union’s readiness to promote hybrid education as a means to reduce costs and attract private investments. He said that “Considering all this reality of revenue retraction, the moment is urgent. In the document, we point out a concern with the year 2021, which must first reconcile the remote and in-person activities, and for that it must have more investment and security for the teachers.”

The trade union’s legal maneuvers and empty statements of opposition, made at the same time that it negotiates with the government, expose the deceptive policy of APEOC and of the unions throughout Brazil, which are carrying out similar policies.

The return-to-school campaign faces huge opposition from educators and families. Mobilizing this opposition to prevent a catastrophic resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic requires a break with the trade unions and the PT and other parties that support the ruling elite’s murderous policies. Teachers should form rank-and-file committees, in alliance with workers across Brazil and internationally, to demand the shutdown of in-person learning and all non-essential production—with full income compensation—and to organize a struggle against the capitalist system to place the defense of life over the drive for profit.

The mental health of young adults is being ravaged by the pandemic—the suffering needs to stop

Kate Randall

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, medical experts have predicted that the resulting social isolation and economic stress would negatively impact mental health. Many months into the pandemic, with a surge in COVID-19 cases affecting virtually every US state as a result of the murderous “herd immunity” strategy pursued by the ruling elite, a new study shows that there is a veritable tsunami of depression flooding over the nation’s young adult population.

This age group, part of Gen Z, have seen their lives implode in 2020. They have missed high school and college graduations, had their schools shut down or been forced into dangerous conditions in them, have been isolated from their friends and robbed of social interaction. They have lost jobs, had their pay cut, or been forced to work in unsafe conditions in restaurants, retail, the service industry and factories.

A man walks past a mural in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020 (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Many of those living with their parents before the pandemic are even less likely now to be able to move out. Those living on their own have seen the excitement of having their own place for the first time turn into numbing isolation. American families are facing devastating poverty due to lost jobs and hours, translating into hunger, poverty and eviction.

Parents with young children, or those living with grandparents, must live in fear of passing the deadly contagion on to them. Like all of the population, they have seen relatives and friends suffer through COVID-19 illness and even death. Contrary to the lies spread by the Trump administration and quack scientists, young people can and do contract the coronavirus and face horrible consequences and death. If they do survive, they may suffer long-term health consequences.

The nationwide survey of young Americans, ages 18-24, examined depressive symptoms among these young adults, including thoughts of suicide, generalized anxiety and disruption in sleep. It was conducted and authored by researchers from Northeastern University, Harvard University/Harvard Medical School, Rutgers University and Northwestern University and published by the COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States.

Overall, across four national waves (in late May, late June, late August and mid-October), researchers found alarming rates of depression, with nearly half of this young adult population—47.3 percent—showing at least moderate depressive symptoms in October, the highest level since June. This is close to 10 times the pre-pandemic rate.

The survey also examined the proportion of respondents who described at least occasional thoughts of being better off dead, or of harming themselves during the two weeks prior to taking the survey. As with depression, such suicidal and self-harm symptoms have skyrocketed among young adults, reaching 32.2 percent in May, and 36.9 percent in October, a more than tenfold increase over an epidemiologic study from 2013-2014, which found 3.4 percent reporting such thoughts.

These staggering figures show that an entire generation of young people are being emotionally ravaged by a pandemic which has unnecessarily claimed the lives of nearly a quarter-million Americans and threatens to become even more deadly in the coming months. Government authorities at all levels have pursued a policy of criminal neglect of the physical and mental health of the population.

In October, survey respondents were asked to identify particular consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic that might have impacted them or their households. The most commonly reported consequence was closure of school or university (51 percent), followed by working from home (41 percent), a pay cut (27 percent), losing employment (26 percent), inability to make rent/mortgage payments (16 percent), and stopping/reducing work to take care of children (15 percent).

The survey findings show the comparative effects of these consequences of the pandemic on mental health. They show that social isolation, economic pressures and the stress on parents while working from home and tending to their children’s remote learning have been key factors in the explosion of mental health problems among young adults.

The largest increase in depressive symptoms was observed among those whose homes were or potentially were impacted (inability to pay rent or mortgage, eviction), with more than 60 percent of these respondents reporting moderate rates of depression. Close to 50 percent of this group also reported suicidal thoughts. Close to 70 percent of those facing eviction reported either suicidal thoughts or generalized anxiety symptoms.

Although there are slight variations among demographic groups, no geographical region, gender, ethnicity, or education level has been spared in this mental health crisis among 18- to 24-year-olds.

Interestingly, although there were disparities in moderate depressive symptoms among young adults by region in June, by October the symptoms were similar in the US Northeast, South and West. This is an indication that all regions of the country are facing similar challenges as the pandemic surges.

Young women showed slightly higher levels of depressive symptoms than men, with higher levels of generalized anxiety, mild and moderate depression and disrupted sleep. Young Asians saw the highest levels generalized anxiety, mild and moderate anxiety and suicidality compared to whites, blacks and Latinos.

While those without college reported slightly higher levels of mental health symptoms compared with those with some college, the difference was not significant.

The mental health impact of the pandemic on not only young adults, but the population as a whole, has been disregarded by both the Trump administration and President-elect Joe Biden. Neither Trump nor Biden has provided any roadmap for confronting any health aspect of the pandemic.

Among younger children, state and local authorities are pushing the reopening of schools so their parents can get back to work. At the university level, they are working to keep campuses open and to maintain the operation of the lucrative college sports industry.

The Trump administration, along with many governors—both Democratic and Republican—have pushed for opening schools and keeping them open with the justification that this is in the best interests of the mental health of youth. Such arguments should be rejected with contempt.

The pandemic has imposed tremendous social and economic hardships on the American population, but much of these effects could be alleviated or lessened with an infusion of government funds and programs. Mental health services have been slashed to the bone under both Democratic and Republican administrations. At a time when these services are needed more than ever, there is no proposal to revive them to provide the mental health care so desperately needed.

Non-profit suicide and mental health hotlines are inadequate substitutes for a comprehensive social program to fund mental health services to assist families that are struggling with educating their children at home, paying their rent and utilities, and buying groceries.

While a virulent virus will inevitably create physical and mental health challenges, the ruling elite in America has allowed it to run rampant as it seeks to keep schools open while forcing workers into dangerously unsafe factories.

In their young lives, 18- to 24-year-olds have seen an unending explosion military aggression of US imperialism—from the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq to Syria and Yemen, to name just a few. Now they are seeing at home how an invisible virus is being allowed to unleash its wrath under conditions where the scientific and social resources are available to fight it, but the profit-drive of the ruling class demands that the population suffer.

The mental health crisis created by the malign neglect and homicidal policies of the ruling elite can only be confronted by the organization of the working class, independent of the two big business parties and the trade unions that defend and accept their murderous back-to-school and back-to-work policies. Along with developing a vaccine and treatments for the coronavirus, the scientific advances in treating mental health must be marshaled, under the guidance of the working class, to assist those suffering under the weight of the pandemic.

European governments seize upon terrorist attacks in France and Vienna to build a police state

Johannes Stern

European governments are responding to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Nice, Dresden and Vienna by adopting the political agenda of the far right. Under the pretext of the “war on terror,” EU leaders and European leaders on Tuesday agreed on a massive expansion of “Fortress Europe,” the de facto abolition of the right of asylum, and the creation of what amounts to a Europe-wide police state.

“The work at government level is aimed at bringing our various services and authorities into line and better coordinating our efforts to fight terrorism, radicalisation with many targeted measures,” declared French President Emmanuel Macron, at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission and former German Defence Minister.

French President Emmanuel Macron by the coffin of slain teacher Samuel Paty in the courtyard of the Sorbonne university, Oct. 21, 2020 in Paris (AP Photo/Francois Mori, Pool)

“The task now is to implement these measures consistently, for example the interoperability of databases, the linking of our databases and the cooperation of our security services also at the external borders.” Another topic “we discussed was the determination with which we want to combat terrorist propaganda and hate speech on the internet,” Macron added. “We are working to ensure that in the coming weeks a regulation on the removal and deletion of terrorist content within one hour is adopted.”

“We must also work on a reform of the Schengen rules,” Macron said. “This means that we must strengthen and better defend the external borders of the European Union and that we must better control and implement the functioning of the Schengen rules … I hope that we will soon be able to establish a real Security Council.”

Merkel also pleaded for a strengthening of Europe’s external borders and stepped-up censorship, stressing that “the German Presidency of the Council still wanted to finalise the regulation on preventing the distribution of terrorist content on the internet.” She boasted: “We have recently given our security authorities in Germany new opportunities” for monitoring “messenger services [such as Telegram] and surveillance.”

Von der Leyen took the same line, announcing that the EU Commission’s 2018 proposal to prevent terrorist content online “will now be finalised in the Council and Parliament trialogue.” She said it was important to “focus on the speed of deleting such terrorist content. It is crucial to be fast.” This will also involve “giving greater responsibility to the major Internet platforms in the fight against illegal and harmful online content.” To this end, the so-called Digital Services Act will be “presented in a few weeks’ time.”

It is clear what this means. Under the guise of the fight against “terrorist content,” the censorship of left-wing content and websites in particular will be expanded. Only on October 28, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, admitted at a hearing before the US Senate that Google’s search engine censors the World Socialist Web Site.

The new directive will oblige internet giants such as YouTube and Facebook, which work closely with the secret services and governments and already censor left-wing and progressive content on a massive scale, to delete “harmful” articles, videos or other postings even faster.

In order to justify the construction of a European police state, the ruling class is seizing upon the horrific terrorist attacks of recent weeks and fueling fears of a continuing terrorist threat.

“We have a constant danger among us. We have thousands of ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ who either survived the fighting in Syria, in Iraq for the IS and returned or who did not get through at all because they were stopped somewhere when they left,” warned the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. He therefore called for a “more robust approach to the threats throughout Europe.” If we want to “protect the freedoms of all, we have to restrict the freedom of these people.”

What Kurz concealed was that European governments are in many ways responsible for the terrible terrorist attacks of recent weeks. The thousands of “foreign terrorist fighters” did not fall from the sky, but were used by the imperialist powers and their reactionary regional allies—above all Saudi Arabia—as shock troops in the wars for regime change in Libya and Syria.

Almost all the assassins of the major terrorist attacks in recent years were known to the security authorities: Anis Amri, who drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market on December 19, 2016, the Kouachi brothers who stormed the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie He bdo in early 2015, and also Kujtim Fejzulai, the assassin in Vienna.

Kurz’s assertion that European governments are concerned with “protecting freedom” is a blatant lie. In fact, the policies of the ruling class do not protect freedom and life, but bring oppression and death. Due to the lethal “herd immunity” strategy, over 300,000 people have died in Europe alone since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In previous years, tens of millions of people had already been killed, injured or made refugees in the EU-backed neo-colonial wars in Central Asia and the Middle East. Tens of thousands have drowned in the Mediterranean. Within Europe, the ruling class is cultivating and using extreme right-wing and fascist forces to intimidate and suppress the growing opposition of the working class and youth.

The latest police-state measures are part of this strategy. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the advanced economic, social and political crisis of the capitalist system. The ruling class feels it is sitting on a social and political powder keg. In recent days and weeks, teachers and students in Greece, Poland and France have protested against the unsafe reopening of schools.

These protests are only an anticipation of massive working-class struggles that will be directed against the entire capitalist system, including in the US. There, the Democrats not only play down the coup plans by President Donald Trump, who seeks to overturn the election results and establish a fascistic dictatorship. They themselves appeal to the military and the state apparatus out of fear of a revolutionary development of the working class.

The same fear is also driving the nominally left-wing bourgeois parties on this side of the Atlantic. In Germany, the Greens and the Left Party, which articulate the interests of affluent sections of the middle classes, stand at the forefront of a sharp shift of the entire political establishment to the right.

Last weekend, excerpts from a so-called “eleven-point action plan” drawn up by Green Party leader Robert Habeck and others became known. Both in terms of its form and content, the paper could have also been drawn up by the right-wing extremist AfD. According to the paper, so-called Islamist “Gefährder” (potential offenders) must be “consistently and closely monitored”. For that, more police and secret service agents are needed.

The Greens attack the grand coalition and its notoriously right-wing Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU) from the right. They demand that arrest warrants against “Islamist perpetrators” be executed more consistently and that deportations be organized more quickly.

At the European level, according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Greens demand the establishment of “a European Criminal Police Office with its own investigative teams, a uniform definition of the term ‘Gefährder’ and more cross-border cooperation between national security authorities.”

This is a blueprint for the creation of a pan-European police state where nobody is safe. If one takes the recent tightening of the Berlin police law by the “Red-Red-Green” (SPD-Left Party-Green) Senate majority, any person who might be willing and seems able to commit a terrorist crime can be classified as a “Gefährder.” This means that anyone can be classified as a “Gefährder” on the basis of a mere presumption and thus prosecuted by the security authorities.

The Left Party leadership is also calling for a strong state, combining this with anti-Islamic agitation. In a commentary for the right-wing Springer newspaper Die Welt, Dietmar Bartsch, the leader of the Left Party’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag (German parliament), called for an end to “ambiguity and inaction” and a “clear reaction of a well-fortified democracy.”

By this Bartsch obviously understands the oppression of Muslims—among other things, he pleads for a headscarf ban “in day-care centers and primary schools”—and the criminalisation of any opposition to racism and the police state.

“It was shocking that demonstrations took place in this country after the attacks in France—against the French President,” he wrote angrily in Die Welt.

Bartsch could hardly make it clearer where he and the Left Party stand on the class struggle. Protests against the hated “President of the Rich” Macron—who praised Nazi collaborationist Philippe Pétain as a hero and has ordered the suppression of the “yellow vest” protests—are just as taboo for the former Stalinist state party of East Germany as protests against police violence.

In early June, the Red-Red-Green senate in Berlin organized police violence against peaceful demonstrators protesting against the police murder of George Floyd in the USA. At the time Bartsch repeatedly praised the police forces, which are permeated by right-wing extremist networks, and declared that “the police do not deserve less, but rather more social recognition and personnel, especially on the streets.”

Immigrant women who accused ICE doctor of forced sterilization deported from the United States

Kevin Martinez

The Trump administration has deported multiple women who complained they were forcibly sterilized by a Georgia gynecologist while held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention camp.

Already six former patients who alleged mistreatment by Dr. Mahendra Amin have been forced out of the country. Amin is accused of operating on immigrant women without their consent and performing medically unnecessary procedures which resulted in some women unable to have children. Another seven women from the Irwin Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia who spoke out also face deportation according to their lawyers.

Immigrants seeking asylum hold hands as they leave a cafeteria at the ICE South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas on August 23, 2019 (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

One of the women who spoke to federal investigators was told only hours later by ICE that the hold on her deportation had been removed and that her removal was “imminent.” Another woman described being taken to a rural Georgia airport and made to sign deportation papers, only to be brought back to the jail as her lawyers file a lawsuit in federal court.

All of the women described operations by Amin that worsened their pain without being given any non-surgical alternative. The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general have opened investigations.

While Amin is no longer treating women at the Irwin County Detention Center, his lawyer, Scott Grubman denied any wrongdoing on the doctor’s part saying he was a “highly respected physician who has dedicated his adult life to treating a high-risk, underserved population in rural Georgia.”

Immigrant advocates have warned that the deportations of the women, often to unsafe countries, will hamper the investigation into not only Amin but also ICE. Elora Mukherjee, a Columbia University law professor who is defending several of the women told the Associated Press (AP), “ICE [is] destroying the evidence needed for this investigation.”

In a statement, ICE denied that the deportations had anything to do with the investigations of Amin, while the Justice Department refused to comment. Grubman also did not say whether Amin was talking to investigators.

One of the women, Mbeti Ndonga, 37, was taken to Amin last year after she complained of abdominal pain and excessive vaginal bleeding. Instead of being given a treatment that was ordered by her previous doctor, Amin insisted that they operate.

Ndonga told AP, “He was adamant and said I must have surgery.” After the procedure, she was told she would never be able to have children and still suffers bleeding and pain.

She spoke twice to government investigators saying, “I told them that I was abused, tortured, dehumanized.” Hours after her interview last week, Ndonga was told that ICE had lifted the hold on her deportation and she could be sent back to Kenya at any time.

Her lawyer, Mukherjee said, “Mbeti’s fear in answering the investigators’ questions was that it would make her immigration case worse. And within hours of the interview, her worst fears were realized.”

Another woman who asked to be identified only be first name Yanira, because she fears being targeted by criminal gangs if she is deported to Mexico, was also abused by Amin. She said that in February he requested estrogen patches to treat hot flashes, following a hysterectomy by another doctor in 2014.

Amin told her he would perform a vaginal ultrasound and a Pap smear, a test for cancer. The procedures caused her intense pain and were performed with no lubrication causing Yanira to have trouble sitting for a week.

She told AP, “We are humans. We are women. We have feelings. Just because we are detained doesn’t mean we should be treated like animals.”

Yanira’s attorneys said that she wanted to talk to government investigators last Thursday about Amin. On Monday, she was taken to an airport to be deported only to be stopped by another ICE agent who said she was no longer being deported because her lawyers had intervened.

The Irwin County Detention Center is run by the private company, LaSalle Correction. News of the medical malpractice spread after a whistleblower complaint was filed on behalf of nurse Dawn Wooten who worked at the jail until July.

Wooten had dubbed the physician “the uterus collector” because of the multiple surgeries he performed on female detainees. The doctor was later identified as Amin, who had previously been taken to court for filing false Medicaid claims. Amin was accused by the government of charging for obstetric ultrasounds that were not necessary. The case was ultimately settled out of court for over half a million dollars without Amin admitting culpability.

Many of the women interviewed by AP and The Intercept spoke of their fear of Amin who was known for his “rough treatment” and feared losing their reproductive systems if they were seen by him. Amin was accused of performing unnecessary surgeries without women’s consent and would get angry if they asked questions. No interpreters were ever present and they were “unclear about the necessity or purpose of the proposed treatment.”

Amin’s case recalls the infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. Mengele performed sadistic experiments on live prisoners and eventually escaped capture at the end of the war to live comfortably in South America thanks to the clandestine “rat lines” set up by the CIA and the Catholic Church to help ex-Nazis escape justice.

The revelations of forced sterilizations of immigrants in ICE custody should serve as a stark

reminder that fascist violence is alive and well in the detention camps set up by the Obama administration and handed over to the Trump administration all across America.

Over 300,000 coronavirus deaths in Europe: Capitalism’s crime against humanity

Will Morrow

This week, as the coronavirus continued to surge out of control, Europe marked the grim milestone of more than 300,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Virtually every European country now faces a resurgence of the virus that threatens once again to overwhelm healthcare systems and kill hundreds of thousands. In Italy, the country first hardest hit when the virus reached the continent, identical scenes to those that occurred just eight months ago are playing out. Yesterday, another 636 people died, up from 623 the day before and the highest number since April. The total number of infections in the country surpassed one million on Tuesday, and the total number of dead is now 43,589.

The country’s hospital system is on the verge of collapse. By Wednesday, coronavirus patients made up more than 50 percent of patients in nine out of 21 provinces, and had reached 75 percent in Lombardy, 92 percent in Piedmont and 99 percent in South Tyrol. Ambulances are queuing up outside hospitals across the country due to a lack of available beds.

Unlike during the first wave, when the pandemic was largely confined to the north, the virus has already overwhelmed a number of regions in the poorer south. In Naples, a 78-year-old woman waited for 26 hours in an ambulance before being admitted to a hospital this week. A video was widely shared online reportedly showing a patient lying dead in a bathroom of a hospital ward. Over the weekend, nurses at Naples’ Catugno hospital provided oxygen treatment to patients sitting in their cars.

“We are very close to not keeping up. I cannot say when we will reach the limit, but that day is not far off,” Dr Luca Cabrini, who runs the intensive care ward at Varese’s Circolo Hospital, told the Associated Press. Leoluca Orlando, the mayor of Palermo, warned that his city and the rest of Sicily were at risk of an “announced massacre.”

In France, 425 people have died in the last 24 hours. More than 10,000 have died since the start of October, and 42,960 since the beginning of the pandemic. The 551 deaths on Monday were the most in a single day since the peak of 613 on April 6. In the Île-de-France region around Paris, more than 90 percent of urgent care beds are occupied. In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the number of occupied emergency beds has reached 146 percent of official capacity, with patients now being transferred to other hospitals.

The UK saw another 525 deaths on Wednesday. The official death toll maintained by the government is now over 50,000. The true figure is tens of thousands higher. The British Office of National Statistics had estimated at least 61,000 deaths as of the end of October.

In Spain, there have been more than 1.4 million confirmed cases of the virus, and over 40,000 officially recorded deaths, with 356 reported in the past 24 hours. A study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE reported that the average life expectancy at birth dropped by 0.9 years in Spain from 2019-2020 due to the pandemic. In three regions—Asturias, Murcia and Andalusia—the daily death toll has surpassed the peak of April.

In Germany, which has long been praised by the bourgeois media as a role model in handling the crisis, the situation is increasingly getting out of control. As a result of the opening policy, schools have become breeding grounds for the virus. Currently more than 300,000 students and around 30,000 teachers are in quarantine and the numbers of daily infections (21,866 on Thursday) and intensive care cases (3,186) is higher than ever in spring. Over 1,800 patients are on ventilators struggling for their lives. In some cities and regions no free intensive care beds are left and the death toll is rising.

In many smaller countries, the death toll as a portion of the total population is among the highest internationally. In Switzerland, one of the wealthiest countries in Europe with a population of around 8.6 million people, 94 people died in the past 24 hours. In a country the size of the United States, this would equate to more than 3,000 deaths in a day.

How has this situation been allowed to occur, just eight months after the first peak of the virus on the continent? The first lockdowns took place in March, after wildcat strikes that erupted in Italy and Spain forced governments to take action to stem the spread of the virus, for fear of a popular revolt at their indifference at the death of thousands.

The European ruling class then deliberately pursued a policy, knowing it would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. These deaths are not inevitable. They amount to a crime against humanity perpetrated by the capitalist class and its political representatives.

The European Union used the opportunity provided by the lockdowns to push through two trillion euros in corporate bailouts. While lockdown measures massively cut the spread of the virus, the ruling elite concluded that a confinement stopping production and cutting corporate profits was unacceptable, no matter the number of deaths. Across Europe and in the US, governments prematurely reopened nonessential workplaces, herding tens of millions back to work to produce a continued flow of profits. This ensured the continued spread of the virus.

Already in July, the World Health Organization warned that the resurgence of the virus could be seen across Europe. However, nothing was done.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex expressed most clearly the standpoint of the ruling elite, declaring that same month that a lockdown “stops the spread of the pandemic, of course, but from an economic and social standpoint, it’s a disaster.”

At the beginning of October, as medical authorities warned publicly of an approaching collapse of the health care system, governments enacted partial lockdowns, but kept nonessential businesses open. Schools are also open; the public education system is used as a child-minding service, with anywhere up to 35 students crammed into classrooms, so parents can be forced to remain at work.

This week, the Italian doctors association publicly demanded a full lockdown across Italy. However, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte replied to La Stampa on Wednesday that “a generalised lockdown shouldn’t be the first choice—the costs would be too high.”

In other words, while a lockdown could save an untold number of lives, the “costs”—i.e., the impact on the profits of the corporate elite—are unacceptable. As far as the ruling elite is concerned, if the old and infirm die, and allow for further cuts to pensions and healthcare, that is to be regarded as a positive good.

The response to the pandemic cannot be left in the hands of the capitalist class. Against its policy of profits and death, the working class must intervene to fight for a scientific response to the crisis. The Socialist Equality Parties call for the formation of rank-and-file safety committees in every school and workplace across Europe, independent of the trade unions, which have helped implement government reopening policies in every country. These committees would provide the means to organize a Europewide general strike, to compel the closure of schools and nonessential production, and allow workers to shelter at home.

Massive resources must be invested to provide a high standard of living to everyone throughout the pandemic, including the resources required to maintain online learning for students. The claim that there is “no money” for such measures is a patent lie. Trillions of euros have been handed to the banks and corporations in bailouts since the beginning of the pandemic. The resources exist, but they are monopolized by a corporate and financial oligarchy.

The fortunes of the rich must be expropriated, and the major corporations transformed into public utilities, democratically controlled by the working class as part of the socialist reorganization of economic life on the basis of social need, not private profit. This means the struggle of the working class across Europe to take political power and build the United Socialist States of Europe.