Stock market falls point to mounting problems in financial system

Nick Beams

Wall Street, together with other stock markets around the world, has continued to fall under the impact of rising interest rates, inflation, and a slowing global economy amid warnings the conditions are being created for instability in financial markets.

The Financial Times reported that its All-Worlds barometer of global equities dropped on Monday by 3 percent, its sharpest fall since June 2020 as markets were hit by the onset of the pandemic, reaching its lowest level since December of that year.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The sharp declines on Wall Street last week continued Monday with the S&P 500 down by 3.2 percent with the tech-focused NASDAQ dropping a further 4.3 percent. The S&P is down more than 16 percent for the year while the NASDAQ has fallen more than 25 percent and is now down 27 percent from its record high last November.

After a significant selloff in Asian markets yesterday, Wall Street rose slightly on the day.

Summing broad sentiments, Seema Shah of Principal Global Investors told the Wall Street Journal: “By 2023 you are very likely to see growth slowing very significantly, and the spectre of recessions is really starting to loom.”

The world economy is pointing in the same direction. There are fears of a significant slowdown in China as it grapples to bring the spread of the latest COVID-19 outbreak under control with exports falling to their lowest levels in two years last month. There are indications of a slowdown in German and French manufacturing industries. The price of oil has also fallen as fears grow of a weakening global economy.

The latest phase in what the WSJ described as a “rout” began last Thursday. Prices had risen sharply the previous day on the back of assurances by Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell that the central bank was not considering an increase of 0.75 percent points in the bank’s interest rate.

But then the reality of continued Fed rate rises—Powell indicated rises each of 0.5 percentage points were on the table for at least the next two meetings of the Fed—sank in and markets fell sharply.

Beneath the immediate fluctuations of the share markets, there are indications of mounting problems in the financial system. It is haunted by the meltdown in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic which saw the Fed intervene to the tune of around $4 trillion, becoming the backstop for all areas of finance.

These fears were highlighted in the Fed’s semi-annual Financial Stability report issued on Monday. It said there was a “higher than normal” chance that conditions in US financial markets could suddenly worsen.

“Further adverse surprises in inflation and interest rates, particularly if accompanied by a decline in economic activity, could negatively affect the financial system,” the report stated.

A sharp rise in rates “could lead to higher volatility, stresses to market liquidity, and a large correction in prices of risky assets, potentially causing losses at a range of financial intermediaries” which could reduce “their ability to raise capital and retain the confidence of their counterparties.”

The Fed report said banks remain well capitalised “but some money market and bond funds are still exposed to sizable liquidity risks.” It warned that some types of money market funds remained prone to runs and “many bond and bank loan mutual funds continue to be vulnerable to redemption risks.” That is, they can experience liquidity problems when large numbers of investors decide to pull their money out.

It noted that elevated inflation and rising interest rates could have far-reaching effects, negatively impacting on “domestic economic activity, asset prices, credit quality, and financial conditions.”

If any near terms risks were realised, it continued, “and especially should such events precipitate a marked worsening of the economic outlook, their effects could be amplified through the financial vulnerabilities” within the system.

The Fed report noted that since late 2021 there had been a tightening in the market for US Treasury securities. Markets are regarded as liquid if traders can make transactions without affecting the market as a whole. Low liquidity, by contrast, can amplify volatility and result in unexpected financial tightening.

“In extreme cases, such as the market turmoil at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, low liquidity can impair the ability of the financial system to respond to a large shock because investors may not be able to adjust their holdings of assets to raise cash or hedge risks, or they may be able to do so only at a substantial cost.”

While the deterioration in liquidity had not been as extreme as in past cases, “the risk of a sudden deterioration appears higher than normal.”

The low depth of liquidity, it said, could indicate that liquidity providers were being particularly cautious. “Declining depth at times of rising uncertainty and volatility could result in a negative feedback loop, as lower liquidity in turn may cause prices to be more volatile.”

The report also drew attention to the situation now developing in the corporate bond market noting that heightened uncertainty weighed on the risk appetite for this form of debt. The share of new speculative-grade bonds with the lowest ratings from financial agencies was low by historical standards but it pointed to the build-up of problems in other areas.

“[The] share of outstanding bonds with the lowest investment-grade ratings—the so-called triple-B cliff—reached its highest level in two decades, suggesting that many investment-grade bonds remain vulnerable to being downgraded to speculative-grade in the event of a negative economic shock.”

The rise in bank interest rates has sparked a selloff in Treasury bonds with the yield on the 10-year Treasury now around 3 percent, compared to less than 1 percent only a few months ago. [Bond prices and their yield or interest rate move in opposite directions.]

The shift in Treasury yields is having an effect in the corporate bond market. The Financial Times reported on Monday that the Bank of America estimated that the average price of investment-grade US corporate bonds has fallen to just above 93 cents on the dollar.

This was below the level reached during the market crash of March 2020 and at a level not seen since May 2009 when markets were still reeling from the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008. Now there are clear indications the conditions which produced these crises are building up once again.

In major escalation of the NATO proxy war against Russia, US rams through $40 billion aid package for Ukraine

Clara Weiss

On Tuesday night, the US House of Representatives voted by 357 to 48 to approve a record $39.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine, just hours after the text of the bill was made known. It is widely expected that the Senate will also approve the bill and that it will be presented to President Joe Biden for ratification later this week.

The bill marks an extraordinary escalation of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

It goes even beyond the $33 billion that had been requested by the Biden administration and amounts to 5 percent of the total US national security budget of $782 billion. The almost $40 billion comes on top of $13.67 billion approved by Congress at the beginning of the war, bringing the total aid to Ukraine to over $53 billion in only two months. This is more aid than any country has received from the US in at least two decades.

Almost all of this money is going directly to fund the war against Russia. According to the magazine Politico, out of the $39.8 billion, $11 billion would go to transfers of weapons and equipment from the US military stockpiles directly to Ukraine; $8.7 billion would be used to replenish weapon inventories sent to the frontlines (up from $3.3 billion that the White House had requested); $6 billion would go to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative which allows the Biden administration to buy weapons from contractors and then send them directly to the Ukrainian army; and $3.9 billion would be used to fund increased troop deployments and other military NATO operations in Europe. Only $900 million are provided for the 5.9 million refugees of the conflict. 

These staggering sums are being pushed through in a bipartisan effort while a miserable $10 billion for COVID-19 relief was unceremoniously dropped by the Democrats, even as the Biden administration is now expecting that 100 million people might get infected in the fall and winter. 

Yet after 1 million people have died from COVID-19 in the US, the ruling class is not even pretending to try to save lives anymore. Instead, in a desperate and reckless attempt to divert immense class tensions outward, it is pushing for the escalation of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine into an ever more direct and open conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.

The supposed “left” wing of the Democratic Party is completely lining up behind the war drive, conspiring in attempts to stifle any public discussion about its implications. Expressing his support for the push by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to ram the package through Congress as fast as possible, the supposedly “left” Senator Bernie Sanders stated, “We should always have a debate, but the problem is that Ukraine is in the middle of a very intense war right now. I think every day counts, and I think we have to respond as strongly and vigorously as we can.”

The implications of the new “aid” package are immense. The noted historian of Nazi Germany, Adam Tooze—who is an open supporter of NATO in the conflict—warned in a comment for The Guardian that the package, if approved, “will mean that we are financing nothing less than a total war.” He wrote this with regard to the smaller sum of $33 billion initially proposed by the White House.

The aid package for Ukraine was passed within the framework of the Biden administration’s renewal of the Land-Lease bill which the US adopted in March 1941 to provide direct military support to its allies against Nazi Germany and Japan in World War II. Raising in so many words the specter of a Third World War, Tooze noted in The Guardian that the March 1941 bill marked the moment when the US “abandoned neutrality” in the war, which it only formally entered in December 1941. 

In a move that can only be described as sinister, Biden chose Monday, May 9, the anniversary date of the end of World War II which cost 60 million lives, to sign the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 into law. The US can now easily lend and lease weapons directly to Ukraine or to Eastern European countries for the war. 

Everything is being done to chloroform public opinion as to the enormous dangers bound up with this deliberate escalation of the NATO conflict with Russia. 

Amid reports that Russia has effectively taken over large parts of east Ukraine, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that “we are not confident the fight in Donbas will effectively end the war.” 

Haines claimed, “Our view [is] that there is not sort of an imminent potential for Putin to use nuclear weapons” because Putin would turn to nuclear weapons if he perceived an existential threat either to his regime or to Russia and if he believed that NATO was “either intervening or about to intervene in that context.” 

But this is precisely what NATO and especially the US have been signaling at every step of the way, constantly seeking to provoke Russia into an escalation of the war. The Biden administration alone has already funneled billions of dollars worth of weapons, tanks, anti-tank missiles, ammunition and more into Ukraine, directly influencing the course of the war that has claimed the lives of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and Russian soldiers. Other NATO members, including Germany, the UK , France and Poland, have also provided billions worth of weapons, tanks and other military aid.

In the most recent provocation, information was leaked confirming that the US had provided intelligence to help Kiev assassinate Russian generals and sink the flag ship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva. The US now claims that as many as 10 Russian generals may have been killed in the war, a staggering figure for a conflict that is barely three months old. 

Emboldened by the imperialist powers and working in cahoots with NATO-armed neo-Nazi militias, the Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky is also doing everything it can to escalate the war. Speaking to the Financial Times on Tuesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced that, given that the West keeps funneling weapons to Ukraine, Kiev is now preparing to retake the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in March 2014, and the Donbass. Kuleba said, “Of course the victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories.”  

In fact, already back in March 2021, the Ukrainian government approved a new military strategy that explicitly aimed at “recovering” Crimea and the Donbass, which at the time was tantamount to an announcement that Ukraine was preparing for war. The strategy was backed by the Biden administration and was one of the many provocations that propelled the Kremlin into launching its invasion, in a desperate bid to preempt a potentially devastating military move by imperialist-backed Ukraine and to force the imperialist powers to the negotiating table.  

Three months into the war, it is clear that this decision was not only criminal but also a disastrous miscalculation by the Putin regime. Far from showing any signs of willingness to compromise, the imperialist powers are instead doing everything they can to broaden the war and bleed the Russian army dry, while working with sections of the oligarchy to bring about a regime change in Moscow. 

The Putin regime, which has emerged out of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s destruction of the Soviet Union and the oligarchy’s plunder of state property, can only respond to the increasing pressure of imperialism by whipping up Russian nationalism and threatening to deploy its nuclear weapons. 

Biden sets aside COVID-19 funding to secure tens of billions to escalate war against Russia

Barry Grey

President Joe Biden on Monday called on Congress to split off additional funding for COVID-19 vaccines, tests and therapeutic drugs from a bill to authorize tens of billions more in military aid to Ukraine in the US-NATO war against Russia.

Originally, he and Democratic lawmakers had urged that Congress attach some $10 billion in US COVID-19 funding to a $33 billion package of military and economic aid to the Ukrainian regime, including a massive increase in large-scale weaponry and ammunition totaling $20 billion.

But when Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said they would not pass the package to escalate the conflict with Russia if it was linked to money, however inadequate, to deal with a new surge in COVID-19 infections and deaths, Biden made clear the priorities of the Democratic Party and the capitalist ruling class.

Medical staff members attend to a COVID-19 patient in the ICU department of the Hospital Universitario, in Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

Washington’s proxy war against Russia—an imperialist war for regime change and the dismemberment of Russia, in preparation for military conflict with China—takes precedence over and is to be paid for by the deaths of hundreds of thousands more workers in the US from the increasingly virulent and infectious virus.

The utter indifference of both capitalist parties to mass death and debilitating illness within the borders of the US exposes the fraudulent claims of a war for “democracy” and “human rights” in Ukraine. The nationalist, capitalist regime of Putin, the authoritarian product of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, was goaded into its reactionary and ill-fated invasion of Ukraine by the United States, which had spearheaded the eastward expansion of NATO and armed its puppet government in Kiev to the teeth in preparation for the current war.

In his White House statement, Biden noted the broad bipartisan support for his plan to massively expand US arms to Ukraine and urged Congress to pass it quickly.

“Previously, I had recommended that Congress take overdue action on much needed funding for COVID treatments, vaccines and tests, as part of the Ukraine Supplemental bill,” he said. “However, I have been informed by congressional leaders in both parties that such an addition would slow down action on the urgently needed Ukrainian aid—a view expressed strongly by several congressional Republicans. We cannot afford delay in this vital war effort. Hence, I am prepared to accept that these two measures move separately, so that the Ukrainian aid bill can get to my desk right away.”

In the next breath, he hypocritically called separate passage of pandemic funding “equally vital,” stating that “Without timely COVID funding, more Americans will die needlessly.”

Failure to pass additional COVID-19 funding, he added, would make it impossible to “order new COVID treatments and vaccines for the fall, including next-generation vaccines under development” and undermine “our supply of COVID tests.”

In fact, the Biden administration told the press in a private background meeting last Friday that it anticipated 100 million new COVID-19 infections this fall and winter as a result of the spread of more infectious and virulent variants of Omicron, such as BA.2. Based on a death rate of 0.5 percent of infections, that translates to 500,000 more COVID-19 deaths in the coming months in the US, the vast majority of which would be entirely preventable.

This is under conditions where the administration and state and local leaders of both parties are ending all mitigation measures, such as mask mandates even as infections, hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise across the country. Moreover, the government is shutting down the collection of data on infections and reducing testing, so as to conceal the true scale of the pandemic.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that the Washington D.C. health department has not shared data with the CDC since April 27 on new coronavirus cases or deaths in the District. The Democratic-run District of Columbia stopped reporting daily case data on its own website two months ago. But it continued providing case counts to the CDC on a sporadic basis until the end of April. Local officials have refused to answer questions from reporters about why.

Maryland and Virginia have recently reported rising cases, climbing 29 percent in Maryland and 49 percent in Virginia in the past week, with the highest rates in the D.C. suburbs.

Thus, the administration is prepared to jeopardize the health and lives of countless thousands of Americans—just as it guts their wages and living standards with record levels of inflation exacerbated by the war—in order to pursue the drive of US imperialism to plunder the resources of Russia and remove it as an obstacle to its violent pursuit of global hegemony. In the process, it is recklessly pushing humanity toward a nuclear World War III.

When it comes to militarism and war, there is overwhelming bipartisan agreement and legislative gridlock evaporates. Biden issued his statement on separating COVID-19 funding from military aid to Ukraine on the same day he signed the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022.” The law updates the 1941 law the US used to aid its allies in World War II. It enables the White House to move weapons and supplies more quickly into Ukraine.

Biden signed the bill at a bipartisan ceremony at the White House, which included Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz, the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA agent, and Democratic Senator Ben Cardin. The House passed the bill last month on a 417-10 vote, following an earlier unanimous vote in the Senate.

Biden and Democratic lawmakers are well aware that the prospects for getting a separate COVID-19 funding bill through the 50-50 Senate are highly questionable, given the 60-vote hurdle for overcoming a filibuster. Asked if moving the Ukraine aid on its own would hurt the chances of passing new funding to combat the coronavirus, Senator Dick Durbin, the number two Senate Democrat, said, “It doesn’t help.”

Moreover, the Republicans have demanded that any COVID-19 bill include an amendment blocking the Biden administration from lifting Title 42, a Trump era measure that mandates Border Patrol agents to summarily expel all refugees seeking asylum or unauthorized entry into the US across the border with Mexico. The order effectively abolishes the legally guaranteed right to asylum and denies migrants any shred of due process.

Biden continued the order, imposed on the pretext that it was a public health measure to combat COVID-19, even as he and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) openly adopted Trump’s “herd immunity” policy of ending all mitigation measures and encouraging mass infection.

However, the obvious hypocrisy of claiming the pandemic was “over” while continuing mass deportations at the border for supposed health reasons, plus the need to facilitate the entry of Ukrainian refugees into the US, rendered Title 42 a political liability. On April 1, the CDC ordered the measure to be lifted by May 23, and Biden backed the order.

The Republicans have seized on the prospective lifting of Title 42 to ramp up their fascistic agitation against immigrants and accuse Biden of deliberately flooding the US with criminal gangs, drug pushers and carriers of disease. In response, a substantial section of Democratic lawmakers have joined with the Republicans in demanding a delay in the lifting of Title 42, and Biden himself has indicated he is inclined to comply.

Both Senator Dick Durbin and Senator Patty Murray, the third-ranking member of the Democratic caucus, said in recent interviews that they were prepared to comply with Republican demands for a vote to amend a COVID-19 funding bill to block the lifting of Title 42.

Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who opposes allowing a vote on such an amendment, called it a “political trap” and predicted the Democrats would likely lose an immigration vote on the Senate floor.

Senator Jon Tester (Democrat, Montana), who has spoken out against the lifting of Title 42, said, “I think we should vote on the [Title] 42, and I think the White House thinks we should vote on 42.”

Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election, said, “Whether we should or not, I think we’re going to” cave in to the Republicans’ demand for a vote on keeping Title 42 in place.

When it comes to protecting the basic democratic rights of working people—from abortion rights, to voting rights, to the rights of refugees, to the very right to live—nothing can be done within the framework of capitalism and its political parties. It offers only war, poverty, inequality and mass death.

Record gas prices cut further into US workers’ real wages

Trévon Austin

Despite assurances from the Biden administration that inflation would be a temporary problem, consumer prices continue to spiral out of control.

Gasoline and diesel fuel prices hit an all-time high once again on Tuesday, just two months after the national average for gasoline surpassed $4 per gallon for the first time in 14 years. According to the American Automobile Association, the nationwide average price for a gallon of gas reached $4.37, a 17-cent jump in the past week alone, while diesel prices rose to $5.55 per gallon.

The rise in gas prices comes amid US-NATO oil sanctions against Russia and a sharp drop in the supply of wheat and fertilizers due to the war in Ukraine. The US consumer price index reached 8.5 percent in March, the highest rate in decades.

A March analysis by Yardeni Research, a global investment and business strategy consultant, found that the average American household will pay nearly $2,000 more for gasoline in 2022.

For months, stores across the United States have been struggling to stock baby formula, forcing parents to scramble from store to store. The shortage, originally spurred by COVID-19 supply disruptions in 2021, was exacerbated by the Food and Drug Administration shutdown of an Abbott Nutrition factory in Sturgis, Michigan. The FDA found that four babies had suffered bacterial infections after consuming formula from the facility.

According to Datasembly, a data analytics firm, between 2 and 8 percent of stores could not stock baby formula in the first half of 2021. However, between November 2021 and early April 2022, the out-of-stock rate jumped to 31 percent. In just three weeks, that rate increased by 9 percentage points, and now 40 percent of stores in the US are completely sold out of formula.

In six states—Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas and Tennessee—the out-of-stock rate for baby formula was over 50 percent during the week starting April 24, according to Datasembly. Additionally, 26 states had out-of-stock rates higher than 40 percent, compared to just seven states three weeks earlier. Major US pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens have imposed limits on how many cans customers can buy at a time.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, at-home food prices are expected to rise another 5 to 6 percent in 2022, and food-away-from-home prices are predicted to increase between 5.5 and 6.5 percent.

President Joe Biden delivered a speech Tuesday blaming inflation on the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a statement dripping with hypocrisy, Biden claimed he understood the problems with which working Americans are grappling, and said his administration and the Federal Reserve were treating the matter as a top issue.

“I know that families all across America are hurting because of inflation,” Biden said in a 20-minute speech from the White House. “I want every American to know that I am taking inflation very seriously and it is my top domestic priority.”

Although the White House advertised Biden’s speech as being focused on how his administration would combat inflation, he devoted most of it to denouncing “MAGA Republicans” rather than laying out new proposals to combat the worst inflation in 40 years. Focusing on a plan put forward by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, Biden decried the “ultra-MAGA” policies that would be enacted if Republicans took control of Congress in November.

“My plan is to lower everyday costs for hardworking Americans. And lower the deficit by asking large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to not engage in price gouging and to pay their fair share in taxes,” Biden said. “The Republican plan is to increase taxes on the middle-class families, let billionaires and large companies off the hook as they raise profits, raise prices and reap profits at record amounts. And it’s really that simple.”

While Biden hastened to reiterate his assurances that he was a capitalist and had no problem with businesspeople compiling billions in wealth, the only concrete steps to curtail soaring gas prices he could cite were the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and emergency measures to expand biofuel sales during the summer. He dared not suggest measures that would challenge the stranglehold of energy giants such as Chevron and ExxonMobil on the country’s gasoline supply.

The US oil monopolies are reporting massive profits generated by jacking up prices and imposing cuts in the real wages of oil workers, with the assistance of the corporatist unions. Chevron refinery workers in Richmond, California, have been on strike since March 21. The United Steelworkers union has isolated their determined and courageous struggle, working hand in glove with the company in its attempt to force through a wage increase far below the inflation rate.

Biden also cited his proposals to raise taxes on billionaires and allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, claiming these policies would help bring down inflation.

But these proposals will never be passed by Congress, as Biden well knows, and American workers are not buying the Democrats’ claims that their hands are tied by Republican opposition.

Following his remarks, Biden took several questions from reporters. When asked if he and other Democrats deserved a share of the blame for high prices, Biden claimed the Democrats’ narrow control of Congress was to blame.

“We’re in power. We control all three branches of government. Well, we don’t really,” he said, and then pointed to the filibuster rule in the Senate, which, as a practical matter, requires 60 out of 100 votes to pass legislation. He failed to mention that he has repeatedly opposed efforts to weaken or eliminate the anti-democratic rule.

The inflationary pressures workers face are a direct product of bipartisan policies pursued by both Democrats and Republicans. When the pandemic led to a severe economic downtown in 2020, the US Fed and other major central banks poured an estimated $16 trillion into the financial markets, hoping to prevent a collapse and continue the parasitic growth of the stock market. But the consequences of this “quantitative easing” are being felt by workers in the US and across the world.

Roberta Annan Fashion Scholarship 2022

Application Deadline?

16th May 2022

Tell Me About Roberta Annan Fashion Scholarship:

The Roberta Annan Scholarship has been created to support the best emerging young fashion communication, business, and media talent from Sub-Saharan Africa, providing financial support for their higher education.

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Undergrad

Who can apply for Roberta Annan Fashion Scholarship?

This is a competitive scholarship scheme aiming to support those with the greatest financial need, talent in the relevant subject areas, and future potential.
The Roberta Anan Scholarship is open to applications from nationals of the following Sub-Saharan African countries:

Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo Democratic Republic, Congo Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Côte D’Ivoire, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Keyna, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Students must be aged at least 18 years old on 1st September at the start of the academic year in which they intend to join this course. An academic year runs 1st September-31st August annually. For the duration of the academic year, a student is considered to be their academic age for admissions purposes, regardless of when their birthday falls within that academic year.

The standard entry requirements for this course are GCSE English and Maths at Grade C (4) or above, or the equivalent international qualifications. This in most cases would be one of the below:

● Senior School Certificate Examination,
● National Senior Certificate,
● National Diploma with higher credits,
● Higher National Diploma with credits

The College is looking for students who will actively contribute to the course and take an original approach to their work and they must have a keen interest in pursuing a career in Fashion Communications.

This scholarship is potential and needs based; therefore all applicants will be have to submit detailed evidence to support their financial need for the scholarship in order to progress to the next step.

How are Applicants Selected for Roberta Annan Fashion Scholarship?

Applications are initially for entry on to the one-year Vogue Fashion Foundation Programme. Upon successful completion of this, and a successful additional undergraduate progression interview, the student is expected to progress onto the BA (Hons) Fashion Communication & Industry Practice (2 years fast-track) undergraduate degree:

Which Countries are Eligible?

See eligibility above

How Many Scholarships will be Given?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of Roberta Annan Fashion Scholarship?

The Scholarship provides full fee remission for the Vogue Fashion Foundation Programme and the BA (Hons) Fashion Communication and Industry Practice degree programme for the successful applicant.

FINANCIAL NEED

The successful candidate will need to provide evidence of the household income below the average for his / her country with one of the following:

– Tax returns
– Bank statements
– Payslips

How to Apply for Scholarship?

If applicants feel they meet all the criteria stated above, they will need to submit the following documents and complete the initial screening via this link
tinyurl.com/RobertaAnnanScholarship

1. CV that includes personal details, location, education history and any relevant work experience.
2. A copy of a valid passport
3. Copies of academic transcripts/certificates
4. 500-word personal statement
5. Pre-recorded interview video

Apply here

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Bongbong Politics: Rehabilitating the Marcos Family

Binoy Kampmark

Children should not pay for the sins of their parents.  But in some cases, a healthy suspicion of the offspring is needed, notably when it comes to profiting off ill-gotten gains. It is certainly needed in the case of Filipino politician and presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, who stands to win on May 9.

Bongbong’s father was the notorious strongman Ferdinand Marcos, his mother, the avaricious, shoe-crazed Imelda.  Elected president in 1965, Ferdinand Marcos indulged in murder, torture and looting.  He thrived on the terrain of violent, corrupt oligarchic politics, characterised by a telling remark from the dejected Sergio Osmenã Jr, whom he defeated in 1969: “We were outgunned, outgooned, and outgold.”

In 1972, martial law was imposed on the pretext of a failed assassination attempt against the defence secretary, an attack which saw no injuries nor apprehension of suspects.  It was only formally lifted in 1981.  Under the blood-soaked stewardship of the Marcos regime, 70,000 warrantless arrests were made, and 4,000 people killed.

The Philippines duly declined in the face of monstrous cronyism, institutional unaccountability and graft, becoming one of the poorest in South-East Asia.  While Marcos Sr’s own official salary never rose above $13,500 a year, he and his cronies made off with $10 billion.  (Estimates vary.)  When revolutionaries took over the Presidential palace, they found garishly ornate portraits, 15 mink coats, 508 couture gowns and over 3,000 pairs of Imelda’s designer shoes.

Fleeing the Philippines in the wake of the popular insurrection of 1986 led by Corazon “Cory” Aquino, the Marcoses found sanctuary in the bosom of US protection, taking up residence in Hawaii.

Opinion polls show that Bongbong is breezing his way to office, a phenomenon that has little to do with his personality, sense of mind, or presence.  A Pulse Asia survey conducted in February showed voter approval at an enviable 60 percent.  This would suggest that the various petitions seeking to disqualify him have had little effect on perceptions lost in the miasma of myth and speculation.

All this points to a dark concatenation of factors that have served to rehabilitate his family’s legacy.  For the student aware of the country’s oligarchic politics, this is unlikely to come as shocking.  For one, the Marcoses have inexorably found their way back into politics, making their way through the dynastic jungle.

Imelda, for all her thieving ways, found herself serving in the House of Representatives four times and unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 1992.  Daughter Imee became governor of the province of Ilocos Norte in 2010, and has been serving as a senator since 2019.  Marcos Jr followed a similar trajectory, becoming a member of congress and senator and doing so with little distinction.  In 2016, he contested the vice presidency and lost.

Bongbong has already done his father proud at various levels, not least exhibiting a tendency to fabricate his past.  On the touchy issue of education, Oxford University has stated at various points that Marcos Jr, while matriculating at St. Edmund Hall in 1975, never took a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.  According to the institution’s records, “he did not complete his degree, but was awarded a special diploma in Social Studies in 1978.”

A statement from the Oxford Philippines Society remarks that, “Marcos failed his degree’s preliminary examinations at the first attempt.  Passing the preliminary examinations is a prerequisite for continuing one’s studies and completing a degree at Oxford University.”  The issue was known as far back as 1983, when a disturbed sister from the Religious of the Good Shepherd wrote to the university inquiring about the politician’s credentials and received a letter confirming that fact.

Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte, whose own rule has been characterised by populist violence and impunity, has played his role in the rehabilitative process.  In 2016, almost three decades after dying in Hawaii, Duterte gave permission for Ferdinand Marcos to be buried with full military honours in Manila’s National Heroes’ Cemetery.  The timing of the burial was kept secret, prompting Vice President Leni Robredo to describe the ceremony as “a thief in the night”.

A coalition of Jesuit groups claimed that the interring of Marcos in Manila “buries human dignity by legitimising the massive violations of human and civil rights… that took place under his regime.”  Duterte would have appreciated the mirror-effect of the move, a respectful nod from one human rights abuser to another.  Under his direction, thousands of drug suspects have been summarily butchered.

Bongbong has also taken the cue, rehabilitating his parents using a polished, digital campaign of re-invention that trucks in gold age nostalgia and delusion.  Political raw material has presented itself.  The gap between the wealthy and impoverished, which his father did everything to widen, has not been closed by successive governments.  According to 2021 figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority, 24 percent of Filipinos, some 26 million people, live below the poverty line.

Videos abound claiming that his parents were philanthropists rather than figures of predation.  The issue of martial law brutality has all but vanished in the narrative.  Social media and online influencers have managed the growth of this image through a coordinated campaign of disinformation waged across multiple platforms.

Gemma B. Mendoza of the Philippine news platform Rappler has noted the more sinister element of these efforts.  Even as the legacy of a family dictatorship is being burnished, the press and critics are being hounded.  The only movement standing in the way of Family Marcos is Vice President Robredo, who triumphed over Marcos Jr in 2016.  Her hope is a brand of politics nourished by grassroots participation rather than shameless patronage.

The same cannot be said of the political classes who operate on the central principle of Philippine politics: impunity. This, at least, is how the political scientist Aries Arugay of the University of Philippines sees it. “We just don’t jail our politicians or make them accountable … we don’t punish them, unlike South Korean presidents.”  The opposite is the case, and as the voters make it to the ballot on Monday, the country, if polls are to be believed, will see another Marcos in the presidential palace.

BBC lays out what “Learning to live with the virus in the UK” means

Thomas Scripps

On Sunday, the BBC published the national broadcaster’s latest state of the nation pandemic piece, written by health editor Hugh Pym.

“Learning to live with the virus in the UK”, informed by government propaganda on the one hand and by serious science on the other, is an article at war with itself. Uncritically citing official policy, “Ministers have told the public they need to live with coronavirus and treat it like flu”, it goes on to set out in as muted terms as possible the key reasons why this is such criminal strategy, without ever drawing that conclusion.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [Credit: Neil Hall Pool via AP]

Under the heading, “Risk of the virus”, the article notes, “Covid can still kill”, before stressing that “the chances of getting seriously ill and not surviving are much lower than in earlier waves.”

“Pressure on the NHS [National Health Service] has eased,” Pym writes, but notes that “the number of patients with Covid in hospital” is still “about 11,000 compared with more than 20,000 in early April.”

The devil is in the unprovided detail. Despite the reduced ratio of deaths to infections, a comparable number of people have been killed in the Omicron wave to the earlier Delta wave—over a much shorter period of time and with higher levels of vaccination. Breaking COVID deaths down by different waves of infection, the Independent SAGE group reports 18,350 Delta deaths and 16,000 Omicron deaths to April 22.

As for “eased” pressure on the NHS, the figure of 11,000 patients with COVID is roughly nine times higher than the number a year ago. The normalisation of this demand on the health service has driven it to the point of collapse.

These figures are the product of the unprecedented spread of COVID in recent months. Pym states that the government’s “message is to stay off work or away from vulnerable people if you have symptoms”. This is nonsense.

Hugh Pym (Credit: Hugh Pym/Twitter)

According to the Financial Times (FT), based on the findings of a YouGov survey, “only 55 per cent of people in England were aware they should avoid contact with vulnerable people if they have Covid, and just 63 per cent realised they should work from home if they have symptoms.”

This is entirely down to the government’s relentless insistence on “living with COVID” and minimisation of even the most inadequate, face-saving “guidance”. To this must the added the immense financial pressures to come into work, and the impossibility of avoiding vulnerable people in crowded houses.

The real meaning of the government’s policy is there for all to see in the repeated surges of infections since “Freedom Day”. An analysis by the FT of infection surveys puts the proportion of people in England who have at some stage been infected at close to 90 percent, having shot up from around 50 percent this January.

Infections are now falling rapidly, due to a combination of the warmer weather meaning more time spent outside and the increased levels of immunity in the population from the swathe of recent infections. As ever, this is being used by the familiar crowd of right-wing reactionaries and pseudo-scientists who tout government policy as an opportunity to declare the pandemic (for the fourth or fifth time) as good as over.

Reality proves the opposite. The BBC article notes, “The return of people from holidays to work and study after summer holidays, and the onset of cooler autumnal weather could create conditions for another uptick in infections.

“More immediately, new strains of the Omicron variant could cause problems.”

It quotes Imperial College London’s Professor Peter Openshaw who explains, “Everyone is thinking of sub-variants—we just don’t know whether they will cause a surge in infections and where they will go in the UK.”

Two subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, currently driving a new wave of infections in South Africa, are present and showing initial signs of growth in the UK.

The BBC also references Professor Mike Tildesley from the University of Warwick warning, in the broadcaster’s words, “the next two to five years will be uncertain.”

What will those years look like? As Pym admits, a new variant of the virus “is the possibility which makes experts nervous… there is no guarantee it will be milder than Omicron.” The BBC then fudges the point, citing Professor Paul Hunter to argue “it is unlikely that a new killer variant will suddenly materialise” and his belief, given vaccines, that “we will see less severe disease”. The opposed possibility is not discussed.

In addition to this future danger, the current variants already pose a serious risk to large numbers of vulnerable people, primarily the 600,000 severely immunosuppressed across the UK.

Professor of immunology at the University of Birmingham Alex Richter told the FT the government’s COVID strategy amounted to a “game of Russian roulette” for these people. The BBC chooses to reference Gemma Peters, chief executive of Blood Cancer UK, to make the patronising point that “ministers and NHS leaders could do more to reassure” the vulnerable.

They could begin by protecting them instead! Just 46 percent of severely immunocompromised people are fully jabbed. More than 10 percent have had two or fewer doses.

A study carried out in Canada published last week found that pregnant women are also at increased risk 5.46 times more likely to be admitted to intensive care with COVID and 2.65 times more likely to be hospitalised than similar-aged women. Infection during pregnancy increased the risk of preterm birth by 63 percent.

Again, this vulnerable group has been left under-protected. Of the just over half a million women who gave birth in 2021, a shocking four in five had not received a vaccine at the time.

The findings from Canada speak to the broader harms of COVID still being uncovered by scientific research. Teams at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London recently found a severe case of COVID could cause cognitive degeneration equivalent to 20 years of ageing. Investigations are ongoing into possible links between prior COVID infection and a sharp increase in cases of hepatitis among children.

What is known for certain but suppressed in the media and government announcements is the terrible burden of Long COVID. According to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, released last Friday, 1.8 million people (2.8 percent of the population) were suffering the debilitating condition as of April 3. Nearly 800,000 had been experiencing symptoms for a year or more and nearly a quarter of a million for more than two years.

The BBC presents these figures with the introduction, “Case numbers have fallen sharply, but however low they get there will always be a small proportion with symptoms which last more than a few weeks, and sometimes many months.” It cites University College London Professor Christina Pagel as saying, “estimates suggesting 5% of those who have been jabbed and then get the virus will go on to get long Covid are concerning.”

In fact, as Pagel has tweeted, around 8-9 percent even of triple vaccinated people report Long COVID symptoms at least four weeks after their first infection, with most reporting activity-limiting symptoms. Data is still being collected on the rates for subsequent infections.

The BBC, along with the corporate media, the Labour Party and the trade unions, helped to propagate the myths used by the government to enforce its “living with COVID” strategy. Now fully in place, its disastrous implications are exposing the lies used to justify it. The working class is being brought face-to-face with the consequences of persistent infection, illness and death caused by a virus allowed to spread freely by the ruling class. It can only rid itself of this disease with a political fight to implement its own policy for the suppression and eventual elimination of COVID-19.

Study finds unmitigated spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the US could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths

Benjamin Mateus

In what amounts to an about-face, after weeks of assuring Americans that all is well with COVID, endorsing the White House’s wholesale dismantling of all pandemic measures, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID response coordinator, took a much more sober and cautious stance during an appearance on ABC’s Sunday interview program “This Week.”

Dr. Ashish Jha, now the White House COVID coordinator (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

He said, “You know, if you take a step back and look at the last two winters, we’ve had relatively large surges of infections. We’re looking at a range of models, both internal and external models. And what they are predicting is that if we don’t get ahead of this thing, we’re going to have a lot of waning immunity, this virus continues to evolve, and we may see a pretty sizable wave of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths this fall and winter.”

The apparent change in tone came after a Friday background briefing by “a senior administration official” forecasted more than 100 million possible COVID infections this fall/winter based on several modeling scenarios, according to the Washington Post. Experts at the briefing agreed that a significant wave could be expected under conditions of waning immunity and a return to pre-pandemic social norms.

Though no mention was made in the Post’s report, the scant information released was, in part, consistent with reliable modeling published in March 2022 by Fractal Therapeutics. This R&D model-based drug developmental company has also turned its expertise to provide insight into the social dynamics of the pandemic.

Dr. Arijit Chakravarty, COVID researcher and CEO of Fractal Therapeutics, explained that the world had entered a dangerous phase of the pandemic. The sole reliance on the current COVID vaccines to end the pandemic was infeasible, they warned.

In November 2021, before the emergence of Omicron, in a report published in PLOS One, they warned that the vaccine-only strategy, with a rapid return to pre-pandemic social norms, would promote new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that could escape immunity. They wrote, “In this work, we demonstrate that a return to pre-pandemic conditions following modestly high levels of vaccination will efficiently select for pre-existing vaccine-evading viral variants within the population, causing a high level of infection and potentially death.”

Indeed, from December 1, 2021, to February 28, 2022, more than 80 million infections were estimated, based on seroprevalence studies, and more than 170,000 people died, including more than 52,000 who were previously fully vaccinated.

A report by Chakravarty et al. published on the medRxiv preprint server on March 30, 2022, was provocatively titled “Endemicity is not a victory: the unmitigated downside risks of widespread SARS-CoV-2 transmission.” They wrote, “Our modeling suggests that endemic SARS-CoV-2 implies vast transmission resulting in yearly US COVID-19 death tolls numbering in the hundreds of thousands under many plausible scenarios, with even modest increases in the IFR [infection fatality rate] leading to an unsustainable mortality burden.”

They noted that no evolutionary pressure favors reducing the SARS-CoV-2’s virulence. A Harvard-based study has recently corroborated that, intrinsically, Omicron remains as severe as previous variants of concern. The US could expect 50 million to 100 million COVID cases per year, under various scenarios, for years to come. And if vaccine protection against infection declined to 50 percent, this “would result in a staggering infection burden approaching 300 million US infections annually,” meaning almost the entire US population could expect to become infected every year.

Under the assumption that vaccine efficacy against mortality remains at 90 percent under all scenarios, using (1) the best estimate of reproductive number (R0) of 5 [the Ancestral strain was 2.5 and Omicron is over 10]; (2) 70 percent vaccination rates in the population [the US is 66 percent fully vaccinated]; (3) a 50 percent infection reduction risk with vaccines; and (4) “best estimate parameters for IFR, the model predicts approximately 420,000 US COVID-19 deaths annually.” They stated that under many of their scenarios, COVID could become the leading cause of death in the US.

Sequencing COVID-19 Omicron samples at a research center in South Africa. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

The report added, “The high level of endemic disease propagation will prove challenging for healthcare systems to manage effectively, jeopardizing the ability of healthcare professionals to detect disease when it is most tractable to antivirals, identify patients at risk for severe outcomes, and optimally distribute treatment. … Overly optimistic predictions about the ending of the ongoing pandemic have tremendously complicated the public health response to the crisis.”

They warned that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could become more virulent through improved transmission by increasing its viral load and improving its “innate” immune evasion characteristics, leading to a higher burden of severe disease despite previous infections and vaccines.

In a statement on their COVID research, Fractal Therapeutics warned, “From early on in the pandemic, we identified three major challenges. 1. That SARS-CoV-2 was likely to evolve quickly in response to spike-targeting antibodies. 2. That rapidly waning natural and vaccinal immunity meant that vaccines alone could not control the disease. 3. That individually rational choices (refusal to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 spread) would lead to a high disease burden in society.” Additionally, they predicted school reopening would lead to widespread disease transmission.

Indeed, these hair-raising estimates seem to have staggered the Biden administration, which has been keen on bringing the pandemic and all the measures that mitigate against infection to an end. Any attempt to reinstitute mask mandates, restricting the size of social gatherings, going back to online classes, or limiting the operation of large public venues would lead to severe economic repercussions on Wall Street and a political maelstrom. But not heeding the advice of principled public health officials means death on the scale seen in previous surges, leading to the complete disintegration of the health system and provoking mass rebellions of health care workers.

Jha’s attempt to shift the blame for the exhaustion of pandemic funding onto the backs of Republicans is another diversion. There has been a bipartisan effort to place the needs of the financial markets ahead of human life throughout the pandemic. Vaccination rates are on the decline, and funding has essentially dried up for testing. States across the country have dismantled their COVID dashboards. The CDC metrics camouflage the actual dangers posed by the circulating strains of Omicron, ensuring the country is flying blind into another pandemic storm.

Not once has Jha or his master Biden taken responsibility for the current state of affairs, which is set to see the third year of the pandemic horrifically unrelenting in its assault. The policies of both capitalist parties have provided the virus leeway to mutate into evermore dangerous versions, killing more than 1 million in the US alone and more than 15 million across the globe.