Spain: Socialist Party government arrests Catalan activists

Alejandro López

National Police under the direct control of Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE) government arrested 16 Catalan pro-independence activists last Wednesday in the city of Girona.

The arrests signal a further shift to the right by the PSOE. They were carried out following last month’s shock result in elections in Andalusia, which saw the party ousted after 36 years of rule and came on the same day a Popular Party (PP)–Citizens coalition government, supported by the fascistic Vox party, was established in the region.

All three right-wing parties had been demanding tougher action against Catalan separatists, including banning the main nationalist parties—the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT), the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the much smaller Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP).

They condemned Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for talking with the Catalan government and told him to take direct control of the region, as Mariano Rajoy’s PP government did in 2017 with Sánchez’s backing, by again invoking Article 155 of Spain’s 1978 constitution.

The illegal and anti-democratic arrests were designed to intimidate and isolate the more hard-line nationalists, who continue to agitate for Catalonia to break away from Spain. They are aimed at putting pressure on the two main nationalist parties to end all talk of resurrecting the independence process and settle for increased funding and greater autonomy for the region. Among those arrested during the police raids were a nephew of Catalan regional premier, Quim Torra, two CUP local mayors and members of the Committees for the Defence of the Republic (CDRs), Catalan National Assembly (ANC), La Forja (a secessionist youth organization linked to the CUP) and Student Union of the Catalan Countries (SEPC).

They were all arrested in relation to the events on October 1, 2018, when some 400 people blocked AVE high-speed train lines in Girona for around two hours to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Catalan independence referendum.

The arrests were carried out on the initiative of the Information Brigade of the Spanish National Police. This was done without the necessary authority of the judge of the Criminal Court of Girona, who is investigating the alleged public disorder crimes that day, or the involvement of the regional Catalan police, the Mossos, which is the organization responsible for matters of public order.

Akin to an anti-terror operation, plainclothes police wearing balaclavas swooped in on the individuals and whisked them away in unmarked cars. CUP mayor, Ignacio Sabater, was transferred to a medical centre due to injury suffered during the arrest.

Those arrested were interrogated about their participation in the events and asked to identify individuals in photographs before being released.

Lawyer Benet Salellas, representing the two CUP mayors, told La Directa that “the operation does not seem justified because there have been no previous appointments [requested by the police], the crime is not serious enough and the detainees have known addresses.” Salellas was denied access to his clients “until they addressed the officers in Spanish,” a clear violation of the law.

An arrested photojournalist, Carles Palacio, who works for various pro-independence newspapers, explained to the police that he was clearly working in the photo he was shown, as was evident by his orange media armband and camera. Palacio was taken into custody after covering the arrests earlier in the day and as he was leaving a cafe alongside well-known fellow Catalan photojournalist and expert on far-right movements, Jordi Borràs.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) warned that the state mobilisation against the separatists was being utilised as a pretext to build a police-state regime, which would inevitably then target the rising militancy and strikes in the working class. The new year has been greeted by large corporations with the announcement of massive layoffs in the coming months, including Vodafone, Santander, CaixaBank, Naturgy, LiberBank, Bankinter, Unicaja, Ikea, H & M, Land Rover and Ford.

The PSOE and Sanchez are more than willing not only to accede to the demand for stepped-up repression in Catalonia, but to turn ruthlessly against the entire Spanish working class. After the Andalusian election, PSOE regional candidate Susana Díaz cynically blamed her defeat on the lack of “Catalan-bashing” during her campaign. PSOE regional premier of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, raised the prospect of banning secessionist parties. Last week, a motion proposed by the PP in the regional parliament of Extremadura—calling for Catalan self-rule to be once again suspended and for a “firm” and “broad” application of Article 155—was passed with the support of the PSOE.

Brandishing the stick of arrests and prosecutions, Sánchez is also using the threat of possible PP-Citizens-Vox success in May’s European Union elections and the 2020 general election to cajole the Catalan nationalists into agreeing his 2019 draft budget. He has also offered a significant rise in spending for Catalonia as a carrot—over €2 billion from central government plus another €200 million for infrastructure.

If the nationalists fail to support the budget, Sánchez has threatened to call snap elections, which could bring into power a right-wing coalition government pledged to suspending Catalan autonomy. In such elections, the Catalan nationalists would be blamed by the PSOE for refusing to back a budget which includes limited increases in social expenditure.

To date PDeCAT and the ERC have refused to back the budget, citing the impending trial of 18 Catalan secessionist leaders charged with rebellion and sedition for their part in organising the Catalan independence referendum on October 1, 2017. Nine of the 18 Catalan political prisoners remain in jail, including former vice president of Catalonia, Oriol Junqueras, former foreign minister Raul Romeva, and ex-interior minister Joaquim Forn.

The public prosecutor has requested a joint total 177 years prison sentence, including 25 years for Junqueras, the highest individual proposed sentence. Last week, Spain’s Supreme Court ordered the nine to be transferred from Catalan prisons to Madrid before the end of January.

However, despite their public intransigence over the fate of its former leaders the Catalan government’s vice premier, Pere Aragones, and spokeswoman, Elsa Artadi, met with Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo in Madrid to pursue talks on the region’s future initiated by Sánchez. They agreed to maintain “an effective dialogue which will lead to a political proposal which has widespread support among Catalan society.”

That the moderate Catalan secessionist camp is ready to sacrifice its radical wing—CUP, CDRs and elements within the ANC—was shown by its muted response to the arrests. The Catalan government announced it would only “file a complaint against the police actions,” saying the detentions are illegal as they were not ordered by a court.

There is broad opposition to the rightward shift in Spanish politics and the attack on democratic rights, which has resulted in a deep polarisation in the country. But the left-wing opposition to the PSOE and the PP is suppressed by the reactionary role of Podemos in supporting the PSOE government and promoting Sánchez as a progressive figure. Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias makes no secret of his hopes for a permanent PSOE-Podemos alliance in government.

As the ICFI warned in its statement “Oppose the state crackdown on the Catalan independence referendum!” on the eve of the 2017 vote, “The Catalan crisis has yet again exposed the Podemos party’s reactionary role. … Podemos is still calling for an alliance with the PSOE, even as the PSOE supports the PP’s onslaught in Catalonia.”

The ICFI warned that Podemos was “signalling the ruling class that it is also available to form an alternate government. … Such a government, were it to be formed, would offer no alternative to the drive to dictatorship and austerity currently being prosecuted by the PP.”

German lawyer receives additional threatening fax from the far right

Marianne Arens

German lawyer Basay-Yildiz has received another message threatening her and her family. The fax signed “NSU 2.0” apparently originates from the neo-Nazi network located in Germany’s police apparatus, which first sent the lawyer a similar fax in August of last year. The existence of second threatening fax signed with “NSU 2.0” was reported by the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Basay-Yildiz defended the Simsek family over a period of five years during the trial of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terror group, which murdered at least 10 people between 2000 and 2006. An investigation into the first fax sent revealed the existence of a far-right chat group in the Frankfurt city police, which exchanged images of Hitler and swastikas. A policewoman involved in the group evidently used a police computer to retrieve the details of Ms. Basay-Yildiz, her family and their home address. In December, six police officers, five of them from police station No. 1 in Frankfurt, were suspended from the service.

The second message leaves no doubt that those behind the fax are either in touch with the police or are themselves police officers. The direct link to the Hessian police is clear from the passage in the second fax, which reads: “You...[vile obscenities] are obviously unaware of what you have done to our police colleagues.”

In the fax, the lawyer is insulted racially and once again her two-year-old daughter is threatened with death. Other close relatives—her husband, mother and father—are called by their real names. These names can only come from a police computer because they were never circulated on social networks.

The extreme right-wing authors of the faxes can obviously rely on protection from the highest political circles. The second fax arrived on December 20, just one day after a meeting of the Interior Special Committee investigating the police scandal. The Hessian interior minister, Peter Beuth (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), failed, however, to inform parliament or even his own committee, let alone the public, about the new fax. It was only made public after the lawyer personally contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung last week.

Beuth was aware of the threats directed against the lawyer and her two-year-old daughter by the self-proclaimed “NSU 2.0” at the beginning of August, when the first fax arrived, but the case was kept secret for months. This was required, according to the investigating authority, “in order not to jeopardise the investigation.” More than five months later, the case has still to be resolved and the perpetrators remain at large.

Beuth has acted in similar fashion to his predecessor, Volker Bouffier (CDU), who is currently premier of Hesse. Following the murder of Halit Yozgat by the NSU in Kassel in 2006, Bouffier kept silent about the fact that a German undercover agent, Andreas Temme, was present at the murder scene. He also failed to inform the parliamentary interior committee.

In addition, the state of Hesse does not appear to be lifting a finger today to protect Ms. Basay-Yildiz. The police merely suggested “that I could have a gun licence to protect myself,” she told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Of course, the question arises: Do I need a weapon in Germany? What for?”

The reaction of leading politicians is also instructive. Just a few days ago, they were all rushing to issue statements of solidarity for far-right AfD deputy Frank Magnitz, who had blown out of all proportion an attack on him by persons unknown. All of the politicians who publicly defended Magnitz—federal Interior Minister Heiko Maas, federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (both SPD), Cem Özdemir (Green Party) and many others—have not said a single word in solidarity with Ms. Basay-Yildiz.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that another lawyer, Cologne attorney Mustafa Kaplan, has also received a threatening letter signed “NSU 2.0.” Kaplan was also involved in the NSU lawsuit as a lawyer on behalf of the victims. He represented one of the victims of a nail bomb attack in Cologne on June 9, 2004. He and his family were both threatened in the letter.

More and more evidence has emerged to reveal the close connection between the police and right-wing extremist groups. These incidents are not, as politicians claim, “unfortunate individual cases.”

Last week, at the trial in Halle, Saxony, of a heavily armed, right-wing extremist couple, it was reported that the woman was apparently a friend of a policeman in Hesse and had received information from a police computer. The woman belongs to a group of so-called “Aryans,” who, on May 1, 2017, had attacked and beaten up alleged enemies—in fact, uninvolved hikers—in the town of Halle.

Once again, the Hesse Ministry of the Interior confirmed “ongoing investigations,” but said that the policeman concerned had shown “no signs of right-wing extremism” and had been transferred to Lower Saxony, and that the case has nothing to do with the investigation in Halle. Nevertheless, the apparent links between a police officer and a far-right, violent criminal are highly suspect.

In Frankfurt, police station No. 1 apparently has major problems with right-wing police violence. A video of a police check from December 9 documents an unprovoked and violent assault carried out by officers at the city’s main police station. The video was made public by the Frankfurter Rundschau. Police station No. 1 is responsible for the main station. When the police found out that their actions had been filmed, they dragged the young man who recorded the video, along with others, to the station and threatened to beat him up if he failed to reveal his cell phone pin.

Nevertheless, Interior Minister Beuth repeatedly intones that there is “no evidence of a right network” in the Hesse police. Although he is responsible as minister for the activities of the extreme right in the police, he remains in office in the newly formed state government, a coalition of the conservative CDU and the Greens.

The Greens continue to support Beuth as interior minister. They have proven to be reliable partners of the CDU and support a powerful state apparatus. In their coalition agreement, they agreed together with the CDU on new measures to intimate those who demonstrate. In future, the new law will allow the police to film all participants at a demonstration by helicopter, mini-drone or cameras mounted on autos. The law also includes a ban on “militant and intimidating behavior.” The prohibition of uniforms and attempts at disguise in the previous law were insufficient, according to Jürgen Frömmrich, the parliamentary faction leader of the Greens. The new law was a “shining star” in the coalition agreement, he gushed.

The Left Party also turns to the state and the police itself when it comes to dealing with the activities of the neo-Nazis in the ranks of the police. According to Left Party interior spokesman Hermann Schaus: “I really hope that the police who apparently issued the personal data from the police computer are intensively investigated and interviewed.”

This statement reveals the utterly bankrupt orientation of the Left Party: It appeals to the same state that shields those responsible for the crimes of the far right and provides the greatest support for the AfD. It is no accident that the Left Party has taken up the demands of the other parties for domestic rearmament. In its 2017 Bundestag election programme, the Left Party had already called for more police, better police equipment and more surveillance, and wrote: “Many people want more security and to be able to better contact the police.”

The behaviour of the Left Party recalls the petty-bourgeois democrats of the 1930s. In the Transitional Programme of 1938, Leon Trotsky wrote: “The reformists systematically implant in the minds of the workers the notion that the sacredness of democracy is best guaranteed when the bourgeoisie is armed to the teeth and the workers are unarmed.”

US drug company payments to doctors linked to opioid overdose deaths

Brian Dixon

A study published last week in JAMA Network Open found that counties where doctors received payments from drug companies later experienced higher rates of overdose deaths from opioids.

A number of previous studies have established a link between drug company payments (even as small as purchasing a lunch) and doctor prescribing behavior. Some prior research has examined the marketing of opioid products and mortality rates.

The JAMA Network Open study, however, is the first to link mortality rates with the total marketing of opioid products based on US county-level data, although the researchers are careful to note that they have only established an association, not causation.

Opioid mortality rates and marketing dollars. Source: JAMA Network Open

The study drew data from three national databases. Data on overdoses for all counties was derived from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiological Research Restricted-Use Mortality Files. Data on drug company payments to doctors came from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payment database. Finally, data on opioid prescribing rates dispensed at retail pharmacies came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

According to the study, drug companies made 434,754 payments (totaling $39.7 million) to 67,507 doctors for non-research-based opioid marketing between August 1, 2013 and December 31, 2015.

The study used three measures of opioid marketing across counties (total marketing money, number of payments per capita, and number of physicians receiving any marketing per capita) and found an association between all three measures and opioid prescribing rates and overdose mortality.

The study notes that while it is possible that drug companies simply targeted areas for marketing that already had high rates of overdose mortality, the tens of millions of dollars invested by drug companies in direct-to-physician marketing makes it “improbable that companies would provide payments to physicians if such marketing did not either increase prescribing rates or maintain high levels of opioid prescribing.”

Moreover, the study notes that recent attempts to address this issue by placing a dollar cap on the amount that doctors can receive is unlikely to make a difference because even small payments can impact prescribing behavior.

“What seems to matter most wasn’t the amount of money doctors were paid, it was the number of times they were paid,” Magdelena Cerdá, the director of the Center for Opioid Epidemiology and Policy at the New York University School of Medicine, told the Washington Post.

The publication of the study comes amid recent reports highlighting the devastating impact of the opioid epidemic in the United States.

Lifetime Odds of Dying from Selected Causes. Source: National Safety Council

Last week the nonprofit National Safety Council issued a study that found for the first time that individuals are now more likely to die from an accidental opioid overdose than in a motor vehicle crash. The odds of accidentally dying from an opioid overdose are 1 in 96, exceeding the odds for dying in a car accident (1 in 103), dying from an accidental fall (1 in 114), gun assaults (1 in 285) or drowning (1 in 1,117).

Rates of drug overdose deaths by state, US 2017. Source: CDC

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an average of 103 Americans die each day from opioid overdoses. In 2017, 70,237 people died from drug overdoses, with 68 percent of deaths (47,600) associated with opioids.

Moreover, a recent study by the CDC found that drug overdose deaths among middle-aged American women have increased by 260 percent since 1999. The increase was particularly stark among women between the ages of 55 and 64, who saw an astounding 500 percent increase in overdose deaths.

The opioid epidemic is largely the result of the unscrupulous marketing practices of drug manufacturers like Purdue Pharma and Insys Therapeutics, along with the major drug distributors —such as McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergen—who flooded communities with opioids and ignored the diversion of prescription painkillers to the black market though numerous “pill mills.”

A recent court filing has shed further light on the role played by Purdue Pharma, which is owned by the Sackler family.

Filed by the attorney general of Massachusetts last week, the court filing cites internal company documents from Purdue Pharma that implicate the Sackler family in the dishonest and aggressive marketing of Oyxcontin. Prior to this filing, the Sacklers, who maintain a veneer of respectability through their philanthropic activities, had succeeded in distancing themselves from the actions of their company.

According to the filing, members of the Sackler family, who in 2016 had an estimated wealth of $13 billion, were more intimately involved than previously acknowledged.

The company’s aggressive marketing tactics were presaged in a statement made by Richard Sackler, the company’s president from 1999 to 2003, at a company gathering shortly after OxyContin’s approval in 1995, claiming that “the launch of OxyContin tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition. The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white.”

Sackler sought to shift the blame of addiction from their aggressive and misleading marketing of the highly addictive drug to those who use and abuse their drug.

“We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible,” Sackler wrote in a 2001 e-mail. “They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”

When a federal prosecutor raised concerns over 59 deaths in his state from Oxycontin, Sackler wrote to company executives in 2001, dismissing the figures as “not too bad. It could have been far worse.”

Sackler family members were also aware of Purdue’s failure to alert criminal authorities to abuses of its drug.

And while the Sackler family members had resigned their operating posts by 2007, Richard Sackler continued to be involved in the company’s operations, with a company sales official complaining in a 2012 email of his overbearing involvement in Purdue’s sales and marketing activities.

Although the company has faced numerous lawsuits for its role in creating the opioid epidemic—including a 2007 settlement in which the company paid fines of $643.5 million and top executives pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges—the Sackler family has so far avoided any accountability for their role.

China records lowest growth rate since 1990

Nick Beams

The Chinese economy has recorded its lowest annual growth rate since 1990 amid indications that the trade war launched by the US is starting to make an impact. According to official government data, the economy grew 6.6 percent last year with growth in the fourth quarter falling to an annual rate of 6.4 percent—the lowest level since the early months of the financial crisis a decade ago.

Commenting on the figures, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics Ning Jizhe told a news conference on Monday that the economy faced “downward pressure.” Referring to the US trade war, he pointed to a “complicated and severe external environment” but then sought to issue a reassurance that “the economy overall is driven by domestic demand.”

However, it is in the domestic economy that the signs of weakness are most apparent. China is the world’s largest auto market and sales fell last year for the first time since 1991, contracting by 4 percent. Retail sales growth has also fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade.

Apple made a surprise announcement earlier this month when it issued a downward sales revision because of lower than expected demand for its iPhones in China. Ford has cut production at a major Chinese plant in what it said was a move to reduce the inventory of unsold cars.

In a comment to the Financial Times earlier this month, Fred Hu, the former Greater China chairman for Goldman Sachs, said: “Domestic sentiment is definitely very bad, perhaps even worse than during the 2008 global financial crisis. In theory, China has wide latitude to boost domestic demand to offset the trade war hit on external demand. But sagging business and consumer confidence, private spending on both capital expenditure and personal consumption is more likely to trend down.”

This assessment has been backed by Eswar Prasad, former China head at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “Aggregate data continue to portray a relatively benign picture that seems increasingly inconsistent with a sense of growing economic malaise and souring business, consumer and investor sentiment,” he said.

Manufacturing is also contracting. Some factories in Guangdong, at the heart of China’s export economy, have shut earlier than usual ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. Others are suspending production lines and reducing workers’ hours amid warnings that migrant workers may not have jobs to return to after the New Year break.

China has adopted a series of limited fiscal and monetary measures since last July in a bid to halt slowing growth but they appear to have had no effect so far. While credit has been eased, the move has failed to lift fixed asset investment which grew by 5.9 percent last year, a significant drop from the 7.2 percent growth recorded in 2017.

There is evidence that the slowdown may be worse than the official figures indicate. China’s growth data are generally taken with a fairly large grain of salt with many analysts, both within China and externally, regarding them as overstated.

On this occasion, prior to the release of the latest data, the government revised down the growth figure for 2017 from 6.9 to 6.8 percent. This may have been undertaken to inflate the figures for 2018 growth.

Last month, President Xi Jinping announced that the broad economic agenda for 2019 must be to maintain growth within a “reasonable range.” The objective, which will be announced in March, is expected to be a growth rate of between 6 percent and 6.5 percent. This would mean a slight downgrade on the objective last year of growth of “about 6.5 percent.”

The Wall Street Journal has reported that of the 20 provinces and municipalities that have reported their 2019 growth targets so far, 13 have cut their objectives and six have left their targets unchanged.

The Chinese government is treading a narrow path in seeking to stimulate growth. It has ruled out any return to the kind of massive stimulus package, based on government spending and the expansion of credit, that followed the 2008-2009 crisis because of concerns over the debt levels in the Chinese economy.

In any case, stimulus measures are losing their impact. According to a Moody’s analysis, the amount of new capital investment needed to generate a given unit of GDP growth has doubled since 2007. In other words, new investment has less impact on the overall economy while debt levels increase.

The exact level of debt is difficult to calculate because much of it is hidden off balance sheets, The Institute of International Finance estimates it exceeded 300 percent of GDP at the end of last year. Much of it has gone into a construction boom of unprecedented proportions—by one estimate, from the start of 2012 until 2016, China used as much cement as the US did in the entire 20th century. A great deal of that investment has gone to waste with as many as 65 million apartments in China that are unoccupied.

The slowing Chinese economy, and the increasing constrictions on government stimulus, come at a significant turning point in the world economy, with all major international economic bodies warning of a global slowdown and increased risks in 2019.

The World Bank report produced earlier this month warned of “storm clouds” with lower growth expected in the major economies.

The IMF has now revised down its predictions for global growth in 2019 warning that the world economy is weakening faster than expected.

Cutting its forecast for global growth by 0.1 percent from its October prediction to 3.5 percent, the IMF said the main reason for the change was weakness in Europe and Japan. Overall it reduced its forecast growth for the advanced economies, with growth set to drop from 2.3 percent in 2018 to 2 percent this year and falling to 1.7 percent in 2020.

IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said that while the downward revisions were modest, “we believe the risks to more significant downward corrections are rising.”

“The cyclical forces that propelled broad-based global growth since the second half of 2017 may be weakening somewhat faster than we expected in October.… While this does not mean we are staring at a major downturn, it is important to take stock of the many rising risks.”

These include rising trade tensions and an associated worsening of financial conditions, a no-deal Brexit that would have negative spillovers across Europe, the budgetary position of Italy coupled with weakness in its banking sector, and a slowdown in China that may be steeper than expected.

Another 170 immigrants drown in the Mediterranean

Marianne Arens

More than 250 immigrants have drowned in the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year. The Italian government and European Union’s (EU’s) policies bear direct responsibility for this grim record. Last weekend alone, no fewer than 170 people lost their lives while crossing the Mediterranean.

On Saturday, the crew of Sea-Watch 3 managed to rescue 47 immigrants, including eight children, from a shipwrecked boat. The Sea-Watch 3 is currently the only NGO rescue ship still active in the Mediterranean. The Maltese government has refused to allow crews to be changed on another ship, the Professor Albrecht Penck owned by Sea-Eye, effectively preventing it from carrying out its work.

One-hundred seventeen people reportedly drowned on Friday after trying to flee Libya from Garabulli, east of Tripoli. After 10 hours at sea, the boat, with 120 people on board, began to sink. Emergency calls for help were sent. Later that day, a helicopter with the Italian navy located three survivors around 94 kilometres from the Libyan coast. Another three were dead. Sea-Watch 3 also responded to the emergency call and arrived on the scene shortly after the navy, but found no further survivors. The three rescued by the navy were therefore the only survivors from a group of 120.

The three men, from Sudan and Gambia, managed to survive in the water for several hours. The navy brought them to the island of Lampedusa. Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told the Adnkronos news agency that 10 women and two children, including a two-month-old baby, were among the 117 missing.

Almost simultaneously, another attempted crossing from Morocco to Spain claimed the lives of 53. The announcement was made by the United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) on Saturday. One survivor reported that after the boat had sunk, he floated helplessly in the water for 24 hours before a fishing boat picked him up and took him back to Morocco. Apart from him, everyone else drowned.

Shortly before these two horrific tragedies, the IOM estimated the number of immigrants drowned in the Mediterranean by January 16 to be 83. On Sunday, a further two deaths were announced. This means the number of deaths has already surpassed 250 in the first three weeks of the year.

The Sea-Watch 3 and the 47 survivors will now be forced to wait on the high seas until a port agrees to let the desperate immigrants land. Italy and Malta have closed their ports.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (Lega), the strongman in Rome, responded to the situation by saying, “The ports are and will remain closed.” Salvini’s remarks perfectly sum up the inhumane refugee policies of all EU governments.

He compared the emergency rescue teams to people smugglers, drug dealers and weapons traders, and accused them of being responsible for encouraging people to risk the dangerous crossing over the Mediterranean. Salvini repeatedly wrote on Twitter, “The party is over for people smugglers and their accomplices.”

Anyone can see for themselves how this alleged “party” plays out in reality. By reading the Twitter messages of Alarm-Phone, which documents the mayday calls, one can see how the grisly tragedies occur in real time.

On Sunday, Alarm-Phone reported on a boat carrying 100 people, including 20 women and 12 children, in trouble near Misrata, Libya, at lunchtime. At 12:20 p.m., a message read,” We have received a new position. They are now 12 nautical miles further east and have navigation problems. A child is unconscious or dead. Water is entering the boat.”

After Alarm-Phone appealed to the Italian, Maltese and Libyan coast guards for urgent help, nothing happened. Rome declared that Valetta, Malta, was responsible. Valetta promised to return the call, but nobody called back. In Libya, where the coast guard now has eight telephone numbers, nobody responded throughout the day. Although the coast guard receives millions in EU funding, it is not even capable of answering a straightforward mayday call.

Shortly before 4 p.m., a Twitter message noted, “We are trying to stay in contact with the boat. One person told us, ‘Soon, I won’t be able to talk to you, I’m freezing!’ They’re panicking, our team is having to calm them down. Over the past hour, we have repeatedly heard people screaming. The situation is desperate.”

At 4:15 p.m. it was confirmed once again that Rome, Valetta and Libya had been informed numerous times. By 6 p.m., the messages indicate that desperation had seized everyone on board. At 7:40 p.m., all contact broke off, probably because the batteries of all available mobile phones ran out.

Around 10 p.m., it was then announced that a ship sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone was changing course to rescue the boat’s passengers. At 1 a.m., the message service announced that the trading ship had rescued all on board, but was bringing them back to Libya.

Only 155 immigrants have arrived in Italy since the beginning of 2019. This compares to 2,730 people during the same period in 2018. The number of immigrants who reached Europe by sea declined from 199,369 in 2017 to less than a fifth of that number, 23,371, last year.

Salvini reported that over the weekend the Libyan coast guard intercepted 393 refugees in the Mediterranean and brought them back to Libya. “The cooperation with Libya is working,” stated Salvini. In fact, the reception centres in Libya are well known to be horrendous concentration camps. They are such a living hell that refugees are prepared to risk a life-threatening journey across the Mediterranean rather than staying there.

The people currently on board the Sea-Watch 3 also confront an uncertain future.

Already in early January, the Sea-Watch 3 and the Sea-Eye ship were forced to wait at sea for 19 days before being allowed to land 49 immigrants in Valetta, the Maltese capital. It took almost three weeks for Joseph Muscat, Malta’s social democratic prime minister, to obtain enough commitments from European countries to accept the 49 immigrants. Some of those rescued went on hunger strike to draw attention to their plight.

When the immigrants were finally allowed to land on January 9, Muscat refused to let the ships dock in Valetta and instead forced the ailing passengers to transfer to ships belonging to the Maltese navy. Sea-Watch 3 and its current passengers once again face the prospect of being shut out by every European country.

Amid mounting coup threats in Venezuela, Maduro begs Trump for dialog

Bill Van Auken

Venezuelan security forces and intelligence agents suppressed an abortive revolt by elements of the country’s National Guard in the pre-dawn hours Monday, arresting 27 soldiers led by a sergeant.

The action unfolded in the midst of mounting pressure by US imperialism and Latin America’s right-wing governments—led by Brazil’s new president, the fascistic former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, and the reactionary president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri—to force the ouster of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

This has included thinly veiled as well as open appeals to the Venezuelan military to overthrow the Maduro government.

In a tweet this week Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who exercises major influence over the Trump administration’s Latin America policy, stated: “We must support those members of military in #Venezuela who have announced they will defend the constitution and recognize Guaidó as legitimate interim President.”

The reference was to Juan Guaidó, the relatively political unknown who has been elevated to the presidency of the Venezuelan National Assembly.

A member of the right-wing Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party, which has been funded with tens of millions of dollars from the US State Department and National Endowment for Democracy, Guaidó has been anointed as the sole legitimate leader of Venezuela by Latin America’s rightist regimes. The Trump White House is reportedly considering recognizing him as Venezuela’s president.

Guaidó has himself called upon the Venezuelan military to intervene, charging that Maduro’s inauguration to a second term as president earlier this month was illegitimate, interfered with the armed forces’ “chain of command” and calling for the army to “reestablish democracy.”

The right-wing opposition to which Guaidó belongs knows that it lacks the broad base of political support needed to oust Maduro by political means and therefore appeals to the military. The military command has served as a principal pillar of so-called “Bolivarian Socialism” introduced by Maduro’s late predecessor Hugo Chavez, himself a former army officer, who gained national prominence by leading his own abortive coup in 1992.

Guaidó and the National Assembly have called for a mass demonstration on Wednesday in Caracas to demand Maduro’s downfall. Meanwhile the ruling PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) has called its own demonstration for the same day, which marks the anniversary of the 1958 overthrow of the repressive Venezuelan dictatorship of Gen. Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

The argument that Maduro’s second term is illegitimate is based upon last May’s election, which was boycotted by most of the right-wing opposition, which knew that it would lose. While the vote saw a record-low turnout, reflecting the disgust and hatred of Venezuelan working people for both the government and its right-wing opponents, Maduro was elected with three times the votes of his nearest rival. This represented just 28 percent of Venezuela’s eligible voters, but still two points more than the 26 percent of eligible voters who cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2016.

While small and isolated, the military revolt Monday was significant. Its leader, who identified himself as Sgt. Alexander Bandres Figueroa, stated in a video, “You asked to take to the streets to defend the constitution, well here we are. ... You wanted us to light the fuse, so we did. We need your support.”

He went on to say that his mother was dying of cancer—in a country where access to medicine and decent medical care has become out of reach for much of the population—and that he and his men were facing the same conditions as the rest of the population.

The mutinous troops overpowered their commander and then took two army trucks and raided a police station in the Petare neighborhood of Caracas, where they seized arms. They then took over a security post in the Cotiza section of Caracas, where they issued their call for a revolt and were subsequently captured by security forces.

The clash touched off protests in Cotiza, where residents, hearing shots fired, took to the streets, to be met with tear gas. Protesters in this poorer neighborhood, which would have once been a base of support for chavismo, chanted, “The government is going to fall” and denounced the fact that the neighborhood’s water service had been cut off for a year, and that other basic utilities were constantly being cut off.

The protest, triggered by the clash within the security forces, was similar to many thousands of such demonstrations that have taken place across Venezuela as the working class suffers the effects of the country’s economic crisis, punishing US sanctions and an “adjustment” program implemented by the Maduro government to place the full burden of the crisis on the backs of the working class, while protecting the interests of foreign capital and the financial oligarchy in Venezuela itself.

The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict (OVCS) issued its annual report last week, recording 12,700 protests in 2018—an average of 35 a day—in Venezuela. The figures represented a 35 percent increase over 2017, when the right-wing opposition organized protests aimed at toppling the Maduro government. The bulk of last year’s protests were led not by the opposition, but by the working class and the poor in response to sharply deteriorating social conditions.

In the face of threats from sections of the military, upon which his government depends, sanctions and ever-escalating pressure from Washington and its right-wing Latin American allies, on the one hand, and a threat of social upheaval from the Venezuela working class, on the other, President Maduro has directed a call to Donald Trump to reach some form of accommodation.

Maduro used an interview with a Fox News reporter to deliver the message, which appealed to Trump for a “frank, direct, face-to-face dialog.” Such a meeting, he insisted, would show Trump that “we are people with whom you can talk, negotiate, understand and agree.”

This pathetic plea to imperialism only underscores the class character of the Maduro government, which for all its “Bolivarian” and “21st Century Socialist” rhetoric, is a capitalist regime that ruthlessly defends private property and the profit interests of the financiers, corrupt government officials and military commanders that are its most important constituencies.

Its effect will doubtless be to fuel Washington’s drive for regime change, which is bound up with US imperialism’s determination to assert unrestrained domination over Venezuela’s oil reserves—the largest on the planet— and to counter the influence of Russia and China, which have established close economic and political ties with the Maduro government.

The only way out of Venezuela’s desperate crisis lies in the independent mobilization of the Venezuelan working class in opposition to the government, the ruling PSUV and their trade union stooges, as well as to the right-wing opposition, whose rise to power through a military coup would signal a bloodbath against the country’s workers and impoverished masses.

Oxfam: 26 billionaires control as much wealth as poorest half of humanity

Nick Beams

As members of the world’s financial elite gather today in Davos, Switzerland, for the opening of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, a new report by the UK-based charity Oxfam International has highlighted the vast accumulation of wealth at the heights of society, and the accelerating growth of social inequality.

The report showed that last year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $900 billion, or 12 percent, while 3.8 billion people—half the world’s population—saw their wealth decline by 11 percent.

Last year, the billionaires increased their wealth by $2.5 billion every day, while a millionaire moved into their ranks every two days.

In the decade since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, governments and financial authorities have imposed its full impact on the backs of the world working class, in the form of stagnant and lower wages and austerity programs that have gutted health and other social services, to name just some of its effects. Meanwhile, wealth has become ever more concentrated. Last year, just 26 people controlled as much wealth as the 3.8 billion people who comprise half the world’s population, compared to 43 people the year before.

Oxfam noted that just 1 percent of the $112 billion fortune accumulated by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, was equivalent to the entire health budget for Ethiopia, a nation of 105 million people.

The Oxfam report found that the top tax rate for the rich in the developed countries plunged from 62 percent in 1970 to 38 percent by 2013, and pointed to the tax cut introduced by US president Trump at the end of 2017, benefiting the wealthy and corporations.

In developing countries, the top personal tax rate is just 28 percent. In the UK and Brazil, the report found that the bottom 10 percent of the population paid a higher proportion of their income in tax than the top 10 percent.

Tax avoidance is rife. The report revealed that the super-rich were hiding $7.6 trillion from tax authorities, while corporations were holding large amounts of money offshore, depriving developing countries of $170 billion per year in revenue.

As a result, only 4 percent of all tax revenue came from the taxation of wealth.

The report noted that “the rate of poverty reduction has halved since 2013, and that “Extreme poverty is actually increasing in sub-Saharan Africa.”

It added that between 1980 and 2016, the poorest 50 percent of the world’s population received only 12 cents in every dollar of global income growth, while the top 1 percent captured 27 cents of every dollar.

A decade ago, the ruling elite’s annual meeting in Davos took place in the wake of the most severe economic and financial crisis, caused by the massive fraud and criminality of the world’s largest financial institutions.

But rather than being sent to jail, the “malefactors of great wealth” were bailed out. Over the next decade, they were provided with trillions of dollars of ultra-cheap money, enabling them to continue their wealth accumulation at an exponential rate.

According to a new report by Bloomberg, the wealth of the 12 richest Davos attendees soared by a combined $175 billion, as the overall wealth of the world’s billionaires grew, in the same period, from $3.4 trillion to $8.9 trillion.

The Bloomberg report highlights the details of this extraordinary growth:

• Mark Zuckerberg increased his wealth from $3 billion a decade ago to $55.6 billion, a rise of 1853 percent.
• Stephen Schwarzman, the head of the hedge fund Blackstone, has seen the assets of his firm rise from $95 billion at the end of 2008 to $457 billion, while his personal wealth has shot up from $2.1 billion to $10.1 billion, an increase of 486 percent.
• The media baron Rupert Murdoch has increased his wealth from $3.2 billion to $15.1 billion, a rise of 472 percent, while Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, has enjoyed a 276 percent wealth increase, from $0.4 billion to $1.1 billion.

And the list goes on.

The strength, however, of the economic data produced by Oxfam, forms a stark contrast to its prescriptions for dealing with such extreme levels of social inequality. These centre on the development of what it calls a “human economy,” built on different principles from what it calls a “growth economy.”

The “human economy” would provide health care, education and gender equality, and create the best conditions for shared wealth. It could be financed by raising taxes on the world’s wealthiest individuals and corporations, given that just a 0.5 percent increase in taxes on the richest individuals would raise enough money to educate the 262 million children, who currently don’t receive an education, and provide health care that would save 3.3 million people from preventable deaths.

Oxfam, however, has been making such proposals for the past eight years, issuing warnings and calling for a policy switch. But to no avail. Every year the situation worsens, as Oxfam itself acknowledges, and at an accelerating rate.

The scourge of social inequality cannot be ended through futile appeals, made to the very powers that preside over the current system, to change course. They are no more capable of that, than the ancien regime in France, prior to the revolution of 1789, or the czarist autocracy in Russia, before 1917.

The only road to a genuine “human economy” is through the working class taking political power in the socialist revolution, thus ending the dictatorship of private profit and the financial markets. Only in this way can the vast resources created by the working class be utilised to meet the social needs of all.

This is the perspective that must now be advanced in the social and class struggles that are erupting around the world—from auto parts strikes in Mexico, the teachers’ strike in Los Angeles, to the huge struggles of the Indian working class. It requires the building of the world party of socialist revolution, the International Committee of the Fourth International, in every country, to provide the necessary leadership.

Joint NAM S&T Centre – ACENTDFB Fellowship in Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology 2019 for Developing Countries – Nigeria

Application Deadline: 1st February 2019
Please send the required papers at the academy before 26 January 2019

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Nigeria

About the Award:  The NAM S&T Centre is implementing a Joint NAM S&T Centre – ACENTDFB Fellowship scheme in partnership with The Centre of Excellence for Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology (hereinafter called, ACENTDFB), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, NIGERIA to provide opportunities to the scientists from the developing countries for working in the ACENTDFB laboratories in various subjects.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:

• Scientists and researchers should hold at least M.Sc. or equivalent qualification and should be engaged in R&D or management of scientific programmes on the identified subjects.
• There is no upper age limit, but younger scientists would be preferred.
• Selection is strictly on merit based on the scientific quality of the proposal submitted by the applicant.
• From any given developing country only one scientist / researcher will be accepted in any given financial year.
• Scientists from Nigeria are not eligible to apply for this Fellowship.

Number and Value of Awards: One researcher will be selected from each Member State of the Center based on the applicant’s academic and professional background. The NAM Center will pay the international airfare. The ACENTDFB will provide free furnished accommodation and a monthly subsistence allowance of US $400 per month to the selected Fellows for the duration of the Fellowship.   

Duration of Programme: 1-2 months

How to Apply: 
Please submit the registration form with the required documents at:asrt.organizations@gmail.com

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

ARPPIS-DAAD Scholarships 2019/2020 for PhD Scholars in African Countries

Application Deadline: 11^th February 2019

To be Taken at: Scholars conduct their innovative research at icipe’s laboratories and at field sites located in various agro-ecological zones.

About the Award: The primary objective of ARPPIS is to prepare young researchers from Africa to compete in an internationally competitive research environment within national, regional and international research programmes. At icipe ARPPIS scholars are provided with excellent research facilities in an interdisciplinary environment within a structured, three-year PhD programme that includes research, training, developing research partnerships, writing scientific papers and grant proposals, and attending scientific meetings and international conferences.

List of Projects: These ARPPIS-DAAD PhD scholarships are available to nationals of sub-Saharan countries for the following projects: LIST OF PROJECTS

Type: PhD

Eligibility: Applicants for these Fellowships must meet the following criteria:

• The applicant must be a citizen of a country in sub-Saharan Africa. Some country restrictions apply. See LIST OF PROJECTS above for more details.
• A Bachelor’s degree with a minimum pass of second-class, upper division.
• A Master’s degree taken with both coursework and research in the field of natural sciences or other field relevant to the PhD project.
• The Master’s degree must have been completed less than six years ago at the time of application.
• Qualified female candidates and candidates from less privileged regions or groups as well as candidates with disabilities are especially encouraged to apply.
• Qualified nationals of French- and Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa are also encouraged to apply.
• Preference will be given to applicants with a maximum age of 36 years (men) or 40 years (women) by 31^st December 2019.
• Additional specific entrance requirements will be considered for admission depending on the eligible PhD project(s) selected by the candidate. For information on applicant requirements for each project, go to LIST OF PROJECTS.
• A working knowledge of English (written & spoken).
• Completed application forms and accompanying supporting documents. Note: please start the application process as soon as possible, especially if some of the supporting documents are difficult to obtain.

Number of Awards: Six ARPPIS-DAAD PhD scholarships are available.

Value of Award: 

• The scholarships cover all costs of the PhD programme, including travel, living expenses, medical insurance, university fees and all research and training costs.
• Successful candidates will develop a full proposal and register with an ARPPIS partner university in Africa after they start the PhD programme at icipe.

Duration of Award: 3 years. The ARPPIS PhD programme will commence from September 2019.

How to Apply: 

• Full instructions and online application: LINK
• Before applying it is recommended that you read very carefully the application guidelines for detailed information on eligibility criteria, deadlines and other key requirements of the application procedure.

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for Details

Dream Together Masters Scholarships 2019/2021 for International Students

Application Deadline: 8th February 2019

To be taken at (country): Seoul National University, South Korea

About the Award: The Dream Together Master is a graduate scholarship programme at the Seoul National University, Korea, which is fully funded by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation (KSPO). It is a unique opportunity to hone sport management skills in a multicultural environment. Every year, FISU presents candidates for this scholarship.

Type: Masters

Eligibility:

• The DTM programme is offered to countries recognised in the List of Official Development Aid Recipients provided by the Development Assistance Committee (Developing countries)
• FISU invites its member National University Sports Federations (NUSFs) to present candidates for this scholarship.
• Achievements in sport, education and social activity would be highly appreciated – especially at FISU events – and that preference will be given to top level athletes as well as to applicants that are interested on writing a thesis related to the University Sports Movement.

Number of Awards: Not specified

How to Apply: 

• All student application forms must be sent to the FISU Education Department at education@fisu.net, with ‘DTM Scholarship 2019’ mentioned in the mail subject. Further details on eligibility and all required documents can be found here. 
• In addition to the documents listed, candidates are required to provide an official recommendation letter from their National University Sports Federation or Continental University Sports Federation.
• The 2019 Admission Guide and the DTM brochure can also be downloaded.
• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

UNESCO/IUPAC Postgraduate Scholarship 2019 for International Students – Czech Republic

Application Deadline: 22nd February 2019.

Eligible Countries: International 

To Be Taken At (Country): Czech Republic

About the Award: Over the years, more than 150 young researchers from different countries participated in UNESCO/IUPAC Courses (see archive) and contributed to a number of scientific projects.  The participant of the UNESCO/IUPAC Course joins a current research project led by an experienced supervisor from the Institute (for research program of the Institute, see http://www.imc.cas.cz). Preliminary contact with the potential supervisor is recommended. The participant is obliged to attend a series of lectures and practica on various topics of polymer science given by Institute specialists.
Graduates can follow in their studies in the Czech Republic as PhD students at Charles University, Institute of Chemical Technology or other in collaboration with laboratories of the Institute.

Type: Research

Eligibility: 

• Candidate must have Masters or PhD degree.
• The official language of the Course is English; hence, good command of English is a necessary condition for admittance.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• The participants receive monthly scholarship of CZK 9.500,-  (EUR 354,- ).
• The participants  use facilities at the IMC building in Prague 6 or at the IMC laboratories in the BIOCEV building in Vestec (outskirts of Prague).
• In addition, the Institute offers free accommodation at the Academy Hotel Mazanka.
• The Institute reimburses the payment the participant made to obtain visa.

Duration of Program: The Course begins on 1st October every year and lasts ten months.

How to Apply: Apply here

It is important to go through application instructions on the Program Webpage before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: The Course is organized under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, UNESCO and IUPAC.

The Next Recession: What It Could Look Like

Dean Baker

With the New Year and the US recovery soon to be record-breaking in duration, many are asking when the next recession is likely to come and what will cause it. While none of us has a crystal ball that gives a clear view of the future, there are a few things we can say.

First, and most importantly, the next recession will not look like the last recession. The last recession was caused by the collapse of a massive housing bubble that had been the driving force in the previous recovery. While economists like to pretend this was an unforeseeable event, that is not true.

There was an unprecedented run-up in nationwide house prices. It was clear that this was not being driven by the fundamentals of the housing market, as there was no remotely corresponding increase in rents, and vacancy rates were hitting record levels.

Furthermore, it was easy to see the housing bubble was driving the economy. Residential construction was hitting record shares of GDP, more than two full percentage points above its long-term average of 4.0 percent of GDP.

The wealth created by the bubble was also leading to a consumption boom, as people spent based on the new equity created by the run-up in the price of their home. This was also easy to see in the data, as the ratio of consumption-to-income hit record levels.

This history is important to review because many analysts are looking for the next recession to be a replay of the 2008 crash. If we pretend that the bursting of the housing bubble and subsequent downturn was an unforeseeable event, then there could be other unforeseen events that will sink the economy. For this reason, it is necessary to point out that the 2008 collapse was entirely foreseeable, economists just ignored the evidence that was visible to anyone who examined the economy with open eyes.

If we rule out the collapsing bubble as the story for the next recession, we are left with the standard story that explains every recession since the end of World War II and before 2001. The Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates too high in an effort to head off inflation. While this chain of events is not likely to trigger a recession in 2019, it is certainly plausible that it will play out in 2020.

While wage growth has been sluggish following the Great Recession, the tighter labor market is finally giving workers more bargaining power. The year-over-year rate of increase in the average hourly wage (the most commonly used measure) was 3.2 percent in the December data. That is up from a 2.5 percent rate in 2017. If we take the annual rate for the most recent three months compared with the prior three months, it is slightly faster at 3.3 percent.

This pace of wage increases is not terribly fast, but it does seem likely that the pace will continue to accelerate if the labor market stays tight. The rate of productivity growth has remained very weak in this recovery at just over 1.0 percent.

Productivity growth acts as an offset to wage growth. If productivity growth were equal to growth (3.2 percent in the most recent data) then employers are seeing no increase in their labor costs per unit of output.

However, in a context where wage growth is 3.2 percent and productivity growth is just 1.0 percent, labor costs per unit of output are rising at a 2.2 percent rate. If wage growth accelerates with no corresponding increase in productivity, then labor cost per unit of output will be rising more rapidly.

Higher labor costs will not be passed on directly in higher prices. Conditions of competition will likely limit firms’ ability to raise prices. This means profits may be reduced to some extent. This is perfectly reasonable, since there was a large increase in profits at the expense of workers in the Great Recession.

However, at some point it is likely that higher labor costs will lead firms to raise their prices more rapidly. If the Fed is committed to maintaining its target of a 2.0 percent average inflation rate, it will find it as necessary to raise interest rates to increase the unemployment rate and reduce workers’ ability to secure pay increases. While it surely does not want to induce a recession with higher rates, the history suggests that this is a likely outcome.

Again, this is not a story that is likely to play out in 2019. The inflation rate remains under 2.0 percent using the core personal consumption expenditure deflator, which is the key measure for the Fed. However, if wage growth does continue to pick up in the next few months, then we are likely to see a somewhat higher inflation rate in the near future.

That could trigger more aggressive rate hikes by the Fed. Given the lag between increases in interest rates and their impact on the economy, Fed rate hikes in the middle of 2019 will not lead to a recession in 2019, but they certainly could in 2020.

That would be my best guess as to what the next recession looks like and when it will come. There can always be extraneous factors that would hugely change the picture. For example, if a war or revolution lead to large disruptions of oil flows and therefore sharp price rises. It is also possible that Trump’s trade wars get completely out of control and go from being minor drags on the economy to major disruptions.

But, barring these sorts of unpredictable events, I would go with a Fed-induced recession in 2020.