Uncertainty over where central banks’ monetary policy is headed

Nick Beams

A fall in the headline rate of inflation in major economies and pressure from financial markets for interest rate cuts are creating the conditions for a conflict in the governing bodies of the major central banks over the direction of monetary policy.

The European Central Bank during a thunder storm in Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. The ECB's governing council met on Thursday. [AP Photo/Michael Probst]

Following a decline in the eurozone inflation rate to 2.4 percent in October, its lowest level since July 2021, pressure is building on the European Central Bank to start reducing its interest rates amid fears that unless this is done there could be significant economic and financial consequences.

The collapse of the Austrian real estate group Signa at the end of last month, which rose to stratospheric financial heights on the back of a near-zero interest rate regime, could well be a sign of what is to come if a tight monetary regime persists. There are also the ongoing concerns about the position of Italian banks and the financing of government debt.

As the Financial Times reported, the new governor of the Italian central bank, Fabio Panetta, hinted in a major address last week that rates might need to be cut soon.

He said that while the ECB tightening was necessary, present indications were that existing policy was bringing inflation down to the target range of 2 percent. “We need to avoid unnecessary damage to economic activity and risks to financial stability, which would ultimately jeopardise price stability,” he added.

The chief global economist at Oxford Economics, Innes McFee, told the FT the major central banks were at risk of making a major policy mistake, particularly the ECB.

“They have every incentive to talk tough, but the action is going to have to change,” he said.

Any move by the ECB to ease its monetary policy, however, is likely to meet opposition from within its governing body made up of representatives of the European banks.

The head of the German central bank, Joachim Nagel, said the fall in the eurozone inflation rate was “encouraging.” He warned, however, that borrowing costs might need to go higher, adding that it was “far too early to even think about a possible reduction in key interest rates.”

According to an FT report, OECD chief economist Clare Lombardelli said the ECB and the Bank of England would not be in a position to ease interest rates until at least 2025 given persistent underlying inflation resulting from wage pressures.

“Monetary policy is going to have to remain restrictive for a period of time—we are still worried about inflation persistence,” she said. “You are going to need real rates to be high.”

The issue of wages is front and centre in the determination of central bank monetary policy as was highlighted in an FT editorial this week. It said that while inflation was coming down fast, to “declare an end to the inflation battle—as some are doing—smacks of complacency.”

It noted that while job markets had “cooled” they remained “tight” and while wage increases had fallen “they are still elevated.”

“This is feeding into high services inflation—the largest component of the price indices. With productivity forecasts subdued, central bankers will want to see salary growth fall further to bring down core inflation, which is still higher than desirable.”

The chief economist at the Bank of England, Huw Pill, has said that falling headline inflation could give a false impression that the inflation threat had passed. There was a challenge for policy makers to maintain their “persistence” in keeping monetary policy tight under conditions where there would be “lots of pressure in the face of weaker employment and activity growth and declining headline inflation, to declare victory and move on.”

In other words, even in the face of higher unemployment, an economic slowdown and possibly even a recession, central banks must maintain their higher interest rate regime.

In the US, the central bank is under pressure from financial markets to declare that the rate tightening cycle is over, with traders making bets that the Federal Reserve will start cutting rates next year. Traders in financial markets now see a two thirds probability that the Fed will start cutting rates in March next year as compared to 20 percent little more than a week ago.

In a question-and-answer session following a speech last Friday, Fed chair Jerome Powell sought to push back against the market pressure, saying the Fed was “strongly committed” to bringing inflation down to 2 percent and keeping monetary policy restrictive until it was confident inflation was on a path to that objective.

“It would be premature to conclude with confidence that we have a sufficiently restrictive stance, or to speculate when policy might ease. We are prepared to tighten policy further if it becomes appropriate to do so.”

Those comments eased the fall in market rates for a short period but then analysts seized on the conditionality of his remarks—“if it becomes appropriate”—and the downward movement resumed.

The continued uncertainty over the direction of monetary policy and the bets that the Fed will be forced to ease rates is reflected in the gold market. On Monday, as the value of the dollar continued to fall—it lost 3 percent in value against a basket of six currencies in November—the price of gold touched an all-time high of $2,135 per ounce above the previous record of $2,072 in August 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

Besides the immediate moves in currency and financial markets, there are other, longer-term factors in the upward movement in the gold price, including rising geo-political tensions and war.

At the start of the US-NATO war in Ukraine, the financial system was delivered a major shock when, as a result of US action, the dollar assets of the Russian central bank were frozen. This sent a warning to other countries that they could be subject to the same treatment should they cross the path of the US.

Central bank buying of gold reached a record high in 2022 and is on course for another record this year. According to the World Gold Council, central banks in emerging markets bought 573 metric tons of gold a year on average between 2010 and 2021. Last year they bought 1,100 metric tons and in the first three quarters of this year 800.

John Reade, a market strategist with the council, in comments to CNN, pointed to the rise in geopolitical tensions as a key factor.

In something of an understatement, he said: “The geopolitical risk environment appears to have changed, not just Russia invading Ukraine, not just the terrible things going on in Israel and Gaza, but the trade tensions between the US and China, concerns about what will happen in the South China Sea, concerns about what China will do in Taiwan.”

The financial effects of these tensions are being exacerbated by conditions in the US, including the question of how long its massive deficits can continue to be financed, dependent on foreign purchases of government debt, and the political turmoil which is certain to intensify in the presidential election year of 2024.

COVID-19 surges across the US despite official cover-up

Evan Blake

Over the past six weeks, transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has more than doubled across the United States, according to the latest wastewater data released Monday by Biobot Analytics. Amid complete silence from the Biden administration and the corporate media, the American population is being subjected to its eighth wave of mass infection with a deadly virus capable of damaging every organ system and causing myriad long-term debilitating symptoms.

Modeling the latest wastewater data, oncologist Dr. Mike Hoerger of Tulane University estimates that at present roughly 1.2 million Americans are catching COVID each day, while 8.6 million people are now actively infectious. By New Year’s Day, there will likely be 1.8 million daily new infections and 12.9 million infectious people. This would be the second-highest level of daily infections of the entire pandemic, surpassed only during the initial wave of the Omicron variant in the fall-winter of 2021-22.

The Biden administration is doing everything possible to keep the public from knowing the immense dangers it confronts, in order to facilitate a policy of deliberate mass infection that will cause older Americans and disabled people to “fall by the wayside,” as expressed by Dr. Anthony Fauci earlier this year. To the extent that the surging pandemic kills vulnerable people, this is, in the words of former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky, an “encouraging” sign.

The fourth winter wave of the pandemic in the US is now concentrated in the colder Midwest and Northeast regions, with the Midwest experiencing its worst level of infections since January 2022, during the first wave of the Omicron variant. Wastewater levels of SARS-CoV-2 are also rising in the South and West, and expected to surge in the weeks ahead.

COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising rapidly in the Midwest, particularly Illinois, Michigan and Indiana, and deaths will soon climb as well, although both official figures are significant undercounts due to the scrapping of COVID testing.

Until now, the wave in the US has been fueled primarily by the Omicron EG.5 and HV.1 subvariants. The JN.1 subvariant, a descendant of the highly-mutated BA.2.86 subvariant (nicknamed “Pirola”), is rapidly becoming dominant and expected to supplant all other variants globally in the weeks ahead. Only after this variant is dominant will it be possible to tell whether it is more pathogenic and likely to hospitalize or kill those infected.

The latest wastewater data entirely confirm the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site two weeks ago that this year’s record Thanksgiving travel would facilitate the spread of COVID-19, endangering millions of people across the country.

This is the first holiday season in the aftermath of the Biden administration and the World Health Organization (WHO) ending their respective COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations, legitimizing Biden’s lie that “the pandemic is over.” With the corporate media dutifully following suit, masses of people throughout the world have been led to believe this disinformation and have dropped their guard, with most family and other gatherings involving no mitigation measures whatsoever.

The ending of the PHEs put the final nail in the coffin of whatever semblance of public health remained in the US and globally. In every country, pandemic surveillance has been scrapped, including testing, contact tracing, and the regular reporting of official COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, as part of a systematic effort by capitalist governments to cover-up the ongoing impacts of the pandemic.

Most recently, on November 27 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly announced on their website that they will no longer provide data from COVID case reports submitted to them by the states, until now the most reliable and prompt method of reporting COVID-19 deaths.

The US and world population are now flying blind into what could be a catastrophic winter storm of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Coinciding with a surge of other respiratory pathogens, in particular influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), this could quickly become a repeat of last year’s “tripledemic” or even worse. There are already reports of children’s hospitals being inundated in cities across North America and Europe, as well as in China.

A byproduct of the deepening cover-up of the very existence of the pandemic—fueled by heavily-funded anti-vaccine disinformation campaigns—is that booster vaccination rates have plummeted. Only 16 percent of American adults, and only 27 percent of the most vulnerable millions of elderly Americans who live in nursing homes, have been vaccinated with the latest monovalent booster shot tailored to the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant. Throughout much of the world, these life-saving boosters are not even available.

In a rare admission of the ongoing dangers of COVID-19, German Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), spoke on the devastating effects of Long COVID at a press conference Monday. Noting historical spikes in Parkinson’s disease and dementia after the 1918-20 influenza pandemic, Lauterbach said that COVID-19 infection “affects how the immune system in the brain functions, as well as the brain’s blood vessels, potentially increasing the long-term risk of these major neurodegenerative diseases.”

Lauterbach stated, “We are seeing an increasing number of [Long COVID] cases as the waves of infection continue to affect us.” He added, “COVID is not a cold—with a cold you don’t usually see any long-term effects. You don’t see any changes in the blood vessels. You don’t usually see an autoimmune disease developing. You don’t usually see neurological inflammation—these things that we all see with Long COVID… It can affect brain tissue and the vascular system.”

Expressing concern that only 3.6 percent of the German population has received the latest booster shot, Lauterbach concluded, “Please protect yourself from Long COVID. Currently, the danger posed by COVID is indeed being underestimated.”

Listening to this press conference, one could be forgiven for holding out hope that at least one official is taking the pandemic seriously. But the truth is that Lauterbach’s comments were mere lip service to the immense suffering from Long COVID, meant to provide political cover for his own and the entire German government’s criminal response to the pandemic.

Over the past two years, ignoring thousands of studies already published on Long COVID, Lauterbach has overseen the complete dismantling of all anti-COVID public health measures, creating the very conditions over which he now feigns concern. In April, Lauterbach echoed Biden’s lie, tweeting, “We can say that the pandemic is also over for Germany.”

He has also complied with the SPD-led government’s gutting of the health budget, which has been cut by three-quarters over the past two years, from €64.4 billion to €16.2 billion. This includes the slashing of funding for research into Long COVID from €100 million to only €21 million, a drop in the bucket relative to the vast scale of this health crisis.

Furthermore, Lauterbach, like all other capitalist politicians, refuses to encourage masking or offer any other means to stop or even slow the spread of the pandemic. A global elimination strategy—based on cleaning indoor air in all public spaces, mass testing of the population to identify and cut off all chains of transmission, and other public health measures—is beyond the pale for the capitalist profit system.

Such a strategy, however, is now more attainable than at any point in the pandemic. On the same day that Lauterbach spoke and Biobot updated their wastewater data, an article was published in Vox on the growing research showing the immense potential of far-UVC technology to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and all other airborne pathogens.

The article, titled, “Ultraviolet light can kill almost all the viruses in a room. Why isn’t it everywhere?” covers much of the same ground as a two-part series published by the WSWS this year. Citing a report from the organizations Rethink Priorities and 1Day Sooner, it notes, “All told, the report estimates that a comprehensive plan to improve air quality, including far-UV, upper-room UV, and ventilation/filtration, in every single commercial building in the US would require a one-off investment of $214 billion.”

Instead of providing such funding, necessary for the health of society, the Biden administration is funneling unlimited sums to Israel to carry out a genocide of the Palestinian population and to Ukraine to perpetuate its proxy war against Russia. The annual military budget for American imperialism now stands at over $1 trillion, enough to provide clean food, water and air for billions of people globally.

Israel steps up ethnic cleansing of Gaza with expansion of ground and air onslaught to the south

Jordan Shilton

Palestinians look at destruction after the Israeli bombing In Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza Strip on December 1, 2023. [Photo: Mohammed Dahman/WSWS]

Israel’s military reported Tuesday it had reached the centre of Khan Younis in southern Gaza amid what a top general labelled “the most intensive day” of combat since the start of the Netanyahu regime’s genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians. The ground offensive on the city, whose population has swelled over recent weeks by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing from northern Gaza, was accompanied by indiscriminate air strikes.

On the fifth day of the Zionist regime’s savage onslaught, after it unilaterally declared an end to the week-long pause in fighting, the United Nations said it was impossible to ensure “so-called safe zones” for civilians anywhere in Gaza due to the ferocity and scope of air and ground attacks. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder stated that the “safe zones” proposed by the Israeli military “are not scientific, they are not rational, they are not possible, and I think the authorities are aware of this.” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said that aid operations are at a “breaking point” and that Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza could become “a major source of death.”

A series of devastating air strikes Tuesday in Khan Younis and the surrounding area underscored the fact that civilians have no place of refuge. At least 45 men, women, and children were slaughtered in an attack on what eye witnesses said was “an entire residential block” in the town of Deir el-Balah just north of Khan Younis. A further 50 civilians were reported killed in strikes prior to the advance of Israeli troops into Khan Younis on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands have already fled Khan Younis for the southernmost city of Rafah. Home to some 280,000 people prior to Israel’s onslaught, estimates predict that over a million people could soon be crammed into the city on the Egyptian border. The UNRWA warned that there were inadequate resources to provide humanitarian aid for all displaced people, many of whom were already displaced once before from the north to Khan Younis and its surroundings earlier in the bombardment.

Adnan Abu Hasna, a UNRWA representative, described the hellish conditions already prevailing in Rafah: “We have tens of thousands of families in the streets. They are already [sheltering] under random things – pieces of nylon and wood. It’s raining now. We will see the disaster.”

On top of the danger posed by air strikes and the heavy weaponry used by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on the ground, the threat posed by untreated diseases is growing rapidly. The UN reported Tuesday an outbreak of hepatitis A at one of its refugee facilities. Just nine out of Gaza’s 35 hospitals continue to function, and there is a chronic lack of medical equipment, medication, and clean drinking water.

The Gaza Government Media Office on Tuesday placed the death toll since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began at 16,248 people. More than 7,000 people are reported missing, most likely buried under the rubble produced by air strikes. The death toll includes 7,112 children, 4,885 women, 286 medical workers—including paramedics and doctors, and 81 journalists and media workers. The bombardment has injured at least 43,616 people.

In the same statement, the Media Office described the virtual halt to aid deliveries into Gaza following Israel’s resumption of military operations as a “death sentence” for 2.3 million people. Reports indicate that only around 100 aid trucks are making it into Gaza through the Rafah crossing each day, just 20 percent of the pre-war daily total of 500 trucks.

The development of Israel’s military operations is following a clear plan: ethnically cleanse most of Gaza and force a large portion of its residents, if not the entire population, into Egypt’s Sinai desert. This approach has been outlined in Israeli government documents and in comments by far-right figures within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. The Zionist regime’s strategy has the unconditional backing of the imperialist powers, above all the United States, without whose military and political support Israel could not carpet bomb Gaza and indiscriminately massacre civilians.

In language that could have been used by any Nazi leader during World War II, Netanyahu outlined his regime’s intentions for Gaza Tuesday evening at a press conference alongside Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz. “We are settling accounts with all those who kidnapped, participated, murdered, slaughtered, raped and burned the daughters of our people,” Netanyahu fumed. “We will not forget and we will not forgive.” In Khan Younis and Jabalia, he continued, “the ground shook” during IDF operations, “we surrounded both…there is nowhere we do not get to.”

Outlining his vision for an end to the onslaught, Netanyahu declared, “There will be no forces that support terror, educate for terror, finance terror and the families of terrorists.” Gaza “must be demilitarized,” he added, “and the only force that can ensure this is the IDF. No international force can be responsible for this.”

Referring to the flattening of the vast majority of residential buildings in northern Gaza, Gallant added in a similar vein, “What happened in Gaza City is happening now in Khan Younis…with impressive results.” For good measure, Gantz emphasised that Israel would not be bound by any restrictions on its operations, asserting, “Only Israel will determine its fate.” Even after the official end of hostilities, he said there would be “months and years” of IDF operations aimed at “stabilising the reality.”

Speaking at a fundraiser in Boston on Tuesday, US President Joseph Biden made clear his full endorsement of the Netanyahu regime’s genocidal plans. Blaming Hamas for ending the pause in fighting because they refused to release some female hostages, Biden declared, “We’re not going to stop — we’re not going to stop until we bring every one of them home and it’s going to be a long process.”

Biden is the leading representative of US imperialism, which has waged bloody wars that have destroyed entire societies and killed millions across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia over the past 30 years. The last thing he is concerned about is the lives of an estimated 138 hostages still in Gaza. American imperialism is determined to use Israel’s ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza, the culmination of the Zionist project’s 75-year-long dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people, as an opportunity to lay the groundwork for a region-wide war. The Biden administration dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups and a nuclear-capable submarine to the region early in the conflict to menace Iran and its rivals for domination over the oil-rich and geostrategically critical Middle East. Biden’s acknowledgement of Israel’s forcible expulsion of the Palestinians being a “long process” underlines that in order to consolidate its hegemonic position in the region as part of a redivision of the world at the expense of its rivals, above all China and Russia, Washington has no qualms about allowing the IDF to continue massacring innocent civilians for weeks and months to come.

The threat of an escalation towards a regional conflagration remains imminent. Since the IDF’s resumption of its assault on Gaza, hostilities have also intensified on the northern border with Lebanon. On Tuesday, the Lebanese army reported that one of its soldiers was killed in an Israeli strike supposedly aimed at a Hizbollah position. The fatality was the first reported by the Lebanese army during the cross-border conflict since 7 October, which has seen Israel strike numerous targets in southern Lebanon and Hizbollah fire rockets into northern Israel. The IDF released a rare statement claiming, “Lebanese army forces were not the target of the attack.” UNIFIL, the UN agency tasked with monitoring the border since Israel’s withdrawal in 2000, described the stepped up exchange of fire in recent days as “alarming.”

Global Health Corps Paid Fellowship 2024/2025

Application Deadline: 10th January 2024

Eligible Countries: GHC welcomes young professionals from Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to apply for paid 13 month fellowships with health organizations in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia.

To be taken at (country): Health organizations in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia. 

About the Award: Global Health Corps is building the next generation of diverse health leaders. We offer a range of paid fellowship positions with health organizations in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia and the opportunity to develop as a transformative leader in the health equity movement. Everyone has a role to play in the health equity movement.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Global Health Corps Fellowship is looking for a global and diverse group of passionate and talented emerging leaders who:

• Are willing to push themselves outside their comfort zones, to embrace failure, and to approach a personally transformative year – with many challenges in the day-to-day – with integrity, humility, and self-reflection.
• Are ready to strengthen and use their voice — the most powerful tool for change that you have — in order to engage others, create space for critical conversation, and effect meaningful social change in global health.
• Are excited by a design-thinking approach to building a better world, creatively embracing wicked problems and ready to embrace failure as learning.
• Are committed to bringing your best and doing the work in the day-to-day, showing up as a critical part of the global health equity movement.
• Are passionate about social justice in global health and about finding and building their voices to effect health impact.
• Are committed to inclusivity and collaboration across sectors, cultures, and borders of all kinds, while investing in and supporting others.

Selection Criteria: By the start of the fellowship,  fellows must:

• Be 30 years or younger.
• Hold a bachelor’s or undergraduate university degree.
• Be proficient in English.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Global Health Corps Paid Fellowship: Yearlong paid placements within partner organizations in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia to address real-time capacity gaps and strengthen health systems.

• In addition to on-the-job training, we engage fellows in a comprehensive leadership training curriculum to build effective, empathetic, and innovative leaders of tomorrow.
• Fellow receive additional logistical and financial support during the year, including:
  • Monthly living and utilities stipend
  • Housing
  • Health insurance
  • Professional development grant of $600 and completion award of $1500
  • Travel coverage to and from placement site, all trainings, and retreats

Duration of Fellowship: 1 year

How to Apply for Global Health Corps Paid Fellowship:

• Applications for our 2024-2025 Africa fellowship class are now open until January 10, 2024. For more information, read on and check out our Africa Fellowship FAQs page.
• It is important to go through the Application Requirements before applying.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

The bankruptcy of the Signa Real estate empire

Peter Schwarz

It would take a writer of the caliber of Honoré de Balzac or Upton Sinclair to describe the rise and fall of real estate speculator René Benko, whose Signa holding company filed for bankruptcy last Wednesday. Benko is the product and embodiment of a sick society in which profit and wealth count for everything, while the fate and even the lives of ordinary people count for nothing.

It is the biggest bankruptcy in the history of Austria. However, Benko’s business activities were not limited to the Alpine country. He had business interests all over the world and especially in Germany. His downfall could trigger an earthquake.

Galeria (formerly Kaufhof) at Frankfurt’s Hauptwache

Tens of thousands of jobs are at risk—in department store chains such as Galeria (Kaufhof and Karstadt), Globus and Selfridges, which Signa has taken over, and in the construction industry, where large-scale construction sites have come to a standstill and missed payments are putting numerous companies at risk. In 2022, around 40,000 people worldwide were employed in companies owned by Signa. Entire city centers threaten to become deserted if the holding company’s huge properties remain empty.

Some of the 120 banks that entrusted Benko with their money in the hope of making a quick profit could also find themselves in a tailspin. JPMorgan estimates that Signa owes its lenders a total of at least €13 billion. The company owes more than 600 million Swiss francs to the Swiss private bank Julius Bär and €750 million to the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International. The Swiss USB, the French Natixis, the Italian UniCredit, the Bank of China and several German state banks are also affected to the tune of hundreds of millions.

A chain reaction is looming in the real estate sector. Benko was not the only one to take advantage of the combination of low interest rates and rising real estate prices to amass a fortune. He was just more brash and unscrupulous than others. The rise in interest rates and the accompanying fall in real estate prices have put paid to this model. After the Signa bankruptcy, it will also be more difficult for real estate groups to obtain new loans.

There is now much debate in the media as to whether the Signa bankruptcy could have been foreseen, whether Benko was an imposter who merely built castles in the air and if criminal activities were involved. As far as it is known, the public prosecutor’s office is not yet investigating Benko. He is, however, facing charges of delaying a declaration of bankruptcy.

But regardless of whether there will be trials and verdicts, the same social conditions that favoured fraudsters such as the crypto guru Sam Bankman-Fried and Wirecard bosses Markus Braun and Jan Masalek also boosted Benko’s career.

Benko, who is only 46 years old, was able to become a billionaire in a very short space of time because the entire political system has long focused on enriching those already rich. Fantastic profits are made on the stock exchanges, in the financial and real estate sector, in industrial and IT monopolies with gigantic salaries paid to managers, while taxes are cut, exploitation is intensified and education, health and public infrastructure are cut to the bone.

As a 17-year-old, the school dropout from a modest background started converting attics in Innsbruck, which he then sold on as expensive apartments. “Buy, renovate in luxury and drive up rents: This is the successful model with which René Benko from Innsbruck went from 17-year-old school dropout to real estate tycoon,” wrote the German weekly Die Zeit one year ago.

As soon as word of Benko’s first successes circulated, he was inundated with funding. “Benko’s empire thrives above all from rich backers,” reported Die Zeit in another article. Among the backers who helped him build his billion-dollar real estate empire were Greek shipowner Georgios Ikonomou, ex-Porsche boss Wendelin Wiedeking, management consultant Roland Berger, logistics billionaire Klaus-Michael Kühne and many others.

Benko deliberately displayed pomp and splendour. He bought prestigious buildings—such as the Chrysler Building in New York—as well as luxury department stores—such as Selfridges in London, KaDeWe in Berlin, Oberpollinger in Munich and Alsterhaus in Hamburg. He built prestigious buildings such as the Elbtower in Hamburg, which is now languishing as a ruined building. He owns a private jet, a luxury villa in Ischgl and invited guests to parties on his €40 million yacht Roma.

“Benko obviously knew that the display of wealth attracts even more wealth,” Die Zeit quotes a business partner. He not only courted donors, but also politicians. He was a mentor of and maintained close relations with the then Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who helped him find new donors on a joint trip to Abu Dhabi in 2018.

Benko’s unscrupulous methods are demonstrated by his involvement in the German department store chains Kaufhof and Karstadt, which had previously narrowly avoided bankruptcy. The trade union Verdi celebrated Benko as a “saviour,” helping him to collect €680 million from the German government’s economic stabilization fund, merge the two chains into Galeria, close dozens of stores and cut employees’ wages.

For Benko, this was a brilliant deal. He separated the valuable real estate from the department store group and charged the latter hugely inflated rents for their continued use. In this way, the real estate division of Signa Holding made a profit of €800 million in the coronavirus year of 2020 and paid out €200 million in dividends to shareholders, while Signa’s loss-making department store chain collected hundreds of millions in taxpayers’ money.

At the beginning of this year, Verdi agreed to another restructuring plan for Galeria, which had filed for insolvency again the previous year. Another 4,000 jobs fell victim to this plan. Now the 12,000 remaining employees, whose monthly wages are already €500 below the official collective agreement rate, due to the series of concessions made by Verdi, are now threatened with the final loss of their jobs. They cannot rely on the Verdi trade union, which bowed down in front of Benko and helped him slash wages and jobs. Defending the jobs at risk requires the establishment of independent action committees.

The increase in rents for the department stores not only filled the coffers of Signa’s real estate division, but also increased the paper value of its properties, which is calculated on the basis of rental income. Benko was thus able to take out ever bigger loans, offering these properties as collateral.

In the end, his Signa empire consisted of an impenetrable web of over 1,000 individual companies, which also did business with each other. In addition to real estate, department stores and luxury hotels, it also included holdings in daily newspapers (Funke Mediengruppe, Kronen Zeitung, Kurier ).

The entire house of cards began to collapse when rising interest rates made it increasingly difficult to refinance the high level of debt. The European Central Bank (ECB) finally initiated a special audit of banks that had granted loans to Signa and instructed them in August of this year to hedge their risks more effectively. At the beginning of November, the rating agency Fitch finally classified Signa as “high credit risk.”

It is not yet clear what the consequences of the insolvency will be for Benko personally. According to reports, he has secured his private assets, which are estimated at €5 billion, but even if he loses part of this sum he will continue to live in luxury.

Massive new wave of coronavirus infections in Germany

Tamino Dreisam

Contrary to the general claims of politicians and the media, the coronavirus pandemic is neither over nor has the coronavirus become harmless. In fact, Germany is currently in the midst of another wave of infection as is shown by all available figures.

According to official figures from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), 23,264 cases of infection were reported in the last calendar week. Just six weeks earlier, there were only around 13,000, meaning that the number of infections has almost doubled in a short space of time. The data from wastewater monitoring has also shown an increase in infections since the beginning of July. Although this has levelled off somewhat in recent days, 17 locations still reported an increasing incidence last week, while 13 reported a falling incidence.

While the official reporting figures confirm the sharp rise in the coronavirus wave, they can tell us little about the actual scale of the pandemic, as testing and reporting requirements have largely been abolished. However, sites such as SentiSurv—a project run by the Mainz University Medical Centre, which collects data from 14,000 people who regularly test themselves and make their data available—are able to determine incidence rates on this basis.

SentiSurv data indicates an incidence rate that would equate to one in 50 inhabitants being newly infected every week. The highest incidence figure ever reported by the Robert Koch Institute during the entire pandemic was 1,543 in March 2022. According to SentiSurv, the incidence level has risen by over 500 since the beginning of November alone.

Even if the numbers of hospitalisations and deaths are lower than in the first years of the pandemic as a result of an increased vaccination rate, the virus has by no means become harmless. According to the State Statistical Office, COVID-19 was still one of the three most common causes of death in 2022, along with coronary heart disease and dementia. COVID-19 was identified as the main cause of death in 52,357 instances. And this does not include the cases in which COVID-19 was only documented on the death certificate as a concomitant illness. These figures will be published at a later date.

Markus Beier, chairman of the German Association of General Practitioners, explained in Die Welt: “For particularly vulnerable groups without appropriate vaccination protection, coronavirus can still be a serious illness.” And epidemiologist and virologist Klaus Stöhr warned in the Frankfurter Rundschau with regard to the wave of infections: “I believe that it will be more severe this winter.”

Even when the infection runs a relatively harmless course this can be followed by extremely severe long-term consequences (Long COVID). This can affect the heart, lungs, kidneys and practically all organs.

The deadly effects of the pandemic are particularly evident in the continuing decline in life expectancy. As the Federal Institute for Population Research recently announced, life expectancy in Germany fell for the third year in a row in 2022. Since the start of the pandemic, life expectancy has fallen from 78.7 years to 78.1 years for men and from 83.5 to 82.8 years for women.

Another worrying aspect of the current autumn and winter wave is the spread of new variants. The dominant variant at present is the Omicron subvariant EG.5, also known as “Eris,” which accounts for almost half of infections. Eris, which has been categorised as a “variant of interest” by the WHO, already has a growth advantage and better immune escape properties.

The sub-variant BA.2.86 “Pirola,” which was detected for the first time in Germany at the end of August, also accounts for 14 percent of infections. Pirola has around 30 mutations in the spike protein compared to its predecessor variants. These many changes in the genetic material are particularly worrying as they could make it more difficult for the body’s defences to recognise vaccinated and recovered people.

Many scientists are currently sounding the alarm about the Pirola offshoot JN.1, which is responsible for almost 5 percent of infections in Germany. JN.1 contains a mutation which, according to laboratory results, has a significantly better immune escape than Pirola. The American scientist J.P. Weiland therefore warns: “A change in the symptom profile or severity cannot be ruled out. ... Additional mutations in JN.1 with an even higher transmissibility are to be expected.” Many experts assume that JN.1 will dominate cases worldwide in the coming months.

The high infection numbers are already causing a nationwide wave of illness, especially in schools and nurseries. “The staffing situation in many primary schools in the country is on edge and in some cases is below the calculated staffing budget,” said Edgar Bohn, chairman of the Primary School Association, to RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND). Depending on the levels of sick absences, some locations will no longer be able to fully compensate for staff shortages from their own resources.

“Many nurseries across Germany are currently struggling with a high number of staff shortages,” Waltraud Weegmann, chairwoman of the German Daycare Association, also told RND. Due to the acute shortage of skilled labour, urgently needed substitutes were lacking. Daycare centres therefore often had to reduce opening hours due to the legally prescribed staffing ratio. “This usually happens gradually, groups are merged, or children are only looked after on individual days,” says the head of the daycare centre association. “Ultimately, nurseries or groups can be partially or completely closed.”

Numerous hospitals are already responding to the rising number of infections by introducing compulsory mask wearing or restricting the number of visits. At Tübingen University Hospital, masks have been compulsory for visitors, outpatients, and staff in direct contact with patients since last week. Marburg University Hospital has also introduced a mask requirement and restricted visiting hours to protect patients from infection.

At Frankfurt University Hospital, masks are mandatory in-patient care. At Frankfurt Höchst Hospital, visitors must wear FFP2 masks and at Darmstadt Hospital, the mask requirement is limited to “high-risk areas” such as oncology or the intensive care unit.

All government parties at federal and state level are directly responsible for this catastrophic situation, as they have subordinated health to profits and have long since ended all protective measures. The consequences of this murderous pandemic policy were summarised in a letter from 15 leading Austrian doctors back in September:

“Since the removal of mandatory protective measures in the medical field, all patients, including highly vulnerable individuals, are being exposed to the risks of a SARS-CoV-2 infection in primary care settings as well as in hospitals. Many people have no way to reliably protect themselves in healthcare settings and are thus forced to contract COVID-19.

Right-wing Supreme Court majority on brink of gutting federal regulatory powers

John Burton

At oral arguments Wednesday morning the right-wing majority of Supreme Court justices sympathized openly with an extremist position advocated by the attorney for a fascistic con artist that threatens longstanding federal powers to regulate the securities markets and other major business activities, including workplace safety, environmental protections and health care.

The decision in the closely watched case could strip about two dozen federal agencies of the authority to hold administrative hearings to assess penalties for regulatory violations. Instead, agency lawyers will be forced to litigate such claims in the already congested federal court system, where alleged violators can invoke the right to a jury trial.

The US Supreme Court building in Washington DC. [Photo by Joe Ravi / CC BY-SA 3.0]

George Jarkesy is a former stockbroker turned right-wing media commentator and conspiracy theorist who established a reputation in certain circles by supporting the Tea Party and attacking then president Barack Obama as a communist surrounded by advisers from the Muslim Brotherhood. In one segment, Jarkesy claimed the Civil War was driven by over-taxation in the North and the need for money from the South.

To cash in on his fascist audience, Jarkesy set up small hedge funds, totaling $20-30 million, by attracting between 100 and 200 gullible investors.

After the funds predictably collapsed, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Jarkesy with bilking his investors by lying about the assets held, inflating their values to generate excessive fees, and misrepresenting the identities of auditors and brokers.

Instead of suing in court, the SEC presented its case to an administrative law judge, employed by the Commission itself, who held a 12-day hearing, rejected Jarkesy’s testimony as evasive and unreliable, and sustained the charges. Jarkesy was ordered to stop his fraudulent activities, return almost $700,000 stolen from investors and pay a $300,000 penalty.

Such administrative proceedings have become ubiquitous over the last 75 years as the primary mechanism for enforcing federal regulations that provide at least a modicum of protection for the public. Accordingly they have become the target of pro-business and libertarian organizations bent on removing all impediments to generating profits through fraud, exploitation, environmental pollution and outright swindling.

Jarkesy petitioned for review of the SEC penalty in the right-wing dominated Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, headquartered in New Orleans. Instead of asserting his innocence, he challenged the constitutionality of the SEC’s administrative procedures themselves. Shocking many legal observers, two of the three judges, one nominated by George W. Bush and the other by Donald Trump, essentially ruled the entire federal administrative law system that has been in place since 1946 to be unconstitutional. The dissent was by an 87-year-old Reagan-nominated judge.

There are nearly 2,000 administrative law judges compared to less than 900 federal court judges. Forcing all their cases into the federal judiciary for resolution will result in logjams making meaningful enforcement of federal regulations impossible. That is the purpose of the ruling.

The SEC appealed to the Supreme Court, where a conglomeration of pro-business and libertarian organizations, right-wing “think tanks,” and billionaires, including Mark Cuban and Elon Musk, have filed friend of the court briefs in support of Jarkesy.

Wednesday’s oral arguments focused entirely on the Seventh Amendment of the Bill of Rights that guarantees “the right of trial by jury” for “suits at common law,” which would apply were the SEC limited to civil actions in federal courts rather than the more streamlined administrative proceedings to assess fines for regulatory violations.

In a landmark 1977 workplace safety case, Atlas Roofing Company v. Occupational Safety & Health Commission, the Supreme Court ruled explicitly that administrative law courts have the power to assess fines based on regulatory violations because such proceedings enforce “public rights” and are not “suits at common law.” That precedent would seem to resolve the issue, except that the corrupt right-wing bloc in control of the Supreme Court has no regard for precedents or the rule of stare decisis that interfere with its overtly political goals.

For those familiar with the Supreme Court’s outrageous expansion of “qualified immunity,” a doctrine fabricated by the court that frequently deprives civil-rights plaintiffs of their right to jury trials for police killings and other egregious official misconduct, the sanctimonious defense of the Seventh Amendment for a Wall Street swindler by these justices was truly stomach-churning.

Most outspoken was Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch. After calling “the right to trial by jury” a “very important foundational freedom in American society and a check on all branches of government,” he told the SEC’s attorney, “the Seventh Amendment would, on your account, dissipate, disappear, whatever verb you want to use.”

Some may recall that Gorsuch’s first Supreme Court opinion, 2018’s Epic Systems v. Lewis, upheld the blanket use of compulsory arbitration clauses by businesses to deny their aggrieved employees the Seventh Amendment right to present employment-based cases to a jury.

Associate Justice Elena Kagan spoke most directly for the three moderate justices, and the status quo, telling Jarkesy’s lawyer that the use of administrative fines has stood for “50 or 60 years” because “nobody has had the chutzpah, to quote my people, to bring it up since Atlas Roofing.”

Kagan added, “When you say, well, we should go back to the common law suits that were brought 200 years ago in the courts of Westminster, is Congress’ judgment—after the Depression, after the savings and loan crisis, after the Great Recession—is Congress’ judgment that more powers were needed within an administrative agency entitled to no respect?”

There are two other challenges to federal regulatory agencies pending in the Supreme Court. The first, which challenged funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was argued last month. In January the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the Chevron doctrine, which requires that courts defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute.

Many commentators are predicting that by the end of the Supreme Court’s current term next June there will be insufficient power remaining for federal agencies to regulate businesses and commerce effectively, turning the clock back to the wide open practices that culminated in the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression.

The barbarity of Australian government’s detainee shackling laws

Mike Head

The Albanese Labor government is already facing three High Court challenges by refugees to the manacling legislation that it and the Liberal-National Coalition jointly rammed through both houses of parliament in just 12 hours on November 16. Further challenges are likely as well.

In a blatant bid to evade a November 8 High Court order to release immigration detainees who had been imprisoned indefinitely, the legislation suddenly inflicted a new form of indefinite detention. It imposed an unprecedented regime of electronic monitoring by ankle bracelets, curfews and other draconian restrictions on all the detainees, as well as some previously released, potentially for the rest of their lives.

The legal challenges highlight two key reactionary features of the bipartisan parliamentary operation to effectively defy the supreme court’s ruling. After sanctioning for three decades the shameful practice of indefinite incarceration of asylum seekers and other non-citizens denied visas, the court said it was unconstitutional, even according to the 1901 Australian Constitution’s extremely limited restrictions on arbitrary detention.

First, the challenges show the human face of the 145 released detainees, who have been deliberately demonised by the government, the Coalition and the corporate media. Many of them are innocent refugees. They have been falsely depicted as “murderers” and “rapists” in an effort to justify police-state measures, including the government’s proposed “preventative detention” bill to re-detain many of them.

In fact, two of the cases involve men who had been earlier released into the community, long before the High Court ruling, having been assessed by the immigration authorities and government as no threat to anyone. They are not alone. At least 21 of the detainees—all witch-hunted as hardened or “disgusting” criminals—had previously been released from detention facilities.

This occurred under both the current Labor government and the previous Morrison Coalition government, exposing the claims that the detainees were too dangerous to release.

Second, the speed with which the three cases have been brought forward underscores the readiness of the political establishment to overturn even minimal constitutional restraints. There is strong legal opinion that the shackling and curfew legislation is just as unlawful, and cruel, as the indefinite detention system which the Keating Labor government pioneered in 1992.

Similar challenges are inevitable to the as-yet unseen preventative detention bill that is aimed at greatly widening the power to detain people without charge. The government is nevertheless demanding that parliament pass the legislation with equal haste this week, proclaiming that parliament must keep sitting until it does so.

In one legal challenge, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) lodged a case on behalf of a 30-year-old Sudanese refugee who has been living in the community for nearly a year.

Despite his earlier release, the man has now been subjected to the same conditions—requiring him to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet “at all times” and follow a strict 10 pm to 6 am curfew. Any departures from these conditions, even for an hour, could mean five years’ imprisonment.

The refugee—identified only as RVJB—arrived in Australia at the age of 13 after fleeing war-torn Sudan. According to the ASRC’s media release, he struggled as a young man to adjust to life in Australia and recover from trauma without adequate support. At the age of just 18, he was convicted of an offence, for which he was punished, but has had no convictions since he was 22.

“After careful assessment, health experts, the [Immigration] Department, courts and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal have all positively remarked on his character, assessing that he was not a danger to the community, and observing he had ‘turned his life around.’

“Despite this, he was subjected to seven years of immigration detention by the Australian Government, including on the notorious Christmas Island, where his health deteriorated and he experienced further trauma.”

His son, mother, two brothers, sister and nieces are all citizens and permanent Australian residents. The immigration minister finally released him from detention a year ago, but the new restrictions “will prevent RVJB from playing an active role in his son’s life and finding employment, impact his health, and expose him to further detention.”

In the media release, RVJB explained: “I’ve been an Australian since I was 13. I made mistakes when I was young after fleeing trauma. I served my time, and learned about consequences the hard way. I’ve worked so hard to change myself and make something of my life and I’ve proved myself over years and years…

“The last time I saw my son, he was three months old. He starts high school next year. When I got my bridging visa, his mother and I planned a special visit. But I don’t want him to see me like this.”

A second case is that of a 37-year-old Afghan refugee who fled Afghanistan and arrived in Australia in 2011. Refugee Legal lawyer David Manne said his client was fined $2,000 for indecent assault while in detention, where he remained for the next 11 years.

“He was then released into community detention and for the next nine months he has been able to live in the community without an ankle bracelet or curfew,” Manne said. “He is also extremely remorseful for what he did in detention and hasn’t committed any further offence over the last 12 years.”

The third challenge, by a Chinese refugee known only as S151, was launched less than a week after the shackling law was rushed through parliament. He arrived in Australia in September 2001 on a student visa, progressing on to other visas. After serving a sentence for an undisclosed offence, he was thrown into indefinite immigration detention, despite being determined to be a refugee in danger of persecution, preventing removal to China.

These three challenges come in the aftermath of the November 8 High Court ruling that led to the release of 145 detainees. The court declared that a stateless Rohingya Muslim asylum seeker from Myanmar, identified in a dehumanising fashion only as NZYQ, had been unlawfully detained since May, when it became clear that he could not be deported.

NZYO had arrived in Australia by boat in 2012. He was locked in immigration detention until 2014 before being granted a temporary bridging visa. In 2016, he was convicted of a sexual offence against a child but had served his time by 2018, when he was placed back into immigration detention.

Even more damning cases are coming to light. Last Thursday, a Federal Court judge ordered the government to immediately free an Iranian asylum seeker, Ned Kelly Emeralds, who had spent a decade in immigration detention after arriving by boat in 2013, despite never committing an offence.

Emeralds had applied for a refugee protection visa, but his application was eventually rejected in 2018 on the basis he did not have a well-founded fear of returning to Iran.

Matthew Albert, Emeralds’ counsel, told the hearing his client had tried to kill himself in detention, vowing: “I will not go back to be tortured and killed by a regime I despise.” 

After the ruling, Emeralds said: “Over 10 years ago, I came to Australia to seek protection from torture in my country, and instead I was tortured. I had no way to escape. I could not go home, and the government chose not to release me. Nobody should be asked to choose between their life and their freedom. What happened to me should not have happened, and it should not happen to anyone else.”

Justice Geoffrey Kennett found Emeralds’ detention was unlawful because there was “no real prospect” of his deportation “becoming practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future.” That is the narrow test applied by the High Court in the initial NZYO ruling, which still permits detention, or re-detention, if deportation becomes “reasonably foreseeable.”

Throughout what has become a political crisis over the detainees, the Labor government has led the way in slandering the detainees, and therefore refugees more generally. In fact, it has criticised the Coalition, especially opposition leader Peter Dutton, from the right.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil [Photo: Clare O’Neil MP]

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and other government ministers have branded Dutton as “weak” for releasing some detainees while he was home affairs minister in the previous Morrison government. They even accused him of protecting paedophiles by opposing an amendment last Monday to ban released “child sex offenders” from going near schools.

Dutton was actually demanding harsher measures, notably preventative detention, a reactionary proposal that the Labor government took up the next day when the High Court published its reasons for the NZYO ruling. The judges advised that detention could be reimposed via a preventive detention law.

Labor seized on that suggestion to again join hands with the Coalition to try to push through unprecedented measures this week, now to incarcerate people for what they might do in the future, according to the government’s police and intelligence agencies, not for any crime they have committed.