Free fall of First Republic Bank in US signals deepening of financial crisis

Nick Beams

The plunge in the shares of First Republic Bank continued yesterday, bringing to 95 percent the total loss which began after the bank revealed it had lost $100 billion in deposits as a result of the fallout from the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank last month.

The bank’s shares dropped 30 percent on Wednesday after their value was halved the day before, as last month’s rescue operation, in which 11 major banks headed by JPMorgan Chase deposited $30 billion, disintegrated.

First Republic’s announcement Tuesday that it planned to slash 20–25 percent of its workforce and sell off assets did not stave off a second day of panic selling.

At the start of March, the share price of First Republic was $115. At the close of trade yesterday it was down to $5.69. Trading in the bank’s shares had to be halted several times over the past two days because of the rapidity of the plunge.

A pedestrian walks past a First Republic Bank location in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 25, 2023. [AP Photo/Jeff Chiu]

Throughout the banking crisis, the official story line from regulatory authorities and Biden administration officials has been that the problems are confined to “outliers.” According to this narrative, the collapse of SVB was a result of “mismanagement,” and the US banking system is “sound” and “resilient.”

That piece of fiction was exposed when the bailout of uninsured SVB and Signature depositors, estimated to have cost around $22.5 billion so far, was organised by invoking a “systemic exemption” provision that allowed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to bail out those with more than $250,000 in deposits.

The official story was left in tatters following this week’s First Republic share plunge. According to a report in the Financial Times (FT) published under the headline “Share sell-off in First Republic shares causes alarm in Washington,” the bank was “in touch with the US government, which is on high alert” following the failure of SVB and Signature.

The FT said officials from the White House, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury had been in contact with First Republic, and the Biden administration was becoming “increasingly concerned” that the bank was running out of time to reassure depositors and investors.

According to the report, an unnamed official maintained that “the government was not concerned about contagion beyond First Republic.” If that were the case, then it would be possible for the market to carry out its verdict that, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, “First Republic is nearly worthless in its current state.”

However, it appears that any bank of almost any size is “too big to fail.” This is because the issues leading to their demise are present throughout the financial system. While each bank has its own particular circumstances, the underlying cause is the rise in interest rates at the fastest rate in 40 years.

In the case of SVB, it was the losses on the market value of its Treasury bonds, which it had piled into during the years of ultra-easy money under the quantitative easing program of the US Federal Reserve.

First Republic was heavily into the high-end mortgage market loans, amounting to $173 billion at the end of March, of which around $100 billion were to single buyers, many of them wealthy, whom the bank attracted by offering low rates.

The Economist reported that Mark Zuckerberg took out a 30-year mortgage for his $59 million Palo Alto home at 1.05 percent. The value of such loans has now plunged as interest rates have risen.

As part of the low-rate deal, rich customers agreed to move their deposits to the bank, but they are now moving out. To try to bolster its financial position, First Republic has had to borrow money from the Fed at 4.5 percent interest.

The net interest rate margin—the difference between what First Republic receives on loans and what it pays for money—has contracted, with the result, as the article noted, that the bank earned next to nothing on net interest in March and is essentially paying as much for money as it is receiving.

In some ways, the impending collapse of First Republic may be of greater concern than that of SVB. The California bank operated in a specialised area of the market—high-tech companies and start-ups backed by the inflow of money from venture capital firms.

According to an analysis conducted by the FT, SVB operated what, in many ways, was a Ponzi scheme—a business model in which money and profit are generated by the inflow of more money.

SVB provided money to what it called “fragile start-ups,” which meant its deposit base was vulnerable to a drought in venture capital funding.

“It also lent freely to them, expecting to be repaid not from the cash flows of the business, but from the eventual bonanza when new investors supplied another round of capital.”

But when this supply dried up because of the tightening of monetary policy by the Fed and cash was withdrawn, SVB had to sell off bonds it had purchased, turning a book loss into a realised loss because the interest rate hikes had lowered the bonds’ market value below their purchase price.

First Republic may have far greater significance than SVB because its operations are replicated more broadly by other medium-sized banks in both the home mortgage and commercial real estate markets, which are being hit by the interest rate rises.

The FT cited comments by Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at the financial intelligence firm CRA Research, who pointed to the possibility of more stress for regional banks.

“I think that in general investors believe [First Republic] is an isolated event, but at the same time, the minute they say that they’re then looking over their shoulder to make sure that no other bank is sneaking up on them. It’s like the cockroach theory: if you see one, you’re going to see more than one,” he said.

In the case of commercial real estate, the market problems caused by higher interest rates are being compounded by COVID, because the prevalence of at-home working means the demand for office space is contracting.

Federal officials are now reported to be trying to bring the major banks together to hammer out a deal. But after the failure of the $30 billion major bank rescue operation organised by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon, there appears to be no great appetite for acquiring First Republic because of its parlous financial position.

This has raised the question of whether the “systemic risk exception” to enable the FDIC to guarantee all uninsured deposits should be invoked. But this could lead to a further shift of deposits from small and medium-sized banks.

One way of meeting such a danger would be for the FDIC to guarantee all deposits without limit at all banks, and such a prospect is being canvassed.

In defence of decolonial and disruptive curriculum

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

Universities are no longer producing critical mass to question power for social, political and economic transformation of society for greater common goods. Universities are no longer producing independent knowledge traditions to address essentialist and emancipatory needs of individuals and societies in short run and long run. The governmental and non-governmental funding bodies control the nature, scope, structure and outputs of the research within higher education. The growing managerialisms have transformed universities and higher educational institutions into bastions of compliance culture in the name of quality processes, knowledge transfer and employability. The unqualified, underqualified and inefficient managers of higher education hide behind these processes in the name of student satisfaction. These managers neither teach nor conduct research but talk about abstract quality processes in teaching and research; the twin pillars of higher education. This is the context in which higher education needs radical transformation to ensure its critical role in the lives of individuals, states and societies.

Universities and institutions of higher education must decolonise itself from dominant knowledge traditions, Eurocentric bias, managerialism, patriarchy, capitalism and all forms of hierarchy. These issues hinder in the growth of secular, scientific and pluriversal knowledge traditions focusing on the people and planet. The dominant knowledge traditions uphold ruling and non-ruling class interests and create paradigms to sustain all forms of inequalities and exploitative systems and processes. The universalisation of dominant knowledge traditions are inherently carrying Eurocentric bias in teaching, learning and dissemination of research publications. It also produces different forms of managerial gate keeping to sustain such a form of knowledge tradition that upholds values of racialised patriarchal capitalism. This is neither sustainable nor helpful for progressive social transformation.

Decolonialisation of curriculum, research and teaching does not mean adding or replacing scholars and their work within representational framework.  Decolonisation of curriculum means decolonisation and democratisation of knowledge production, evaluation and dissemination beyond the dominant frameworks of knowledge traditions which are racially managed, sexually controlled and territorially prejudiced.

Similarly, decolonisation also demands the end of managerialism and modularisation of higher education. It is destroying interconnectedness of knowledge production, management and dissemination.  The growing managerialism and modularisation has led to race of profit driven education in which students, teachers and researchers compete with each other for gradation; students for marks, teachers for student satisfaction grades, and researchers for quick impact factor evaluation. This unhealthy competition destroys the critical potentials of teaching and research in higher education and in the processes of knowledge production and dissemination.  In such a scenario, knowledge transfer in higher education has becoming a process driven machine where education is merely a profit driven business.

In this context, universities, higher education institutions and practitioners of higher education needs to decolonise themselves and develop disruptive curriculum for a greater common good focusing on people and the planet. Decolonisation and disruptive curriculum development needs to focus on the ideal that knowledge needs free and autonomous to be secular, scientific and social. Disruption of teaching, learning, evaluation, research, knowledge production, management and dissemination is central to develop new forms of pluriversal, democratic, secular and scientific knowledge traditions accessible and available to all without any forms of barriers.

Egalitarian, inclusive, democratic and sustainable values are imperative for all involved in the production, management and dissemination of knowledge. The human empowerment needs to replace human resource development in higher education. The honing of universal values of science, secularism, citizenship rights and peaceful coexistence with natural world is crucial for the present and future of higher education. Universities and other intuitions of higher education needs to play a greater role in such a transformation.

Recent technological advancements and digitalisation of society demands greater transparency in the processes of knowledge production and dissemination. Universities and higher education institutions can’t insulate themselves from such a demand for accountability in the form of providing democratic, secular and scientific knowledge to all irrespective of their social, economic, political, sexual, racial, regional, cultural and religious backgrounds. Therefore, democratisation of knowledge and deepening of secular and scientific ethos are needs of our present and future. Decolonise mind and disrupt power for a radical transformation of education for the emancipation of individuals and societies from all forms of inequalities, exploitations and bondages of reactionary thoughts and practices. for greater common goods which can serve people and the planet.

Erdogan regime jails Kurdish nationalists

Ulaş Ateşçi

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has launched a police operation arresting at least 126 people, including Kurdish politicians, journalists, lawyers and artists. Arrest warrants were issued for a total of 216 people in operations yesterday in 21 provinces, centred on Diyarbakır. The police operation provoked protests in Diyarbakır, Istanbul, Bursa, Izmir, Mardin, Mersin, Van and many other cities.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaking on Thursday, June 9, 2022 [AP Photo/Turkish Presidency ]

At least 25 lawyers were arrested and the Aram Publishing House in Diyarbakır was raided. In addition, the City Theatre and the Dicle Culture and Art Association in Diyarbakır, the Mesopotamia Culture and Art Association in Mardin and the Bahar Cultural Centre in Batman were raided and many artists were arrested.

According to Mezopotamya Agency, among those detained are “Mezopotamya Agency (MA) Editor Abdurrahman Gök, MA reporters Ahmet Kanbal and Mehmet Şah Oruç, JINNEWS Beritan Canözer, Yeni Yaşam Editor-in-Chief Osman Akın, Xwebûn official Kadri Esen, journalists Mehmet Yalçın, Mikail Barut, Salih Keleş and Remzi Akkaya” and HDP executives Özlem Gündüz and Mahfuz Güleryüz.

Arzu Kurt, a leading member of the Association of Lawyers for Freedom (ÖHD), said its members had been detained, and that “a confidentiality order on the file and a 24-hour restriction on lawyers” had been issued. According to the MA, they were arrested on charges of “membership” in the outlawed Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella group that includes the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria. This is a pretext the Turkish state has used for decades to carry out arrests.

In a statement denouncing the police raids, the HDP called it a “new coup,” adding: “The government, which has been trying to prolong its life with political coups, massacres, black propaganda, special warfare methods, threats, blackmail and all kinds of attacks since 2015, has started a new coup process against the May 14 elections with mass arrests this morning.”

It added, “This operation is an operation to steal the ballot boxes and the will of the people. This operation is an open intimidation and threat to society and its political preferences.”

This crackdown, coming less than three weeks before explosive national elections, is a flagrant attack on democratic rights. The Erdoğan government has repeatedly cracked down on the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and its affiliated groups. It is clear that this attack is bound up with the deep crisis of Erdoğan’s ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP).

After more than 20 years in power, Erdoğan’s AKP faces widespread social opposition, which has only grown since the February 6 earthquake disaster that led to tens of thousands of preventable deaths.

According to many polls, Erdoğan is likely to lose both the presidential and parliamentary elections. The HDP, which has around 6 million voters’ support and supported Erdoğan’s rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the presidential election, is expected to have a significant impact on the election results.

The defense of democratic rights can only be carried out in opposition to every faction of the capitalist political establishment. This includes opposing any action by Erdoğan to follow the example of his right-wing authoritarian counterparts like Donald Trump in the US or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and refusing to accept the election results; or to take military action against Kurdish militias in Syria or Iraq. It also involves opposing the reactionary role of Erdoğan’s rivals, such as Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Since 2015, the Erdoğan government has increasingly targeted the HDP. In this period, many HDP deputies were stripped of their parliamentary immunity and jailed, with the support of Kılıçdaroğlu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP). Thousands of HDP members were arrested, while elected mayors were dismissed by government orders.

Before this police-state repression, however, the HDP and its predecessor, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), were firmly allied with Erdoğan himself. The so-called “peace process” negotiations between Ankara and the PKK, continued until 2015 under the auspices of the US and European powers. It was essentially an attempt by the Turkish and Kurdish ruling elites to forge an alliance to obtain a share in the ongoing plunder of the Middle East led by the imperialist powers.

The Erdoğan government, starting in 2011, was one of the most ardent supporters of the US-led war for regime change against the Russian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, it ended the so-called “peace process” with the Kurdish nationalists when the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the PKK’s sister organization in Syria, emerged as the main US proxy force in that country. The Turkish government feared that the consolidation of a Kurdish entity in Syria could lead to the separation of majority-Kurdish regions of Turkey.

Renewed violent conflicts thereupon erupted inside Turkey itself between Erdoğan and the Kurdish nationalist organizations.

The HDP is a pro-NATO party like Erdoğan’s AKP or Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP, although it seeks to adopt a “democratic” and even “anti-imperialist” pose. The HDP has glorified the YPG’s dirty alliance with US imperialism in Syria as the “Rojava revolution.” It recently declared that Finland’s accession to NATO, in a move aimed to escalate the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, was “legitimate.”

According to a recent report by the Washington Post, citing leaked Pentagon documents, Ukrainian military intelligence planned in December to attack Russian forces in Syria through the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is the backbone. The Post wrote, “Ukrainian officers considered training operatives of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the military force of Syria’s Kurdish-controlled autonomous northeast, to strike Russian targets…”

It continued: “As planning occurred last fall, the SDF sought training, air defense systems and a guarantee that its role would be kept secret in exchange for supporting Ukrainian operations. The leadership of the SDF also forbade strikes on Russian positions in Kurdish areas, the document says.”

Moreover, according to the document, Ankara was also aware of the plan. The Turkish officials “‘sought to avoid potential blowback’ and suggested that Ukraine stage its attacks from Kurdish areas instead of those in the north and northwest held by other rebel groups, some of them backed by Turkey.” An SDF official denied the document, while the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Turkish embassy in the US did not respond to the Post’s questions.

Pentagon’s Ukraine war leaks expose Spain’s Podemos and its pseudo-left rival, Sumar

Alejandro López

The leaking of Pentagon documents on the NATO war in Ukraine has provoked a faction fight between Podemos and its newly-founded electoral rival, Sumar, led by Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz. The leaked documents exposed the lies of NATO governments, including the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government Díaz leads. They reveal that NATO has troops in Ukraine, that NATO is directly involved in the war, and that Ukraine’s military is in a far worse position than presented by NATO media.

Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz [Photo by U.S. Department of Labor / CC BY 2.0]

The entire corrupt pseudo-left political milieu of Podemos and Sumar lied to the public and hid from the working class the imminent danger of all-out NATO-Russia war. Last February, Minister of Foreign Affairs José Manuel Albares, said sending troops to Ukraine “is absolutely ruled out by Spain, the European Union or NATO.” He dismissed reports of NATO troops on the ground as a “hoax.”

PSOE-Podemos Defense Minister Margarita Robles said: 'Never, ever, will any troops from a NATO country, and Spain is one of them, participate in the war in Ukraine.” This is, she claimed, “an absolutely impossible scenario; non-existent.”

Albares and Robles were reacting to a speech made days before by Podemos general secretary and Minister of Social Rights Ione Belarra. Also hiding that NATO troops are already fighting Russia in Ukraine, Belarra postured as a critic of her own government. She said, “They told us, first, that we were never going to send offensive material. Then they told us that we did have to send anti-aircraft missiles; then, that we are going to send tanks and now jet fighters; what's next, sending Spanish soldiers to Ukraine?”

The documents show more than 150 US and NATO troops are, in fact, deployed in Ukraine. Podemos and Sumar are political tools of a conspiracy, hatched behind the backs of the people of Spain and the NATO countries, to wage an undeclared war on Russia, a nuclear-armed power.

In a press conference, Belarra said that Podemos is 'very concerned about these leaks' released 'according to which elite NATO, British, French soldiers are reportedly already in Ukraine.” She claimed that “there are two different positions within this government” on the Ukraine war, without adding any further points on the positions of Podemos or Sumar.

After the initial shock of the leaks, Podemos reacted by trying to cover itself, launching a factional struggle accusing Sumar of being pro-NATO. The level of cynicism involved is virtually indescribable. Indeed, Podemos leader Ione Belarra and Sumar leader and Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz are both ministers of a NATO government that, only last Friday, sent Leopard tanks to the Ukrainian army.

For days, however, Podemos officials denounced Sumar for being subservient to NATO and the Ukraine war. In a ludicrous video posted last week, Podemos made thinly-veiled criticisms of Díaz, reminding her of her lack of opposition to sending weapons to Ukraine. Podemos members, it asserted, are “outraged when they see that their ministers look the other way with NATO and the war in Ukraine, and that only Ione [Belarra] says what she thinks” about the war.

On CTXT, ex-Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias defended his party’s supposed criticisms of NATO against Diaz, stating: “These leaked security documents confirm an involvement of the United States and Europe in the war that goes beyond sending money and weapons. That is, they would confirm that we have been lied to.”

He then defended Belarra’s criticisms of NATO war strategy in Ukraine, claiming that her previous statements are “relevant and the best proof that Podemos ministers are criticized in the media for daring to say what the leaders of Sumar privately recognize is true.”

Yolanda Díaz reacted by accusing Iglesias of male chauvinism on a La Sexta TV interview. Asked whether she believed Iglesias imposed “male-chauvinist situations” on her, she replied: “Yes, absolutely, I think that I did and so did all of Spain. It was this thumping on the table during negotiations. … I’m used to this, Jordi.”

She thereupon doubled down on defending the arguments the PSOE-Podemos government has given to justify the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine, whatever the risks. She said, 'If I were prime minister, I would fulfill a fundamental objective, which is to deploy our own European security policy. The Russian war is illegal, illegitimate, and all my solidarity with Ukraine. When there is an illegitimate aggression, the Ukrainian people have the right to defense.”

This debate exposes both the fraud of Sumar’s claim to represent a political alternative to Podemos, and of Podemos’ posturing as an “anti-imperialist” critic of Sumar.

Díaz and Sumar as a whole have the closest ties to Podemos; Díaz was nominated as Deputy Prime Minister by former Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias after he resigned from that post. The Sumar alliance she leads includes various Podemos allies: the Stalinist-led United Left (IU), More Country (Más País), Greens Equo (Verdes Equo), and In Common We Can (ECP). It includes two government ministers and the mayors of Barcelona and Valencia—Spain’s second and third largest cities, respectively.

Podemos was not invited, however, after Díaz refused to commit to internal primary elections. A faction fight is now unfolding inside the affluent petty-bourgeois milieu of Podemos for access to influence and posts in the capitalist state machine. Sumar ('Unite') electoral platform was launched earlier this month by Deputy Prime Minister and Labour minister Yolanda Díaz for this year’s national elections in December. Díaz announced that she aspires to become prime minister.

There are no differences of political principle or class orientation between Sumar and Podemos. Both are populist, nationalist and pro-capitalist parties of the affluent middle class, theoretically rooted in a postmodernist rejection of Marxism and of the revolutionary role of the working class. Both are led by pro-NATO ministers of the Spanish capitalist state that wage imperialist war abroad and class war on workers at home.

Sumar has no differences with Podemos’ ultra-reactionary domestic policies, which it has helped to formulate and impose on the working class. This includes pension cuts and a labour reform; pumping €140 billion of EU bailout funds into Spanish corporations and banks; a profits-over-lives policy in the COVID-19 pandemic leading to over 160,000 deaths; the barbaric incarceration and murder of migrants, including the infamous massacre of 37 refugees at the borders of the Spanish enclave of Melilla in Africa; and violent crackdowns on striking metalworkers and truck drivers.

Despite their differences on foreign policy, neither Belarra nor Díaz specifically criticizes their government’s decision to send €320 million in military aid to Ukraine. This includes rocket launchers, armoured vehicles and tanks and the training of over 850 Ukrainian soldiers on Spanish soil. Spanish weapons provided by Podemos and Sumar ended up in the hands of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.

To the extent that differences have arisen, they are on questions of how to market Spanish imperialism’s foreign policy. This reflects not opposition to war in the working class, but tactical divisions within the Spanish political establishment over how to balance its war policies between Washington, the NATO alliance, the European Union, Russia, and the growing influence of China. For now, at least, Sumar is more closely associating itself to support for NATO and Podemos with a call for strategic autonomy from Washington.

After French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to China and called for “European strategic autonomy” from Washington, Iglesias told CTXT that he defends “European strategic autonomy” and wants to remain within NATO. He said Podemos “must continue hold our hand out despite the insults.”

But this “autonomy” means an independent imperialist course for European capitalism, against rivals abroad and the workers at home. While Washington and the US-led NATO alliance play leading roles in stoking wars with Russia and China in a bid to preserve US global hegemony, Europe’s pseudo-left parties that advocate a “multi-polar” capitalist order are also unflaggingly reactionary. The calls for “autonomy” is not the liberty and social and democratic rights of working people, but, instead, the liberty of the capitalist classes to wage war in the pursuit of their profit interests.

Podemos and Sumar are united in their hostility to the global upsurge of the working class against real wage cuts and attacks on social and democratic rights. This is reflected in the strike by over 120,000 Canadian federal government workers, the three-month-long mass protests in France against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension cuts, and major strikes by health care and postal workers in Britain and education workers in the United States. All of these struggles are objectively defying the ruling class.

Biden seeks reelection amid war, COVID and inflation

Patrick Martin

President Joe Biden’s announcement Tuesday that he will seek reelection in 2024, while predictable and widely expected, is nonetheless a significant event. It demonstrates the deepening political crisis of the capitalist two-party system and of American capitalism as a whole.

President Joe Biden at SK Siltron CSS, a computer chip factory in Bay City, Michigan, November 29, 2022. [AP Photo/Patrick Semansky]

The Democratic Party cannot provide an alternative to an 80-year-old man whose physical health and mental competence are clearly at issue, and who would be 86 years old before he leaves the White House at the end of a second term.

As for the Republicans, the fascist former president, Donald Trump, at 76 the second-oldest man ever to occupy the White House, is the clear favorite for the party’s presidential nomination. Should Trump fail to secure the nomination, another fascist, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is waiting in the wings.

These are the choices that the capitalist two-party system offers working people, although, according to recent polls, Biden and Trump are the two least popular politicians among the presidential hopefuls. Only 5 percent of those polled looked with favor on a rematch of the 2020 election, in which Biden defeated Trump by 7 million votes, and by a margin of 306–232 in the Electoral College.

When the Stalinist bureaucracy had reached the end of its rope in the Soviet Union, in the early 1980s, it advanced a series of aging leaders, a gerontocracy that demonstrated visibly its ossification. After the death of Leonid Brezhnev, 75, Yuri Andropov, 68, succeeded him, followed by Konstantin Chernenko, 72. They now seem positively youthful compared to the current crop of leaders in Washington, with Biden, age 80, in the White House; the troika of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, all in their 80s, in control of the House of Representatives until last November; and Chuck Schumer, 72, and Mitch McConnell, 81, leading the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.

As in the USSR, the aging and semi-senile leadership is a sign of unresolved contradictions which make it difficult for the ruling elite to make the transition from one generation to the next in its leading personnel. The nature of these contradictions is suggested by the three-minute video presentation in which Biden made the case for his own reelection. The video is remarkable, both for what it includes, but mainly for what it passes over in silence, particularly the war in Ukraine, the central focus of the Biden administration for the past two years.

Biden declares freedom and democracy to be the central issues in the 2024 elections, citing three major threats: the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, the Supreme Court ruling overturning the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights and efforts by the Republican Party to restrict voting rights.

These are, of course, highly significant issues. But the Democratic Party has done nothing to defend any of these rights. The House committee hearings into January 6 and the ensuing Justice Department investigation have not resulted in the criminal prosecution of any of those responsible for organizing and instigating the violent attack on Congress, which was aimed at blocking certification of Trump’s election defeat and keeping him in the White House. Trump and his top collaborators in the White House, Pentagon and other federal agencies still walk free.

Similarly, the Democrats failed to take any action to safeguard abortion rights from the 6–3 ultra-right majority on the Supreme Court when they had a majority in both houses of Congress. They are using abortion now purely as a “get-out-the-vote” tactic to mobilize younger voters who otherwise have been alienated by the right-wing policies of the Biden administration. The attack on voting rights has likewise been reduced to a means of mobilizing black and Hispanic voters to go to the polls in 2024 and vote for Democrats, who would not pass a voting rights bill when they controlled Congress.

Even more significant are the issues suppressed in Biden’s announcement video.

There is no mention of the US-instigated proxy war in Ukraine, despite the incessant claims by the Biden administration that this is a war to defend democracy and human rights against Russian aggression. Even when declaring that his campaign theme is the defense of freedom, Biden does not dare to make the connection to the war in Ukraine, because he knows it is deeply unpopular. Nor could he refer to the danger of nuclear war arising from this conflict, because the policy of his administration is to recklessly escalate the war and support provocations against Russia that could trigger a nuclear response.

He was likewise silent on the COVID pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 1.1 million Americans, a large majority of them while Biden was in the White House. During the 2020 election campaign, Biden declared during one debate that 200,000 Americans had died of coronavirus during Trump’s time in office. “Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America,” he said. More than three times that number have died of the preventable disease during Biden’s presidency, and the pandemic is ongoing.

Biden said nothing about inflation or the economic crisis of world capitalism more generally, although that is surely a central issue in the minds of working people. His administration and the Federal Reserve are pursuing a policy of using higher interest rates and higher unemployment to suppress the mounting struggles of the working class driven by inflation. This was signaled most directly by Biden’s pushing legislation through Congress last December to ban a strike by 115,000 rail workers and impose a concessions contract on them.

The next two years will be ones of deepening crisis and social and political explosions, which will break up the seeming political paralysis in US ruling circles and shake the existing political order to its foundation. The two-party system, already deeply discredited, can provide no way forward for tens of millions of working people.

Senator Bernie Sanders, Biden’s major opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, announced his endorsement within minutes of the release of the campaign video, saying, “I’m in to do what I can to make sure that the president is reelected.” All other leading Democrats are following suit, confirming that there will be no challenge to Biden from within his own party.

As for the right-wing opposition, the Republican Party has moved decisively in the direction of fascism, with the majority of its congressional delegation having voted to overturn the decision made by voters in the 2020 elections in favor of keeping Trump in the White House as an unelected president and would-be dictator.

The struggle against war, the pandemic and economic crisis, and the defense of democratic rights, cannot be left to any section of the capitalist class and the politicians who serve and represent the financial oligarchy. The working class must advance its own independent political alternative.

Europe leads record rise in global military spending to $2.2 trillion as governments prepare for world war

Thomas Scripps

A soldier fires a machine gun from a Leopard 2 tank at the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks in Augustdorf, Germany, Wednesday, February 1, 2023. [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) “Trends in Military Expenditure” briefing for 2022 is a chilling document, charting the gathering storm clouds of a third world war.

A global military spend of over $2.2 trillion—the highest level ever recorded by the organisation—shows the world’s governments are preparing for conflict on a scale not seen since 1945.

The combined arsenals of artillery and tanks, fighter and bomber aircraft, warships and missiles, including nuclear weapons, are enough to raze society to the ground several times over. And they are being readied for action.

Military spending increased by 3.7 percent in real terms over 2021, the sharpest rise in 30 years, despite high rates of inflation. SIPRI writes, “Without adjusting for inflation, spending grew by 6.5 percent in 2022—the biggest year-on-year nominal increase in global military spending since 2010.”

United States spending of $877 billion—39 percent of the global total, three times the spend of second-place China—confirms Washington’s place as the world’s leading warmonger and instigator of military aggression.

But by far the fastest increase in spending (13 percent) was among US allies in Europe. At the centre of two world wars, the continent is once again being turned into an armed camp.

The scale of the proxy war being waged by NATO against Russia through Ukraine is enormous. Ukraine’s own military spending for 2022 catapulted the country from the 36th largest armed forces budget in 2021 to the 11th largest in 2022—at $44 billion, 34 percent of its annual GDP. But this is only half the story.

SIPRI says it is not able to provide “an accurate assessment of the total amount of financial military aid to Ukraine,” giving an estimate of “at least $30 billion in 2022.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced this month that the current nominal figure was over $70 billion.

Whichever figure is closer to the truth for 2022, Ukraine’s military budget last year not only outstripped all NATO powers except the US, it was at least close to and potentially significantly higher than Russia’s $86.4 billion budget, even following Moscow’s 9.2 own percent increase.

Ukraine’s de facto NATO membership is here spelled out in dollars and cents, with Stoltenberg announcing last Friday the imperialist alliance’s intention to formalise this relationship.

The sums of money involved are staggering. Central and Western European military budgets climbed to a combined $345 billion, 30 percent higher than a decade ago and surpassing the level of 1989, at the end of the Cold War. Wealth that could alleviate many of the worst crises affecting human civilization is spent every year preparing for wars that threaten to end its existence in a nuclear Armageddon.

The increases so far are only a down payment on what is to come, as each country is drawn more and more fully into the maelstrom.

Sweden and Finland, recently incorporated into the NATO alliance, and Poland and Lithuania on its front line, all lifted military spending by at least 10 percent last year—up to 36 percent in the case of Finland. The Baltic states and Poland have committed to spending between 2.5 and 4 percent of GDP on their armed forces within two years.

The major European imperialist powers are following suit.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s plans announced this January to increase military spending by a third—taking GDP spending to 2 percent by 2025—for an additional €413 billion in total.

Germany, also pledged to hit 2 percent of GDP, has already set aside a massive €100 billion additional fund—equivalent to its entire military budget for almost two years—to modernise its armed forces.

Demands are constantly raised for governments to go further faster, either by Washington urging the European powers to pull their weight in US-led wars, or by representatives of Europe’s ruling elite such as Macron insisting on the need for “strategic autonomy” from the US to aggressively pursue their own objectives.

Referring to the NATO members’ pledge of military spending of 2 percent of GDP, Stoltenberg told Die Welt, “I expect that we will make a new pledge on defense spending when we meet in Vilnius at the NATO summit in July this year… I expect there to be a more ambitious pledge because everyone sees that we need to invest more.”

Warning that Europe faces “vassalisation” at the hands of the US, the European Council on Foreign Relations called this month for Europe to “Deploy western European forces to the east in greater numbers, offering to replace US forces in some cases”; “Pursue greater European military capabilities and greater capacity to act autonomously, both within and external to NATO” and to “Consider a European nuclear deterrent.”

War with Russia already threatens a direct clash between powers armed with multiple thousands of nuclear warheads. But America and the European powers’ imperialist ambitions are also set on China, owner of the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal after the US and Russia.

Spurred on by US-led aggression against China over Taiwan, Asia was the second fastest growing region for military spending in 2022 after Europe. Military budgets in Asia and Oceania grew by 2.7 percent last year to $575 billion, a 45 percent rise over the last decade. China and US allies India and Japan led the way with increases of 4-6 percent.

Japanese, like German, imperialism is remilitarising to an extent not previously considered politically possible given the horrors inflicted by their militaries on the world’s population during the Second World War. Japan too is gearing up its armed forces in preparation for war with the same nations it invaded with such horrendous consequences only a lifetime ago.

The return of the arms race that characterised most of the 20th century points to the re-eruption of the same question which drove the world to catastrophe in 1914 and 1939—who will dominate the world, both economically and strategically?

The existential crisis of US imperialism—its explosive internal tensions and waning global economic supremacy—has provoked an unending series of imperialist wars and interventions intended to reverse its fortunes that has now escalated to the point of a direct confrontation alongside its allies with Russia and China.

Everywhere, the ruling class’s war aims depend on an assault on the living standards of the working class. Boosts to military spending last year took place as price rises drove an unprecedented fall in real wages—2.2 percent across the G20 for just the first six months of 2022, according to the International Labour Organization. Inflation is also being used by governments to erode the real-terms value of social spending on services like health care, education and welfare support.

These cuts are driving millions of workers into strikes and protests, to which the ruling elites respond with a turn to dictatorial forms of rule, as with Macron’s enacting pension cuts by decree and police repression of protests.

Australia eases citizenship requirements for New Zealanders as countries strengthen military ties

Tom Peters

Last weekend Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a policy change that will remove long-standing barriers for New Zealanders living in Australia to gain citizenship.

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, left, meets Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra, Australia, Tuesday, February 7, 2023. [AP Photo/Hilary Wardhaugh]

In 2001, the right-wing Australian government led by Prime Minister John Howard introduced strict criteria making it much harder for New Zealanders to gain permanent residence and citizenship. As of 2016, New Zealanders could only apply if they had worked consecutively in Australia for five years, earning at least $53,900 a year, an insuperable barrier for hundreds of thousands of working class people.

Any New Zealander moving to Australia after 2001 could live and work there indefinitely under a temporary Special Category Visa (SCV), with no access to welfare benefits, public housing, student loans, disability support and no right to vote. Around 670,000 New Zealand citizens live in Australia (more than a tenth of the NZ population) and roughly half have no residence or citizenship. In recent years, Australia has deported hundreds of New Zealanders for often minor offences, including many who grew up in Australia. 

Under the new rules, New Zealanders on SCVs will be able to apply for citizenship from July if they have lived in Australia for four years, and the income threshold has been removed. 

The discrimination against New Zealanders was one component of the anti-immigrant measures enforced by successive Labor and Coalition governments, including the ongoing imprisonment of refugees in detention centres. New Zealand, for its part, has similar discriminatory policies, including frequent deportations of migrants from the Pacific, Asia and elsewhere. These broader anti-immigrant measures will remain unchanged.

The announcement of the new policy for New Zealanders in Australia has been exploited for maximum political advantage both by the Albanese government, as well as Chris Hipkins’ Labour Party-led government in NZ, which faces an election in October. In both countries, the established parties are increasingly discredited by the cost of living crisis, soaring social inequality and a catastrophic situation in public hospitals and aged care facilities caused by the decision to let COVID-19 rip.

One motivation behind the relaxation of citizenship criteria, which had been opposed by successive governments in Australia for more than two decades, is that the Albanese government is desperate to encourage immigration to fill labour shortages across all sectors of the economy. The tight labour market, caused in part by never-ending waves of illness from COVID-19, is an obstacle to the ruling elite’s plan to intensify exploitation by pushing up unemployment and reducing wages and conditions.

The timing of the deal and the rhetoric surrounding it, however, makes clear that it is part of a more fundamental push for closer strategic and military ties between Australia and New Zealand as both countries integrate themselves into US-led war preparations against China. The less restrictive citizenship rules, while they will undoubtedly be welcomed by working people in both countries, are not being done out of humanitarian motivations. 

The changes were in fact negotiated last year, but Hipkins, who visited Australia over the weekend, said the announcement was “deliberately timed to be on the closest weekend to Anzac Day… [to] reaffirm our incredibly strong Anzac mateship.” Anzac Day, April 25, is a public holiday in Australia and NZ that marks the entry of both countries into World War I in the Allies’ disastrous invasion of Gallipoli in Turkey.

The day is characterised by patriotic military parades and political speeches that glorify all the wars that Australia and NZ troops have fought in, including the bloody invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

At a joint press conference in Australia Hipkins said the “historic” citizenship agreement “will make an enormous difference to the lives of so many people making Australia home.” He immediately added that he and Albanese had “discussed the geostrategic challenges in our region and how, as allies, Australia and New Zealand can continue to work together to advance our common interests and values.”

Albanese was asked by one journalist whether he considered Australia and New Zealand to be “close allies when it comes to responding strategically in our region, in particular [in response to] China?” He replied: “We are absolutely close allies and will remain that in perpetuity.”

Hipkins endorsed the AUKUS military pact between Australia, the UK and United States, which will supply Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines and ramp up collaboration between the imperialist powers throughout the Indo-Pacific region, as they gear up for war with China. 

“New Zealand agrees with the AUKUS partners that the collective objective needs to be the delivery of peace and stability and the preservation of an international rules-based system in our region,” Hipkins said. Defending the “rules-based system” established by US imperialism following World War II is the pretext for an unprecedented military build-up in the Indo-Pacific and continual military provocations against China.

New Zealand is a minor imperialist power, allied with Australia and part of the US-led Five Eyes intelligence network. Successive NZ governments have, however, been reluctant to say anything that might threaten the lucrative trade relationship with China, which takes about 30 percent of New Zealand’s exports.

This is now changing, as it becomes ever more clear that Washington is intent on provoking a Third World War against both Russia and China, to secure its domination over the world’s resources and markets. 

The Hipkins government has indicated that it is prepared to join some aspects of AUKUS, including the sharing of military and intelligence technology. 

Earlier this month, the Australian and New Zealand armies signed Plan ANZAC, an agreement to closely integrate their operations and share resources in anticipation of new conflicts. Chief of Australian Army Lieutenant General Simon Stuart said the plan would enhance “interoperability, capacity, ability to jointly support combat operations” and “will see both armies better prepared to work together to support security and stability missions.”

After signing the deal, Stuart and the head of the New Zealand Army, Major General John Boswell, travelled together to Fiji and Vanuatu to strengthen ties with military forces in the small Pacific island countries. Australia and New Zealand are seeking to push back against growing Chinese influence across the Pacific, which the ruling elite in both countries view as their colonial backyard.

A significant aspect of the new pathway to citizenship is that it will give hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders in Australia the “right” to enlist in the Defence Force, which is carrying out its biggest recruitment drive since the Vietnam War, and its biggest expansion in spending since the Second World War.

The New Zealand Herald, meanwhile, has marked Anzac Day by lamenting the “unbelievable surge” in people leaving the military. With just 9,000 active personnel and attrition rates of more than 15 percent, journalist Pete McKenzie stated that “if [the Defence Force] was asked to do a long-term peace-keeping mission in the Pacific, for example, it probably wouldn’t be able to do that, according to the people I spoke to.”

Amid the escalating US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, and declarations by the US that war with China is likely within the next two years, the Australian and New Zealand ruling elites are scrambling to build up their military forces and to place their countries on a war footing. 

The invocations of the “Anzac spirit” and enduring “mateship” by Australian and New Zealand politicians serve the crucial ideological function of glorifying the “sacrifices” made by working people in past wars, in order to condition the population for even more devastating wars in the future.

China economic growth up but major problems mount

Nick Beams

China has reported a better-than-expected growth rate for the first three months of the year but there are a number of questions hanging over the economy. These include the increase of debt held by local government authorities, the sustainability of consumer demand and the worsening effects of US technology bans.

A worker assembles electronic devices at an Alco Electronics factory in Houjie Town, Dongguan City, in the Guangdong province of China. [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

Data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics last week showed the economy had advanced at a rate of 4.5 percent for the first three months of the year, considerably better than the 2.2 percent growth in the December quarter, and above market predictions of a 4 percent increase.

But the bureau said that while the first quarter had “made a good start,” domestic demand remained “inadequate” and the “foundation for economic recovery is not solid yet.”

The main driver of the increase was consumer spending with retail sales growing by 10.6 percent in March following the abandonment by the Xi Jinping regime of its previous “zero Covid” policy at the end of last year.

Exports were another key driver, expanding by 14.8 percent over the year to March compared to expectations of a decline of 5 percent. How long this surge might continue is another question as economists expect a slowdown in the US and Europe.

The International Monetary Fund has forecast that growth in the US will slow to 1.6 percent this year, down from 2.1 percent in 2022, while the growth rate for the eurozone is predicted to be only 0.8 percent.

The parlous state of the global economy is highlighted by the expectation that lower Chinese growth will account for around one-third of total world growth this year, according to the IMF.

It has said the world economy will grow by only 2.8 percent this year which, apart from the major contraction in 2020 when the pandemic hit, is the lowest level since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

But China is not going to come to the rescue as it has in the past. As Louise Loo, China economist at Oxford Economics in Singapore, put it: “Anyone looking for China to save the global economy this year might be somewhat disappointed.”

Internally, the property market and real estate development, which have been key components of Chinese growth for more than a decade, continue to remain under pressure because of liquidity and financial problems that have led to a series of defaults as credit conditions have been tightened.

Real estate investment fell by 5.8 percent in the first quarter, home sales dropped by 1.8 percent and new housing starts declined sharply by 19.2 percent year on year.

Growing financial problems were pointed to in a recent report by Bloomberg. It said that while China had so far not experienced a financial crisis, despite close calls, there was an elephant in the room in the form of Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs). For years local authorities had relied on them to finance major infrastructure projects and to support their regional economies.

But this had resulted in a massive increase in debt such that LGFV borrowings at $12.4 trillion are equivalent to 48 percent of China’s GDP and are almost the same as central and local government debt combined.

This financial edifice has been maintained to a considerable degree by the revenue local governments obtain from land sales, but over the last year this dropped by 23 percent.

The problems for the Chinese economy and the Beijing leadership were outlined by long-time China analyst Eswar Prasad, even as he extolled what he called the “stunning” growth of the Chinese economy in recent decades.

In a paper prepared for the National Bureau of Economic Research earlier this month, Prasad said the huge build-up of domestic debt and the highly volatile prices of stocks, property and other assets were “emblematic” of a number of problems.

Beijing now faced a series of policy dilemmas, some of its own making, he wrote. These included: how to reduce debt while maintaining growth; how to reduce energy-intensive production while the economy continued to rely on heavy industry; how to restrain wealth inequality while relying on the private sector to generate more wealth, and how to encourage private sector innovation while cutting private enterprises down to size.

The economic issues and problems are inextricably connected to political ones. Having long ago abandoned any, even nominal, connection to socialism, under conditions where social inequality has widened, the Xi regime is tolerated by the population to the extent that it is seen as promoting economic growth.

It used to maintain that social stability required a growth rate of at least 8 percent. Now the official target is just 5 percent, amid concerns that even this rate will only be obtained this year with considerable difficulty.

The regime sits atop a potential social powder keg because the very economic expansion over the past three decades has led to the growth of the working class, numbering around 400 million, as economic prospects become gloomier.

As the Financial Times noted in a recent article: “The ruling Chinese Communist Party claims legitimacy from its ability to improve the lives of the country’s 1.4 billion people, but a structural slowdown in manufacturing has hampered its ability to boost employment.”

This is seen in the persistence and increase in youth unemployment. There are now 30 million Chinese people aged 16 to 24 who are out of work, with the youth jobless rate rising by 3 percentage points from the December to March quarter.

The Xi regime is well aware that the growing problems of the economy and the class tensions to which they will give rise cannot be resolved through the methods developed since the restoration of capitalism three decades ago.

Neither production of cheap consumer goods, as took place in the 1990s and the early years of this century, nor the reliance on massive infrastructure and real estate development, as occurred following the global financial crash of 2008, provides a way out.

Hence the turn by the regime to high-tech development as the key driver of further economic development which is central to its maintenance of political power.

However, here it has run headlong into a major obstacle in the form of US imperialism which regards the growth of Chinese technological development as an existential threat to its global dominance and is determined to crush it by all means necessary, including war.

Like its counterparts in the former USSR, which maintained that the concept of imperialism was not the expression of objective economic and political reality but a figment of Marxist imagination, the Chinese Stalinist-Maoist leadership considered, as it restored capitalism, that it would be able to manoeuvre and join the “family of nations” through a “peaceful” rise.

US imperialism is determined to crush such a development, regarding it as an existential threat to its economic dominance.

The high-tech bans it has imposed on China, begun under Trump and intensified under Biden, are already causing major problems.

Last month, the Financial Times carried a report on one of China’s richest counties, Kunshan, located just 50km from Shanghai. Tech bans introduced by the US have led to firms relocating out of the country.

Factory owners are cutting back with some reducing wages by as much as a third, according to the report.

It stated: “The labour market weakness has been exacerbated by Taiwanese manufacturers, the county’s biggest employer, relocating to other countries, to limit their exposure to US-China tensions.”

One logistics company owner said shipments from the county had dropped by at least a third in the first quarter of this year.

And the pressure on China is going to intensify, not lessen, as a major speech by US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen on US-China relations delivered last week made clear.

The speech was generally welcomed as offering accommodation for China or even as an olive branch. But as a Foreign Policy column by economic historian Adam Tooze indicated, it was anything but that.

He said Yellen had presented a “goldilocks vision” in which US bans were targeted and not directed at the broader economy.

Tooze responded: “But as everyone knows, those targeted measures have so far included massive efforts to hobble the world leader in 5G technology, Huawei, sanctions against the entire chip industry supply, and the inclusion of most major research universities in China on America’s entities list that strictly limits trade.”

Tooze, who would like to believe that Yellen’s speech was intended to be “reasonably accommodating,” nevertheless found it “jarring” that China had to accept America’s demarcation of the status quo and if it did not “then it should expect to face massive sanctions.”

And it was hard to see how Yellen’s “vision in which the United States arrogates to itself the right to define which trajectory of Chinese economic growth is and is not acceptable, can possibly be a basis for peace.”