New studies reveal growing epidemic of nurse suicides in the US

Alex Johnson 

New studies show that nurse suicides are reaching epidemic proportions, as the mental health strain on these health care workers is driving increasing numbers of them to take their own lives. MedPage Today last month analyzed national data extracted from Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, a research division of the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, which conducted the first national investigation of nurse suicides in more than 20 years.

Judy Davidson, RN, DNP, and her colleagues at USCD acquired most of their data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). The researchers found that suicide incidence among nurses, male and female alike, was significantly higher than in the general population. For female nurses, the incidence of suicide was 11.97 per 100,000 while the incidence for male nurses was found to be more than three times that rate, at 39.8 per 100,000.

One researcher for the study told MedPage Today, “This national data confirms what we previously suspected given our local findings, that nurses are at higher risk of suicide than the general population.” Among the subgroups of nurses at higher risk for suicide were nurse anesthetists and retired nurses.

The study also determined the methods of suicides that were the most prevalent. According to the researchers, suicides frequently involved pharmaceuticals, at a rate of 35.1 percent, while firearms were used at a rate of 33.7 percent. Nurses’ access to drugs plays no small role in this distribution. Among the general US population, firearms and pharmaceuticals account for 55.1 percent and 9.1 percent of suicides, respectively.

A study released by Dr. Ben Windsor-Shellard in 2015 linked the disturbing disparity between suicides among female nurses and suicides in the general female population to the access to lethal doses of medications. Windsor-Shellard also noted that lower-paid health care practitioners had higher rates of suicide than higher-paid managers and CEOs.

Davidson, a psychiatrist and nurse, said her interest in the issue of nurse suicides arose after three nurses at UCSD took their own lives within a brief time-span. In 2018, Davidson coauthored a 2018 National Academy of Medicine paper which found that nurses work in one of the most high-pressure environments in the US, with demands for optimal performance being a decisive factor in accelerating feelings of distress and depression.

Besides being in a stressful work environment, nurses are frequently exposed to some of the most disheartening forms of human suffering and death, which contributes to ethics-related stress and increasing dissatisfaction with their work. Although the prevalence of major depressive disorder among nurses is not known, one study mentioned in the paper said that depressive symptoms are found in 41 percent, while another reported 18 percent.

Of the 18 states that were included in the NVDRS’s data set, the researchers found 205 suicides among the 14,774 documented. According to the study, “Nurses were statistically significantly more likely to have reported mental health problems, history of treatment for mental illness, history of previous suicide attempt, leaving a suicide note and physical health problems than the general population.”

Despite the alarming increases in suicide attempts and depressive symptoms, hospitals and clinics have done very little to alleviate the emotional burdens that plague nurses. Nurses have reported a lack of social and professional support within their work settings. They are trained to work under the most strenuous conditions, dealing with human beings hard-hit by discouraging, sometimes tragic circumstances.

Nurses work in high-speed inpatient settings and are exposed to patients’ debilitating physical diseases and psychological trauma. Although institutions may vary, health care environments in general, and for nurses in particular, are known to be harsh and intimidating, causing workers to suppress their feelings and become emotionally aloof until these conditions take their toll.

Leah Helmbrecht, a traveling nurse, wrote an op-ed on nurse.org about her frustrating experience as a new nurse, “I felt like I was in an abusive relationship...with my job,” said Leah. For every shift, she would have to care for six to eight patients, doing things from inserting catheters and helping patients to the bathroom to monitoring vitals and discharging patients.

These arduous tasks would have to be completed all while getting yelled at by patients and their families for the delay in responding to their requests. “It got to the point where I would go to work every day to get yelled at and go home and cry. I was put on an antidepressant, which helped numb the pain, but didn’t make it go away.”

US Kaiser Permanente workers vote overwhelmingly in favor of strike

Dan Conway

In a vote on Monday, more than 98 percent of Kaiser Permanente workers represented by SEIU United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) voted in favor of strike action against the health care behemoth. The vote is a powerful expression of opposition to decades of attacks on workers by the multi-trillion dollar US health care industry.

More than 37,000 employees voted in favor of a strike, more than two-thirds of the overall SEIU-UHW membership. The remainder of the group, the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente unions, will vote between now and early September, raising the possibility of a strike by more than 80,000 workers throughout the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Issues that motivated the strike vote were the ensuring of adequate and safe staffing levels, protection of jobs and benefits, including the maintenance of a defined pension benefit, and opposition to the practice of hiring unlicensed and unaccredited staff members.

Kaiser Permanente, a supposed non-profit, is the largest managed health organization in the United States with more than 12 million members, posting more than $5 billion in net income during the first two quarters of 2019 alone, more than its net income in the entirety of 2018.

This has largely been the result of the company imposing onerous conditions on its 217,000-employee workforce along with downsizing and the imposition of the so-called “Kaiser Model” of patient care. The model, which has spearheaded various innovations in the health care industry including the consolidation and centralization of health care records and the use of technology to better integrate and streamline care delivery, is being utilized to ration health care and otherwise cut costs.

The company advances the claim that various lifestyle changes can in many cases completely obviate the need for hospital-based treatment and thus save billions of dollars in expenses. According to a 2015 analysis of the model conducted by the Brookings Institution, “The financial incentive [of the Kaiser model] is to provide high quality, affordable care and manage population health rather than generating high volume of compensable services.”

Kaiser has recently launched, in partnership with CVS and Target, the 7th and 8th largest retailers in the US respectively, a series of “minute” clinics meant to provide non-emergency medical services for members outside of the Kaiser service area. It also launched last May a partnership with the Unite US social care coordination platform to “address the social factors that impact the overall health and well-being of individuals across the country.” The company has also heavily utilized the practice of virtual medicine, encouraging and in some cases mandating doctor consultations via phone or video conference in place of office visits.

The emergence of such practices along with other now ubiquitous technologies such as fitness trackers and health-related mobile applications have the potential to improve public health. Kaiser and other hospital and insurance chains, however, utilize these methods largely to steer patients away from more expensive yet necessary treatments in order to increase their bottom lines.

While the company as a whole is listed as a non-profit, making it exempt from many federal and tax obligations, many Kaiser doctors are part of what is known as the Permanente Medical Group, or TPMG, which is the for profit arm of the company. TPMG doctors are encouraged to limit patient visits to as short a time period as possible and to recommend the cheapest treatments available.

This cost cutting along with regular employee attrition and the attendant overworking of remaining workers along with the recent consolidation of Kaiser’s extensive real estate holdings across the Western US has made the company’s executives among the highest paid of any health care organization in the US. Thirty-six of its top executives make more than a million dollars a year in salary. Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson led the pack with $16 million in salary in 2019, an increase of 74 percent over the previous year. In an absurd and cynical statement, a Kaiser press release addressing such astronomically high salaries stated that, “Delivering care that is affordable is critical, which is why a third of Kaiser senior leaders’ total compensation is tied to performance-based incentives.”

Many of the hospital workers who voted in favor of a strike make $44,000 a year or less, meaning they would have to work 363 years to make what Tyson makes in only one single year.

While Kaiser executives rake in millions, workers are forced to endure increasingly harsh conditions of low pay, overwork and severe under-staffing. One Kaiser nurse in Southern California spoke to the WSWS about the conditions she faces on a regular basis. The nurse wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.

“I started with Kaiser 20 years ago and it was one of my first jobs out of school. There were always problems on the job but in the past few years they’ve only gotten worse. A lot of nurses and therapists who have been with Kaiser for a long time are let go all of a sudden with little or no warning.

“I had a coworker who was given a disciplinary review for taking an extra five minutes on his break. The whole review process lasted for about two weeks and then he was gone. Another coworker I know openly complained about being understaffed and she was let go soon after. Both of these incidents took place within the past year alone.

“Neither of the positions have been back-filled,” the nurse said. “This isn’t like a factory or an office building where you can lay off a number of employees all at once. Instead they do it piece by piece. It is extremely hard to work like this where you fear for your job almost every day. It makes me so angry every time I hear [actress and Kaiser spokeswoman] Allison Janney on the radio. It sounds so compassionate and caring, but it’s so at odds with what actually takes place in the hospitals and med centers.

Financial turbulence continues as major economies move towards recession

Nick Beams

Markets around the world fell yesterday in response to the biggest fall on Wall Street for the year on Wednesday, amid further indications from bond markets and production data that the global economy is moving into recession.

In response to the Wall Street decline, markets in Asia fell, with Japan’s Topix index down 1 percent while the Australian market dropped 2.9 percent, wiping $60 billion off share values. Markets in Europe also fell before recovering some of their losses later in the day.

Yesterday Wall Street whipsawed in response to news reports on the state of the US-China trade war. Futures markets were down before the start of trade on the basis of a statement from Beijing that it would “retaliate” against the latest imposition of tariffs by the US, but the market rose in response to what was seen as a more conciliatory statement from Beijing.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said: “We hope the US can work in concert with China to implement the two presidents’ consensus that was reached in Osaka, and to work out a mutually acceptable solution through equal-footed dialogue and consultation with mutual respect.”

But any prospect of such a resolution appears no closer with Trump saying that any agreement with China had to be “on our terms.”

As trade war tensions show no sign of easing, the bond markets continue to send out signals that the conditions for a recession are building. This week the yield curve inverted in both the US and the UK, meaning that the yield on two-year government debt rose above that on ten-year bonds. This is regarded as a forecast of recession because it indicates that investors are seeking a “safe haven.”

Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid told the Financial Times: “For me yesterday’s … inversion is the one that worries me the most. In my opinion, it has the best track record for predicting an upcoming recession over more cycles than any of the others.”

In a further indication of the worsening economic outlook, the yield on 30-year US Treasury bonds dropped below 2 percent, for the first time ever, reaching its lowest level on records going back to the 1970s.

The historically unprecedented conditions now prevailing in financial markets—the result of the pumping out of trillions of dollars by the world’s central banks in response to the global financial crisis of 2008—is indicated by the latest data on negative yielding debt.

Bonds with a negative yield, meaning that investors would make a loss if they held them to maturity, have risen to $16 trillion, after passing the $15 trillion mark just 10 days ago. At the end of last year the value of bonds with negative yield was $8 trillion, meaning that it has doubled in just eight months.

And the central banks are preparing to pump still more money into financial markets. The US Federal Reserve is set to cut its base rate by at least 0.25 percentage points in September and possibly more, while the European Central Bank (ECB) is set to make a major move on monetary policy when it meets next month.

It will be a large-scale operation as indicated by remarks by Olli Rehn, the governor of Finland’s central bank and a member of the ECB’s governing council, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

“It is important that we come up with a significant and impactful policy package in September,” he said.

“When you’re working with financial markets, it’s often better to overshoot than undershoot and better to have a very strong package of policy measures than to tinker.”

The measures under consideration include a further cut in the ECB key interest rate, already sitting at minus 0.4 percent, and a resumption of its asset purchasing program after the ECB had previously decided to phase it out. Rehn pointed to a series of risks, including an unstable political situation in Italy, an economic slowdown in China, uncertainties caused by the US-China trade conflict and the prospect of a hard Brexit as justification for the ECB move.

Scotland records highest drug fatality rate in the UK

Stephen Alexander

Drug-related deaths in Scotland soared by 27 percent to 1,187 in 2018, the highest figure since records began in 1996, according to National Records of Scotland (NRS). Most of the deaths were the result of “accidental poisoning,” the official term for an overdose.

This amounts to 218 drug deaths per million people, roughly three times the rate for the UK as a whole and higher even than in the US—considered the overdose capital of the world.

The deaths have fallen disproportionately on poor, urban areas of the former industrial working class. Dundee City Council area registered the highest rate with 0.31 deaths per 1,000 of population, followed by Glasgow (0.30) and Inverclyde (0.25). Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh, registered 0.16 deaths per 1,000 of population—still far higher than the UK-wide fatality rate.

Elinor Dickie, a public health advisor at NHS (National Health Service) Health Scotland, emphasised that drug addiction is 17 times higher in Scotland’s poorest areas compared to the wealthiest. “We know from the evidence,” Dickie wrote in Aberdeen’s The Press and Journal newspaper, “that problem drug use is related to social circumstance: job loss, experiences of poverty, childhood adversity and trauma all being factors.”

Although the overwhelming majority of drug fatalities, 86 percent, are linked to the abuse of opioids, including heroin, morphine and methadone, the NRS report attributes the surge in drug deaths to the recent growth of “poly-drug” abuse.

The consumption of opioids in combination with “street” benzodiazepines or “street Valium,” which have flooded Scotland’s cities since 2012, has been particularly lethal. Normally prescribed on a temporary basis for anxiety or stress, street versions of benzodiazepines, such as Etizolam pills, vary in quality and strength. They drastically heighten the risk of an opioid overdose due to their sedative effect on the respiratory system.

While street Valium was implicated in 675 or 57 percent of deaths, prescriptible benzodiazepines diverted from NHS prescriptions were involved in 238 or 20 percent of all deaths. Gabapentin/Pregabalin, another prescriptible non-opioid pain and anxiety medication, was involved in 367 deaths (31 percent). Common recreational drugs, cocaine, ecstasy and other amphetamines, were involved in 273 deaths (23 percent), 35 deaths (3 percent) and 46 deaths (4 percent), respectively. Alcohol featured in 156 drug-related deaths (13 percent).

The vast majority of drug fatalities, 72 percent, were male. But over the past decade, overdoses among women surged by 212 percent compared to 75 percent for men.

Among older generations of long-term victims of drug addiction, 35- to 44-year-olds accounted for 442 drug deaths (37 percent), followed by 345 fatalities (29 percent) among 45- to 54-year-olds. Many of these people became hooked in their youth during the heroin epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, which blighted areas of high youth unemployment and poverty. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Bradford and the Welsh Valley were among the worst hit.

This was a direct product of the Conservative Thatcher government’s (1979-1991) vicious, anti-working-class policies of cuts, deindustrialisation, widespread privatisation and financial deregulation. This agenda has been honoured by successive Labour and Conservative administrations, together with the devolved governments, and was deepened in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

The epidemic of drug deaths has been building for the best part of a quarter century. According to NRS data, approximately 250 drug-related fatalities were recorded in Scotland in the mid-1990s. By 2008, this number had more than doubled to 574. Fatalities then remained at between 500 and 600 for several years, before surging again by 107 percent to nearly 1,200 in just the past five years (2013-2018).

While conditions in the rest of the UK have been overshadowed by the scale of the crisis in Scotland, the latest figures for England and Wales show that drug deaths are also at record levels: 66.1 deaths per million of population in 2017, compared to 42.9 per million in 1993.

Hospital workers strike spreads throughout France

Anthony Torres

The strike by French hospital workers against the Macron administration’s healthcare legislation, which came into force in March, is spreading throughout the country. Of the 478 emergency services in the country, 216 are now involved in the movement that began in March and involved 80 hospitals by June.

The urgent care nurses and assistants are opposing Health Bill 2022 and the systematic deterioration of conditions for staff and patients that has been implemented over decades. Driven by spending cuts and the demands for “competitiveness,” hospital directors are implementing ever-more destructive cost-cutting measures, creating shortages of doctors and temporarily closing services.

Confronted with growing anger, Health Minister Agnès Buzyn contemptuously announced 70 million euros in additional funding, assigned to increase by 100 euros per month the bonus paid to emergency staff to account for the inherent physical dangers of the work. This did not calm the anger of the workers, who are demanding 10,000 additional jobs, a wage increase of 300 euros net per month, and an end to all bed closures.

Buzyn had to flee the hospital at La Rochelle on July 12, after being pursued by a group of protesting workers. Buzyn, who knows the hospital well from her work there as a doctor, had supposedly gone to assess the mood of staff over the conditions in the facility.

Between 1996 and 2016, the number of people treated in the country’s emergency care services increased from 10 million to 21 million. In 2018, according to SAMU-Urgences de France, 180,000 patients spent a night on a stretcher in the hallways of the urgent care wards.

At the Sainte-Foy-la-Grande hospital in northern Gironde, for example, the emergency service has been closed between 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 a.m. from August 1 to 31. Patients requiring care during these night hours are redirected to the Bergerac hospital in the Dordogne, about 20 kilometers away.

Because of a shortage of doctors, the Pithiviers hospital cancelled its mobile care unit, the Mobile Emergency and Resuscitation Service (SMUR), for 18 days, giving priority to its on-site services instead. The SMUR units of Montargis and Orléans are taking on the additional responsibilities, with longer intervention times as a result, as they too are struggling to recruit doctors over the summer.

According to Vincent Authié, a stretcher bearer and delegate for the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) trade union: “It’s true that we are in a region particularly affected by doctor shortages, but the management anticipates nothing. It does not make plans for staff schedules. We have known for a long time that there would be a problem.” The staff of the hospital joined the national protest movement at the beginning of the summer.

The emergency department of Beaumont-sur-Oise Hospital has joined the national strike movement. There are about 70 per cent of workers listed as participating in the strike movement among paramedical staff, although the service is continuing to operate.

Canada: New federal law expands national security agencies’ repressive powers

Laurent Lafrance 

As one of its last legislative acts before this fall’s federal election, Canada’s Liberal government has pushed through passage of its anti-democratic Bill C-59, “An Act Respecting National Security Matters.”

Bill C-59 expands the state’s power to spy on the population and further entrenches the new, repressive powers that the previous, Stephen Harper-led Conservative government gave the national-security agencies in 2015 on the phony claim Canada was under siege from jihadi terrorists.

Providing yet further proof that they are a right-wing capitalist party, Elizabeth May and her Green Party voted for Bill C-59 and are echoing the Liberals’ claims that it “balances” Canadians’ democratic rights with the need for “security.”

The social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) opposed the new law, citing criticisms from civil liberties and privacy groups. But they mounted no campaign to alert the population as to its reactionary provisions; just as they have remained almost entirely silent on the Trudeau Liberal government’s integration of Canada into Washington’s military-strategic offensives around the world, its plans to hike the military budget by more than 70 percent by 2026 and its complicity in Trump’s vicious anti-immigrant campaign.

Thanks in large part to the revelations of US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, it is public knowledge that Canada’s premier domestic spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the country’s signals intelligence agency, are carrying out mass surveillance operations that violate the constitutional rights of millions of Canadians and others around the world. Canada’s national-security agencies are implicated in espionage activities against foreign countries, their leaders, and the corporate rivals of Canadian big business, but also against opposition movements both abroad and at home.

Well aware of the strong popular hostility to such anti-democratic intrigues, the Liberals have sought to justify the handing of more powers to the intelligence agencies by portraying Canada as a country under threat from hostile actors. They justified their push to enact Bill C-59 in late June by touting the totally unsubstantiated claims of Canada’s intelligence agencies that Russia or other powers might “interfere” in the coming federal election campaign.

In this, the Trudeau government was drawing on the reactionary efforts of the US political and military-security establishments to use bogus allegations that Russia massively meddled in the 2016 US elections to push for a more aggressive policy against Moscow, increased powers for the intelligence apparatuses, and censorship of the internet.

What is contained in Bill C-59?

Introduced to parliament in June 2017, Bill C-59 is the Liberals’ supposed “reform” of the law Harper and his Conservatives passed in 2015 to strengthen the powers and reach of the national security agencies. So reactionary was Harper’s Bill C-51 that even the pro-Conservative Globe and Mail decried it as a “police state” measure.

Trudeau and his Liberals voted for Bill C-51, but conscious of the strong popular opposition to it, pledged that they would repeal parts of it if they came to power after the October 2015 election.

In fact, Bill C-59 retains all of Bill C-51’s core anti-democratic provisions. Trudeau has sought to camouflage this by touting his legislation’s creation of new oversight or “watchdog” mechanisms, including an Intelligence Commissioner and a National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA).

As the World Socialist Web Site noted in its initial analysis of Bill C-59, “These mechanisms are nothing more than a fig leaf, aimed at providing the intelligence agencies with a legal-constitutional cover to spy on opponents of the government and big business—environmentalists, native organizations, leftist and antiwar groups, and above all the working class.” For all the talk of ensuring the national-security agencies respect Canadians’ constitutionally-protected democratic rights, the NSIRA’s mandate is not to inform the population of the spy agencies’ violations of the law, but to prepare confidential reports for the government and the spy agencies themselves. Its members are bound to secrecy even when they uncover illegal acts and the government has wide powers to withhold information from the NSIRA, including on all ongoing security-intelligence operations.

Underlining the NDP’s firm support for and full integration into the criminal activities of Canadian imperialism, retiring New Democrat MP Murray Rankin has accepted the Liberal government’s offer to serve as the first NSIRA chair.

Bill C-59 enshrines the new power Bill C-51 granted CSIS to actively “disrupt” what the Canadian state deems are threats to “national security” and to violate virtually any law when doing so. The legislation’s only restrictions on CSIS’s right to “disrupt” are that a judge must approve the target through the issuing of a “disruption” warrant, and that the agency’s actions must not cause bodily harm or violate the target’s “sexual integrity.” “Disruption” techniques could include breaking into homes, interfering with bank accounts and other personal data, intercepting mail and other packages, destroying property, illegally detaining persons, and running “false flag” and other “dirty tricks” operations.

The Liberals have gone even further than the Conservatives by granting CSE an explicit mandate to mount cyber-war attacks against foreign targets, including states’ computer infrastructure and communication networks. This was in response to criticism from the political establishment and military-security apparatus that the spy agencies were previously limited, at least officially, only to “defensive” operations.

Trump administration sabotages Endangered Species Act

Kevin Martinez

The Trump administration has announced a major overhaul in the way it would enforce the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The changes allow federal authorities to take economic considerations into account when protecting a certain species. Environmental groups say the new rules will push more plants and animals into extinction from habitat loss and climate change.

Since 1973 when the Endangered Species Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon, more than 1,600 species of wildlife have been legally protected in the US and its territories. The act has been credited for saving the bald eagle, California condor, the grizzly bear and dozens of other species from extinction.

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who made billions as an asset stripper in steel and other industries, spoke for the most rapacious sections of big business, declaring, “The revisions finalized with this rule-making fit squarely within the president’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public …”

Wildlife experts have criticized the administration’s moves, with Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity saying, “These changes crash a bulldozer through the Endangered Species Act’s lifesaving protections for America’s most vulnerable wildlife. For animals like wolverines and monarch butterflies, this could be the beginning of the end.”

According to environmental group Earthjustice, the Endangered Species Act has stopped 99 percent of its protected species from going extinct. The Act also is also approved by 90 percent of Americans, according to the group.

Pro-business groups like the Property and Environment Research Center welcomed the changes. Executive Director Brian Yablonski said, “Our interest is getting this landmark wildlife protection law to work better. That means fostering conditions so landowners become more enthusiastic in their role as stewards for species recovery, not worried if they find an endangered species on their land.”

The deregulation of environmental rules has long been sought after by Democratic and Republican representatives of big business, with some saying the recent overhaul does not go far enough. Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso said, “These final rules are a good start, but the administration is limited by an existing law that needs to be updated. We must modernize the Endangered Species Act in a way that empowers states, promotes the recovery of species, and allows local economies to thrive.”

Before Monday’s announcement there were several attempts to gut the ESA. Since 2017, there have been about two dozen bills targeting the ESA that were either introduced in Congress or proposed by the Trump administration.

Among the changes proposed by the White House are reducing the protections for any species that are added to the “threatened species” list in the future. Until Monday, animals considered “threatened” were given the same protection as “endangered” animals. Now they will be protected only on a case-by-case basis.

Wall Street plunges on fears of global recession

Nick Beams 

US stock markets experienced their biggest fall for the year yesterday amid clear signs of a growing financial crisis and a marked global economic slowdown, with increased prospects of a recession.

Market indexes on Wall Street opened significantly down and continued to fall throughout the day. The Dow ended down by 800 points, or 3 percent, the S&P 500 fell 2.9 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index dropped by more than 3 percent.

A confluence of factors contributed to the market fall: clear signs of a global contraction; the continuing fall in bond yields; a growing recognition that monetary stimulus by the world’s central banks is not going to bring an upturn in the global economy; a financial crisis in Argentina; the ongoing US-China trade war; political instability in Europe as exemplified in the Brexit crisis and the break-up of the Italian government; and the growth of social opposition in the working class, exemplified by the 10 weeks of protests and demonstrations in Hong Kong.

The trading day opened to the news that the Germany economy had contracted by 0.1 percent in the second quarter, following a similar slowdown in Britain, putting both economies in line for a recession, marked by two consecutive quarters of negative growth. The decline in Germany was a sharp reversal from the first quarter when its economy expanded by 0.4 percent.

The main reason for the decline was the contraction in exports, reflecting the uncertainties resulting from the US-China trade war and the intensifying struggle for markets in the auto industry on which the German economy is heavily dependent. There is no sign of an upturn and a survey of financial analysts released on Tuesday showed that economic sentiment had dropped to its lowest level since the euro zone financial crisis in 2011.

The jobs market is down. Only 1,000 new jobs were created in June compared to an average of 44,000 over the past five years as a series of major companies have started to introduce short-time working.

The impact of trade conflicts on production was also reflected in data from China which showed that value-added industrial production grew by 4.8 percent in July, compared to an increase of 6.3 percent in June and below market expectations of 5.9 percent growth.

One of the most significant developments in yesterday’s turmoil was the emergence of an inverted yield curve in bond markets. This refers to a situation in which the return on long term government debt falls below that on shorter term bonds. This phenomenon is regarded as one of the most accurate indicators of recession as investors seek a “safe haven” in longer term bonds, pushing up their price and lowering their yield.

Yesterday the gap between the yield on two-year and ten-year government debt in both the US and the UK entered negative territory. This is the first time this has happened in the US since 2007 in the lead up to the global financial crisis and recession.

Central banks around the world are either increasing their monetary stimulus or are getting ready to do so. The US Federal Reserve cut its rate by 0.25 percentage points last month and is set to do so again in September, amid growing expectations in financial markets that it may reduce rates by 0.5 percent. The European Central Bank has also indicated that it is set to introduce more monetary stimulus next month, either by further cutting rates or expanding its program of asset purchases.

But there is a clear recognition that the various forms of monetary stimulus practised by the world’s central banks since the financial crisis of 2008, introduced with the claim that they would eventually boost economic growth, have little or no effect on the real economy and that central banks are “pushing on a string”—a term first developed in the Great Depression of the 1930s pointing to the failure of monetary policy.

“The Fed doesn’t have the cure for an economic slowdown or recession,” Kristina Hopper, chief market strategist at Invesco, a major global investment company, told the Wall Street Journal. “But I do think the Fed has the antidote for the stock-market sell-off,” she continued, expressing the demand of the financial elites for still more money to be pumped into the financial system, whatever the consequences.

Adobe Research Women-in-Technology Scholarship 2020 for Female Undergraduate Students in STEM Fields

Application Deadline: 27th September 2019 at 5pm Pacific Time

About the Award: Adobe Research creates innovative technologies for software products to better serve consumers, creative professionals, developers, and enterprises. Adobe brings together the smartest, most driven people to give them the freedom to nurture their intellectual curiosity, while providing them the necessary resources and support to shape their ideas into tangible results.

Fields of Study: This scholarship is intended for students studying computer science, computer engineering, or related technical fields.

Type: Fellowship, Undergraduate

Eligibility: In order to be eligible for the 2020 Adobe Research Women-in-Technology Scholarship, applicants must meet all of the following criteria:

• Be a female student currently enrolled as an undergraduate or masters student at a university for the 2019-2020 academic year.
• Intend to be enrolled as a full-time undergraduate or masters student at a university for the 2020-2021 academic year.
• Be majoring in computer science, computer engineering, or a closely related technical field.
• Maintain a strong academic record
• Not have a close relative working for Adobe Research.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The Adobe Research Women-in-Technology Scholarship includes:

• A $10,000 award paid once.
• A Creative Cloud subscription membership for one year.
• An Adobe Research mentor.
• An opportunity to interview for an internship at Adobe.

How to Apply: Applications must include:

• A resume
• Academic transcripts from your current and/or past institution
• Three references (our online application system will request letters from your references via email)
• Answers to up to four essay questions, which will be available when we start accepting applications
• An optional 60-second video or multimedia submission describing your dream career.

If you have questions, please email adoberesearchwebmaster@adobe.com.
Scholarship recipients will be announced by November 20, 2019.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

AIMS-NEI Big Data for Development Innovation Challenge 2019 for Young African Scientists

Application Deadline: 21st August 2019 at 11:00 PM CAT.

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: The BD4D Innovation Challenge aims to support emerging young African data scientists to develop innovative solutions that leverage new and non-traditional sources of data to address development challenges.

The challenges 
For this pilot program, the following three challenges have been selected. In future editions, there will be additional challenges in different development areas. 
Before submitting your application, we kindly invite you to click on each link below and take time to read the information provided about each challenge.

1. Youth employment 
2. Financial inclusion
3. Food security

Type: Contest

Eligibility:

• The BD4D Innovation Challenge is open to Applicants from member countries of the African Union.
• Applicants may be individuals or teams of individuals. Teams are encouraged to combine skills in data science and data engineering. Applicants are responsible for compliance with the legal requirements of their country. 
• Applicants must submit a solution to one of the 3 challenges above

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Seed funding grants of up to USD 10,000 
• Mentorship support
• Public recognition and opportunity to network 

Selected candidates will pitch at the Final Challenge and compete for seed funding awards and mentorship support. 

Challenge Winners will be selected and awarded for the following categories:

1. Best BD4D-IC solution: Up to $10,000 
2. Most Innovative BD4D-IC solution: Up to $10,000 

 AIMS-NEI will extend an invitation to the winning solutions to explore ways to collaborate in validating, implementing or scaling the project’s reach. All winning projects will be recognized through public communications from the AIMS-NEI, IDRC and the World Bank Group and may be mentioned as part of a high-profile international event where the BD4D network will participate. 
The prizes will be awarded in disbursements, based on a deliverables plan which will be agreed with each team. 

How to Apply:

1. Applicants must use this online form to submit their application for the BD4D Innovation Challenge.
2. The best submissions will be invited to pitch at the Final Pitch Competition. 
3. The Pitching Competition will take place on September 9th, 2019. Winners will be announced on the same day.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

British Council/Prince Claus Fund Mobility Grants 2019 for African Artists

Application Timeline:

• Applications must be received at least 8 weeks before the intended date of travel; applications sent in later can unfortunately not be considered.
• Successful grantees must request reimbursement maximum 4 weeks after the travel has taken place. Reimbursement is granted only after the travel takes place. Applicants that require a pre-payment of the mobility grant may request this. This request will be discussed case by case.

Eligible Countries: Botswana; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Malawi; Mauritius; Mozambique; Namibia; Nigeria; Rwanda; Senegal; Sierra Leone; South Africa; South Sudan; Sudan; Tanzania; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.

To be Taken at (Country): Eligible travel routes that would be supported include travel within the countries listed above as well as between the above listed African countries and countries listed in the DAC list.

About the Award: The British Council, and Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development are issuing a Call for Proposals to support Mobility in and from Africa, specifically prioritising young artists and cultural practitioners from a range of African countries. Through this joint collaboration, we wish to assists in the professional growth and networking possibilities of emerging practitioners from Africa.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: 

• Emerging artists and cultural practitioners are encouraged to apply (individuals or those representing independent cultural/artistic organisations);
• Priority is given to young artists between 18 and 35 yearsof age; Special attention is given to women artists and LGBTQI+ community related projects.
• Applications focusing on contemporary artistic and cultural disciplines including cultural capacity building are encouraged;
• Only applicants travelling from and holding passports of the following countries are eligible for funding: Botswana; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Malawi; Mauritius; Mozambique; Namibia; Nigeria; Rwanda; Senegal; Sierra Leone; South Africa; South Sudan; Sudan; Tanzania; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.
• Destinations eligible are limited to all countries listed in the DAC list;
• If you are disabled or have a physical or mental health condition that makes it difficult for you to travel (on your own) please let us know. In this case you may apply for an additional Access Grant. An Access Grant will contribute to the additional costs incurred as a result of your condition. Please ensure that you clearly state what your access needs are and include the additional costs in your budget requirement in section 3c of the application form. The size of the Access grant will be determined according to your requirements.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The grant amounts are determined based on general market rates depending on country of departure and destinations. The funding available is to be used for travel, visas, accommodation and general subsistence costs

Types of Travel that are Supported

• Attendance at a meeting, festival, conference for the first time to expand professional networks;
• Attendance at capacity development training (e.g. workshops, talent development programmes)
• Participation in a local arts and culture scene followed by knowledge-sharing with local and/or international peers;
• Setting up new (experimental) cross-border partnerships for upcoming projects, particularly those in the preparation or development phase.

How to Apply: Mobility Fund Application Form 2019 PCFXBC doc 156 KB

• The applicant must be the traveller personally and not a host organisation!
• Please download the application, fill it in and send it to tickets@princeclausfund.nl together with a biography/Curriculum Vitae and an invitation letter from the inviting organization
• If granted, applicants must supply scanned copies of original travel receipts, accompanied by a signed digital version of a Narrative Report.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) Postdoctoral Junior Leader fellowships 2019/2020 for International Students – Spain

Application Deadline: 8th October 2019

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): Either of the 2 universities that make the CRAG consortium (University of Barcelona (UB), and Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)), Spain.

About the Award: The postdoctoral fellowships programme, Junior Leader “la Caixa”  is aimed at hiring excellent researchers—of any nationality—who wish to continue their research career in Spain or Portugal. Sponsored by Obra Social ”la Caixa”, the objectives of this programme are to foster high-quality, innovative research and to support the best scientific talents by providing them with an attractive, competitive environment in which to conduct excellent research.
The Junior Leader programme is divided into two different frames:

• “la Caixa” Junior Leader – Incoming: 30 postdoctoral fellowships for researchers of all nationalities. They will be offered a three-year employment contract to conduct a research project at a centre accredited with a distinction of excellence, such as the “Severo Ochoa” (which CRAG holds). For Spanish institutions, candidates must have resided in Spain less than 12 months in the last three years.
• “la Caixa” Junior Leader – Retaining: 15 postdoctoral fellowships for researchers of all nationalities to carry out research at any university or research centre in Spain (including CRAG) or Portugal. For Spanish institutions, candidates must have resided in Spain more than 12 months in the last three years.

By means of a complementary training programme, these fellowships are intended to consolidate research skills and to foster an independent scientific career as an option for the future.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: The program is aimed at international students who have completed one of the following options by July 2019:

• studies that lead to an official Spanish (or from another country of the European Higher Education Area) university degree in Biology, Biochemistry, Biotechnology, or related areas and that have 300 credits (ECTS), of which at least 60 must correspond to master level.
• a degree in a non-Spanish university not adapted to the European Higher Education Area that gives access to doctoral studies in Biology, Biochemistry, Biotechnology or related areas.

2. Candidates are selected exclusively on merit, on the basis of their curriculum. Academic grades and the curriculum of applicants are evaluated, as well as reference letters and a motivation letter. No selection criteria for positive or negative discrimination are applied.
3. Candidates cannot be in possession a PhD Degree.
4. Candidates cannot have been hired as predoctoral students for more than 12 months before the start of the PhD Program.
5. Candidates cannot have started a pre-doctoral fellowship funded by the Spanish “Plan Estatal de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica” or any previous “Plan Nacional”.
The doctoral program is in English. Therefore, a good knowledge of English is absolutely required. We encourage candidates to support the application with scores of internationally valid language exams like TOEFL or other tests. However, they are not mandatory: a verifiable education in English, or a reasonably long stay in an English speaking country are also convincing.

Selection: Applicants will be selected by the Principal Investigator responsible for the chosen project or projects (candidates may apply to more than one project). Successful applicants will start their PhD projects in autumn 2019.

Number of Awards: 45 (30 Postdoctorate Junior Leader – Incoming AND Postdoctorate Junior Leader – Retaining)

Value of Award: Researchers of the Postdoctoral Junior Leader fellowships programme will have a labor contract in accordance with employment legislation in force in Spain or Portugal, pursuant to provisions regarding occupational health and safety and social security, with access to suitable resources, equipment and facilities. Additionally, the fellowship includes mobility and family allowances.

Duration of Programme: 3 Years

How to Apply: 

• If interested in applying, please carefully read the Application requirements and procedure and check out all available projects.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

LafargeHolcim Awards competition in Sustainable Construction (USD 2 million prize money) 2019

Application Deadline: 25th February, 2020 (14:00 UTC)

To be Taken at (Country): Projects evaluated and awarded across five geographic areas: Europe, North America, Latin America, Middle East Africa, and Asia Pacific.

About the Award: The 6th International LafargeHolcim Awards competition seeks leading projects of professionals as well as bold ideas from the Next Generation that combine sustainable construction solutions with architectural excellence.

LafargeHolcim Awards main category

• For exemplary sustainable construction projects at an advanced stage of design from architecture, engineering, urban planning, materials science, construction technology, and related fields.
• No age restriction for project authors.
• Project must not have started construction/fabrication before January 1, 2019.

LafargeHolcim Awards Next Generation category

• For visionary design concepts and bold ideas including design studio and research work.
• Authors can be no older than 30 years of age (date of birth later than June 4, 1988).
• Students and young professionals are also welcome to enter the Awards main category with projects at an advanced stage of design and a high probability of realization.

Type: Award

Eligibility:

• Submissions must be in English.
• Entry content includes author details, project summary, statements on sustainability, CO2 lifecycle assessment (for main category), 5–10 project images.
• Entry is free.
• No limit to number of projects an individual/team may enter.
• Step-by-step guide to entering the competition explaining all details available on website.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• USD 2 million total prize money: USD 330,000 per region including USD 70,000 for Next Generation prizes.
• Global LafargeHolcim Awards in 2021 of USD 350,000 selected from winning projects of the regional competitions 2020.

How to Apply: Apply in Link below

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

The Need for Unity in Ethiopia

Graham Peebles

Ethiopia is a tribal nation, made up of 80 or so different groups, some large some small, some powerful, some not. Large numbers of people, the majority perhaps, identify themselves with their tribe more powerfully than their country, or their region. Tribal affiliation runs deep among all age groups, loyalty is strong, resentment of tribal others can be fierce.

Social divisions along tribal lines, fear and animosity, particularly between the three largest groups – the Oromo, Amhara and Tigrinian – are acute. People within all three are heavily armed; carrying weapons in rural Ethiopia is commonplace, expected even. Isolated conflicts have occurred in various parts of the country in recent months leading to deaths and displacement of people.

Ethiopia now boasts the largest number of internally displaced persons in the world. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (iDMC) states that, “about 2.9 million new displacements associated with conflict were recorded in 2018.” The total number displaced in the country is estimated to be close to four million.

The new government has not responded effectively to this humanitarian crisis or the incidents of tribal-based violence; it appears weak and indecisive, and when it has reacted it has done so in a heavy-handed, clumsy manner. Many Ethiopians, both inside and outside the country are concerned that matters could spiral out of control; one spark, carelessly thrown, could ignite fury, civil war even. This is not a new fear, but it is becoming more widespread, and with every eruption of ethnic violence unease deepens, tensions grow.

The government, under the leadership of PM Abiy Ahmed Ali, appears unclear how to respond to the frustration that many in the country feel. Maintaining Law and order by the police is essential, the military should not be involved, but, they have been deployed to deal with unrest, and the government has on occasion retreated into the Old Ethiopian Way of Control; arresting troublesome journalists and restricting Internet access – the regime still owns the sole telecommunications company. The Committee to Protect Journalists report that “on June 22, Ethiopia was plunged into an internet blackout following what the government described as a failed attempted coup in the Amhara region.”

In the aftermath at least two journalists were detained under the country’s repressive anti-terror law. The draconian Anti-Terrorist Proclamation was introduced in 2009, was described by Human Rights Watch (HRW) at the time as “a potent instrument to crack down on political dissent, including peaceful political demonstrations…. It would permit long-term imprisonment and even the death penalty for ‘crimes’ that bear no resemblance, under any credible definition, to terrorism.” The government has been discussing reforms to the proclamation, but what is required is not endless debate, but for the law to be scrapped immediately and new legislation brought forward.

From dictatorship to Democracy

Until PM Abiy took office, the ruling EPRDF coalition was dominated by a group of men from Tigray under the banner of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). For 23 years they imposed their ideology of ‘Revolutionary Democracy’ – a highly centralized authoritarian political and economic system, which the regime was never able to clearly define. Human rights were ignored, corruption was rife, the judiciary politicized, state terrorism commonplace in various parts of the country, and “ethnic federalism”, a system of regional administration based on ethnicity, introduced. Good on paper, it promised to respect cultural diversity and give autonomy to ethnic groups should they wish it. In practice ethnic federalism was a way for the TPLF to control the people, to “Divide and Rule”. Competition among groups for land, government funding, aid and natural resources increased, historic tribal flags hoisted, differences aggravated and national unity impaired, all by design.

The EPRDF is still in office under PM Abiy, but the cabinet is new (50% women), and the approach has radically changed; democracy is, many hope, a real possibility in the country.

Abdi is Oromo and holds the office of chairman of the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP). Although they constitute the largest group (with around 35% of the population), there has never before been an Oromo Prime Minister. As large numbers of Oromo see it, they have been dominated for generations by people from the Amhara and Tigray regions, who have suppressed and abused them. With an Oromo PM and a large number of Oromo ministers in place many Oromo people believe their time has come; their time for what precisely though, is unclear. Revenge perhaps – dangerous, to redress historic injustices, to gain independence or autonomy – something that is geographically impossible; Oromia sits on land in the center of the country and includes the capital, Addis Ababa.

Since the new government took office in April 2018 political prisoners have been released, prisons – in which torture was routine – closed down, peace established with Eritrea, troops withdrawn from the Ogaden region in the south. Ethiopians living abroad, many of who were critical of the previous regime, were welcomed back, and the media unshackled. A new beginning then, and much to be welcomed. But as the old repressive measures are rejected, deep-seated anger has surfaced; some see the disquiet as an opportunity to advance their narrow political agenda, they exploit the situation, agitating, stirring up anger.

The evolution into democracy, something Ethiopia has never before known, needs to be carefully nurtured if the transition away from fear and suppression is to be peacefully realized. The government is new and needs time, they also need support; Ethiopia’s major beneficiaries, Europe, USA and Britain, need to become engaged. As with the world as a whole, the key for Ethiopia is unity: unity enriched by the diverse tribal cultures and traditions that exist in this beautiful country.

There is a great deal to be done in Ethiopia: it remains one of the poorest countries in the world, and finds itself languishing at 173rd on the UN Human development Index, out of 189 countries. Health care is poor as is the standard of education. Civil society is weak, it lacks a comprehensive legal infrastructure, the judiciary is not trusted; the cost of living is high and inequality extreme. It will take time, cooperation, tolerance and goodwill to address these fundamental societal issues. Every effort needs to be made to unite the disparate groups; no matter the tribe, all are Ethiopian and all have a contribution to make in the New Ethiopia.

Thoughts on China’s Currency

Dean Baker

There is a conventional wisdom on China’s currency that gets repeated almost everywhere and never seems to be challenged in the media. The basic story is that in the bad old days China ‘manipulated” its currency, but that stopped years ago. At present, its currency controls are actually keeping the value of its currency up, not down. As much as I hate to differ with the conventional wisdom, there are a few issues here that deserve closer examination.

First, it’s great see that everyone now agrees that China managed its currency in the last decade. (I prefer the term “manage” to “manipulate,” since the latter implies something sneaky and hidden. There was nothing sneaky about China’s undervalued currency. It had an official exchange rate that it bought trillions of dollars of foreign reserves to maintain.) Unfortunately, almost none of these people acknowledged China’s actions at the time, when the under-valuation of China’s currency was costing the United States millions of manufacturing jobs. Oh well, it wasn’t like the Wall Street bankers were losing their jobs.

The second point is that there is a common assertion that only the buying, not the holding, of reserves affects currency prices. It is easy to show that China is not currently buying large amounts of reserves. In fact, it has been selling some in recent years to keep its currency from falling.

Okay, let’s take a step back. The Federal Reserve Board bought more than $3 trillion in assets to try to boost the economy following the Great Recession. This was done to directly reduce long-term interest rates by increasing the demand for bonds. While it stopped buying assets several years ago, it still holds more than $3 trillion in assets.

Virtually all economists agree that by holding these assets, the Fed is keeping down long-term interest rates. If this additional $3 trillion in assets were on the market, then long-term interest rates would be higher. (The size of the impact is debated, but not the direction.)

If the holding (not buying) of assets has an impact on interest rates, why does China’s holding of more than $3 trillion in foreign reserves not have an impact on the price of the dollar and other reserve currencies relative to the RMB? (It would actually be well over $4 trillion if we add in the trillion plus dollars held in China’s sovereign wealth fund.)

In the magical world of make it up as you go along conventional wisdom economics there can be peaceful coexistence of this logical conflict, but those of us who are not part of the club need not accept it.

It’s also worth adding that the Fed has raised interest rates several times in the last three years, just as China has occasionally sold reserves. Would anyone say that this means that the net effect of the Fed’s actions at the moment is to raise interest rates above the level they would be at if the Fed were not holding assets?

Finally, we get the story that if China were to remove all capital controls then the value of the RMB would fall, as Chinese sought to diversify their holdings. While this is true, it is at best half of the story as every fan of I.M.F. policies knows. The I.M.F. always tells countries to eliminate capital controls because it will increase the amount of capital that flows into the country. Investors are more likely to put their money into a country where they can freely withdraw it than one where they can’t.

While the capital inflow story needs some qualifications, there is a basic logic to it. Obviously, foreign investors will feel more comfortable putting money into a country where they can get back their investment quickly than in one where they can’t. In spite of the fact that this logic is imposed on developing countries all the time, it is virtually invisible in discussions of China’s currency.

As a practical matter we continually see stories about how European retirees are unhappy with the negative interest rates they get on the bonds of countries like Germany and France. Getting an interest rate of more than 3.0 percent on long-term bonds issued by the Chinese government would look pretty good in comparison. Furthermore, with China’s purchasing power parity GDP almost twice its GDP measured by exchange rates, most people would probably expect the general direction of its currency over the long-term to be upward, as it has been in the past. This would further increase the potential gains from holding Chinese government debt relative to the debt of European countries or the United States.

It seems as though the conventionally wise people never thought about this issue, or at least if they have, they don’t mention it in public discussions. Anyhow, it is not surprising that the conventional wisdom is missing much of the story here. After all, the conventional wisdom in economics could not see the $8 trillion housing bubble ($12 trillion in today’s economy), the collapse of which sank the U.S. economy and gave us the Great Recession. The conventional wisdom doesn’t seem any wiser today.