When we take into consideration $144.6 trillion in US Unfunded Liabilities, $20.4 trillion in Social Security Liability, and $31.6 trillion in Medicare liability, the nation lingers on the precipice a total collapse.

For all the uncertainties the COVID-19 pandemic poses to the world, especially in the US, one thing seems evident.  Our neoliberal capitalist civilization has proven itself to be unprepared for unexpected crises and catastrophes. For decades, the US has been falling behind other developed nations to infuse economic resiliency in society. Not only has the American medical system and federal health agencies been shown to be naked, we are also discovering we cannot rely on epistemological statistics and computer modeling alone to account for our flawed health policies.

Aside from the pandemic’s toll on people’s lives, there is also its impact upon the national economies and the global economy at large that is barely being discussed in any depth. Rather, hopes and wishes are being directed towards life returning to normal. We are expected to believe that our addiction to unconscionable consumerism will return, employment will rise and the American dream can again be mentally photo-shopped on the horizon. In short, we are persuaded that the comfort of our illusions and denial of harsh realities will return.  However, if a past Nobel laureate of economics, Joseph Stiglitz, is correct, then “if you leave it to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell we will have a Great Depression.” Likewise, former Federal Reserve chair Jenet Yellen has also warned that the 30% GDP decline is leading us towards Depression. In fact, we may already be there.

As of today, the federal government has guaranteed $5.2 trillion dollars to keep the economy afloat as a depression worse than 1932 looms overhead. Some economists believe that this massive bailout is insufficient and upwards to $10-15 trillion may be necessary.  In 2008, with one broad stroke the Obama administration rescued Wall Street.  What was believed to be just the TARP bailout of $700 billion was in fact over $4 trillion worth of outlays, including TARP and other FED and Treasury expenditures.  The Levy Institute at Bard College calculated the outlays may have been as high as $29 trillion, a number the Sanders’ campaign had quoted.

Obama’s bailout was to assist the incompetency and corruption of Wall Street and the financial industry. Today it is a submicroscopic organism, approximately 120 nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter or about 20 oxygen atoms lined up), that threatens the financial well being of most Americans.

However before the COVID-19 reached our shores, the US was already in a horrible debt crisis.

Fiscal conservatives are angered that the US National Debt has reached $24.5 trillion while at the same time adamantly ignoring that the US Total Debt now hovers above $77 trillion. Neither party shows concern about Americans’ increasing personal debt (mortgage, credit card, auto, student loans, etc), nor the rise in corporate, state and city debts.

When we take into consideration $144.6 trillion in US Unfunded Liabilities, $20.4 trillion in Social Security Liability, and $31.6 trillion in Medicare liability, the nation lingers on the precipice a total collapse.

Before the pandemic, Trump boasted an unemployment level as low as 3.6 percent. But in the US, there are different ways to calculate unemployment figures. There is the official figure (U-3) that Wall Street and presidential administrations rely upon and then a more realistic statistic or U-6 that includes those underemployed and those only marginally attached to the work force.

Before the pandemic the “real” or U-6 employment was 6.9 percent.  Finally there is the shadow statistic, which adds the millions of Americans who have dropped out of the work force because their benefits ceased or because they are homeless or unaccounted for by the Labor Bureau.  When those adjustments are made, the shadow unemployment is likely around 23 percent.

Now, unemployment is skyrocketing.  The most recent estimate is that over 26 million people lost work during the past month and, according to Fortune magazine, the official unemployment rate may be as high 18 percent. 

Consequently a more accurate unemployment figure would be approximately 32 percent or almost a third of population. This is far worse than at the height of the Great Depression when unemployment stood at 25 percent.

The dark side of American jobs has been decades of large layoffs, workers being replaced by automation, downsizing, corporate consolidation due to equity partnerships, mergers and off shoring of manufacturing. In addition, tens of thousands of foreign professionals have received work visas and are eager to take the place of middle seniority positions in firms for lower salaries and without full benefits.  The system is so corrupt that the millions of people who work full time for less than a living wage are completely ignored. Hence most Americans are deep in debt and frequently live paycheck to paycheck. The fact of the matter is that there is no security whatsoever for millions of people who may not find work for a very long time.

Even if the lockdown were to end tomorrow, the lights would not immediately switch back on.

Throughout the financial news, we are reading headlines of companies eyeing bankruptcy as credit ratings are being rapidly downgraded.  Retail stores are being especially hit badly. According to Global Data Retail, over 190,000 retail stores have closed, accounting for nearly 50 percent of the nation’s retail square footage. Forbes has listed Dillards, JC Penny, Kohl’s, Levi Strauss, Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Signet to likely go under.  Others include Pier 1 Imports, Rite Aid, J Crew that is loaded up with private equity debt, Fairway supermarkets, and niche organic grocer Lucky’s. Macy’s capital alone dropped from $6 billion to $1.5 billion since February. This trend had already been rising since Trump came to office with large chain companies increasingly closing outlets including Walgreens, Gap, GNC, H&M and Victoria’s Secret. For sure, when and if the pandemic ends, there will be far less retail stores. The New York Times predicts very few are likely to survive. And we are not even looking at the hundreds of their vendors that are also being affected.

With 60 percent of Americans eating regularly outside the home, the restaurant industry is also being hit fiercely. Restaurants employ more minority managers than any other industry — approximately 60% — and employs almost 16 million people. Between 2010 and 2018, it represented the largest number of low middle class jobs ($45,000 to $75,000), 300 percent more than the overall economy. Now a restaurant apocalypse is underway, with an estimated 20 percent of restaurant operations going under. Larger chains are far better equipped. They are simply closing down dining room facilities and only offering carryout, pickup, delivery or drive-thru. Smaller independent restaurants are at the greatest risk.

Then there are the farms, the concentrated agriculture feeding organizations (CAFOs) and food chain suppliers. In the past it was very rare to enter a large grocery store and find empty shelves. Now it is a common sight because the food supply chain has been upended.

Pork and other meat suppliers such as Smithfield Foods, Tyson and Cargill are forced to close plants. Due to Trump’s draconian position on immigration of foreign workers, farm produce will not be harvested.

Niv Ellis at The Hill reports that “some $5 billion of fresh fruit and vegetables have already gone to waste.”  The pandemic, therefore, is contributing to rising food insecurity throughout the nation. Before the pandemic, Ellis notes, 37 million Americans were already food insecure.  The additional 26 million unemployed will increase that number, and it is sure to continue to climb. Finally, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization expects that the frantic efforts underway by countries to import basic staple foods may launch global food inflation.

We are also facing “the quickest and deepest oil demand crash in history,” says Richard Heinberg from the Post Carbon Institute. Oil prices plunged to an inconceivable negative minus $37 a barrel last week as global fossil fuel demand dropped roughly 30 percent. “The entire petroleum industry,” writes Heinberg, “is teetering.”  Natural gas producers relying on hydrofracking shale, which had already been burdened with high debt from private equity, are scrambling for bankruptcy protection. According to Reuters, “numerous midstream companies [in the energy sector] backed by private equity are in danger of bankruptcy.” With the collapse of hydrofracking companies, the pipeline firms have also entered troubled waters. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City predicts that 40 percent of energy producers may be insolvent “if oil prices remain around $30 a barrel” for the year. Then consider the larger picture of the impact this has on the 6.4 million people working in the energy sector.

Also we might consider the future of 15 million Americans who work in the tourism industry, including hotels, entertainment, parks, museums, etc. It is estimated that 96 percent of global tourism has vanished in the blink of an eye.

State and local city governments are also “staring at budget shortfalls that will substantially exceed what they faced during the great recession.” States are reporting significant gaps in their capacity to remain fiscally afloat. The Republican Senate led by Mitch McConnell seems determined to withhold $150 billion of emergency funds to the states in the CARES Act before Congress — less than half of the $300 billion to $1 trillion state legislators are demanding. Consequently, states are staring into a deep abyss.

Americans who will either return to a job or seek work when the pandemic slows will be further imprisoned by an economy buried in greater debt.

• Downsizing will accelerate along with borrowed money to continue operations while the White House refuses to pass a rent holiday, forgive student loans and other debts, cease payday loans, reduce interest rates on credit nor provide free healthcare for those infected with COVID-19;
• The average person without a steady paycheck is living off savings and credit cards. Therefore, when the economy reopens, large numbers of people will be unable to return to the marketplace to circulate dollars;
• As corporate debt mounts, the most insidious truth are the vultures of capitalism who will profit. These are the great white sharks in the finance industry that smell blood. For the trillions of dollars Trump is dishing out to the 1 percent, these are the first to get the lion’s share of the quarry.

Nobody in the mainstream media has properly criticized the huge monetary allocations being made for the pandemic. The FED is buying corporate debt in order for companies to off load their mistakes and receive fresh, new money. But the average small business receives the left over pennies.  The virus is teaching us the harsh reality about Washington pervasive culture of corruption. On this account both parties have no empathic regard for average citizens and small business owners.  Even the money from Trump’s and Mnuchin’s stimulus package given to citizens can be confiscated by debt collectors.

Imagine if you are an average citizen, not an insider, at the conference table with executives from Facebook, Google, the major banks and mega-corporate industries. You have no income or savings and no health insurance. If you are hungry, where do you get money for food? Where do you get money if you are sick or gas for your car? The unintended consequences of Trump’s and the Congress’ irresponsible and inhumane policies are literally bankrupting the nation.

By extension the millennial and iGen generations are the victimized recipients of this debt bequeathed to them by older generations. They are further compromised with the inability to secure jobs equal to their educational level nor secure a satisfying living wage. They are burdened with high interest student loans. They also are far more aware of the impact climate change will have on their futurs. Therefore, millions of young adults are rapidly losing faith in America’s neoliberal capitalist system and our self-centered culture of predation.

Similar to waking up the day following September 11, 2001, we will be emerging into a new world after the COVID19 pandemic subsides. It is now being called the “shut-in economy.” The pandemic is not solely a health crisis; it is equally an existential crisis, an impasse in the global civilization that is forcing us to realize that our over dependence and perverse reliance upon natural resources, such as fuel, energy, food and corrupt banking and healthcare services, is fragile. We are learning that at every level there are numerous cracks in our structures of governance and our economic and social bases.  Yet the virus did not break the nation; it has been broken for a long time. Only now more people are waking up from their dream. Furthermore, few people, including the mainstream media, now believe there will ever be a return to the normalcy of life that ended after Wuhan had its first patient infected with the virus. It is time for every individual to reassess her or his priorities. A life full of well-being is more possible today if we realize the virus has also been our teacher. But it is living a life that is founded upon simplicity, insight and wisdom, and community rather than consumption and competitive power.

There’s a simple fact that’s not noticed or remarked on nearly enough. The world’s two large English speaking societies, America and Britain, are collapsing. And they are collapsing in eerily similar ways, for eerily similar reasons, too. Yet in these societies, this basic point doesn’t seem to be understood much, if at all. And yet it’s not really a matter for debate. It’s a simple empirical fact.

There are only two societies in the rich world where life is getting shorter, poorer, meaner, and more hopeless — fast. Where life expectancies, incomes, and savings are all falling. America and Britain. Where middle classes have imploded, people live hand to mouth, and upward mobility has all but vanished. Where the idea of living a better life is somewhere between a joke and a distant memory. Where entire generations of young people — at last count, three, Gen X, Millennials, and Get Z — live worse lives than their parents and grandparents. Just two such societies where trust, happiness, and purpose have all imploded catastrophically — while depression, rage, anxiety, and suicide are all surging.

In fact, there are just a handful of societies with those grim statistics anywhere in the world — Venezeula, perhaps, Russia, North Korea, war torn African shells. Failed states, in other words. That is what America and Britain are becoming.

In a failed state, progress has become regress. That’s what happened to these societies. They are self-destructing. America, of course, is further down that road. But Britain is catching up fast. So how did they get here?

America and Britain have entered a vicious cycle, a death spiral. It’s a novel and bizarre phenomenon for a modern, rich society, unseen since Weimar Germany. It goes like this. In the 1980s, America began decades of underinvestment in public goods and social systems. It privatized whatever there was to privatize. The idea was that whatever it was — healthcare, education, finance — the private sector could do it better. The Reagan Revolution was in full effect — as a backlash to the advances civil rights made in the 1960s and 1970s, the good white American using “choice” as a shield to protect themselves from ever having to invest in or mingle with those dirty, filthy subhumans. All that was called “neoliberalism.” Let markets sort it all out! Translation: let the strong survive, and the weak perish.

But the result of massive underinvestment in public goods was predictable: stagnation, debt, falling living standards, and a permanent loss of mobility. More and more people were forced to desperately compete for all those “private sector” jobs, which didn’t really exist to begin with, since jobs were just slashed and cut en masse. Instead of creating tons of new jobs, the private sector built…huge monopolies, which, by today, employ scant numbers of people, like a Facebook or a Google or an Uber.

That competition for what few decent jobs there were led to massive wage stagnation. What “private sector” jobs did exist weren’t very good ones, and over time, they degenerated further, to the point that now many of them aren’t really “jobs” at all, but shells, with no benefits or mobility or protection. Today, America and Britain have record low unemployment…and plummeting real incomes. That should be an economic impossibility. It’s a reality that tells us their economies are unable to employ their populations at decent levels of income anymore.

At the same time, the “private sector” which was supposed to provide good healthcare, education, retirement, finance, and so on, began to charge the average American more and more for these things, while lowering their quality. After all, corporations are profit-seeking entities: their motivation is money. And so over time, the average American began to pay prices for things that astonished the rest of the world: $50K for childbirth, $200K for an education, and so on. How could they afford the basics of life at ever increasing prices — when their incomes had begun to stagnate? They couldn’t — so they began to go into massive debt (and today, the average American dies in debt.)

As a necessary consequence, social systems and public goods were eviscerated — and left undeveloped. America has no functioning social systems at all at this point, from healthcare to education to retirement — precisely because for nearly half a century now, it hasn’t invested enough (read: almost anything) in them. Hence, those poor kids in the pic above: they really don’t have much of a future, and increasingly, they know it.

Today, the situation is this. The average American is in a “low-wage job” — translation: they earn less than the poverty line. Yes, really. That’s why most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford to save, much less ever live better lives than their parents or grandparents. He desperately needs things like healthcare, education, retirement, finance, to have any hope — any — of living a better life, instead of just a worse and worse one every year. But he himself can’t afford to fund those things anymore, because now his income is too low. How can he pay more in taxes to fund the things he needs most, like healthcare or retirement — when he earns a relative pittance to begin with? What is he supposed to live on then?

That, my friends, is a death spiral for an economy (and a society.) Let me put that more precisely.

America and Britain are in an austerity-poverty death spiral. Austerity causes poverty which causes more austerity which causes more poverty. It goes like this.

1. Underinvesting in public goods and social systems led to fresh poverty
2. As profit-seeking corporations lowered wages and raise prices.
3. The result was that the tax base itself shrank — and now the average American or Brit will tell you they’re “too poor” to afford a functioning society. They’re not kidding. They are. They don’t have the money to invest in public goods or social systems anymore. They can’t make ends meet as it is.
4. But without those very things, all that’s left is permanently, perpetually lower wages and higher prices…into oblivion, because that’s what a profit-seeking system demands.
5. Bang! Game over. Your economy dies, and your society goes with it, pursuing follies like Brexits and Trumpisms, instead of solving its real problems.

Do you see the death spiral? Let me flip it on it’s head so it’s even more crystal clear. What’s the lesson here for other societies?

The less that we invest in public goods and social services as nations, the more that our economies corrode and our societies disintegrate. Incomes fall and prices rise, as all that’s left are people competing for private sector jobs, of which there aren’t enough, while paying ever increasing private sector prices. The average person is left impoverished. But because the average person is impoverished, there isn’t enough then left to fund the kind of tax base that can provide generous basics for everyone. Yet without those things, societies just decline into…forever. Regress becomes a way of life.

Below a certain threshold of investment, economies enter a death spiral. We must never let the amount that we invest in public goods and social services as a society fall too low. How low? Well, Britain and America give us hard proof: about 25% of an economy. When investment falls to that level, societies find themselves in the austerity-austerity-poverty death spiral. They may never emerge. Regress becomes locked-in, like in Russia.

(On the contrary, in Europe, rates haven’t fallen that low. They’re falling nonetheless though, hence reactionary movements like the Gilets Jaunes. And if they fall to such a point, Europe too will enter just such a death spiral.)

America and Britain’s future is questionable at this point — and I’m being generous. Think about what the above really means: these societies are caught in a trap from which there might well be no escaping. The average person needs more and better healthcare, education, finance, safety nets to ever live a better life again. But now they themselves are too poor to fund those things. What’s the obvious implication? That they will never have them again. That is the point. America and Britain let themselves be ruined. They fell into a trap — from which there is no good way out. Maybe no way out at all. Regress has likely become permanent, perpetual trend.

We are seeing a weird and gruesome new thing in the modern world. Rich countries which become failed states. In a precise and hard sense: they enter death spirals of austerity-poverty which cause a chain reaction self-destruction. That is the story of America and Britain’s twin collapses. Having let their investment rates fall too low, kicking off a vicious spiral of austerity and poverty leading to more austerity and poverty…which left the average person too poor to invest in anyone else, let alone him or herself…now no recovery towards a path of progress may be possible. Their future is just more of this, more regress, only harder and faster. Their destiny now well may be written in stone. They are joining nations like Russia and Venezuela in decline and collapse.

Let us hope that other nations are wise enough to learn from their mistakes. Because what follows folly is horror. What follows such death spirals, of course, is fascism, authoritarianism, and all the horrors of history.

If given the choice between maintaining a toxic world of fear, pollution and violence controlled by the State or a society of prosperity and compassion based on freedom and individual rights, there is little doubt that the majority of Americans would want the old paradigm of synthetic events to take a hike; except that choice has been distorted under the guise of what the World Health Organization (WHO) has mislabeled the most deadly virus in history.

The coronavirus crisis arrived in a flash with little time to analyze exactly WTF was going on. Americans struggled to process what is real, trustworthy and authentic as the unraveling of deep political decay revealed a behind-the-scenes subterranean power struggle that has surfaced with the intent on disintegration of American Society.

While the country is fast approaching an existential crisis on steroids, millions experienced an inner knowing that some indefinable thing was not right with recognition that the early explanations were hogwash while others, addicted to mainstream/social media who still believed in the illusion of democracy, were on board with the litany of spin from the medical and political establishment.

While the Lockdown could have been a wake up call for humanity to change its consciousness with a paradigm shift – whether it be a spiritual awakening, a political realignment or re-evaluating one’s own personal health choices, since, after all, humanity was locked in a major health crisis. And most importantly, it was an opportunity to acknowledge that the planet itself is ailing from abuse and neglect with CV as a metaphor urging a personal reconnection with Nature.

In early 2020, Neil Ferguson of the UK’s Imperial College used a scare tactic to predict that 80% of Americans would be infected and that there would be 2.2 million American deaths – neither of which materialized. Yet Ferguson’s extremism accomplished its intended purpose in establishing the basis for draconian Lockdown requirements. Ferguson later retracted his earlier prediction down to 20,000 fatalities.

With current infection fatality rate at 0.20%, Lockdowns have been devoid of science and are based on arbitrary, contradictory and inconsistent requirements.
Nancy
Just a few examples come to mind, such as liquor stores and big chains are considered ‘essential’ and remain open but stand-alone, independent, mom ‘n pops are not. Barbers may be open but hair salons may not. While it is advised to get tested for Covid19, a colonoscopy or other elective surgery are not allowed. While vitamins C and D and Sunshine strengthen the immune system, all outdoor sport programs have been canceled.

In an unexpected development, a recent JP Morgan study asserted that the Lockdowns failed to “alter the course of the pandemic” as it “destroyed millions of livelihoods” and that as infection rates ‘unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown’ measures decreased, fewer outbreaks were reported as the quarantines were lifted.

As the official narrative of the Covid19 as an existential threat has collapsed, it is interesting to follow how ‘hot spots’ occur just as a particular State, like Florida, announces re-opening.

Those new hot spots encourage a reinvigorated debate over mandatory face masks and social distancing with its success depending on a duplicitous media instilling panic and a naive public still believing Covid19 to be more dangerous than seasonal flu.

WHY LOCKDOWN ASYMPTOMATIC CITIZENS?

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of WHO’s COVID19 Task Force threw a monkey wrench in the works recently by stating:

what we really want to focus on.. if we followed all the symptomatic cases, isolate those cases, follow those contacts and quarantine those contacts, we would drastically reduce..transmission. We would do very, very well…”

Dr. Van Kerkhove then explained that transmission of the virus from asymptomatic patients appears to be very rare:

It still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.”

The next day, there was panic at the WHO but Dr. Van Kerkhove’s uncensored comments were very clear as they validated questioning the purpose of the entire Lockdown process. If an asymptomatic person is not spreading the disease but might publicly increase herd immunity, then why wear a face mask or be quarantined?

House Speaker Pelosi called for a national mask mandate as HHS Secretary Azar reported that Pence and Trump are tested daily and are asymptomatic; therefore not required to wear a mask.

WHY FACE MASKS?

To date, there is no standard for what constitutes a ‘safe’ face mask or instructions for disposal considering that a used face mask will be a contaminated bio-hazard material; ergo a face mask is more of a device to require citizen compliance than a safety precaution.

Adding a partisan narrative to the crisis, the most expansive lockdown restrictions (some with criminal penalties) came from predominantly Democratic Governors and Mayors who offered no science or forensic data to prove that either mandatory face masks or home sequestration have failed to prevent a spread of the virus.

During a House Oversight committee meeting, the mask debate broke down along party lines with Dems dutifully covered while strenuously objecting to their mask-free peers.

A riveting June 23rd Palm Beach County Commission public hearing on a proposed Mandatory Face Mask ordinance drew overwhelming opposition.

While OSHA’s (Occupational Safety and Health Agency) responsibility is to oversee the health and safety of every American worker as each workplace is expected to comply with OSHA standards, its website regarding COVID19 states that cloth-based face masks

will not protect the wearer against airborne transmissible infectious agents due to loose fit and lack of seal or inadequate filtration.“

OSHA goes on to inform that a safe level of oxygen must be maintained as an oxygen deficient atmosphere (defined as below 19.5% by volume) creates a respiratory risk.

While there is no sound science or evidence to prove the benefits of mandatory usage, the NE Journal of Medicine reported that:

We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection […] The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”

More recently, NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci declared masks as largely ‘symbolic’ as he was setting an example for what other people should be doing.

There’s also a “Risk of Hypoxia to All Mask Wearers” according to Drs. Russell Blaylock and Zach Bush.

SOCIAL DISTANCING AKA QUARANTINE

With not a whit of science in support, Social Distancing which is a mutually exclusive phrase since there is nothing social about enforced distancing from other humans, has been attributed to a CIA protocol in use since the 1950’s to break a prisoner’s resistance or a teenage science project.

In any case, SD has proven a great way to erode an individual’s normal need for social contact, to effectively starve the brain function of human interaction and comparable to other emotionally unhealthy deprivations. As former Vietnam POW John McCain related “It crushes your spirit more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

Rules 3 and 44 of the Nelson Mandela Rules warn of being cut off from the outside world and prohibits more than two weeks of isolation as cruel and inhumane treatment.

*

While the manufactured COVID 19 health crisis opened the door for the World Economic Forum and its friends to activate One World Government, millions of Americans continue to play the cognitive dissonance game with little awareness they are witnessing a government takeover with increased surveillance and censorship. As coordinated violent protests in Seattle and DC spread a thinly veiled political coup, all accomplished more easily while the American public were in Lockdown.