Patrice de Bergeracpas

SERGE HALIMI—When this tragedy is over, will everything just go back to the way it was? For 30 years each new crisis has raised unreasonable hopes that the world would return to reason, come to its senses, end the madness. We have dreamed of containing, then reversing, a sociopolitical dynamic whose deadlocks and dangers were finally understood (1). We hoped that the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 would end runaway privatisation, and that the financial crises of 1997 and 2007-08 would halt happy globalisation. They didn’t.

PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—The guys who come by and pick up our trash and recyclables each week; The man or woman who wipes the ass of our relative in the nursing home and bathes them; the cleaning ladies who breath in the dust and allergens in our offices or homes, or those aforementioned paramedics who carry us to the emergency rooms… THEY are more vital than those highly paid minions who parrot either of the Two Party/One Party propaganda on air each day.

Berlin’s state interior ministry blamed the US for confiscating 200,000 masks ordered from a US producer when they were in transit through Bangkok. French officials have accused unidentified Americans of paying over the odds to secure masks in China that had already been earmarked for France.

ELLEN BROWN—What will individuals, families, communities and state and local governments be getting out of this massive bailout? Not much. Qualifying individuals will get a very modest one-time payment of $1,200, and unemployment benefits have been extended for the next four months. For local governments, $150 billion has been allocated for crisis relief, and one of the Fed’s newly expanded Special Purpose Vehicles will buy municipal bonds. But there is no provision for reducing the interest rate on the bonds, which typically runs at 3 or 4 percent plus hefty bond dealer fees and foregone taxes on tax-free issues. Unlike the federal government, municipal governments will not be getting a rebate on the interest on their bonds. The taxpayers have obviously been shortchanged in this deal.

JOHN BUELL—Klein is surely correct to be concerned. President Trump proposed temporary cuts in the payroll tax as a fiscal stimulus. This act would in effect partially defund Social Security, forcing Democrats to choose between a tax increase or reductions in or means testing the program. Turning Social Security into a means tested program would undermine its popularity and probably destroy it, a long time goal of conservative Republicans and neolibereal Democrats.