The pandemic-theater performed in the United States may have initially been designed to actually (poorly) serve the purpose of protecting the population, but it has become little more than an excuse to claim “victory,” to send people back to work, and to perpetuate on us, the working people of the U.S. Empire, a grand and wide-scale theft. COVID has been used, in this sense, as little more than an excuse for the rapacious rulers of the United States Empire to tighten their iron grip on us and squeeze more and more blood from each member of the working class. Different groups among the vampiric ruling classes have sought to capitalize on the crisis in different ways. While the investment monopolists were tinkering with the money supply and throwing good money after bad, into useless “investments,” the lower rungs of the ruling class were stealing directly from the federal government.
You may have heard of Quantitative Easing, that Keynesian theory that, because the government controls the money supply, there is no downside to simply “printing more money,” as the saying goes. The Federal Reserve certainly subscribes (or pretends to subscribe) to this “theory” which has already been clearly debunked by the results of their massive program to inject money into the economy. As we warned,
[L]oans have been given out like candy. The atmosphere of excessive speculation on bad investments started in 2008 with the general reduction in regulation to try to pull the economy back from the brink of the huge crisis that struck it that year; ever since, speculative investments (investments on things that promise huge returns but likely won’t pan out) have been spreading. Why not, if the Fed is going to give you zero-interest money to try things out with? As the rate of profit sinks, speculation becomes more attractive.
With COVID, things kicked into overdrive. The bourgeoisie, always half-grifter to begin with, has seen an explosion of companies that do absolutely nothing and promise the moon. Because firms, particularly tech firms, can take many years to pan out into profitability, every investor is looking for the next Apple- or Microsoft-to-be. Some of these tech companies, like Uber and DoorDash, model their entire business on keeping themselves alive through venture-capital infusions until they manage to take over the whole market, driving out the already-existing firms, and creating a tech-based monopoly. To get from plucky startup to tech supergiant, these firms need constant infusions of “venture capital,” or investment cash, because they don’t turn a profit. With money as loose and liquid as it has been, the number of hucksters and snake-oil salesmen has ballooned. Firms that never had any intention of producing anything resembling a profit sprang up overnight. Their “plucky” CEOs filled their pockets with investment cash and have every intention of declaring bankruptcy, shuttering the non-producing firm, and doing a runner with the money.
In order to preserve the economic status quo — or so they said — the Federal Reserve changed the reserve rate to 0 and the overnight lending rate to the same during the years of the High Pandemic, when the federal government at least tried to look like it was acting in the service of the general public. They enacted massive quantitative easing programs to buy up treasury bills on the market with never-before-available credit, thus flooding the monetary system, to keep the stock market afloat while the first stay-at-home orders, mass deaths, etc., shocked the economy.
The government told us that this wouldn’t cost us anything. It’s free money! But we know better. There’s no such thing as free. In our system, every dollar can be thought of as a ticket that grants its holder the power to command a fraction of the total production of the U.S. Empire’s economy. That dollar is split among all the issued dollars in the U.S. markets. The economy is a big apple pie, and each dollar is a “ticket.” Let’s say there are 10 dollars — we have to cut the pie 10 ways. Adding 20 more dollars doesn’t make the pie any bigger, it merely means that each dollar is worth 1/3rd as much as it used to be. That’s what the Federal Reserve did; it issued all these new dollars, these new tickets, to banks and investors, leaving the working class to hold an ever-devaluing supply. Because our economy is market-based, the effects of this weren’t immediately visible. It takes time for prices to adjust to the new reality, but that’s just what they’re doing — through inflation. We are now experiencing a period of high inflation that the Federal Reserve, try as it might, cannot stop. These are the after-effects of the theft the Reserve started back in 2020, the theft of telling every working class person in the U.S. not to worry, they weren’t getting less, others were just getting more. Meanwhile, the price of food and fuel has increased by roughly 18%. No surprise! Two thirds of currently circulating money originated in 2020 or later!
Although that’s the biggest theft — you’ve lost 20 cents out of every dollar, and we’re on track to lose plenty more — it’s far from the only one. To maintain the loyalty of the small business tyrants, the big capitalists also enacted relief programs for their businesses. They couldn’t let the windfall come only to the big investors; this is one of the reasons that protestors gathered to scream about haircuts and yachts during the lockdowns, to complain that they be “allowed to work” (what they meant was that they be allowed to force their employees to work!)
The U.S. Small Business Association (SBA), a federal agency, offered the now-infamous Paycheck Protection Program (a forgivable loan to help employers pay employees, or so they claimed), loans to cover revenue loss, loans for theaters and concert venues temporarily shuttered by the pandemic, loans for restaurants, and generalized debt relief for small businesses. In 2021 the SBA claimed to have released some $1.1 trillion in loans and grants for COVID. That’s fully 5% of the output of the entire U.S. imperial economy each year.
This, in itself, is another form of theft. The loans are paid for out of the money raised by the Federal Reserve, accounting for some of that new money that’s driving up our inflation. All federal programs, it should be noted, are paid for by this same kind of sleight-of-hand; this is where the government “gets” money! But it’s worse than that.
On Tuesday, June 27, the SBA announced that at least 17% of all funds related to the EIDL loans and Paycheck Loans were claimed by people who were not eligible for them or who used them to line their own pockets. Of these relief programs, over $200 billion was stolen by petty business tyrants, grifters, and con-artists.
Above and beyond the money, the ruling classes have stolen the very life-blood of the workers during the pandemic. Their cruelty, their casual dedication to our destruction, stands revealed in every theatrical victory ceremony, in every statement of unity as the “essential workers” were condemned to overwork and death. They have stolen — continue to steal — our very lives from us; crouched, vampiric, over our recumbent forms, each tragedy is a new opportunity for them to feed. We must rise to throw them off, and the first step to rising is opening our eyes.
As each day passes, new depths of perfidy are revealed. Between the U.S. government, the monopolists, and the petty business tyrants, we are being attacked, stolen from, and degraded from every side. We have yet to plumb the full abyss of ruling class evil, but we must keep our eyes open for their tricks and lies.
