While millions are living on the brink of famine, there has been a major boon for Wall Street giants, according to new data showing that the world’s 100 largest banks are on pace to smash commodity trading profit records this year.

“The 100 biggest banks by revenue are set to make $18 billion from commodities trading in 2022,” Bloomberg reported Friday, citing figures from the London-based firm Vali Analytics. “That would be the highest in the data, which goes back 14 years, and exceed the previous high watermark in 2009.”

“The prediction is the latest evidence that the wild swings in energy prices triggered by the war in Ukraine are delivering a boon to commodity traders, even as they push European nations into crisis,” Bloomberg added.

The prices of wheat and other food staples remain significantly elevated compared to last year, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, leaving millions vulnerable to hunger and starvation.

The World Food Program estimates that “as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night” and “the number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared—from 135 million to 345 million—since 2019.”

“People’s misery makes capitalists’ superprofit,” Salvatore De Rosa, a researcher at the Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies, tweeted.

“We’re in a market where speculators are driving prices up,” Michael Greenberger, former head of the Division of Trading and Markets at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, told Mongabay in July.

“Commodity markets are supposed to be hedging markets for people who are dealing with the commodity involved,” Greenberger said. “In the case of wheat, it would be farmers and people buying wheat. But if we looked at it, there would be banks in there with no interest in what the price of wheat is, writing swaps and controlling this price.”

“It’s too easy to say the war in Ukraine has unbalanced all these markets, [or that] supply chains and the ports are shot, and that there’s a supply and demand reason for these prices going up,” Greenberger added. “My own best guess is anywhere from 10% to 25% of the price, at least, is dictated by deregulated speculative activity.”

  Vladimir Putin became one of the first world leaders to congratulate King Charles III.

“Please accept my sincere congratulations on your accession to the throne. I wish Your Majesty success, good health and all the best.” 

Putin also offered condolences when the death of the Queen was announced, offering “sincere sympathy” to the country following her death.

He wrote: “The most important events in the recent history of the United Kingdom are inextricably linked with the name of Her Majesty. For many decades, Elizabeth II rightfully enjoyed the love and respect of her subjects, as well as authority on the world stage. I wish you courage and perseverance in the face of this heavy, irreparable loss. I ask you to convey the words of sincere sympathy and support to the members of the royal family and all the people of Great Britain.”

The Kremlin also said that the wisdom of the late Queen would be missed internationally. The Russian people had “great respect” for Queen Elizabeth II, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, singling out her qualities of “wisdom and authority” adding,  “Such qualities are in very short supply on the international stage at the moment.” 

‘All the best’: Vladimir Putin offers congratulations to King Charles III | The Independent

CNN wants to be the new Fox News. 

 Last month CNN suddenly axed Brian Stelter’s Sunday show in a move many commentators considered politically motivated; Stelter had been an outspoken critic of Trump and was reviled by many on the right. Earlier this month White House correspondent John Harwood was fired shortly after calling Trump “a dishonest demagogue” on the air.

Chris Licht the new CEO of the CNN cable network after purging progressive voices, announced John Miller would be joining CNN as the network’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst. Miller isn’t exactly an obvious hire if you’re looking to brandish your new “neutrality” credentials. The former New York police department (NYPD) deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter-terrorism is an extremely polarizing figure who made headlines in March when he testified to the New York city council that the NYPD did not, in his opinion, inappropriately spy on Muslims after the September 11 2001 attacks. Which is a weird thing to say because Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting has clearly shown that the NYPD used census data to spy on Muslims following September 11 and the department has settled a number of lawsuits related to the illegal spying.

Licht doesn’t seem to mind that his new hire has been accused of lying about the NYPD surveillance of Muslims. He doesn’t seem to find it awkward that even Eric Adams, the current mayor of New York City and a former police officer, said Miller was “wrong” to deny the existence of the program. Instead, the CNN CEO announced, with a seemingly straight face, that Miller “will help deliver on CNN’s commitment to tackle complex issues while presenting audiences with independent, objective news”.

New ‘objective’ CNN appears to be making itself objectively rightwing | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank with a long track record of popularizing research on wage suppression and runaway inequality.

“Everyone’s obsessed with a post-pandemic phenomenon called ‘quiet quitting,'” EPI explained. “It’s basically defined as workers just doing the basic requirements of their jobs and not going ‘above and beyond.’ But the reality is workers have long been going ‘above and beyond’ and not getting paid for it,” EPI continued. “We’re calling this phenomenon ‘quiet fleecing.'”

EPI pointed out that between 1948 and 1979, the nation’s economy and working-class wages grew largely in tandem. Although wages began to flatline during the 1970s crisis of stagflation, a 118% increase in productivity during this 31-year period—when Keynesianism was still dominant—was mirrored by a 107% increase in typical worker pay. 

But ever since former President Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal counterrevolution against unions, public goods provided by the welfare state, and other fixtures of the New Deal era—a pro-corporate and anti-labor agenda that became bipartisan and has only recently lost some of its hegemony—the gap between productivity and typical worker pay has widened dramatically. In essence, policy choices made to suppress wage growth prevented potential pay growth fueled by rising productivity from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. 

According to EPI, net productivity rose 61.8% from 1979 to 2020. Hourly pay, meanwhile, increased by just 17.5% during those 41 years, meaning that productivity grew 3.5 times as much as wages over the past four decades, after adjusting for inflation. When employers don’t share the gains of increased productivity, keeping the benefits for themselves, inequality soars and workers suffer.

“Workers are more productive than ever,” EPI noted , “but employers haven’t been sharing the wealth. In fact, they’ve been fleecing workers for 40 years when it comes to having pay rise with productivity.”

“Who’s reaping the benefits if workers are getting quietly fleeced?” the think tank asked. 

At the same time that typical worker pay has remained largely flat despite climbing productivity, the share of income captured by the top 1% has soared. From 1948 to 2019, the top 1% enjoyed a 407% increase in compensation, with the bulk of those gains coming after 1979.

According to EPI’s latest research on the subject, top CEOs in the U.S. were paid 351 times as much as typical workers in 2020. EPI found that the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989. Between 1978 and 2020, researchers noted, CEO pay soared by 1,322% while typical worker pay grew by just 18%.

In a more detailed analysis on the topic, EPI noted that the growing gulf between productivity and typical worker pay represents “income going everywhere but the paychecks of the bottom 80% of workers.”

That wedge of income “went into the salaries of highly paid corporate and professional employees,” EPI pointed out, “and it went into higher profits (i.e., toward returns to shareholders and other wealth owners).”

“This concentration of wage income at the top (growing wage inequality) and the shift of income from labor overall and toward capital owners (the loss in labor’s share of income) are two of the key drivers of economic inequality overall since the late 1970s,” the think tank added.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1567963533094318080

Taken from here

Analysis Shows ‘Quiet Fleecing’ of US Workers—Not ‘Quiet Quitting’—Is the Real Problem (commondreams.org)

 Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), recalled a conversation with frontline staff at a major hospital: “They said to me, ‘We’re not important to the government. We were seen as important during the pandemic, but we’re not important now. We don’t think the government will do anything for us’.

“When I talked to them about being a demoralised workforce, they said: ‘we’re not just a demoralised workforce. We have given up. No one seems to care any longer.’ 

There is anger that they have been pushed to this position.

“The health service is not just staring over the precipice. It has gone over. And the very people who are trying to bring it back up are being paid the lowest wage we can possibly pay them. If we deplete it any further, there will not be a health service there.”

The RCN decided to ballot for industrial action after the government unilaterally gave NHS nurses a £1,400 pay rise, leaving them £1,000 a year worse off in real terms, according to the union. It wants a rise of 5% above inflation to avoid a flood of nurses leaving the profession.

“It is probably the most difficult it has ever been for every single nurse – even more challenging and difficult now than it was through the pandemic,” Cullen said. “And I think it’s quite a frightening place for our nursing staff because of the absolutely depleted workforces.”

Cullen became general secretary in July last year, having been director of RCN Northern Ireland. She has been a nurse for 42 years: for much of that time she worked as a nurse psychotherapist in Northern Ireland’s prisons, and principally with victims of the Troubles. She is confident she can lead a successful strike. The union has a £50m hardship fund for striking staff whose pay is docked – members of the public have already offered donations as well – and she speaks strongly of nurses’ resolve. She also has some practice in industrial disputes, having successfully led a strike in Northern Ireland in 2019.

If the government believes it can out-wait the RCN, or take them on, Cullen has a warning. “If the government thinks of trying to set the public against nursing, I’d tell them not to bother,” she said. “The public are smarter than that.”

Starmer has told Labour MPs not to join picket lines, and Cullen is not expecting particular support from the party for the strike.

“It’s entirely up to them. What I would suggest is that no politician should turn their back on any nurse. If they turn their back on nurses during what will be a very, very challenging time for nurses – if we move to strike – those 500,000 nurses will not forget that, and I think patients will have something to say.”

Nurses are caring for patients with highly complex needs, she said, particularly older patients who have been waiting for surgery for years. At the same time, many nurses find themselves having to use food banks, and can’t afford to cook hot meals or buy school uniforms for their children.

NHS England said 6.8 million people were now waiting for treatment, a record high, with 377,689 waiting for more than a year.

 Ambulance waiting times have shot up, with only 58% of patients seen within four hours, far below the 95% target.

NHS is ‘over the precipice’, warns nurses’ leader as strike vote looms | Nursing | The Guardian

In January 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019 – that’s an official poverty rate of 11.4 percent, up 1.0 percentage point from 10.5 percent in 2019.  The “poverty threshold” for a four-person family in 2020 was $26,496.

The Census Bureau also reported that between 2019 and 2020, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics. Among non-Hispanic Whites, 8.2 percent were in poverty in 2020, while Hispanics had a poverty rate of 17.0 percent.  In addition, Black Americans had the highest poverty rate at 19.5 percent.

Kimberly Amadeo points out, “Between 1979 and 2007, after-tax income increased by 275% for the most affluent 1% of households. It rose by 65% for the top fifth. For the bottom fifth, it only increased by 18%, even adding all income from Social Security, welfare, and other government payments.”

The Federal Reserve reports that in 1989 the top 1 percent controlled 23.5 percent of the nation’s wealth and, in 2022, its share had increased to 31.8 percent or $44.9 trillion. 

Gender inequality

Pew Research reports “the gender gap in pay has remained relatively stable in the United States over the past 15 years or so.”  In 2020, it reports, “women earned 84% of what men earned.”  It further points out, “based on this estimate, it would take an extra 42 days of work for women to earn what men did in 2020

Racial inequality

A 2018 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis concluded, “The historical data also reveal that no progress has been made in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households over the past 70 years.”

Racial inequality persists through the unequal distribution of economic opportunity, education, healthcare and neighborhood conditions. It involves racial disparities in wealth, education, employment, housing, mobility, health, rates of arrest and incarceration, to name but a few factors. Of special concern, the nation’s demographic character is fundamentally changing.  As the 2020 Census makes clear that the demographic clock is ticking against the notion that the U.S. is a “white” nation.  The racial/ethnic composition of the country is changing and, by 2050, the U.S. is projected be a “majority-minority” country, with white non-Hispanics making up less than half of the total population.

Legal inequality

The Sentencing Project reports that “Black Americans are imprisoned at a rate that is roughly five times the rate of white Americans.”  Yet, Black or African Americans make up only 13.6 percent of the nation’s population. A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences found that “dying at the hands of law enforcement is a leading cause of death among young Black men.” Going further, it noted that “1 in 1,000 Black men and boys can be expected to be killed by police at some point in their lifetime.”  It also notes that that Black males are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white males.”

Health/wellness inequality

Amidst the Covid pandemic, the U.S. was characterized by zones of “vaccine deserts,” geographic areas where people have little or no convenient access to vaccines. According to one estimate, 17 million people live in rural vaccine deserts and 50 million people live in urban vaccine deserts.

Urban/rural inequality

The U.S. is becoming an ever-increasing urban nation with about 83 percent of the population living in cities. Rural America is losing it population to more attractive urban centers, most often supporting Democrats. During the decade following the Great Recession of 2007–2009, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in rural America lagged behind urban GDP growth.  Rural areas in the aggregate experienced post-recession growth of 14.8 percent while urban areas registered 19.2 percent growth.

In the 2016 election, “Trump votes was higher in counties with a higher share of white, middle-income, US-born, rural and less-educated voters. In that more unequal states were more likely to vote for Trump.”

A  CBS survey for the 2020 elections.  It found that for families with income under $50,000, 55 percent voted for Biden while 44 percent voted for Trump; for families with income of $50,000 or more 51 percent voted for Biden while 47 percent voted for Trump.  However, for families with incomes of over $100,000, 54 percent voted for Trump while 42 percent voted for Biden.

America: The Land of Inequality – CounterPunch.org

The effects of global warming have brought our planet to the brink of a number of tipping points.  Passing one tipping point is often likely to help trigger others.

“The Earth may have left a ‘safe’ climate state beyond 1C global warming,” the researchers concluded.

A major study shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date.

The analysis, published in the journal Science, assessed more than 200 previous studies on past tipping points, climate observations and modelling studies. A tipping point is when a temperature threshold is passed, leading to unstoppable change in a climate system, even if global heating ends.

These include the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, eventually producing a huge sea level rise, the collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic, disrupting rain upon which billions of people depend for food, and an abrupt melting of carbon-rich permafrost.

At 1.5C of heating, the minimum rise now expected, four of the five tipping points move from being possible to likely, the analysis said. Also at 1.5C, an additional five tipping points become possible, including changes to vast northern forests and the loss of almost all mountain glaciers.

In total, the researchers found evidence for 16 tipping points, with the final six requiring global heating of at least 2C to be triggered, according to the scientists’ estimations. The tipping points would take effect on timescales varying from a few years to centuries.

Prof Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who was part of the study team, said: “The world is heading towards 2-3C of global warming. This sets Earth on course to cross multiple dangerous tipping points that will be disastrous for people across the world. To maintain liveable conditions on Earth and enable stable societies, we must do everything possible to prevent crossing tipping points.”

The nine global tipping points identified are: the collapse of the Greenland, west Antarctic and two parts of the east Antarctic ice sheets, the partial and total collapse of Amoc, Amazon dieback, permafrost collapse and winter sea ice loss in the Arctic.

A further seven tipping points would have severe regional effects, including the die-off of tropical coral reefs and changes to the west African monsoon. Other potential tipping points still being studied include the loss of ocean oxygen and major shifts in the Indian summer monsoon.

The assessment of the Amazon tipping point did not include the effects of deforestation. “The combination of the warming and the deforestation could bring that a lot sooner,” Dr David Armstrong McKay at the University of Exeter, a lead author of the study, said.

The scientists define crossing a tipping point as “possible” when its minimum temperature threshold is passed and “likely” beyond the central threshold estimate.

Prof Niklas Boers, at the Technical University of Munich, said: “The review is a timely update on the Earth’s potential tipping elements, and the threat of tipping events under further warming is real.”

World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, study finds | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 It has long been known that the poorest and those from minority ethnic communities shoulder the greatest burden from air pollution – and now a study has provided compelling evidence.

Researchers used sensors mounted on satellites and aircraft to map nitrogen dioxide across 11 major US cities and researchers were able to map the pollution exposure.

The poorest areas in New York and Newark – defined as those with more than one-fifth of households below the poverty level – had air pollution about 26% greater than wealthier areas. In Los Angeles, black, Hispanic and Asian communities of the lowest socioeconomic status endured average pollution that was 38% greater than their non-Hispanic, white counterparts – the greatest difference of any of the cities studied.

Poorest areas bear brunt of air pollution, US study shows | Air pollution | The Guardian

 A new study calculated that the oil and gas industry has made more than $2.8bn (£2.4bn) a day in profits over the past half-century. In the second quarter of 2022, Exxon posted a profit of $17.9bn, the highest any publicly listed oil company has ever reported. Chevron hauled in $11.6bn, while Shell reported $11.47bn and BP $9.3 bn, its biggest windfall in more than 14 years.

National oil companies such as Saudi Aramco saw year-on-year profits rise 90% during the second quarter. The Saudi kingdom raked in a cool $88bn during the first half of 2022. Norwegian’s Equinor paid $3bn in dividends last month, while France’s Total tripled its income. Glencore, the world’s largest coal shipper, made record profits and will pay shareholders an additional $4.5bn.

While shareholders and executives reap the benefits of this crisis, families struggle with exorbitant fuel and energy bills on top of climbing food prices. The UN reports that 50 million people in 45 countries are facing famine.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, condemned the fossil fuel super-profits as “grotesque greed” and reiterating that it was immoral for corporations to be making record profits at a massive cost to the poorest communities and the climate.

This “energy crisis” has less to do with economic forces and more with greed. Petrol prices are lowest in Venezuela ($0.022 a litre), while a few miles away, Trinidad and Tobago pays $0.994. In Saudi Arabia, it’s $0.62, Russia $0.837, the US $1.083, China $1.285, the UK $2.003 and Norway $2.218. The price at the pump is made up of the costs of crude oil, refining, shipping and distribution, marketing, wholesale and retail margins, and, of course, taxes. The main driver is the crude price, which fluctuates at 50% to 60% of the total. Hence, an increase in crude raises petrol prices.

Another driver is inflation. Quantitative easing, or “printing money”, through the pandemic equated to £895bn pumped into the UK economy alone. This has contributed to Britain’s inflation rate, which is 10.1% and heading towards 15% – not vice versa, as some may have us believe. Stagflation is now a real possibility worldwide. All of this against the backdrop of many countries’ astonishing debts.

As the world locked down in early 2020, demand for crude plummeted. Production was reduced, hoping for a resurgence in price, and then, as 2021 ended, demand increased. Russia invaded Ukraine and crude prices rocketed. The Opec+ met on 30 June and agreed to add 648,000 barrels a day to oil markets in July and August, while President Joe Biden hastened to court Saudi’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a man he had harshly criticised for his human rights abuses. Both Biden and Boris Johnson – failed, however, to get an increase in the oil supply that would bring down the oil price from either Saudi or UAE. Opec+ kindly agreed to increase output by a mere 100,000 barrels a day for the month of September but in the last few days have agreed to slash that back again by the same amount for October.

So the world is again at the mercy of big corporations. Having been pillaged by big pharma during Covid, we now have to grit our teeth and bear the onslaught of big oil, the “new seven sisters” – Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, China’s CNPC, the National Iranian Oil Company, Venezuela’s PDVSA, Brazil’s Petrobras and Malaysia’s Petronas – as well as Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, Total and others.

Big oil and Opec are holding the world to ransom – it’s time to rein them in | Access to energy | The Guardian

 “Believing as we do that there is nothing on earth more sacred than humanity, we deny all allegiance to this institution of royalty…knowing well that a people mentally poisoned by the adulation of royalty can never attain to that spirit of self-reliant democracy necessary for the attainment of social freedom. The mind accustomed to political kings can easily be reconciled to social kings – capitalist kings of the workshop, the mill, the railway, the ships and the docks.”

James Connolly

James Connolly: Visit of King George V (1911) (marxists.org)