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      in World Politics

      Can an Inflatable Economy Survive?

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      US President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have remained consistently positive since his inauguration in January, inspiring hope among his supporters and the liberal media that he can fulfill at least some of his campaign promises. With extremely thin majorities in both houses of Congress, Biden has to be sure that the “moderates” in his party follow his lead. The term “moderate Democrat” designates the type of elected official who wins office in a Democratic district but possesses a mindset in line with conservative Republican ideology. In particular, such people tend to reject anything that reeks of excessive spending or may create pressure to increase taxes.

      But that is not all. One of Biden’s most intimate advisers during last year’s election campaign, economist and former director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, Larry Summers, has been leading a vociferous campaign opposing Biden’s policies on the grounds of a lurking danger of inflation. He fears that the combined effect of COVID-19 relief and an ambitious infrastructure project accompanied by diverse social reforms will stretch the economy to the point of triggering uncontrollable inflation, the bugbear of traditional politicians. Biden may want to be remembered as the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Summers appears to be inspired by the thinking of FDR’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover.

      Hoover was the president on whose watch the 1929 stock market crash occurred. Historians have identified excessive leveraging and the inflation of asset prices as the main contributing factor to the 1929 crash that marked the end of the Roaring ‘20s. That sobriquet for a decade that followed World War I and left in its wake the Great Depression reflects the wild optimism that reigned at the time. The US had survived a “war to end all wars” and now embraced what President Warren G. Harding called “the return to normalcy.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Proud of their role in ending Europe’s war, Americans — though deprived of alcohol that had been banned in 1919 by a constitutional amendment — interpreted normalcy as an open invitation to self-indulgence. Throughout that roaring decade, the stock market reached for the ceiling before crumbling to the floor in 1929.

      To avoid the mistakes that led to depression, politicians have since crafted their preferred ways of fending off imminent disaster. They called the latest trick, perfected after 2008, quantitative easing (QE), a fancy name for the printing of money gifted to banks and corporations skilled at keeping it out of the reach of ordinary people. Quantitative easing magically inflated asset prices with little effect on the consumer index, a phenomenon all politicians gloried in for two reasons. First, it avoided consumer blowback against price-tag inflation. That always puts voters in a bad mood, threatening prospects of reelection. Second, QE meant that there would be unlimited cash available to corporate donors to finance their political campaigns.

      The COVID-19 crisis arrived at a point where interest rates had fallen to close to 0% and in some cases had gone negative. The encouraging news concerning effective vaccines at the end of 2020 gave hope of a rapid return to Hardingesque normalcy. But today, things have become more complicated. The new Delta variant of the coronavirus threatens the optimists’ vision of a prosperous post-pandemic world. Add to that the raging debate about spending trillions to implement the long-delayed response to a crumbling infrastructure in the US and it becomes clear that many now doubt the likelihood of a smooth transition to a new normalcy, in which the market’s productive forces, guided by an invisible hand, will solve problems on their own while government spending is reined in.

      The question arises: Is it reasonable to print money to solve otherwise unsolvable problems? Larry Summers says it will provoke inflation. Janet Yellen, Biden’s treasury secretary, disagrees: “Is there a risk of inflation? I think there’s a small risk. And I think it’s manageable.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Inflation:

      1. The characteristic expansion of all types of bubbles during their formation and preceding the moment at which they burst
      2. A general characteristic of any system that seeks to build an elaborate superstructure of hyperreality to replace traditional human activities, institutions, economic relations and social behavior, whose elements range from methods of governing and ideological frameworks to acceptable forms of public rhetoric

      Contextual Note

      Nobel Prize-winning economist, New York Times columnist and loyal Democrat Paul Krugman confessed this week that “while I’m in the camp that sees the current inflation as a transitory problem, we could be wrong.” He thus acknowledges that the threat of inflation is real while reiterating an optimism similar to Yellen’s. Consistent with The Times’ editorial line, he aligns with the president’s political agenda of Biden in his quest to be remembered as a second FDR.

      Some have asserted that Summers’ bitterness about not having been handed the job of treasury secretary explains his loud complaining about the danger of inflation. But Summers may have missed the real threat facing the economy, just as he misjudged not only the situation in 2007 but even the Asian crisis in the 1990s. “In terms of judgment, in forecasting his record has been atrocious,” according to Joseph Stiglitz. But does that mean Yellen and Krugman are correct?

      Who’s to Blame for a Tanking Economy?

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      Theron Mohamed, writing for Business Insider, cites a number of experts who beg to differ, including Michael Burry, who famously predicted the 2008 crash and became the hero of the book and film, “The Big Short.” These market analysts see something far worse than inflation in the offing. According to Mohamed, “Michael Burry and Jeremy Grantham are bracing for a devastating crash across financial markets. They’re far from the only experts to warn that rampant speculation fueled by government stimulus programs can’t shore up asset prices forever.”

      Whereas Summers and Krugman are debating possible effects on the consumer index, Burry and Grantham are talking about a market meltdown, possibly a new depression. And they dare to designate the true villain: the obsession with shoring up asset prices.

      Historical Note

      A recent study documented by Yale Insights points to a historical constant that exists despite radically changing market and regulatory conditions. “Downward leverage spirals are believed to be one of the main triggers of the 1929 U.S. stock market crash,” professor Kelly Shue points out. “Leverage-induced fire sales were also a contributing factor to the 2007-2008 financial crisis in the U.S.” She adds that the same phenomenon underlay the Chinese stock market crash in 2015.

      Measures taken with the intent of avoiding a depression have paradoxically aggravated the conditions that may result in a monumentally devastating depression. The intention of the Treasury and the Fed to employ quantitative easing to “shore up asset prices forever” contains one significant error: the belief in “forever.” It parallels the belief of every administration since George W. Bush — now for the first time called into question by Biden — that American wars can also be carried on forever.

      The link between the two may be more direct than most people recognize. Military investment and activity have become the core of the US economy. Bloated defense budgets are today’s “pump priming.” Wars keep a cycle of investment alive that nourishes not only industries that directly benefit from defense procurement but more broadly the entire technology sector, which has become the locomotive of the civil economy.

      The problem may even sink deeper into the structure of the US economy. Robert Kuttner recently unveiled a “dirty little secret of the recent era of very low inflation.” He believes that “the prime source of well-behaved prices has been shabby wages.” Citing “outsourced manufacturing, gig work, weakened unions, and a low-wage service sector,” he notes that the economy’s very real gains from productivity growth have all “gone to the top.”

      When nearly all incremental wealth is tied up in assets that may come tumbling down at any moment, nobody is secure. After the crash, the rich will lament their losses and their inability to rebuild. Millions will lose their gig work and below-survival wages in real jobs with no hope for a rebound. And with COVID-19 still creating havoc and climate change more and more visibly aggravating its effects, the problem of inflation we should be most worried about is the verbal inflation of experts who believe their discourse is capable of shoring up a failing system.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      In a pandemic, US workers without paid medical leave can’t afford a sick day

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      US newsIn a pandemic, US workers without paid medical leave can’t afford a sick dayCoronavirus focuses new attention on need for laws requiring paid time off Michael SainatoFri 9 Jul 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 9 Jul 2021 05.01 EDTThe coronavirus pandemic has fueled the demand for American workers to be provided with paid sick leave at their jobs, as essential workers risked not only contracting coronavirus but also losing two weeks of income if they tested positive for the virus.US workers receive far fewer days off than workers in other major industrialized nations, and work an average of four to eight more hours a week than the average worker in Europe. More than 32 million workers in the US had no paid sick days off before the pandemic, and low-wage workers are less likely to have paid sick leave and other benefits such as health insurance.Esperanza Jimenez, a janitor in the Miami area for an office cleaning contractor, lives with her son and his three daughters, and relies on her income to send money to her 90-year-old mother in Nicaragua.While working as an essential worker during the pandemic, Jimenez contracted Covid-19 in late December 2020 and spent several days in the hospital. While out sick from work, she didn’t receive any sick leave compensation from her employer because it was exempt from the federal paid leave requirement.“I was worried about my bills, because it doesn’t matter if you’re sick or not, you still have to pay the bills,” said Jimenez. “When I left the hospital I still was getting these horrible muscular pains all over my body, these terrible headaches and a hoarseness in my throat, but I can’t miss any work because they’re not going to pay me for my days off.”Though government action like the Cares Act and American Rescue Plan Act expanded paid sick leave to millions of workers in the US, paid leave advocates and workers are now pushing for a permanent solution, as the US is the only major nation in the world without a federal paid leave policy.“It’s something we should have had in place years ago,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, director of Paid Leave for All, a campaign of several organizations advocating for a federal paid leave policy for medical and family issues.“The pandemic put into focus what a crisis this has been in the making. When the global pandemic hit, we weren’t prepared and one of the first things Congress did was put into place a temporary paid leave law, knowing it would save lives and jobs.”Veronica Gonzales works two jobs, one at Taco Bell and the other at the fast-food chain Jack in the Box, in Alameda, California. Through the pandemic, she’s had to fight to receive paid time off for quarantining while her son was hospitalized from Covid-19, and even went into work recently while sick.“Working during the pandemic has been extremely stressful for us,” said Gonzales. “We have to work. We have to be paid and we can’t afford not to be paid.”A campaign of workers, small and large business owners and activists has been pushing Congress to pass a federal paid leave policy and also fighting to enact paid leave at the local level.Nija Phelps of Milford, Connecticut, a Paid Leave for All advocate, became involved in the campaign after she and her husband had to quit their jobs and move to Michigan in 2013 to care for her mother-in-law, who was recovering from heart surgery. Neither of them had any paid leave to keep their jobs and income.“Life was very much just up in the air. We didn’t really know what was going to happen. As she got stronger, we felt better about it, but there were struggles for all of us,” said Phelps. “To not have an employer or government helping with that, it’s frightening, it’s cruel and it’s really unnecessary because we know we can make it work not just because other countries have been doing it for decades, but there are workable plans and so many other states are adopting it.”Paid leave policies have passed in California, New York, Washington, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Colorado, Oregon and the District of Columbia, and local ordinances have passed in cities and counties around the US.Angel Maldonado, a public transit security officer, is pushing for paid sick leave to be provided to contracted county employees in Miami-Dade county, Florida.In 2018, he had to return to work soon after surgery for prostate cancer. He wore a catheter on the job for two months, which often leaked. Now he is scheduled to have back surgery and is worried he will have to return to work while he’s still recovering because he can’t afford to live without the income.“The situation was very difficult. I’m the only one who works in the house and my wife, who is retired and on disability, depends on me,” said Maldonado. “It’s not fair. We’re human beings and we have biological needs just like anyone else.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsCoronavirusfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      Has the Pandemic Boosted the Idea of Universal Basic Income?

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      The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns have brought economic activity to a standstill. As a result, the livelihoods of people around the world have been threatened. To respond to the crisis, some governments have considered how to expand their social safety net. This is particularly because many people who work in the informal economy or those without jobs have been left with no financial support. In this context, the idea of a universal basic income (UBI) has resurfaced.

      Until recently, UBI was a utopian proposal relegated to academic discussions. But the pandemic has led to a debate about UBI as a potential tool of public policy. Now, several basic income programs are running around the world. Advocates see in UBI an instrument to build more resilient societies in the face of economic crises, income inequality and automation. Critics argue that governments should strengthen existing social programs instead.

      Can a Presidential Candidate Convince America on Universal Basic Income?

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      In June 2020, Spain offered monthly payments of up to €1,015 ($1,200) to the poorest families. Germany has implemented a small-scale pilot study to take place over three years. As part of the program, 120 Germans will receive monthly payments of €1,200. In the United Kingdom, a motion to introduce UBI was signed last year by more than 100 parliamentarians from across the political spectrum. At the start of the pandemic, the US government paid up to $1,200 to adults earning below $99,000 a year; a second stimulus package meant Americans received even more money. Thus, it seems that the crisis has shifted the UBI debate, at least in some European countries and in the US.

      However, in South and Central America, the debate on the desirability of UBI could “not take off, given the very severe fiscal constraints in most countries,” says Oscar Ugarteche, a Peruvian professor of economics. This is despite the Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance) experiment of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former Brazilian president. This indicates that the debate is partly country-specific and that the implementation of UBI may require “several national experiments, which are likely to influence corresponding variations in policy design,” according to counselor Andrew Cornford.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Indeed, UBI is not a one-size-fits-all program. Many questions need to be considered. For example, should payments be issued per household or adult? Should everyone be eligible for UBI or only those receiving low salaries? Should a universal basic income be temporary or permanent? How will it affect the willingness of people to find a job or to continue working? How would UBI be financed?

      The first step is to assess the feasibility and implications of UBI. To do so will require building on the experiences of small-scale studies, comparing their results and collecting further evidence. Thus, it could be a long time before governments and the wider population see such a program. That is unless the current health crisis can serve as a catalyst for socioeconomic change, contributing to make UBI part of the legacy of the pandemic. 

      By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski

      Author’s note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: Where does the debate over a universal basic income stand in your region? Has the pandemic had an impact on discussions about UBI?

      “…ensure that everyone has a floor on which to build [their] life…”

      “World GDP in 2020 reached $90 trillion. To bring this number down to earth, it means that what we presently produce is equivalent to $3,800 a month per four-member family, amply sufficient for everyone on earth to live a dignified and comfortable life. A modest reduction in inequality and a flat redistribution to adults is sufficient to ensure that everyone has a floor on which to build [their] life. Huge financial resources lay idle in the world, growing not through productive investment, but financial rent. Taxing them might make these resources useful, stimulating demand and production at the bottom while drastically reducing poverty. Those who do not need the support might just be taxed back for the amount.”

      Ladislau Dowbor — economist, professor at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo, consultant many international agencies

      “…a certain confusion reigns here around the notion…”

      “In France, the debate concerning a universal basic income remains confined to academic spheres and to a few militant groups. The issue was, however, put in the political agenda by the socialist candidate in the last presidential elections (spring 2017), that is to say before the outbreak of COVID-19. This candidate achieved a very poor score. The crisis itself does not seem to have brought the problem to the fore. It is true that a certain confusion reigns here around the notion: Is it a real universal basic income, a negative tax, aid to citizens without resources or a subsidy to all residents? The imagination is lost, which does not help the political inscription of this notion, nor the serene economic discussion.”

      Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)

      “…with the COVID crisis, the idea is resurfacing…”

      “In June 2016, a proposal to introduce a universal basic income was rejected by three-quarters of Swiss voters and all Cantons. With the COVID crisis, the idea is resurfacing, but to gain traction, it will need to address two issues. The first is how to finance it, especially if UBI should be enough to live on, without having adverse incentives for work and the tax base. The second is why provide support to everyone instead of those in need? Even with the pandemic, the vast majority of the population have kept their income and thus do not need support.”

      Cedric Tille — professor of macroeconomics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva

      “…dissatisfaction with existing social-security systems…”

      “Dissatisfaction with existing social-security systems has recently led to greater attention to the universal basic income. Perhaps the best-known experiment is that carried out on a limited sample of recipients in Finland. In the recent municipal elections in the UK, almost 300 candidates of the Green Party were declared supporters of the UBI. Supporters stress the automaticity and universality of the UBI, which are believed to contribute to wellbeing and the ease with which beneficiaries are able to handle other problems of their lives. Critics stress the undesirability of the delinking of financial benefits from particular welfare services owing to its likely impact on popular support for these services. This is a debate that requires several national experiments, which are likely to influence corresponding variations in policy design, including other solutions such as negative income taxes or simply strengthened social security.”

      Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services

      “…the proposal could draw away people from the labor force…”

      “During the pandemic, the Spanish left coalition government accelerated a plan called Ingreso Minimo Vital, expected to hand out between €462 and €1,015 per month according to the conditions of each household unit. This in part replaces or adds up to existing regional schemes. Until March 2021, 210,000 beneficiaries had their submission approved, of a total of 1.3 million requests. The unions and a few NGOs — some of them very efficient in relieving newly emergent poverty — denounced the slowness and administrative maze in the process. The Spanish unemployed still number 3.6 million (15.99%), plus about 750,000 in furlough schemes. The proposal, if successful, could draw away people from the labor force, whereas we need public-private policies aiming to the contrary.”

      Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, former executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group

      “…these measures would provide tangible help that women need right now…”

      “For myriad women in economies of every size, along with trailing income, unpaid care and internal work burden have exploded. While all are facing unprecedented challenges, women continue bearing the brunt of the economic and social fallout of COVID-19. Pandemic-induced poverty flow will also widen the gender poverty gap, which means more women will be pushed into extreme poverty than men, thereby revealing women’s precarious economic security. Introducing direct income support to women would mean giving cash directly to women who are poor or lack income that can be a lifeline for those struggling to afford day-to-day necessities during the pandemic. Further, these measures would provide tangible help that women need right now.”

      Archana Sinha — head of the Department of Women’s Studies at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, India

      “In Central America, it has not even been considered…”

      “In Mexico, the discussion went to Congress as a proposal in June 2020 and is unapproved with a cost of 1% of GDP. In Central America, it has not even been considered as it is too onerous for the limited public finances of those countries. In Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Argentina, among other countries in the region, there is public discussion on the desirability of UBI promoted by ECLAC and UNDP and has not taken off, given the very severe fiscal constraints in most countries. UBI would not reduce inequalities as people who do not need it would get it and families with many adults in one household would get a bigger share than those with children.”

      Oscar Ugarteche — visiting professor of economics in various universities

      “…at the center of the most dynamic debates…”

      “The pandemic triggered a socioeconomic downturn — already sharpened by the 2008 debt crisis — that raised economic uncertainty and widened inequalities. Fundamental rights and basic life parameters are at risk, especially for the poorest of the poor. Scholars, experts and citizens feel that it’s surely the time to voice their support for a series of socioeconomic initiatives — the universal basic income being at the center of the most dynamic debates. The southern Mediterranean countries and Greece prioritized the pandemic effects and kept aside for a short period of time the austerity measures. However, Greece is expected to turn back to the economic stability narrative, as described during the debt crisis, a fact that disempowers a possible engagement to the UBI debate. If this becomes — as it should — an international matter, weaker economies will follow.”

      Christos Tsironis — associate professor of social theory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece

      “…popularizing the idea of universal basic income in the US…”

      “Thanks, Andrew Yang, for popularizing the idea of universal basic income in the US. Yang ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, offering the “Freedom Dividend,” a UBI of $1,000 a month to every American adult, as a solution to the eventual replacement of (nearly all) humans with automation. He scarcely answered how his UBI was to be funded, a significant, but not insurmountable, problem for UBI’s proponents. UBI skeptics were somewhat silenced when the former and current administrations sent out modest checks to those who lost jobs in the pandemic, in a series of massive economic rescue packages. Maybe the rescue plans are a nascent solution to UBI funding: higher taxes, deficit spending and pump priming.”

      Kara Tan Bhala — president and founder of the Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics

      “Italy introduced two years ago the Reddito di cittadinanza…”

      “Italy introduced two years ago the Reddito di cittadinanza, with 1.2 million Italians receiving this first attempt of universal basic income (€560 on average), at the condition of refusing no more than two job offers. In two years, only a small number of citizens actually signed a contract, as most offers were short-term. On the other hand, Italy just presented its Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza )PNRR), consisting in €235.1 billion. Roughly 27% of the resources of the plan will be devoted to the digital agenda, 40% to investments to counteract climate change and 10% to social cohesion. Particular attention was paid to the historically disadvantaged Mezzogiorno of southern Italy (€82 billion, of which 36 in infrastructures), with projects involving young people and women, groups hit hard by the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic.

      Valerio Bruno — researcher in politics and senior research fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR).

      *[A version of this article was originally published by From Virus to Vitamin and Agefi.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Republican governors urge vaccine-hesitant residents to get Covid shots

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      US newsRepublican governors urge vaccine-hesitant residents to get Covid shotsLeaders of Arkansas, West Virginia, and Utah describe high stakes as Delta variant poses threat Edward Helmore in New YorkMon 5 Jul 2021 14.02 EDTLast modified on Mon 5 Jul 2021 14.03 EDTSeveral Republican governors with lagging vaccine rates in their states have urged residents to accept the shots as the Biden administration comes under pressure to reopen US borders to overseas visitors.The Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, West Virginia’s Jim Justice and Spencer Cox of Utah warned against vaccine hesitancy, which some disease experts, including the White House chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said could create “two types of America”.“We are in a race,” Hutchinson said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. About 32% of people in Arkansas are fully vaccinated, compared with 47.9% nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. “If we stopped right here, and we didn’t get a greater per cent of our population vaccinated, then we’re going to have trouble in the next school year and over the winter.” The solution, he said, “is the vaccinations”.In a Fourth of July address on Sunday, Joe Biden called vaccination “the most patriotic thing you can do”, saying the US had moved into a new phase of virus response. But he also warned that while the country is “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus”, the effort was not complete. “We’ve got a lot more work to do,” he said.Justice told ABC’s This Week: “Red states probably have a lot of people that are very, very conservative in their thinking and they think, ‘Well, I don’t have to do that.’ But they’re not thinking right.”01:28West Virginia, which has been offering vaccine incentives from college scholarships to free hunting and fishing licenses, has a similar rate of vaccination to Arkansas.“When it really boils right down to it, they’re in a lottery to themselves,” Justice said. “We have a lottery that says if you’re vaccinated, we’re going to give you stuff. Well, you’ve got another lottery for them, and it’s a death lottery.”Cox called Utah’s low vaccination rates “troubling”, and placed blame on the state’s youthful population. He told CBS’s Face the Nation “hopefully reason will rule”.Cox’s delicacy in urging his state’s residents to accept vaccination comes as a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 74% of people who have not been vaccinated said they probably or definitely would not get the shots.The divide corresponds to political affiliation, the survey found, with 86% of Democrats and only 45% of Republicans having received at least one vaccine shot. Six per cent of Democrats and 47% of Republicans said they were unlikely to get the shot.Asked about whether he is concerned the Delta variant of coronavirus could cause outbreaks in the US, Fauci said: “I don’t think you’re going to be seeing anything nationwide. Because fortunately, we have a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated. So it’s going to be regional. … We’re going to see, and I’ve said, almost two types of America.” Persistent resistance to vaccination in red states led Fauci to warn on Sunday that fully vaccinated Americans should “go the extra step” and wear masks when traveling to parts of the country with low rates.“If you put yourself in an environment in which you have a high level of viral dynamics and a very low level of vaccine, you might want to go the extra step … even though the vaccines themselves are highly effective,” Fauci told NBC’s Meet the Press.Fauci added that the situation was lamentable: “When you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and death, it’s really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”The warnings came as the administration’s Covid response coordinator, Jeff Zients, acknowledged that it had narrowly missed its goal of 70% of adults having at least one shot by the Fourth of July.“I think we’re much further along than anyone would have anticipated at this point, with two out of three adult Americans with at least one shot,” Zients told CNN, noting that 90% of those age 65 and older had received at least one shot.The situation comes as the administration comes under increasing pressure to lift international travel restrictions that have been in place since March 2020.Steve Shur, president of the trade group Travel Technology Association, told the Hill on Monday that the administration’s travel bans were “frozen in time.”With exceptions for citizens, green-card holders, students and some family members, US entry bans remain in place for travelers from China, Iran, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, India and South Africa.“We believe it’s possible now, at least for countries of low risk, to start to reopen international travel” to the US, Shur told the outlet.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, came under pressure late last month from European heads to reciprocate the EU’s recent reopening of borders to vaccinated travelers from the US.“I can’t put a date on it,” Blinken said at a press conference in Paris on 25 June. “I can tell you we’re working very actively on this right now, and we are – like France, like our other partners in Europe – both anxious and looking forward to restoring travel. But we have to be guided by the science. We have to be guided by medical expertise.”TopicsUS newsArkansasWest VirginiaUtahVaccines and immunisationCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Nightmare Scenario review: Trump, Covid and a lasting national trauma

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      BooksNightmare Scenario review: Trump, Covid and a lasting national trauma Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta of the Washington Post show how bad things got – and how they could have been worseLloyd GreenSat 3 Jul 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 3 Jul 2021 02.21 EDTAs the world wakes from its pandemic-induced coma, Bloomberg rates the US as the best place to be. More than 150 million Americans have been vaccinated; little more than 4,100 have been hospitalized or have died as a result of breakthrough infection.Trump contempt for White House Covid taskforce revealed in new bookRead moreThe vaccines worked – but too late to save more than 600,000 Americans who have died. More than 500,000 were on Donald Trump’s watch.“This would have been hard regardless of who was president,” a senior administration official confided to Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. “With Donald Trump, it was impossible.”Abutaleb is a health policy writer for the Washington Post. Paletta is its economics editor. Together, they supply a bird’s-eye narrative of a chaotic and combative response to a pandemic that has subsided but not disappeared in the west. Elsewhere, it still rages.At almost 500 pages, Nightmare Scenario depicts an administration riven by turf wars, terrified of losing re-election and more concerned about the demands of Trump and his base than broader constituencies and realities. It was always “them” v “us”. Sadly, this is what we expected.Under the subtitle “Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic that Changed History”, Abutaleb and Paletta confirm that life in the Trump White House was Stygian bleak. Trump was the star. Pain and insecurity were the coins of the realm.Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, laboured in constant fear of Trump and competitors inside the government. After taking a hard line against flavoured e-cigarettes early on, to Trump’s dismay, Azar never recovered. The pandemic simply deepened his personal nightmare.When Covid struck, he was all but a dead man walking. Then the White House Covid taskforce, headed by Mike Pence, neutered his authority. Think of it as a one-two punch. True to form, Trump told a taskforce member Azar was “in trouble” and that he, Trump, had “saved him”.Azar was forced to take on Michael Caputo, an acolyte of Roger Stone, as spokesman. Eventually, Caputo posted a Facebook video in which he claimed “hit squads [were] being trained all over this country”, ready to mount an armed insurrection to stop a second Trump term. Caputo embarked on a two-month medical leave. His “mental health … definitely failed”.Not surprisingly, Trump lost patience with Pence’s taskforce. It failed to deliver a magic bullet and he dismissed it as “that fucking council that Mike has”. For the record, in April 2020 Pence remarked: “Maybe I’m a glass half-full kind of guy, but I think the country is ready to reopen.” For all of his obsequiousness, Pence could never make Trump happy.Instead, Peter Navarro, Scott Atlas and Stephen Moore emerged as Trump’s go-to guys. Predictably, mayhem ensued.Navarro suggested his PhD in economics made him an expert in medicine as well. He jousted with Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease since 1984 – seemingly for giggles.Atlas was a radiologist whose understanding of infectious diseases was tangential. As for Moore, he played emissary for a libertarian donor base distraught by shutdowns and mask mandates.“Fauci is the villain here,” Moore intoned. “He has the Napoleon complex, and he thinks he is the dictator who could decide how to run the country.” Trump’s own authoritarian streak seems to have escaped him.Moore also referred to Fauci as “Fucky”, and advised state-based “liberation” movements against public health measures that served as precursors and incubators to the invasion of the US Capitol on 6 January this year.Going back to 2019, Moore was forced to withdraw from consideration for the board of the Federal Reserve after the Guardian reported on his bouts of alimony-dodging, contempt of court and tax delinquency.With one major exception – financing and developing a vaccine – the Trump administration left Covid to the states. Hydroxychloroquine never saved the day, though Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, ordered a bunch of it from India to sate Trump’s ego. Six days after the 2020 election, the National Institutes of Health issued a statement that insisted: “Hydroxychloroquine does not benefit adults hospitalized with Covid-19.” Trump was callous and mendacious before the pandemic. Yet even as he embraced medical quackery, bleach injections and self-pity, he presided over unprecedented vaccine development, the medical equivalent of winning the space race and the cold war at once.Preventable review: Andy Slavitt indicts Trump over Covid – but scolds us all tooRead moreWhen Trump signed off on Operation Warp Speed in May 2020, “he thought vaccines were too pie in the sky”, Abutaleb and Paletta report. When Trump learned the first contract executed under the program was with AstraZeneca, from the UK, he growled: “This is terrible news. I’m going to get killed.”Boris Johnson would “have a field day”, he said. Things didn’t work out that way.Right now, countries that relied on Chinese vaccines are experiencing a death spike in the face of the Delta variant. In the Seychelles, almost seven in 10 are fully vaccinated – yet deaths per capita are currently running at the highest rate in the world.Added to Chinese opacity surrounding its role in the outbreak, the limits of vaccine diplomacy and technology are apparent. From the looks of things, Trump has left multiple legacies, some more complex and alloyed than others. But things could have been worse.TopicsBooksCoronavirusInfectious diseasesPolitics booksUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationreviewsReuse this content More