Thursday, April 1, 2021, Managua, Nicaragua


Notes From My Journal

No Comments

The Chauvin Trial

Get ready. There is a reasonably good chance that Derek Chauvin will be exonerated from at least one and possibly all three of the murder charges against him in the death of George Floyd.

And if he is, who knows what will happen. A lot depends on how much of what is presented at court is made public.

When video footage of the incident went viral, there was almost universal agreement that Floyd had been willfully and cruelly murdered by Chauvin. For nine horrific minutes, we witnessed the scene. An armed policeman, squatting next to a handcuffed black man lying on the ground, casually putting his weight on his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck, while the latter cries out, repeatedly, that he cannot breathe. This despite witnesses shouting that the man in custody was losing consciousness.

The death sparked outrage, which led to months of protests and violence and to the deaths of more than a dozen people and the destruction of millions of dollars in property.

And now the trial is here. And everyone is watching.

Based on the video, there seems to be little doubt that this incident was, at the very least, a case of second-degree (involuntary manslaughter) murder. But when you consider the fact that the cop was White and the victim was Black, you would have to ask yourself: If Floyd were White, would he be alive now?

I think it’s fair to say that the great majority – probably 90+% – of Americans expect Chauvin to be convicted of all three counts. And that’s because 90+% – of Americans know nothing more about the incident than what was shown on the video.

Chauvin has been charged with 3 crimes: unintentional, second-degree murder… third-degree murder… and second-degree manslaughter.

But the prosecution has a problem. Two problems:

  1. The autopsy revealed that Floyd’s death was due to an extremely lethal dose of fentanyl that he’d injected just before the arrest.
  2. And as horrible and irresponsible as it appeared, Chauvin and his fellow police officers were exactly following the protocols they were required to follow.

Neither of these two facts makes George Floyd’s death less terrible. Just the idea that he was detained and handcuffed for passing a counterfeit $20 bill is ridiculous. And the fact that, despite the fact that he was telling the truth about his claustrophobia, the arresting officers tried to force him in the car and then put him on the ground, face down with his hands cuffed behind his back… that is, in IMHO, completely inexcusable.

There are those and many other facts about this matter that demand a response in terms of policing. But as to the specific charges against Chauvin – I don’t see how he can be convicted.

If the defense can provide good evidence that the cause of Floyd’s death was primarily due to a mental and physical overreaction to the lethal amount of fentanyl in his system, I don’t see how the case can go any further. But even if the prosecution convinces the jury that the primary cause was not the drug but the restraint he was under, there is still the problem of making the case that Chauvin was “culpably responsible.” Because, as I said, he was following police procedure.

My feeling is that the legislature of Minnesota is guilty for allowing people to be arrested for non-violent misdemeanors, and that the Minneapolis police department is guilty of perpetuating outdated and dangerous strategies for dealing with people that resist arrest. And I think that the fact that Chauvin continued to follow “protocol” while it was evident that he might be endangering Floyd’s life makes him guilty of something he should get time for. But I don’t think that what he did meets the definition of any of the murder charges he is being tried for.

We’ll have to see what happens. But if there is any hope of avoiding another summer of outrage and violence, the major media will have to start reporting the truth – the whole truth and nothing but the truth – throughout the trial.

Continue Reading

From My Work-in-Progress Basket

No Comments

“By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” – John Maynard Keynes

 

Something Rotten in the EEC 

In mid-March, the European Central Bank (ECB) took a bold new step towards trying to deal with the debt it has accumulated since its chief economist announced the bank’s intention to “make sure the yield curves do not move ahead of the economy.”

What does that mean?

It means that it’s going to do everything in its power to create a negative gap between the interest rates that investors will get for buying ECB bonds and inflation.

Still confused? So am I! Let me try again.

The ECB is trying to create a situation where ECB bond holders – people and institutions that support the EEC lending the ECB billions of euros (by buying ECB bonds) – will get shafted by seeing the rates they are getting on those bonds eaten up by a higher rate of inflation.

You believe in the EEC. So, you lend the ECB a million euros for 10 years. This IOU (bond) comes with a guaranteed 2.5% return (yield) on your million euros. You check your investment calculator. In 10 years, your investment will be worth about 1.3 million euros. Not a lot, but something.

Or so you think. What you don’t know – or aren’t aware of – is that the ECB is planning to keep inflation at 5.5% over that 10-year span.  That three-point gap between the 2.5% yield you are getting and the 5.5% yearly devaluation of the euro has made you poorer. Instead of making 300,000 euros, you’ve actually lost about 300,000.

This is bad news for the bond investor, but good news for the government that creates this policy. A negative 3% real yield brings down the real value of a government’s debt load by 46% over 20 years. And a negative 5% real yield brings it down by 64% over 20 years.

If this sounds like the EEC has decided to make its lenders pay for its overspending, you are seeing it the way I do. But it’s a clever policy because it is (1) gradual, and (2) indirect, and therefore almost nobody understands it.  And if anybody does get it, it can easily be explained as the natural fluctuations of the market. (Not true.) And if that fails, it will be revealed as another way of taxing the rich. (Bond holders are generally rich.) So who cares?

It is a clever policy. Not just because it will fly under the radar, but mostly because it will be tolerated by the people that are being robbed. It’s an extra “tax” on their bond holdings. And not a huge tax. Just a few percentage points. The ECB won’t be biting off the hands that feed it. It’ll be merely nibbling at them, at a rate of 3% to 5% per year.

In a recent issue of Postcards from the Fringe, Tom Dyson called this a form of “financial repression… when big, heavily indebted industrialized countries turn their sovereign bonds into certificates of confiscation in order to reduce their debt.” By pushing inflation rates up while keeping yield curves down (below inflation rates), they “effectively create a tax on holders of government bonds by probably something like 3% to 5% a year.”

It’s been done before, Tom argues.

“From 1945 to 1980, the US Federal Reserve mostly kept inflation a few percent over interest rates – not like this. It’s not too much that it scares people to dump bonds, but enough to keep the debt pile shrinking consistently over the long term.”

So, a question for those of us who have, in the past, liked the idea of lending our government our money in return for a guaranteed return: Does it make any sense anymore?

Continue Reading

Postscript

No Comments

I’m not a huge horse racing fan, so I had never heard about the rampant homophobia that exists in that industry. I’m happy to report, however, that there has been some progress recently.

 

Continue Reading