What most analysts will not mention is the role of market manipulation, profiteering and speculation in pushing up prices. Speculation has been fuelled by the supply of ready cash provided by capitalist governments, particularly in the US and Europe in response to the financial market meltdown of March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.
Financial markets have priced in the prospect of payment as unlikely with one of its bonds trading at less than 30 percent of its face value.
A new report from research firm Wealth-X found that the global COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the growth of social inequality and witnessed an unprecedented accumulation of wealth among the most privileged layers in society.
According to trade association Oil & Gas UK, the price of wholesale gas has more than quadrupled since this time last year. It has jumped by 250 percent since January and 70 percent since August.
This lecture was delivered to the Socialist Equality Party (US) Summer School on July 23, 2019 by Andre Damon, regular writer for the World Socialist Web Site and leading member of the Socialist Equality Party in the US.
This is the text of the speech given by David North to open the International Online May Day Rally hosted by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the WSWS on Sunday, May 4.
Link to audio
The IMF’s “baseline scenario” is that the world economy will lose $9 trillion in 2020 and 2021, equivalent to the combined economic output of Germany and Japan.
The spread of the coronavirus has exposed the disastrous consequences of decades of the massive concentration of wealth and inequality spawned by capitalism.
