Let's have a sense of proportion: COVID-19 fraud pales to insignificance compared to others

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The mainstream press continues to distract and misdirect public anger about fraud and misconduct, focusing on pinpricks while ignoring arterial bleeding. Here's an excerpt from a Chicago Tribune editorial headlined Monstrous COVID-19 fraud leaves taxpayers holding the bag*:

"It's sickening to consider how, in the midst of a crisis that was killing more than 1 million Americans and disrupting countless livelihoods, so many of our fellow citizens seized an opportunity to exploit relief efforts for personal gain."

Some foreign-sounding guy (Hadi Isbaih) practiced fraud in claiming COVID-19 relief payments. Why how like those foreigners!

Note: No mention of the CDC fraud (ignoring air quality as a COVID spread source) that actually did the killing. No mention of populations that continue to be at risk because air quality standards aren't promoted.

In financial terms, the COVID payment frauds are tiny when compared to the recent scandals, among them bank frauds like the subprime/derivatives meltdown of 2007-9--now called the "Global Financial Crisis" (the GFC). That was orders of magnitude larger, and favored an even more select group of fraudsters--Wall Street's financiers!

According to its own audit, during the GFC the US central bank extended credit to the Wall Street fraudsters amounting to between $16 and $29 trillion. The COVID relief fraud may amount to about 3% of the bank frauds. The result of those GFC fraudulent loans was 8 - 10 million foreclosures, and a massive loss of home ownership. And nobody went to jail! (Thanks Obama!)

Since then, Wall Street's private equity pirates picked up those foreclosed homes for bargain-basement prices and began raising rents. One study confirms that 58% of the current homeless populaton were the result of rents rising faster than wages. 

This is a variation on the theme that Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism"--taking advantage of distress to make a profit. Klein describes it operating in the Iraq war(s). When the US invaded, French and Russian oil firms had contracts to develop the Iraqi oilfields. After that invasion, American firms somehow became favored.

A more recent bit of news reports the US central bank--the Federal Reserve--is paying 5.4% interest to banks for the reserves they have on deposit, yet ...

"megabanks aren’t passing along that generosity to their customers’ savings accounts, since those savings accounts continue to pay the preposterously low rate of 0.01 percent interest, despite 11 rate hikes by the Fed since 2022.

"A detail that goes missing in mainstream media reports on this generous payout by the Fed is that the Fed and banking system were able to survive for 95 years without the Fed paying any interest on bank reserves. The Fed began paying interest on reserves at a time when the megabanks on Wall Street were in the process of imploding during their self-inflicted financial crisis of 2008 [the GFC!] and needed every handout they could conjure up from the Fed...."

This next headline is self-explanatory: Tech Firms Prey on Poor Under Guise of Expanding Access to Financial Services. But it's those dang furriners!

The question that remains unasked is: Who can blame poor people from defrauding a system that preys on them when they're down? These stories are evidence that most mainstream media's reporting tactics amount to straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel. The editors express outrage about the gnats and ignore the camels altogether. And that is really what's sickening to consider.

*Published in the Sacramento Bee 7/1/24