Headline News 28/03/2020

Headlines:

• US Announced Records $2.2 Trillion Stimulus Package to Support Economy not People

IMF and World Bank Call for Debt Relief for Poor Countries

West Fails to Comprehend how to Deal with Plague, Instituting Lockdowns but Keeping Travel Open

Details:

US Announced Records $2.2 Trillion Stimulus Package to Support Economy not People

According to the Financial Times:

Donald Trump has signed into law a historic $2.2tn stimulus package designed to prop up a US economy crippled by the spread of coronavirus, after more than a week of wrangling on Capitol Hill.

The package includes one-off “helicopter money” cheques of up to $1,200 for individuals, an extra $600 a week in unemployment insurance for those without work, and a $450bn bailout fund for US businesses, states and cities, among other provisions.

There are now more than 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the US, making it the country with the largest number of citizens testing positive for Covid-19. More than 3m Americans filed a claim for unemployment benefits last week, an all-time high, as businesses shuttered amid city and state-imposed lockdowns in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.

It is well-known that the West cares very little for humanity. This is evident not only in their foreign policy, which is built on imperialism, exploiting the peoples of the world for the interests of Western elites, but is also evident from their treatment of their own people, who suffer a stressful, empty existence, many working from morning until night yet still living on debt and meagre government handouts. Western governments have access to vast resources but it is only when the elite are in trouble that they are willing to provide access to it. This callousness comes directly from the Western liberal secular creed that motivates the individual to care only for selfish personal material interest and disregard humanitarian, ethical and spiritual concerns, attributing them to suffocating tradition, irrational sentimentality, and baseless superstition. It is further reinforced in the Capitalist economic thinking, which calls on government to care not for the welfare of actual people but for the welfare of the ‘economy’. Governments promote fiscal spending during recessions not with the intention of helping people but with the explicit intention of reviving economic growth, again benefiting most of all the Capitalist elite. With Allah’s permission, the Muslim Ummah shall soon arise and rescue humanity from its misery, by re-establishing the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw) that shall implement Islam alone and carry its message to the entire world.

IMF and World Bank Call for Debt Relief for Poor Countries

Just as Western governments are announcing massive domestic spending programmes, they are also pushing for international relief, with the IMF and World Bank heads both calling for this. According to al Jazeera:

The heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday underscored the need to provide debt relief to poorer countries hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and said official bilateral creditors would have to play a major role.

The IMF and the World Bank have both launched emergency programmes to offer grants and loans to member countries, with a heavy focus on developing countries and emerging markets, some of which are already in debt distress. They have also called on official bilateral creditors to provide immediate debt relief to the world's poorest countries.

"Poorer countries will take the hardest hit, especially ones that were already heavily indebted before the crisis," the World Bank's president, David Malpass, told the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the steering committee of the IMF.

"Many countries will need debt relief. This is the only way they can concentrate any new resources on fighting the pandemic and its economic and social consequences," he said, according to a text of his remarks.

Malpass said the bank had emergency operations under way in 60 countries, and its board was considering the first 25 projects valued at nearly $2bn under a $14bn fast-track facility to help fund immediate healthcare needs.

The World Bank was also working with 35 countries to redirect existing resources to address the pandemic, with almost $1bn of those projects already approved. Overall, the bank plans to spend $160bn over the next 15 months, he said.

Malpass said the IMF and World Bank would present a joint plan for debt relief at the institution's virtual Spring Meetings in April, but gave no details.

The poorest countries face official bilateral debt service payments of $14bn in 2020, including interest and amortisation payments, Malpass said.

Less than $4bn of that total $14bn was owed to the United States and other Paris Club members. China, a major creditor, is not a member of the Paris Club - an informal group of creditor nations working to solve the payment problems faced by debtor nations.

Given the large share of debt held by official bilateral creditors, Malpass said it was critical to ensure their "broad and equitable participation" in addressing the crisis.

The IMF's managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, warned that half of the low-income countries were already in "high debt distress" and much would depend on the official creditors.

She said there were already discussions among the world's 20 largest economies, the Group of 20, and in the Paris Club. But she noted there would also be a role for private creditors, as was the case during the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

"The sooner we do it, the better," Georgieva said. "The same way the fund during the global financial crisis brought together both official creditors and private creditors to assess a good pathway through a dramatic crisis, we have to do it this time around as well."

The two Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and World Bank, well understand their role in maintaining the world economic order. Created in 1944, they were designed to perpetuate the imperial economic order established by individual European empires but to do so on a global scale. The world economic order is designed for the transfer of unimaginable wealth and resources from what are known as third world countries to Western countries, chief amongst them the United States, where the Bretton Woods Conference was held. The purpose of the IMF and World Bank is to ensure that the exploited countries do not completely collapse, and so are able to continue to maintain the West and, in particular their elites, in luxurious comfort and astonishing prosperity. Hence these institutions inevitably step in during global economic crises with their miserly loans conditioned upon multiple Western demands and targeted to sustain the economic infrastructure upon which Western exploitation depends. With Allah’s permission, the Muslim Ummah shall soon arise and rid itself of the interference of the disbelieving West and its imperialist exploitation, and return the world to the open and just economic order that existed previously, guaranteed by the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate), the superpower of its age.

West Fails to Comprehend how to Deal with Plague, Instituting Lockdowns but Keeping Travel Open

After China’s success in containing COVID-19, the epicentre of the disease has now shifted to the West, with the number of cases in America outnumbering those in China, despite Western announcements of lockdowns and social distancing. But locking down healthy people on them only obstructs necessary social and economic activity that is essential to the welfare of all. It is those who are unwell who are in need of isolation, not those who are well. Furthermore, it is not individuals that require social distancing but entire regions that need to be quarantined to prevent further dissemination of the disease. But Western countries are failing to do this, keeping international travel open. According to CNN:

The US State Department has repatriated more than 15,000 Americans who had been stuck abroad due to coronavirus but is still tracking tens of thousands more who may need assistance.

As of Friday afternoon, the agency had dispatched more than 150 flights to more than 40 countries to retrieve the travelers, many of whom were left without other means of departure due to flight restrictions and border closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Ian Brownlee, the head of the State Department's repatriation task force, told reporters Friday that they were tracking at least 64 additional flights over the next week and that they had identified about 9,000 passengers to take these flights.

While certain Islamic scholars have said that necessary travel to or from areas of plague can be permitted, the hadeeth is clear about prohibiting fleeing from plagued areas. Rasool Allah (saw) said:

«إِذَا سَمِعْتُمْ بِالطَّاعُونِ بِأَرْضٍ فَلَا تَدْخُلُوهَا وَإِذَا وَقَعَ بِأَرْضٍ وَأَنْتُمْ بِهَا فَلَا تَخْرُجُوا مِنْهَا»

“If you hear of a plague in a land, then do not go into it. If it happens in land where you are, then do not go out of it.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 5396, Sahih Muslim 2218)

The misguided disbelieving West mismanage and spoil everything. Sanity shall not return to man’s affairs until Islam is once again established and the Muslim Ummah fulfils its destiny of caring for all humankind.

#Covid19    #Korona                   كورونا#