Saturday, March 21, 2020
War, Demobilization and Memory pp 254-268| Cite as
Enterprising Women and War Profiteers: Race, Gender and Power in the Revolutionary Caribbean
Authors
Kit Candlin
Cassandra Pybus
Authors and affiliations
Part of the War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 book series (WCS)
Enterprising Women and War Profiteers: Race, Gender and Power in the Revolutionary Caribbean
Authors
Kit Candlin
Cassandra Pybus
Authors and affiliations
Part of the War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 book series (WCS)
Abstract
War profiteers have long been a theme in conflict studies. Profiteering was as much a feature of the wars that tore through the Caribbean at the end of the eighteenth century as it was for later wars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The age of democratic revolutions in the Atlantic World, beginning roughly with the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 and continuing through the American, French, and South American revolutions, brought upheaval to the Caribbean that lasted decades. In this turbulent world of slave rebellion and imperial contest a new group of people emerged to complicate further the social demography of the region. This chapter focuses on free women of colour, who perhaps more than any other social group were able to navigate the revolutionary turmoil in the Caribbean, self-fashion their own lives and profit from division and conflict. These were women who were descended from slaves and yet they themselves became slave owners with little inclination to manumit any of their chattels unless they happened to be family. By the time these conflicts came to an end, their mark on networks of power would be an indelible, often denigrated, part of afro-Caribbean identity. Their presence is an important legacy in the history of war, demonstrating that conflict and insecurity could create important entrepreneurial opportunity to be seized upon by marginalized or displaced civilians.
War profiteers have long been a theme in conflict studies. Profiteering was as much a feature of the wars that tore through the Caribbean at the end of the eighteenth century as it was for later wars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The age of democratic revolutions in the Atlantic World, beginning roughly with the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 and continuing through the American, French, and South American revolutions, brought upheaval to the Caribbean that lasted decades. In this turbulent world of slave rebellion and imperial contest a new group of people emerged to complicate further the social demography of the region. This chapter focuses on free women of colour, who perhaps more than any other social group were able to navigate the revolutionary turmoil in the Caribbean, self-fashion their own lives and profit from division and conflict. These were women who were descended from slaves and yet they themselves became slave owners with little inclination to manumit any of their chattels unless they happened to be family. By the time these conflicts came to an end, their mark on networks of power would be an indelible, often denigrated, part of afro-Caribbean identity. Their presence is an important legacy in the history of war, demonstrating that conflict and insecurity could create important entrepreneurial opportunity to be seized upon by marginalized or displaced civilians.
Commodore Vanderbilt: Patriot or War Profiteer?
T.J. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 2009 National Book Award Winner
When I set out to write a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, a man known by the informal title of "Commodore," I faced one mystery after another. Even though he was one of the richest and most powerful businessmen in American history, he conducted most of his operations in secret. He left no diary, no collection of papers, and carried out many transactions orally, without committing them to paper. But perhaps no period of his life was more bewildering than the Civil War.
Congress bequeathed a gold medal upon the Commodore for donating his largest steamship (the Vanderbilt) to the Union navy—but he did so only after leasing it to the War Department for many weeks, until the bill reached $300,000, nearly a third of what it cost to build. He refused to take any compensation when he organized a massive flotilla to transport an expedition to New Orleans led by General Nathaniel Banks—yet the press was scandalized by stories of decrepit, unseaworthy vessels that he hired for the fleet. It was said that Vanderbilt used an agent who extracted outrageous commissions from shipowners, suggesting the Commodore had received some of the gains as well.
Was Vanderbilt a noble patriot, or a war profiteer? Most histories of the period that mention him list him as an example of the latter, alongside men who sold the government rotten shoes and shoddy uniforms that fell apart in the first rain. Yet Vanderbilt named two of his sons after national heroes (William Henry Harrison and George Washington), and seems to have taken great pride in his country.
Some of my initial research only made things more confusing. Newspaper accounts and the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion showed that the Commodore tried to donate the Vanderbilt at the war's outset, only to be turned down by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. Why would he follow this noble gesture with leasing it at piratical rates?
The answer to this and other questions came from Vanderbilt himself. Congress regularly published the evidence it collected in its various investigations, including testimony given to committee hearings and documents provided by the executive branch. These invaluable volumes of primary sources—the Congressional Serial Set—have been fully digitized and made text-searchable by Readex, a division of NewsBank. Working at the Columbia University library, I was able to search all the incidents of "Vanderbilt" in the Readex edition of the Congressional Serial Set. There were a lot. None were more revealing than the Commodore's testimony about his role in the Civil War.
"The moment a man comes to New York he is surrounded by a lot of thieves all the time, and in every shape and direction," Vanderbilt told a committee of the House of Representatives. When Welles turned down the gift of the Vanderbilt (supposing it to be too expensive to operate), the War Department sought it as a transport for amphibious expeditions on the South's Atlantic coast. But when the department sent its agents to New York, they relied on ship brokers, who took a commission of 2.5% or more.
Vanderbilt called them "outside thieves": men with every incentive to run up the price, and the authority to demand any ship they wanted. The Commodore told Congress, "I would rather sell my ships than let them remain in the government employ until they earn their whole value and then have the ships and the money too."
But a crisis gave him the chance to carry out his original plan. When the Confederates converted the frigate Merrimack into the ironclad Virginia, Lincoln and his cabinet went into a panic. They turned to Vanderbilt. As he explained to Congress, he personally offered the Vanderbilt to President Lincoln, expressing confidence that the rebels wouldn't dare risk the Virginia against it. He converted the massive ocean liner into a warship at his own expense, and piloted it to Hampton Roads, where it helped to bottle up the Virginia in harbor at Norfolk. He sold it to the navy for $1, and converted it into a cruiser to hunt for the commerce raider Alabama.
One mystery was solved. But what about the scandal surrounding the Banks expedition—the secret effort to charter steamships for military transport, which led to a Senate investigation and a motion to censure Vanderbilt? Did the Commodore lease rotten vessels for the government? Did he skim money through an agent? Again, the Congressional Serial Set provided the answers.
It turned out that Vanderbilt leased only one vessel (out of twenty-seven) that was unseaworthy—and that its rotten timbers had been planked over to disguise the ship's true state. As for the scheming agent, one Thomas J. Southard, he had been recommended by General Banks himself. He handled only the sailing ships, outfitting them to carry horses (his particular expertise). Vanderbilt took no pay for his efforts, and he insisted that Southard work for free as well. Unwilling to do so, Southard extracted commissions through highly indirect methods—implying that ship owners must use suppliers with family connections to Southard. Meanwhile he carried out his duties as expected.
If Southard's skimming escaped Vanderbilt's notice, not much else did. He cut out the "outside thieves" he despised, dealing directly with the ship owners. "I believe religiously that he has saved the government fifty percent in fitting out these vessels," the Navy's Commodore George J. Van Brunt told Congress. "He was acting, as I thought, with great patriotism, in serving the government for nothing."
I was ready to indict and convict Vanderbilt of war profiteering, if that's where the evidence led me. Instead, it convinced me that the Commodore deserved his gold medal. Vanderbilt has often been treated with cynicism by historians, who are ready to believe the worst of a staggeringly rich, secretive, and combative man. Certainly I did not set out to rehabilitate his reputation. But I couldn't ignore the evidence—evidence provided in breathtaking abundance by Congress in its Serial Set, now more accessible than ever thanks to digitization.
Filed under
War Profiteering Comparing Military-Industry Stock Portfolio Returns versus Market Returns During the Iraq and Afghan Wars
8 Pages Posted: 29 Apr 2015
Date Written: April 27, 2015
Abstract
The Department of Defense (DoD) relies on a privatized defense industry for tools of war. Following the Cold War, the majority of this Defense Industry consolidated into 5 large corporations: Boeing, United Technologies Corporation, Honeywell, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin. In this study, an equally weighted portfolio of the 5 aforementioned companies stocks is constructed, and then analyzed during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). The equally weighted portfolio is then compared to the market to see whether or not a defense-industry portfolio can outperform the market during wartime. Both the portfolio and the market index are assessed by average monthly return and the Sharpes Slope. These metrics are compared between the portfolio and the market through a Difference in Means Statistical Test.
Faber, Isaac and Flanagan, Maxwell, War Profiteering Comparing Military-Industry Stock Portfolio Returns versus Market Returns During the Iraq and Afghan Wars (April 27, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2599846 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2599846
'Do F-35s Fight Pandemics?' Amid Covid-19 Outbreak, Lawmakers Pushing For Even More Useless Pentagon Spending
"Infuriating doesn't even begin to describe it."
by
Lawmakers are calling for more F-35s in response to the coronavirus outbreak. (Photo: Forsvarsdepartementet/flickr/cc)
Published on
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As the federal government develops strategies for how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak that has already significantly damaged the U.S. economy and killed over 100 Americans, a group of lawmakers are urging Congress approve the purchasing of 19 more F-35 fighters than the Pentagon requested as part of the battle against the disease, enraging progressives.
"Infuriating doesn't even begin to describe it," tweeted Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War, on Friday.
Infuriating doesn't even begin to describe it. Can you think of a more outrageous thing for members of Congress to be demanding the federal gov't be spending its money on now than MORE F-35s, a jet that still doesn't work, than the Pentagon even wants. Do F-35s fight pandemics? pic.twitter.com/ox6uIHRmMG— Stephen Miles (@SPMiles42) March 20, 2020
According to Politico, the request for more F-35s came from Democrats and Republicans alike:
"It is essential that we continue to increase production of our nation's only 5th generation stealth fighter in order to ensure the United States maintains air dominance and to further reduce overall program costs," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the chairmen and top Republicans of the House Armed Services Committee and Defense Appropriations panel.The letter was spearheaded by the co-chairs of the Congressional Joint Strike Fighter Caucus — Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.), Marc Veasey (D-Texas), Martha Roby (R-Ala.) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio).
"Outrageous priorities of militarists during the coronavirus pandemic," tweeted anti-war group Peace Pledge Union.
Win Without War has issued a list of policy demands—laid out in a document titled "U.S. Foreign Policy in the Face of the Coronavirus"—to help guide the government's handling of the crisis.
The #coronavirus pandemic, & the economic crash it's sparked, have revealed deep weaknesses in the current economic & political order. We need a progressive internationalist response to this crisis, & that response must meet, at the least, 5 key demands:https://t.co/7nH2g6TU13— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) March 20, 2020
The list includes no more money for Pentagon wars, ending sanctions, protecting refugees and migrants, focusing on international cooperation, and the passage of a Green New Deal.
"The greatest security challenges of the 21st century—global inequality, climate change, pandemics—cannot be solved militarily," the document declares. "Years of funneling trillions of dollars into the Pentagon instead of investing in critical human needs have left us woefully unprepared to meet them."
The Suicide Machines
Here’s a ska-meets-hardcore band that Noam Chomsky could love. War Profiteering Is Killing Us All, the Detroit rabble-rousers’ sixth album pushes their anticorporate, antiwar, anti-apathy message to cartoonish extremes. Even when the boys pull back to allow a touch of Caribbean melody to creep through their punk screeds, The Suicide Machines see only ”total destruction, total collapse” and ”Capitalist Suicide.” Otherwise, the polka-beat tempos are revved so high that the 13 songs blow past in 31 minutes. After all, who’s got time to waste when Western civilization is about to crumble?
https://ew.com/article/2005/08/15/war-profiteering-killing-us-all/
Here’s a ska-meets-hardcore band that Noam Chomsky could love. War Profiteering Is Killing Us All, the Detroit rabble-rousers’ sixth album pushes their anticorporate, antiwar, anti-apathy message to cartoonish extremes. Even when the boys pull back to allow a touch of Caribbean melody to creep through their punk screeds, The Suicide Machines see only ”total destruction, total collapse” and ”Capitalist Suicide.” Otherwise, the polka-beat tempos are revved so high that the 13 songs blow past in 31 minutes. After all, who’s got time to waste when Western civilization is about to crumble?
https://ew.com/article/2005/08/15/war-profiteering-killing-us-all/
U.S. intelligence reports warned about a likely pandemic
U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic
Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima
U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting
The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.
Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month, as officials scrambled to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals braced for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Intelligence agencies “have been warning on this since January,” said a U.S. official who had access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress and their staffs as well as to officials in the Trump administration, and who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information.
“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” this official said. “The system was blinking red.”
Spokespeople for the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and a White House spokesman rebutted criticism of Trump’s response.
“President Trump has taken historic, aggressive measures to protect the health, wealth and safety of the American people — and did so, while the media and Democrats chose to only focus on the stupid politics of a sham illegitimate impeachment,” Hogan Gidley said in a statement. “It’s more than disgusting, despicable and disgraceful for cowardly unnamed sources to attempt to rewrite history — it’s a clear threat to this great country.”
Public health experts have criticized China for being slow to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, and have said precious time was lost in the effort to slow the spread. At a White House briefing Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said officials had been alerted to the initial reports of the virus by discussions that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had with Chinese colleagues on Jan. 3.
The warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies increased in volume toward the end of January and into early February, said officials familiar with the reports. By then, a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers and digests from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA was about covid-19, said officials who have read the reports.
The surge in warnings coincided with a move by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to sell dozens of stocks worth between $628,033 and $1.72 million. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr was privy to virtually all of the highly classified reporting on the coronavirus. Burr issued a statement Friday defending his sell-off, saying he did so based entirely on publicly available information, and he called for the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate.
A key task for analysts during disease outbreaks is to determine whether foreign officials are trying to minimize the effects of an outbreak or take steps to hide a public health crisis, according to current and former officials familiar with the process.
At the State Department, personnel had been nervously tracking early reports about the virus. One official noted that it was discussed at a meeting in the third week of January, around the time that cable traffic showed that U.S. diplomats in Wuhan were being brought home on chartered planes — a sign that the public health risk was significant. A colleague at the White House mentioned how concerned he was about the transmissibility of the virus.
“In January, there was obviously a lot of chatter,” the official said.
Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously, according to multiple officials with knowledge of meetings among those advisers and with the president.
Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials. When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said.
On Jan. 27, White House aides huddled with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus, according to people briefed on the meeting. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, argued that the administration needed to take the virus seriously or it could cost the president his reelection, and that dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.
Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings. In early briefings, however, officials said Trump was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.
By early February, Grogan and others worried that there weren’t enough tests to determine the rate of infection, according to people who spoke directly to Grogan. Other officials, including Matthew Pottinger, the president’s deputy national security adviser, began calling for a more forceful response, according to people briefed on White House meetings.
But Trump resisted and continued to assure Americans that the coronavirus would never run rampant as it had in other countries.
“I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said on Feb. 19. “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.”
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” Trump tweeted five days later. “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
But earlier that month, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services delivered a starkly different message to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a classified briefing that four U.S. officials said covered the coronavirus and its global health implications.
Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response — who was joined by intelligence officials, including from the CIA — told committee members that the virus posed a “serious” threat, one of those officials said.
Kadlec didn’t provide specific recommendations, but he said that to get ahead of the virus and blunt its effects, Americans would need to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives, the official said. “It was very alarming.”
Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.
Some of Trump’s advisers told him that Beijing was not providing accurate numbers of people who were infected or who had died, according to administration officials. Rather than press China to be more forthcoming, Trump publicly praised its response.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted Jan. 24. “The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Some of Trump’s advisers encouraged him to be tougher on China over its decision not to allow teams from the CDC into the country, administration officials said.
In one February meeting, the president said that if he struck a tougher tone against Xi, the Chinese would be less willing to give the Americans information about how they were tackling the outbreak.
Trump on Feb. 3 banned foreigners who had been in China in the previous 14 days from entering the United States, a step he often credits for helping to protect Americans against the virus. He has also said publicly that the Chinese weren’t honest about the effects of the virus. But that travel ban wasn’t accompanied by additional significant steps to prepare for when the virus eventually infected people in the United States in great numbers.
As the disease spread beyond China, U.S. spy agencies tracked outbreaks in Iran, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy and elsewhere in Europe, the officials familiar with those reports said. The majority of the information came from public sources, including news reports and official statements, but a significant portion also came from classified intelligence sources. As new cases popped up, the volume of reporting spiked.
As the first cases of infection were confirmed in the United States, Trump continued to insist that the risk to Americans was small.
“I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine,” he said on Feb. 10.
“We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it,” he said four days later. “It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”
On Feb. 25, Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, sounded perhaps the most significant public alarm to that point, when she told reporters that the coronavirus was likely to spread within communities in the United States and that disruptions to daily life could be “severe.” Trump called Azar on his way back from a trip to India and complained that Messonnier was scaring the stock markets, according to two senior administration officials.
Trump eventually changed his tone after being shown statistical models about the spread of the virus from other countries and hearing directly from Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, as well as from chief executives last week rattled by a plunge in the stock market, said people familiar with Trump’s conversations.
But by then, the signs pointing to a major outbreak in the United States were everywhere.
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Intelligence officials were warning Trump about a pandemic as early as January, but they 'couldn't get him to do anything about it'
Sonam Sheth
Evan Vucci/Getty Images
The US intelligence community was warning President Donald Trump about an impending pandemic as early as January, The Washington Post reported.
Officials were giving Trump classified briefings on the matter at the same time the president was publicly downplaying the risk of the novel coronavirus and insisting the US was well prepared to handle the outbreak.
"The system was blinking red," a US official told The Post. "Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it."
United States intelligence agencies were warning President Donald Trump about an impending pandemic as early as January, The Washington Post reported.
Officials were giving Trump classified briefings on the matter at the same time that the president was publicly downplaying the risk of the novel coronavirus and insisting the US was well prepared to handle the outbreak.
The Post reported that intelligence documents closely tracked the virus' spread in Wuhan, China, where it originated and as it later progressed through mainland China, but they did not specify when the disease would make it to the US.
"The system was blinking red," one US official with access to the intelligence told The Post. Agencies "have been warning on this since January."
"Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it," the official added.
The intelligence documents were disseminated to White House officials as well as congressional lawmakers and their staff. Congress also began receiving daily briefings on the virus earlier this year as it rapidly spread across the globe.
By the end of January and beginning of February, a majority of the intelligence contained in Trump's daily briefings was about the coronavirus, according to The Post.
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic on March 11. To date, 271,629 people around the world have become infected and 11,282 have died.
Trump declared a national emergency last week but has since been criticized for misrepresenting information about when a vaccine may become available, and blaming the mainstream media and his critics for the continued escalation of the crisis.
In the absence of strong federal guidance, various states and cities have had to take matters into their own hands and introduced sweeping measures to restrict public gatherings and stop the spread of the virus.
The governors of New York and California issued statewide orders mandating that residents stay inside as much as possible and limit their outdoor activity. Across the country, millions of people have been forced to work from home or lost their jobs altogether as nonessential businesses have been ordered to shut down.
Trump on Friday evening approved a major disaster declaration for the state of New York, which has been the hardest hit by the disease's outbreak in the US.
NOW WATCH: 6 times Trump contradicted public officials about the coronavirus pandemic
Sonam Sheth
Evan Vucci/Getty Images
The US intelligence community was warning President Donald Trump about an impending pandemic as early as January, The Washington Post reported.
Officials were giving Trump classified briefings on the matter at the same time the president was publicly downplaying the risk of the novel coronavirus and insisting the US was well prepared to handle the outbreak.
"The system was blinking red," a US official told The Post. "Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it."
United States intelligence agencies were warning President Donald Trump about an impending pandemic as early as January, The Washington Post reported.
Officials were giving Trump classified briefings on the matter at the same time that the president was publicly downplaying the risk of the novel coronavirus and insisting the US was well prepared to handle the outbreak.
The Post reported that intelligence documents closely tracked the virus' spread in Wuhan, China, where it originated and as it later progressed through mainland China, but they did not specify when the disease would make it to the US.
"The system was blinking red," one US official with access to the intelligence told The Post. Agencies "have been warning on this since January."
"Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it," the official added.
The intelligence documents were disseminated to White House officials as well as congressional lawmakers and their staff. Congress also began receiving daily briefings on the virus earlier this year as it rapidly spread across the globe.
By the end of January and beginning of February, a majority of the intelligence contained in Trump's daily briefings was about the coronavirus, according to The Post.
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic on March 11. To date, 271,629 people around the world have become infected and 11,282 have died.
Trump declared a national emergency last week but has since been criticized for misrepresenting information about when a vaccine may become available, and blaming the mainstream media and his critics for the continued escalation of the crisis.
In the absence of strong federal guidance, various states and cities have had to take matters into their own hands and introduced sweeping measures to restrict public gatherings and stop the spread of the virus.
The governors of New York and California issued statewide orders mandating that residents stay inside as much as possible and limit their outdoor activity. Across the country, millions of people have been forced to work from home or lost their jobs altogether as nonessential businesses have been ordered to shut down.
Trump on Friday evening approved a major disaster declaration for the state of New York, which has been the hardest hit by the disease's outbreak in the US.
NOW WATCH: 6 times Trump contradicted public officials about the coronavirus pandemic
Syria's war profiteers
News features and analysis from Financial Times reporters around the world. FT News in Focus is produced by Fiona Symon. Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Save OCTOBER 17 2019Print this page During Syria's eight year civil war, around half a million Syrians have lost their lives and many more have lost their livelihoods. But a few individuals have made millions by helping the Assad regime. Chloe Cornish has been investigating and she tells Josh Noble about some of Syria's war profiteers.
https://www.ft.com/content/3a197a86-8c1a-437b-ae8f-2a9fd79f4a2c
News features and analysis from Financial Times reporters around the world. FT News in Focus is produced by Fiona Symon. Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Save OCTOBER 17 2019Print this page During Syria's eight year civil war, around half a million Syrians have lost their lives and many more have lost their livelihoods. But a few individuals have made millions by helping the Assad regime. Chloe Cornish has been investigating and she tells Josh Noble about some of Syria's war profiteers.
https://www.ft.com/content/3a197a86-8c1a-437b-ae8f-2a9fd79f4a2c
Triggering a Global Financial Crisis: COVID-19 as the Last Straw
by SABRI ÖNCÜ
Photograph Source: Richard Eriksson – CC BY 2.0
Whether a black swan or a scapegoat, Covid-19 is an extraordinary event. Declared by the WHO as a pandemic, Covid-19 has given birth to the concept of the economic “sudden stop.” We need extraordinary measures to contain it.
Initially referred to as the novel coronavirus 2019, the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) originated late in 2019 in Wuhan, China and was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office in China on 31 December 2019. Rapidly becoming an endemic, it was declared by the WHO a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” on 30 January 2020.
Covid-19, now present in more than 100 countries, has been declared a pandemic by the WHO. However, the global financial markets had declared it a pandemic in the week that started on Monday, 24 February 2020, by overwhelmingly vouching for pandemic. They did this through the fastest equity market correction of all time that took place in about six to seven days, where a correction is defined as at least a 10% drop from the peak. There remains a second question which still is debated, and it is about whether Covid-19 is a swan or a goat.
Swan, Goat or Both?
While the origin of the concept of goat (specifically, scapegoat) is Chapter 16 of Leviticus, one of the early books of the Bible, the origin of the concept of swan in the current context is from Black Swan. There is also the white swan, which originated in Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance. A scapegoat is a person or an event blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency. As for the two swans, a black swan, as defined by Taleb (2007), is an unpredictable outlier event with an extreme impact, and a white swan, as defined by Roubini and Mihm (2010), is the same as a black swan except that it is predictable.
Although, in a recent essay, Roubini (2020) identified several white swans for 2020 that “could trigger severe economic, financial, political, and geopolitical disturbances,” such as the escalation of the ongoing cold war between the United States (US) and China to a near hot war, and the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, even he did not refer to Covid-19 as a white swan as it was an undeniably unpredictable event. So the real debate is whether Covid-19 is a black swan or a scapegoat.
Although we could not have predicted it, Covid-19 was not the reason, but just the trigger for the ongoing financial crash as all we needed was the proverbial straw to break the finance sector’s back (Öncü 2015). With asset price bubbles everywhere and the total global debt over 322% of the world gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2019 (IIF 2020), something had to trigger what is happening now.
‘Economic Sudden Stop’
But Covid-19 was not just any trigger as it gave birth to the concept of the economic “sudden stop.” When the global equity markets dropped on 31 January 2020 following the WHO declaration of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern, El-Erian (2020) warned the investors on 2 February 2020 that they should snap out of the “buy the dip” mentality. Pointing out two vulnerabilities, namely structurally weak global growth and less effective central banks, he introduced the concept of “sudden stop” economic dynamics.
Although El-Erian is yet to define what exactly an “economic sudden stop” is, I take it as an abrupt onset of a deep recession. In the case of Covid-19, it is a sudden stop of economic activity resulting in supply and demand shocks to the global economy as major cities in infected countries, more than 100 and counting, are put on lockdown. And, add to that the deepening oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Shortly after 6 pm on 8 March 2020 in New York, the futures markets opened and oil futures (both Brent and WTI) are trading about 21% down, gold is above $1,700 per ounce, and all United States (US) equity index futures are trading about 4% down. What is worse is that with the long-term US Treasury yields at their historical lows (10-year yield below 0.5% and 30-year yield below 1% as I write), the capital markets are frozen (not to mention many oil projects that will go bust at these prices).
Disorderly Deleveraging
All this means that what I claimed inevitable in my column (Öncü 2019) has already started: a disorderly global non-financial private sector debt deleveraging, which is likely to lead to deep global debt deflation, followed by a recession (and possibly a depression), thereby creating financial and economic instabilities, and further tensions in international relations with dire consequences for emerging and developing countries, not to mention developed countries.
As mentioned in Öncü (2019), while in developed and high-income developing countries, the non-financial private sector is more over-indebted, in middle-income and low-income developing countries, the public sector is more over-indebted. Given that the global non-financial private sector debt deleveraging has already started, the analysis in Öncü (2019) indicates that the public sector debts of the developed and high-income developing countries will also go up and the governments’ ability to rescue their economies will also decline in these countries. Furthermore, this will severely constrain the governments’ ability to spend on climate change-related projects to address the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change for many years to come, diminishing our hopes to make the necessary investments and innovations to address the now existential climate crisis on time. Last, but not least, the measures we have to take to control the spread of Covid-19 before a cure is found will further challenge the financial system, as people stop earning an income and businesses go bankrupt (Keen 2020b).
Orderly Deleveraging
In this column last year, I looked at the German Currency Reform (GCR) of 1948 as a modern example of debt restructuring to see if it could be adapted for use now (Öncü 2019). Recall that the original plan of the GCR consisted of (i) conversion of currency and debts at a ratio of 10 reichsmarks for one deutschemark, and (ii) a fund built with a capital levy for the equalisation of burdens (Lastenausgleich) to correct part of the inequity between owners of debt, and owners of real assets and shares of corporations. As the actual GCR deviated from the planned GCR in that it required all financial institutions to remove from their balance sheets any securities of the Reich and cancel all accounts and currency holdings of the Reich, it impaired the balance sheets of nearly all of the financial institutions. The equalisation claims were the solution, which were interest-bearing government bonds of a then non-existing government and had no set amortisation schedules. They later became bonds of the Federal Republic of Germany, established on 23 May 1949.
In his two Patreon posts, Keen (2020a, 2020b) proposed several extraordinary measures including the “Modern Debt Jubilee” (MDJ) of Keen (2017) that the governments, central banks and financial regulators should take now to stop the health effects of Covid-19 triggering a financial crisis that could in turn make Covid-19 worse. Supporting these immediate measures wholeheartedly, I add a globally coordinated deleveraging framework to be considered later that Ahmet Öncü and I have proposed in Öncü and Öncü (2020a, 2020b). Our proposal is a blend of the MDJ and the GCR.
In our framework, there would be three authorities to maintain a deposit account at the central bank in each country: a deleveraging authority for leverage reduction, Lastenausgleich authority for capital levies, and a climate authority for financing needs in developing national climate plans. These national authorities should be globally coordinated through the appropriate United Nations agencies.
The Lastenausgleich authority would be under the finance ministry, whereas the deleveraging and climate authorities would be not-for-profit corporations promoted by the government. The government would capitalise the deleveraging and climate authorities by the Treasury-issued zero-coupon perpetual bonds, that is, our proposed equalisation claims. The deleveraging authority would then sell its equalisation claims to the central bank in exchange for an increased balance in its deposit account at the bank, while the climate authority would wait until the deleveraging concludes. Further, the climate authority would not be allowed to open deposit accounts to its borrowers to ensure that it would be a pure financial intermediary, not a bank.
Assuming that a globally agreed-upon debt reduction percentage that would bring the global non-financial sector leverage well under 100% is determined, and that all countries agree to act simultaneously, the framework is as follows (i) the financial institutions comprising the banks and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) write down all the loans and debt securities on both sides of their balance sheets by the required percentage; (ii) the deleveraging authority compensates the banks and NBFIs for the loss if any; and (iii) the deleveraging authority pays each qualified resident their allocated amount less than the debt relief if any. If an NBFI gains after the above debt reduction, it should owe equalisation liabilities to the deleveraging authority of its jurisdiction. Note that as all debts mean all debts, public sector debts will also be written down by the same percentage except the official debts of the sovereigns that fall out of the scope of our proposed framework and should be handled by other means.
After Deleveraging
After deleveraging, the balance of the deleveraging authority account at the central bank goes down whereas the total balance of the bank accounts (reserves) at the central bank go up by the total payment made by the deleveraging authority. Hence, the base money goes up by the total payment of the deleveraging authority. Since NBFIs and residents cannot maintain deposit accounts at the central bank, they have to be paid through a bank which creates deposits for the NBFIs and residents against reserves. Hence, the broad money goes up by the amount of the payment to the NBFIs and residents.
One issue is that in many countries, the bank and NBFI balance sheets are multi-currency balance sheets. However, the deleveraging authority payments are in domestic currency, which may create currency risk for some banks and NBFIs. Backed by the central banks, the globally coordinated national deleveraging authorities should stand ready to intervene to avoid potential crises.
The authorities would require their domestic banks and other financial institutions to spend an internationally agreed-upon percentage of their newly found money, if any, after the deleveraging on the interest-bearing, finite-maturity bonds the national climate authorities would issue. Since the promoter of the climate authority is the government, the bonds of the climate authority would have the same credit with the government bonds, and the central bank would accept the climate authority bonds in its open market operations. Therefore, the climate authority bonds would be the main tool to manage the reserves and deposits created through the equalisation claims. In addition, the climate authority bonds could be used for the greening of the financial system through the investment of foreign exchange reserves of the central banks proposed by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS 2019).
Lastly, equipped with a “globally coordinated wealth registry” (Stiglitz et al 2019), the Lastenausgleich authorities would collect progressive wealth taxes from the owners of real and non-debt financial assets for the equalisation of burdens. While a part of these taxes could be used to retire some of the equalisation claims and the corresponding reserves and deposits created in the deleveraging process, another part could be transferred to the climate authorities, and the rest could be spent in the interests of the society.
References
BIS (2019): Green Bonds: The Reserve Management Perspective, Bank of International Settlements, https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1909f.htm, viewed on 18 December 2019.
El-Erian, M (2020): “Coronavirus Should Snap Investors Out of ‘Buy the Dip’ Mentality,” Financial Times, 2 February.
IIF (2020): Global Debt Monitor, International Institute of Finance, January, https://www.iif.com/Research/Capital-Flows-and-Debt/Global-Debt-Monitor.
Keen, S (2017): Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.
— (2020a): “A Modern Jubilee as a Cure to the Financial Ills of the Coronavirus,” 3 March, https://www.patreon.com/posts/modern-jubilee-34537282.
— (2020b): “Thinking Exponentially about Containing the Coronavirus (corrected),” 3 March, https://www.patreon.com/posts/thinking-about-34565061.
Öncü, T S (2015): “When Will the Next Financial Crisis Start?” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 50, No 24, pp 10–11.
— (2019): “Non-financial Private Debt Overhang,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 54, No 45, pp 10–11.
Öncü, A and T S Öncü (2020a): “A New Framework for Global Debt Deleveraging: Globally Coordinated Deleveraging Authorities,” forthcoming.
— (2020b): “Debt, Wealth and Climate: Globally Coordinated Climate Authorities for Financing Green,” forthcoming.
Roubini, N and S Mihm (2010): Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance, New York: Penguin.
Roubini, N (2020): “The White Swans of 2020, Project Syndicate,” 17 February, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/white-swan-risks-2020-by-nouriel-roubini-2020-02.
Stiglitz, J E, T N Tucker and G Zucman (2019): “The Starving State: Why Capitalism’s Salvation Depends on Taxation,” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2019-12-10/starving-state.
Taleb, N (2007): The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York: Penguin.
More articles by:SABRI ÖNCÜ
Sabri Öncü is an economist based in Istanbul, Turkey. He can be reached at: sabri.oncu@gmail.com.
by SABRI ÖNCÜ
Photograph Source: Richard Eriksson – CC BY 2.0
Whether a black swan or a scapegoat, Covid-19 is an extraordinary event. Declared by the WHO as a pandemic, Covid-19 has given birth to the concept of the economic “sudden stop.” We need extraordinary measures to contain it.
Initially referred to as the novel coronavirus 2019, the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) originated late in 2019 in Wuhan, China and was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office in China on 31 December 2019. Rapidly becoming an endemic, it was declared by the WHO a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” on 30 January 2020.
Covid-19, now present in more than 100 countries, has been declared a pandemic by the WHO. However, the global financial markets had declared it a pandemic in the week that started on Monday, 24 February 2020, by overwhelmingly vouching for pandemic. They did this through the fastest equity market correction of all time that took place in about six to seven days, where a correction is defined as at least a 10% drop from the peak. There remains a second question which still is debated, and it is about whether Covid-19 is a swan or a goat.
Swan, Goat or Both?
While the origin of the concept of goat (specifically, scapegoat) is Chapter 16 of Leviticus, one of the early books of the Bible, the origin of the concept of swan in the current context is from Black Swan. There is also the white swan, which originated in Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance. A scapegoat is a person or an event blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency. As for the two swans, a black swan, as defined by Taleb (2007), is an unpredictable outlier event with an extreme impact, and a white swan, as defined by Roubini and Mihm (2010), is the same as a black swan except that it is predictable.
Although, in a recent essay, Roubini (2020) identified several white swans for 2020 that “could trigger severe economic, financial, political, and geopolitical disturbances,” such as the escalation of the ongoing cold war between the United States (US) and China to a near hot war, and the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, even he did not refer to Covid-19 as a white swan as it was an undeniably unpredictable event. So the real debate is whether Covid-19 is a black swan or a scapegoat.
Although we could not have predicted it, Covid-19 was not the reason, but just the trigger for the ongoing financial crash as all we needed was the proverbial straw to break the finance sector’s back (Öncü 2015). With asset price bubbles everywhere and the total global debt over 322% of the world gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2019 (IIF 2020), something had to trigger what is happening now.
‘Economic Sudden Stop’
But Covid-19 was not just any trigger as it gave birth to the concept of the economic “sudden stop.” When the global equity markets dropped on 31 January 2020 following the WHO declaration of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern, El-Erian (2020) warned the investors on 2 February 2020 that they should snap out of the “buy the dip” mentality. Pointing out two vulnerabilities, namely structurally weak global growth and less effective central banks, he introduced the concept of “sudden stop” economic dynamics.
Although El-Erian is yet to define what exactly an “economic sudden stop” is, I take it as an abrupt onset of a deep recession. In the case of Covid-19, it is a sudden stop of economic activity resulting in supply and demand shocks to the global economy as major cities in infected countries, more than 100 and counting, are put on lockdown. And, add to that the deepening oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Shortly after 6 pm on 8 March 2020 in New York, the futures markets opened and oil futures (both Brent and WTI) are trading about 21% down, gold is above $1,700 per ounce, and all United States (US) equity index futures are trading about 4% down. What is worse is that with the long-term US Treasury yields at their historical lows (10-year yield below 0.5% and 30-year yield below 1% as I write), the capital markets are frozen (not to mention many oil projects that will go bust at these prices).
Disorderly Deleveraging
All this means that what I claimed inevitable in my column (Öncü 2019) has already started: a disorderly global non-financial private sector debt deleveraging, which is likely to lead to deep global debt deflation, followed by a recession (and possibly a depression), thereby creating financial and economic instabilities, and further tensions in international relations with dire consequences for emerging and developing countries, not to mention developed countries.
As mentioned in Öncü (2019), while in developed and high-income developing countries, the non-financial private sector is more over-indebted, in middle-income and low-income developing countries, the public sector is more over-indebted. Given that the global non-financial private sector debt deleveraging has already started, the analysis in Öncü (2019) indicates that the public sector debts of the developed and high-income developing countries will also go up and the governments’ ability to rescue their economies will also decline in these countries. Furthermore, this will severely constrain the governments’ ability to spend on climate change-related projects to address the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change for many years to come, diminishing our hopes to make the necessary investments and innovations to address the now existential climate crisis on time. Last, but not least, the measures we have to take to control the spread of Covid-19 before a cure is found will further challenge the financial system, as people stop earning an income and businesses go bankrupt (Keen 2020b).
Orderly Deleveraging
In this column last year, I looked at the German Currency Reform (GCR) of 1948 as a modern example of debt restructuring to see if it could be adapted for use now (Öncü 2019). Recall that the original plan of the GCR consisted of (i) conversion of currency and debts at a ratio of 10 reichsmarks for one deutschemark, and (ii) a fund built with a capital levy for the equalisation of burdens (Lastenausgleich) to correct part of the inequity between owners of debt, and owners of real assets and shares of corporations. As the actual GCR deviated from the planned GCR in that it required all financial institutions to remove from their balance sheets any securities of the Reich and cancel all accounts and currency holdings of the Reich, it impaired the balance sheets of nearly all of the financial institutions. The equalisation claims were the solution, which were interest-bearing government bonds of a then non-existing government and had no set amortisation schedules. They later became bonds of the Federal Republic of Germany, established on 23 May 1949.
In his two Patreon posts, Keen (2020a, 2020b) proposed several extraordinary measures including the “Modern Debt Jubilee” (MDJ) of Keen (2017) that the governments, central banks and financial regulators should take now to stop the health effects of Covid-19 triggering a financial crisis that could in turn make Covid-19 worse. Supporting these immediate measures wholeheartedly, I add a globally coordinated deleveraging framework to be considered later that Ahmet Öncü and I have proposed in Öncü and Öncü (2020a, 2020b). Our proposal is a blend of the MDJ and the GCR.
In our framework, there would be three authorities to maintain a deposit account at the central bank in each country: a deleveraging authority for leverage reduction, Lastenausgleich authority for capital levies, and a climate authority for financing needs in developing national climate plans. These national authorities should be globally coordinated through the appropriate United Nations agencies.
The Lastenausgleich authority would be under the finance ministry, whereas the deleveraging and climate authorities would be not-for-profit corporations promoted by the government. The government would capitalise the deleveraging and climate authorities by the Treasury-issued zero-coupon perpetual bonds, that is, our proposed equalisation claims. The deleveraging authority would then sell its equalisation claims to the central bank in exchange for an increased balance in its deposit account at the bank, while the climate authority would wait until the deleveraging concludes. Further, the climate authority would not be allowed to open deposit accounts to its borrowers to ensure that it would be a pure financial intermediary, not a bank.
Assuming that a globally agreed-upon debt reduction percentage that would bring the global non-financial sector leverage well under 100% is determined, and that all countries agree to act simultaneously, the framework is as follows (i) the financial institutions comprising the banks and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) write down all the loans and debt securities on both sides of their balance sheets by the required percentage; (ii) the deleveraging authority compensates the banks and NBFIs for the loss if any; and (iii) the deleveraging authority pays each qualified resident their allocated amount less than the debt relief if any. If an NBFI gains after the above debt reduction, it should owe equalisation liabilities to the deleveraging authority of its jurisdiction. Note that as all debts mean all debts, public sector debts will also be written down by the same percentage except the official debts of the sovereigns that fall out of the scope of our proposed framework and should be handled by other means.
After Deleveraging
After deleveraging, the balance of the deleveraging authority account at the central bank goes down whereas the total balance of the bank accounts (reserves) at the central bank go up by the total payment made by the deleveraging authority. Hence, the base money goes up by the total payment of the deleveraging authority. Since NBFIs and residents cannot maintain deposit accounts at the central bank, they have to be paid through a bank which creates deposits for the NBFIs and residents against reserves. Hence, the broad money goes up by the amount of the payment to the NBFIs and residents.
One issue is that in many countries, the bank and NBFI balance sheets are multi-currency balance sheets. However, the deleveraging authority payments are in domestic currency, which may create currency risk for some banks and NBFIs. Backed by the central banks, the globally coordinated national deleveraging authorities should stand ready to intervene to avoid potential crises.
The authorities would require their domestic banks and other financial institutions to spend an internationally agreed-upon percentage of their newly found money, if any, after the deleveraging on the interest-bearing, finite-maturity bonds the national climate authorities would issue. Since the promoter of the climate authority is the government, the bonds of the climate authority would have the same credit with the government bonds, and the central bank would accept the climate authority bonds in its open market operations. Therefore, the climate authority bonds would be the main tool to manage the reserves and deposits created through the equalisation claims. In addition, the climate authority bonds could be used for the greening of the financial system through the investment of foreign exchange reserves of the central banks proposed by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS 2019).
Lastly, equipped with a “globally coordinated wealth registry” (Stiglitz et al 2019), the Lastenausgleich authorities would collect progressive wealth taxes from the owners of real and non-debt financial assets for the equalisation of burdens. While a part of these taxes could be used to retire some of the equalisation claims and the corresponding reserves and deposits created in the deleveraging process, another part could be transferred to the climate authorities, and the rest could be spent in the interests of the society.
References
BIS (2019): Green Bonds: The Reserve Management Perspective, Bank of International Settlements, https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1909f.htm, viewed on 18 December 2019.
El-Erian, M (2020): “Coronavirus Should Snap Investors Out of ‘Buy the Dip’ Mentality,” Financial Times, 2 February.
IIF (2020): Global Debt Monitor, International Institute of Finance, January, https://www.iif.com/Research/Capital-Flows-and-Debt/Global-Debt-Monitor.
Keen, S (2017): Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.
— (2020a): “A Modern Jubilee as a Cure to the Financial Ills of the Coronavirus,” 3 March, https://www.patreon.com/posts/modern-jubilee-34537282.
— (2020b): “Thinking Exponentially about Containing the Coronavirus (corrected),” 3 March, https://www.patreon.com/posts/thinking-about-34565061.
Öncü, T S (2015): “When Will the Next Financial Crisis Start?” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 50, No 24, pp 10–11.
— (2019): “Non-financial Private Debt Overhang,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 54, No 45, pp 10–11.
Öncü, A and T S Öncü (2020a): “A New Framework for Global Debt Deleveraging: Globally Coordinated Deleveraging Authorities,” forthcoming.
— (2020b): “Debt, Wealth and Climate: Globally Coordinated Climate Authorities for Financing Green,” forthcoming.
Roubini, N and S Mihm (2010): Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance, New York: Penguin.
Roubini, N (2020): “The White Swans of 2020, Project Syndicate,” 17 February, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/white-swan-risks-2020-by-nouriel-roubini-2020-02.
Stiglitz, J E, T N Tucker and G Zucman (2019): “The Starving State: Why Capitalism’s Salvation Depends on Taxation,” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2019-12-10/starving-state.
Taleb, N (2007): The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York: Penguin.
More articles by:SABRI ÖNCÜ
Sabri Öncü is an economist based in Istanbul, Turkey. He can be reached at: sabri.oncu@gmail.com.
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