Federal Reserve Board: H.2 Release for Week Ending January 6, 2018; H.4.1 Release (Balance Sheet) for Week Ending January 11, 2018; Two Of Note Items

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Of Note–

(1) Inhuman, immoral patient dumping a policy result of the present health-care system. At a Maryland teaching hospital, University of Maryland Medical Center, in Baltimore City, the hospital placed a patient on the street with just a hospital gown (in cold weather).

Comment:  This is an inhuman, immoral result of health-care policy. The only cure to ensure that this abhorrent behavior never happens is single-payer health care so that people can concentrate on their health rather than the current system’s focus on “health insurance” company bloat and outlandish executive compensation packages as well as Big Pharma’s shameless profit extraction from people who are ill.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has published a report on this topic, “Patient Dumping.”

(2) The disgusting fig leaf of bias, “colorblindness,” has been removed by the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.

[Author’s note: This blog does not use vulgar language in its content, but as the President of the United States of America has used vulgar language in the exercise of his duties, the blog relates the word the President stated.]

U.S. President Donald J. Trump made disparaging remarks, referring to Haiti, El Salvador, and countries in the African continent as “shithole” countries, during a White House meeting on immigration legislation.

[Trump stated in a later tweet that “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used.” It is unclear what this statement means; however, it is not a condemnation of the reporting as incorrect—which confirms that the reporting is correct. Considering also Trump’s long history of biased comments, the reported comments also fit with his past behavior.]

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Comment:  In the United States, racial bias is couched in an underhanded way–hiding the biased intent (and representing that intent as “colorblind” that results in discrimination anyway. Trump’s comments just erase the disgusting, yet accepted, fig leaf. The removal of the fig leaf bothers people who barely concealed their bias with claims of “colorblindness.”

Now, as a result, his Administration’s policies (and any law he signs) should be reviewed to ensure that they are all fair and equitable.

Separately, as mentioned in a previous post, the culture of the United States includes the bias that Trump expressed. Rev. Thomas Merton wrote about it in his book “Seeds of Destruction” in 1964.

Moreover, the blog has followed the racial discrimination case at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (otherwise known as the Federal Reserve Board)–Artis v. Greenspan Bernanke Yellen.

(For more information on other books on bias in the United States of America, see the recommended reading list on the blog’s sidebar.)

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The Federal Reserve Board (Board) publishes a weekly digest of its activities on its website. The digest is called the H.2 Release and is published every Thursday. The release for the week ending January 6, 2018, is below.

H.2 Release–Actions of the Board, Its Staff, and the Federal Reserve Banks; Applications and Reports Received

 

Category	Action Taken
Board Operations	Office of Inspector General — 2018 operating and capital budgets. -Approved, December 15, 2017 (A/C)   [Note: This is the reason why the Board’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is not independent. The Board appoints the IG, and the Board approves, as noted, the OIG’s independently prepared budget.
Regulations and Policies	Rules of Practice for Hearings — final rule to adjust the Board’s maximum civil money penalties for 2018 to account for inflation. -Approved, December 26, 2017 (A/C)   Supervisory Guidance for Large Financial Institutions — publication for comment of proposed guidance describing core principles of effective senior management, the management of business lines, and independent risk management and controls for large financial institutions. -Approved, January 1, 2018
Enforcement	AmBank Holdings, Inc., Davenport, Iowa — written agreement dated February 2, 2012, terminated December 27, 2017. -Announced, January 4, 2018 J.P. Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Limited, Hong Kong, China — determination denying the request by Timothy Fletcher, a former institution-affiliated party, for immediate review of two interlocutory orders issued by the administrative law judge in connection with an enforcement matter. -Approved, December 26, 2017 (A/C)

Federal Reserve Board: Balance Sheet (H.4.1 Release)

The Board publishes data of factors affecting reserve balances. The digest is called the H.4.1 Release, and they are published every Thursday (or the next business day if the publication date falls on a federal holiday). The release for January 11, 2018, is below.

[Note: The blog will cover the line titled “Total Factors Supplying Reserve Funds.”]

H.4.1 Release–Factors Affecting Reserve Balances

Total factors supplying reserve funds (as of January 10, 2018):  $4,493,186 (in millions of dollars). (On September 26, 2007, this amount was $900,473 (in millions of dollars)).

(See the release for further information.)

Futility of “Colorblindness”: Nonviolent Spring Valley High School (South Carolina) Discipline Issue “Resolved” with Violence by a Police Officer

[Update 10-28-2015: The student thrown down is a grieving person; she has an estranged mother,and now she is in foster care. This is simply an extremely sad case, with multiple levels of failure.]

The placement of police officers in schools to use the criminal justice system to resolve issues of nonviolent school discipline issues must end. It affects students by prematurely blocking them from the society with criminal records. It allows police tactics to replace the educational purpose of the schools, both in teaching academic subjects as well as helping students learn to self-manage their emotions and actions. Police officers are trained to handle threats and serious, violent crimes, not nonviolent student disciplinary issues, like using cellphones in class, backtalk, or other displays of minor, but irritating, teenage disobedience.

[Author’s note: For further background information about police officers (also referred as school resource officers) in educational institutions, see Raymond, Barbara, “Assigning Police Officers to Schools.”]

In Spring Valley High School in South Carolina, an alleged minor rule infraction was escalated to a criminal justice issue by the teacher and ultimately the high school’s administrator, subjecting the student to violence for an issue that well could have waited until the class ended to discuss with cool heads.

Instead of that, students were taught an alternative lesson: absolute compliance with authority is expected or expect the violent powers of the state to be used against you. In addition, your physical safety matters not one iota to us if you block us in any way. To the black students–you are not safe at all; we do not respect you as a human being but rather as a thing to be dominated and controlled.

Virginia Slave Law, 1705

In the book, “Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Coates wrote the following:

In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body–it is heritage.

Reverend Thomas Merton (referenced by Pope Francis during a speech before Congress in September 2015) in discussing the civil rights movement and its meaning in a letter to a white liberal wrote the following:

“The Negro children of Birmingham, who walked calmly up to the police dogs that lunged at them with a fury capable of tearing their small bodies to pieces, were not only confronting the truth in an exalted moment of faith, a providential kairos. They were also in their simplicity, bearing heroic Christian witness to the truth, for they were exposing their bodies to death in order to show God and man that they believed in the just rights of their people, knew that those rights had been unjustly, shamefully and systematically violated, and realized that the violation called for expiation and redemptive protest, because it was an offense against God and His Truth.” (Merton (1964), “Seeds of Destruction,” page 44.)

So, the whole class was traumatized; all learning stopped as a result of the violence used against a student who apparently used a cellphone in class to the chagrin of the teacher.