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Nov 17, 2016 | www.theguardian.com
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians.
The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation of a disintegrating neoliberal order – a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness.
White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process.
This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future.
What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering of poor and working people and obsessed with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness to justice. We must ground our truth-telling in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist domination. Third we must remember courageous exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral and spiritual inspiration as we build multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall Street crimes and war crimes, global warming and police abuse – and to protect precious rights and liberties.
Feminists misunderstood the presidential election from day one Liza Featherstone By banking on the idea that women would support Hillary Clinton just because she was a female candidate, the movement made a terrible mistake Read moreThe age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad.
Rightwing attacks on Obama – and Trump-inspired racist hatred of him – have made it nearly impossible to hear the progressive critiques of Obama. The president has been reluctant to target black suffering – be it in overcrowded prisons, decrepit schools or declining workplaces. Yet, despite that, we get celebrations of the neoliberal status quo couched in racial symbolism and personal legacy. Meanwhile, poor and working class citizens of all colors have continued to suffer in relative silence.
In this sense, Trump's election was enabled by the neoliberal policies of the Clintons and Obama that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. The progressive populism of Bernie Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat Trump to avert this neofascist outcome!
Click and elect: how fake news helped Donald Trump win a real election Hannah Jane Parkinson The 'alt-right' (aka the far right) ensnared the electorate using false stories on social media. But tech companies seem unwilling to admit there's a problemIn this bleak moment, we must inspire each other driven by a democratic soulcraft of integrity, courage, empathy and a mature sense of history – even as it seems our democracy is slipping away.
We must not turn away from the forgotten people of US foreign policy – such as Palestinians under Israeli occupation, Yemen's civilians killed by US-sponsored Saudi troops or Africans subject to expanding US military presence.
As one whose great family and people survived and thrived through slavery, Jim Crow and lynching, Trump's neofascist rhetoric and predictable authoritarian reign is just another ugly moment that calls forth the best of who we are and what we can do.
For us in these times, to even have hope is too abstract, too detached, too spectatorial. Instead we must be a hope, a participant and a force for good as we face this catastrophe.
theomatica -> MSP1984 17 Nov 2016 6:40
To be replaced by a form of capitalism that is constrained by national interests. An ideology that wishes to uses the forces of capitalism within a market limited only by national boundaries which aims for more self sufficiency only importing goods the nation can not itself source.
farga 17 Nov 2016 6:35
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang.
Really? The white house and congress are now dominated by tea party politicians who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand.....read Breitbart news to see how Thatcher and Reagan are idolised.
That in recent decades middle ground politicians have strayed from the true faith....and now its time to go back - popular capitalism, small government, low taxes.
if you think the era of "neo liberalism" is over, you are in deep denial!
Social36 -> farga 17 Nov 2016 8:33
Maybe, West should have written that we're now in neoliberal, neofascist era!
ForSparta -> farga 17 Nov 2016 14:24
Well in all fairness, Donald Trump (horse's ass) did say he'd 'pump' money into the middle classes thus abandoning 'trickle down'. His plan/ideology is also to increase corporate tax revenues overall by reducing the level of corporation tax -- the aim being to entice corporations to repatriate wealth currently held overseas. Plus he has proposed an infrastructure spending spree, a fiscal stimulus not a monetary one. When you add in tax cuts the middle classes will feel flushed and it is within that demographic that most businesses and hence jobs are created. I think his short game has every chance of doing what he said it would.
SeeNOevilHearNOevil 17 Nov 2016 6:36
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad.
Didn't Obama say to Wall Street ''I'm the only one standing between you and the lynch mob? Give me money and I'll make it all go away''. Then came into office and went we won't prosecute the Banks not Bush for a false war because we don't look back.
He did not ignore, he actively, willingly, knowingly protected them. At the end of the day Obama is wolf in sheep's clothing. Exactly like HRC he has a public and a private position. He is a gifted speaker who knows how to say all the right, progressive liberal things to get people to go along much better than HRC ever did.
But that lip service is where his progressive views begin and stop. It's the very reason none of his promises never translated into actions and I will argue that he was the biggest and smoothest scam artist to enter the white house who got even though that wholly opposed centre-right policies, to flip and support them vehemently. Even when he had the Presidency, House and Senate, he never once introduced any progressive liberal policy. He didn't need Republican support to do it, yet he never even tried.
ProbablyOnTopic 17 Nov 2016 6:37
I agree with some of this, but do we really have to throw around hysterical terms like 'fascist' at every opportunity? It's as bad as when people call the left 'cultural Marxists'.
LithophaneFurcifera -> ProbablyOnTopic 17 Nov 2016 7:05
l0Ho5LG4wWcFJsKg 17 Nov 2016 6:40True, it's sloganeering that drowns out any nuance, whoever does it. Whenever a political term is coined, you can be assured that its use and meaning will eventually be extended to the point that it becomes less effective at characterising the very groups that it was coined to characterise.
Keep "fascist" for Mussolini and "cultural Marxist" for Adorno, unless and until others show such strong resemblances that the link can't seriously be denied.
I agree about the importance of recognising the suffering of the poor and building alliances beyond, and not primarily defined by, race though.
Hang about Trump is the embodiment of neo-liberalism. It's neo-liberalism with republican tea party in control. He's not going to smash the system that served him so well, the years he manipulated and cheated, why would he want to change it.garrylee -> l0Ho5LG4wWcFJsKg 17 Nov 2016 9:38West's point is that it's beyond Trump's control. The scales have fallen from peoples eyes. They now see the deceit of neo-liberalism. And once they see through the charlatan Trump and the rest of the fascists, they will, hopefully, come to realize the only antidote to neo-liberalism is a planned economy.Nash25 17 Nov 2016 6:40
This excellent analysis by professor West places the current political situation in a proper historical context.
However, I fear that neo-liberalism may not be quite "dead" as he argues.
Most of the Democratic party's "establishment" politicians, who conspired to sabotage the populist Sanders's campaign, still dominate the party, and they, in turn, are controlled by the giant corporations who fund their campaigns.
Democrat Chuck Schumer is now the Senate minority leader, and he is the loyal servant of the big Wall Street investment banks. Sanders and Warren are the only two Democratic leaders who are not neo-liberals, and I fear that they will once again be marginalized.
Rank and file Democrats must organize at the local and state level to remove these corrupt neo-liberals from all party leadership positions. This will take many years, and it will be very difficult.
VenetianBlind 17 Nov 2016 6:42
Not sure Neo-Liberalism has ended. All they have done is get rid of the middle man.
macfeegal 17 Nov 2016 6:46
It would seem that there is a great deal of over simplifying going on; some of the articles represent an hysteric response and the vision of sack cloth and ashes prevails among those who could not see that the wheels were coming off the bus. The use of the term 'liberal' has become another buzz word - there are many different forms of liberalism and creating yet another sound byte does little to illuminate anything.
Making appeals to restore what has been lost reflects badly upon the central political parties, with their 30 year long rightward drift and their legacy of sucking up to corporate lobbyists, systems managers, box tickers and consultants. You can't give away sovereign political power to a bunch of right wing quangos who worship private wealth and its accumulation without suffering the consequences. The article makes no contribution (and neither have many of the others of late) to any kind of alternative to either neo-liberalism or the vacuum that has become a question mark with the dark face of the devil behind it.
We are in uncharted waters. The conventional Left was totally discredited by1982 and all we've had since are various forms of modifications of Thatcher's imported American vision. There has been no opposition to this system for over 40 years - so where do we get the idea that democracy has any real meaning? Yes, we can vote for the Greens, or one of the lesser known minority parties, but of course people don't; they tend to go with what is portrayed as the orthodoxy and they've been badly let down by it.
It would be a real breath of fresh air to see articles which offer some kind of analysis that demonstrates tangible options to deal with the multiple crises we are suffering. Perhaps we might start with a consideration that if our political institutions are prone to being haunted by the ghost of the 1930's, the state itself could be seen as part of the problem rather than any solution. Why is it that every other institution is considered to be past its sell by date and we still believe in a phantom of democracy? Discuss.
VenetianBlind -> macfeegal 17 Nov 2016 7:00
I have spent hours trying to see solutions around Neo-Liberalism and find that governments have basically signed away any control over the economy so nothing they can do. There are no solutions.
Maybe that is the starting point. The solution for workers left behind in Neo-Liberal language is they must move. It demands labor mobility. It is not possible to dictate where jobs are created.
I see too much fiddly around the edges, the best start is to say they cannot fix the problem. If they keep making false promises then things will just get dire as.
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Feb 01, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
The end of America's unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America. Just as the Vietnam War drove the United States off gold by 1971, its sponsorship and funding of violent regime change wars against Venezuela and Syria – and threatening other countries with sanctions if they do not join this crusade – is now driving European and other nations to create their alternative financial institutions.
This break has been building for quite some time, and was bound to occur. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would become the catalytic agent? No left-wing party, no socialist, anarchist or foreign nationalist leader anywhere in the world could have achieved what he is doing to break up the American Empire. The Deep State is reacting with shock at how this right-wing real estate grifter has been able to drive other countries to defend themselves by dismantling the U.S.-centered world order. To rub it in, he is using Bush and Reagan-era Neocon arsonists, John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, to fan the flames in Venezuela. It is almost like a black political comedy. The world of international diplomacy is being turned inside-out. A world where there is no longer even a pretense that we might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties.
The Neocons who Trump has appointed are accomplishing what seemed unthinkable not long ago: Driving China and Russia together – the great nightmare of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. They also are driving Germany and other European countries into the Eurasian orbit, the "Heartland" nightmare of Halford Mackinder a century ago.
The root cause is clear: After the crescendo of pretenses and deceptions over Iraq, Libya and Syria, along with our absolution of the lawless regime of Saudi Arabia, foreign political leaders are coming to recognize what world-wide public opinion polls reported even before the Iraq/Iran-Contra boys turned their attention to the world's largest oil reserves in Venezuela: The United States is now the greatest threat to peace on the planet.
Calling the U.S. coup being sponsored in Venezuela a defense of democracy reveals the Doublethink underlying U.S. foreign policy. It defines "democracy" to mean supporting U.S. foreign policy, pursuing neoliberal privatization of public infrastructure, dismantling government regulation and following the direction of U.S.-dominated global institutions, from the IMF and World Bank to NATO. For decades, the resulting foreign wars, domestic austerity programs and military interventions have brought more violence, not democracy.
In the Devil's Dictionary that U.S. diplomats are taught to use as their "Elements of Style" guidelines for Doublethink, a "democratic" country is one that follows U.S. leadership and opens its economy to U.S. investment, and IMF- and World Bank-sponsored privatization. The Ukraine is deemed democratic, along with Saudi Arabia, Israel and other countries that act as U.S. financial and military protectorates and are willing to treat America's enemies are theirs too.
A point had to come where this policy collided with the self-interest of other nations, finally breaking through the public relations rhetoric of empire. Other countries are proceeding to de-dollarize and replace what U.S. diplomacy calls "internationalism" (meaning U.S. nationalism imposed on the rest of the world) with their own national self-interest.
This trajectory could be seen 50 years ago (I described it in Super Imperialism [1972] and Global Fracture [1978].) It had to happen. But nobody thought that the end would come in quite the way that is happening. History has turned into comedy, or at least irony as its dialectical path unfolds.
For the past half-century, U.S. strategists, the State Department and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) worried that opposition to U.S. financial imperialism would come from left-wing parties. It therefore spent enormous resources manipulating parties that called themselves socialist (Tony Blair's British Labour Party, France's Socialist Party, Germany's Social Democrats, etc.) to adopt neoliberal policies that were the diametric opposite to what social democracy meant a century ago. But U.S. political planners and Great Wurlitzer organists neglected the right wing, imagining that it would instinctively support U.S. thuggishness.
The reality is that right-wing parties want to get elected, and a populist nationalism is today's road to election victory in Europe and other countries just as it was for Donald Trump in 2016.
Trump's agenda may really be to break up the American Empire, using the old Uncle Sucker isolationist rhetoric of half a century ago. He certainly is going for the Empire's most vital organs. But it he a witting anti-American agent? He might as well be – but it would be a false mental leap to use "quo bono" to assume that he is a witting agent.
After all, if no U.S. contractor, supplier, labor union or bank will deal with him, would Vladimir Putin, China or Iran be any more naïve? Perhaps the problem had to erupt as a result of the inner dynamics of U.S.-sponsored globalism becoming impossible to impose when the result is financial austerity, waves of population flight from U.S.-sponsored wars, and most of all, U.S. refusal to adhere to the rules and international laws that it itself sponsored seventy years ago in the wake of World War II.
Dismantling International Law and Its Courts
Any international system of control requires the rule of law. It may be a morally lawless exercise of ruthless power imposing predatory exploitation, but it is still The Law. And it needs courts to apply it (backed by police power to enforce it and punish violators).
Here's the first legal contradiction in U.S. global diplomacy: The United States always has resisted letting any other country have any voice in U.S. domestic policies, law-making or diplomacy. That is what makes America "the exceptional nation." But for seventy years its diplomats have pretended that its superior judgment promoted a peaceful world (as the Roman Empire claimed to be), which let other countries share in prosperity and rising living standards.
At the United Nations, U.S. diplomats insisted on veto power. At the World Bank and IMF they also made sure that their equity share was large enough to give them veto power over any loan or other policy. Without such power, the United States would not join any international organization. Yet at the same time, it depicted its nationalism as protecting globalization and internationalism. It was all a euphemism for what really was unilateral U.S. decision-making.
Inevitably, U.S. nationalism had to break up the mirage of One World internationalism, and with it any thought of an international court. Without veto power over the judges, the U.S. never accepted the authority of any court, in particular the United Nations' International Court in The Hague. Recently that court undertook an investigation into U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, from its torture policies to bombing of civilian targets such as hospitals, weddings and infrastructure. "That investigation ultimately found 'a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity." [1]
Donald Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton erupted in fury, warning in September that: "The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court," adding that the UN International Court must not be so bold as to investigate "Israel or other U.S. allies."
That prompted a senior judge, Christoph Flügge from Germany, to resign in protest. Indeed, Bolton told the court to keep out of any affairs involving the United States, promising to ban the Court's "judges and prosecutors from entering the United States." As Bolton spelled out the U.S. threat: "We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us."
What this meant, the German judge spelled out was that: "If these judges ever interfere in the domestic concerns of the U.S. or investigate an American citizen, [Bolton] said the American government would do all it could to ensure that these judges would no longer be allowed to travel to the United States – and that they would perhaps even be criminally prosecuted."
The original inspiration of the Court – to use the Nuremburg laws that were applied against German Nazis to bring similar prosecution against any country or officials found guilty of committing war crimes – had already fallen into disuse with the failure to indict the authors of the Chilean coup, Iran-Contra or the U.S. invasion of Iraq for war crimes.
Dismantling Dollar Hegemony from the IMF to SWIFT
Of all areas of global power politics today, international finance and foreign investment have become the key flashpoint. International monetary reserves were supposed to be the most sacrosanct, and international debt enforcement closely associated.
Central banks have long held their gold and other monetary reserves in the United States and London. Back in 1945 this seemed reasonable, because the New York Federal Reserve Bank (in whose basement foreign central bank gold was kept) was militarily safe, and because the London Gold Pool was the vehicle by which the U.S. Treasury kept the dollar "as good as gold" at $35 an ounce. Foreign reserves over and above gold were kept in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, to be bought and sold on the New York and London foreign-exchange markets to stabilize exchange rates. Most foreign loans to governments were denominated in U.S. dollars, so Wall Street banks were normally name as paying agents.
That was the case with Iran under the Shah, whom the United States had installed after sponsoring the 1953 coup against Mohammed Mosaddegh when he sought to nationalize Anglo-Iranian Oil (now British Petroleum) or at least tax it. After the Shah was overthrown, the Khomeini regime asked its paying agent, the Chase Manhattan bank, to use its deposits to pay its bondholders. At the direction of the U.S. Government Chase refused to do so. U.S. courts then declared Iran to be in default, and froze all its assets in the United States and anywhere else they were able.
This showed that international finance was an arm of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. But that was a generation ago, and only recently did foreign countries begin to feel queasy about leaving their gold holdings in the United States, where they might be grabbed at will to punish any country that might act in ways that U.S. diplomacy found offensive. So last year, Germany finally got up the courage to ask that some of its gold be flown back to Germany. U.S. officials pretended to feel shocked at the insult that it might do to a civilized Christian country what it had done to Iran, and Germany agreed to slow down the transfer.
But then came Venezuela. Desperate to spend its gold reserves to provide imports for its economy devastated by U.S. sanctions – a crisis that U.S. diplomats blame on "socialism," not on U.S. political attempts to "make the economy scream" (as Nixon officials said of Chile under Salvador Allende) – Venezuela directed the Bank of England to transfer some of its $11 billion in gold held in its vaults and those of other central banks in December 2018. This was just like a bank depositor would expect a bank to pay a check that the depositor had written.
England refused to honor the official request, following the direction of Bolton and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. As Bloomberg reported: "The U.S. officials are trying to steer Venezuela's overseas assets to [Chicago Boy Juan] Guaido to help bolster his chances of effectively taking control of the government. The $1.2 billion of gold is a big chunk of the $8 billion in foreign reserves held by the Venezuelan central bank."
Turkey seemed to be a likely destination, prompting Bolton and Pompeo to warn it to desist from helping Venezuela, threatening sanctions against it or any other country helping Venezuela cope with its economic crisis. As for the Bank of England and other European countries, the Bloomberg report concluded: "Central bank officials in Caracas have been ordered to no longer try contacting the Bank of England. These central bankers have been told that Bank of England staffers will not respond to them."
This led to rumors that Venezuela was selling 20 tons of gold via a Russian Boeing 777 – some $840 million. The money probably would have ended up paying Russian and Chinese bondholders as well as buying food to relieve the local famine. [4] Russia denied this report, but Reuters has confirmed is that Venezuela has sold 3 tons of a planned 29 tones of gold to the United Arab Emirates, with another 15 tones are to be shipped on Friday, February 1. [5] The U.S. Senate's Batista-Cuban hardliner Rubio accused this of being "theft," as if feeding the people to alleviate the U.S.-sponsored crisis was a crime against U.S. diplomatic leverage.
If there is any country that U.S. diplomats hate more than a recalcitrant Latin American country, it is Iran. President Trump's breaking of the 2015 nuclear agreements negotiated by European and Obama Administration diplomats has escalated to the point of threatening Germany and other European countries with punitive sanctions if they do not also break the agreements they have signed. Coming on top of U.S. opposition to German and other European importing of Russian gas, the U.S. threat finally prompted Europe to find a way to defend itself.
Imperial threats are no longer military. No country (including Russia or China) can mount a military invasion of another major country. Since the Vietnam Era, the only kind of war a democratically elected country can wage is atomic, or at least heavy bombing such as the United States has inflicted on Iraq, Libya and Syria. But now, cyber warfare has become a way of pulling out the connections of any economy. And the major cyber connections are financial money-transfer ones, headed by SWIFT, the acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which is centered in Belgium.
Russia and China have already moved to create a shadow bank-transfer system in case the United States unplugs them from SWIFT. But now, European countries have come to realize that threats by Bolton and Pompeo may lead to heavy fines and asset grabs if they seek to continue trading with Iran as called for in the treaties they have negotiated.
On January 31 the dam broke with the announcement that Europe had created its own bypass payments system for use with Iran and other countries targeted by U.S. diplomats. Germany, France and even the U.S. poodle Britain joined to create INSTEX -- Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges. The promise is that this will be used only for "humanitarian" aid to save Iran from a U.S.-sponsored Venezuela-type devastation. But in view of increasingly passionate U.S. opposition to the Nord Stream pipeline to carry Russian gas, this alternative bank clearing system will be ready and able to become operative if the United States tries to direct a sanctions attack on Europe.
I have just returned from Germany and seen a remarkable split between that nation's industrialists and their political leadership. For years, major companies have seen Russia as a natural market, a complementary economy needing to modernize its manufacturing and able to supply Europe with natural gas and other raw materials. America's New Cold War stance is trying to block this commercial complementarity. Warning Europe against "dependence" on low-price Russian gas, it has offered to sell high-priced LNG from the United States (via port facilities that do not yet exist in anywhere near the volume required). President Trump also is insisting that NATO members spend a full 2 percent of their GDP on arms – preferably bought from the United States, not from German or French merchants of death.
The U.S. overplaying its position is leading to the Mackinder-Kissinger-Brzezinski Eurasian nightmare that I mentioned above. In addition to driving Russia and China together, U.S. diplomacy is adding Europe to the heartland, independent of U.S. ability to bully into the state of dependency toward which American diplomacy has aimed to achieve since 1945.
The World Bank, for instance, traditionally has been headed by a U.S. Secretary of Defense. Its steady policy since its inception is to provide loans for countries to devote their land to export crops instead of giving priority to feeding themselves. That is why its loans are only in foreign currency, not in the domestic currency needed to provide price supports and agricultural extension services such as have made U.S. agriculture so productive. By following U.S. advice, countries have left themselves open to food blackmail – sanctions against providing them with grain and other food, in case they step out of line with U.S. diplomatic demands.
It is worthwhile to note that our global imposition of the mythical "efficiencies" of forcing Latin American countries to become plantations for export crops like coffee and bananas rather than growing their own wheat and corn has failed catastrophically to deliver better lives, especially for those living in Central America. The "spread" between the export crops and cheaper food imports from the U.S. that was supposed to materialize for countries following our playbook failed miserably – witness the caravans and refugees across Mexico. Of course, our backing of the most brutal military dictators and crime lords has not helped either.
Likewise, the IMF has been forced to admit that its basic guidelines were fictitious from the beginning. A central core has been to enforce payment of official inter-government debt by withholding IMF credit from countries under default. This rule was instituted at a time when most official inter-government debt was owed to the United States. But a few years ago Ukraine defaulted on $3 billion owed to Russia. The IMF said, in effect, that Ukraine and other countries did not have to pay Russia or any other country deemed to be acting too independently of the United States. The IMF has been extending credit to the bottomless it of Ukrainian corruption to encourage its anti-Russian policy rather than standing up for the principle that inter-government debts must be paid.
It is as if the IMF now operates out of a small room in the basement of the Pentagon in Washington. Europe has taken notice that its own international monetary trade and financial linkages are in danger of attracting U.S. anger. This became clear last autumn at the funeral for George H. W. Bush, when the EU's diplomat found himself downgraded to the end of the list to be called to his seat. He was told that the U.S. no longer considers the EU an entity in good standing. In December, "Mike Pompeo gave a speech on Europe in Brussels -- his first, and eagerly awaited -- in which he extolled the virtues of nationalism, criticised multilateralism and the EU, and said that "international bodies" which constrain national sovereignty "must be reformed or eliminated." [5]
Most of the above events have made the news in just one day, January 31, 2019. The conjunction of U.S. moves on so many fronts, against Venezuela, Iran and Europe (not to mention China and the trade threats and moves against Huawei also erupting today) looks like this will be a year of global fracture.
It is not all President Trump's doing, of course. We see the Democratic Party showing the same colors. Instead of applauding democracy when foreign countries do not elect a leader approved by U.S. diplomats (whether it is Allende or Maduro), they've let the mask fall and shown themselves to be the leading New Cold War imperialists. It's now out in the open. They would make Venezuela the new Pinochet-era Chile. Trump is not alone in supporting Saudi Arabia and its Wahabi terrorists acting, as Lyndon Johnson put it, "Bastards, but they're our bastards."
Where is the left in all this? That is the question with which I opened this article. How remarkable it is that it is only right-wing parties, Alternative for Deutschland (AFD), or Marine le Pen's French nationalists and those of other countries that are opposing NATO militarization and seeking to revive trade and economic links with the rest of Eurasia.
The end of our monetary imperialism, about which I first wrote in 1972 in Super Imperialism, stuns even an informed observer like me. It took a colossal level of arrogance, short-sightedness and lawlessness to hasten its decline -- something that only crazed Neocons like John Bolton, Elliot Abrams and Mike Pompeo could deliver for Donald Trump.
Footnotes
[1] "It Can't be Fixed: Senior ICC Judge Quits in Protest of US, Turkish Meddling," January 31, 2019.
[2] Patricia Laya, Ethan Bronner and Tim Ross, "Maduro Stymied in Bid to Pull $1.2 Billion of Gold From U.K.," Bloomberg, January 25, 2019. Anticipating just such a double-cross, President Chavez acted already in 2011 to repatriate 160 tons of gold to Caracas from the United States and Europe.
[3] ibid
[4] Corina Pons, Mayela Armas, "Exclusive: Venezuela plans to fly central bank gold reserves to UAE – source," Reuters, January 31, 2019.
[5] Constanze Stelzenmüller, "America's policy on Europe takes a nationalist turn," Financial Times, January 31, 2019.
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "and forgive them their debts": Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year< Jointly posted with Hudson's website
doug , February 1, 2019 at 8:03 am
We see the Democratic Party showing the same colors. Yes we do. no escape? that I see
drumlin woodchuckles , February 1, 2019 at 9:43 am
Well, if the StormTrumpers can tear down all the levers and institutions of international US dollar strength, perhaps they can also tear down all the institutions of Corporate Globalonial Forced Free Trade. That itself may BE our escape . . . if there are enough millions of Americans who have turned their regionalocal zones of habitation into economically and politically armor-plated Transition Towns, Power-Down Zones, etc. People and places like that may be able to crawl up out of the rubble and grow and defend little zones of semi-subsistence survival-economics.
If enough millions of Americans have created enough such zones, they might be able to link up with eachother to offer hope of a movement to make America in general a semi-autarchik, semi-secluded and isolated National Survival Economy . . . . much smaller than today, perhaps likelier to survive the various coming ecosystemic crash-cramdowns, and no longer interested in leading or dominating a world that we would no longer have the power to lead or dominate.
We could put an end to American Exceptionalism. We could lay this burden down. We could become American Okayness Ordinarians. Make America an okay place for ordinary Americans to live in.
drumlin woodchuckles , February 1, 2019 at 2:27 pm
I read somewhere that the Czarist Imperial Army had a saying . . . "Quantity has a Quality all its own".
... ... ...
Cal2 , February 1, 2019 at 2:54 pm
Drumlin,
If Populists, I assume that's what you mean by "Storm Troopers", offer me M4A and revitalized local economies, and deliver them, they have my support and more power to them.
That's why Trump was elected, his promises, not yet delivered, were closer to that then the Democrats' promises. If the Democrats promised those things and delivered, then they would have my support.
If the Democrats run a candidate, who has a no track record of delivering such things, we stay home on election day. Trump can have it, because it won't be any worse.
I don't give a damn about "social issues." Economics, health care and avoiding WWIII are what motivates my votes, and I think more and more people are going to vote the same way.
drumlin woodchuckles , February 1, 2019 at 8:56 pm
Good point about Populist versus StormTrumper. ( And by the way, I said StormTRUMper, not StormTROOper). I wasn't thinking of the Populists. I was thinking of the neo-etc. vandals and arsonists who want us to invade Venezuela, leave the JCPOA with Iran, etc. Those are the people who will finally drive the other-country governments into creating their own parallel payment systems, etc.
And the midpoint of those efforts will leave wreckage and rubble for us to crawl up out of. But we will have a chance to crawl up out of it.
My reason for voting for Trump was mainly to stop the Evil Clinton from getting elected and to reduce the chance of near immediate thermonuclear war with Russia and to save the Assad regime in Syria from Clintonian overthrow and replacement with an Islamic Emirate of Jihadistan.
Much of what will be attempted " in Trump's name" will be de-regulationism of all kinds delivered by the sorts of basic Republicans selected for the various agencies and departments by Pence and Moore and the Koch Brothers. I doubt the Populist Voters wanted the Koch-Pence agenda. But that was a risky tradeoff in return for keeping Clinton out of office.
The only Dems who would seek what you want are Sanders or maybe Gabbard or just barely Warren. The others would all be Clinton or Obama all over again.
Quanka , February 1, 2019 at 8:29 am
I couldn't really find any details about the new INSTEX system – have you got any good links to brush up on? I know they made an announcement yesterday but how long until the new payment system is operational?
The Rev Kev , February 1, 2019 at 8:43 am
Here is a bit more info on it but Trump is already threatening Europe if they use it. That should cause them to respect him more:
https://www.dw.com/en/instex-europe-sets-up-transactions-channel-with-iran/a-47303580
LP , February 1, 2019 at 9:14 am
The NYT and other have coverage.
Louis Fyne , February 1, 2019 at 8:37 am
arguably wouldn't it be better if for USD hegemony to be dismantled? A strong USD hurts US exports, subsidizes American consumption (by making commodities cheaper in relative terms), makes international trade (aka a 8,000-mile+ supply chain) easier.
For the sake of the environment, you want less of all three. Though obviously I don't like the idea of expensive gasoline, natural gas or tube socks either.
Mel , February 1, 2019 at 9:18 am
It would be good for Americans, but the wrong kind of Americans. For the Americans that would populate the Global Executive Suite, a strong US$ means that the stipends they would pay would be worth more to the lackeys, and command more influence.
Dumping the industrial base really ruined things. America is now in a position where it can shout orders, and drop bombs, but doesn't have the capacity to do anything helpful. They have to give up being what Toynbee called a creative minority, and settle for being a dominant minority.
integer , February 1, 2019 at 8:43 am
Having watched the 2016 election closely from afar, I was left with the impression that many of the swing voters who cast their vote for Trump did so under the assumption that he would act as a catalyst for systemic change.
What this change would consist of, and how it would manifest, remained an open question. Would he pursue rapprochement with Russia and pull troops out of the Middle East as he claimed to want to do during his 2016 campaign, would he doggedly pursue corruption charges against Clinton and attempt to reform the FBI and CIA, or would he do both, neither, or something else entirely?
Now we know. He has ripped the already transparent mask of altruism off what is referred to as the U.S.-led liberal international order and revealed its true nature for all to see, and has managed to do it in spite of the liberal international establishment desperately trying to hold it in place in the hope of effecting a seamless post-Trump return to what they refer to as "norms". Interesting times.
James , February 1, 2019 at 10:34 am
Exactly. He hasn't exactly lived up to advanced billing so far in all respects, but I suspect there's great deal of skulduggery going on behind the scenes that has prevented that. Whether or not he ever had or has a coherent plan for the havoc he has wrought, he has certainly been the agent for change many of us hoped he would be, in stark contrast to the criminal duopoly parties who continue to oppose him, where the daily no news is always bad news all the same. To paraphrase the infamous Rummy, you don't go to war with the change agent and policies you wished you had, you go to war with the ones you have. That might be the best thing we can say about Trump after the historic dust of his administration finally settles.
drumlin woodchuckles , February 1, 2019 at 2:39 pm
Look on some bright sides. Here is just one bright side to look on. President Trump has delayed and denied the Clinton Plan to topple Assad just long enough that Russia has been able to help Assad preserve legitimate government in most of Syria and defeat the Clinton's-choice jihadis.
That is a positive good. Unless you are pro-jihadi.
integer , February 1, 2019 at 8:09 pm
Clinton wasn't going to "benefit the greater good" either, and a very strong argument, based on her past behavior, can be made that she represented the greater threat. Given that the choice was between her and Trump, I think voters made the right decision.
Stephen Gardner , February 1, 2019 at 9:02 am
Excellent article but I believe the expression is "cui bono": who benefits.
hemeantwell , February 1, 2019 at 9:09 am
Hudson's done us a service in pulling these threads together. I'd missed the threats against the ICC judges. One question: is it possible for INSTEX-like arrangements to function secretly? What is to be gained by announcing them publicly and drawing the expected attacks? Does that help sharpen conflicts, and to what end?
Oregoncharles , February 1, 2019 at 3:23 pm
Maybe they're done in secret already – who knows? The point of doing it publicly is to make a foreign-policy impact, in this case withdrawing power from the US. It's a Declaration of Independence.
whine country , February 1, 2019 at 9:15 am
It certainly seems as though the 90 percent (plus) are an afterthought in this journey to who knows where? Like George C.Scott said while playing Patton, "The whole world at economic war and I'm not part of it. God will not let this happen." Looks like we're on the Brexit track (without the vote). The elite argue with themselves and we just sit and watch. It appears to me that the elite just do not have the ability to contemplate things beyond their own narrow self interest. We are all deplorables now.
a different chris , February 1, 2019 at 9:30 am
Unfortunately this
The end of America's unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected
Is not supported by this (or really the rest of the article). The past tense here, for example, is unwarranted:
At the United Nations, U.S. diplomats insisted on veto power. At the World Bank and IMF they also made sure that their equity share was large enough to give them veto power over any loan or other policy.
And this
So last year, Germany finally got up the courage to ask that some of its gold be flown back to Germany. Germany agreed to slow down the transfer.
Doesn't show Germany as breaking free at all, and worse it is followed by the pregnant
But then came Venezuela.
Yet we find out that Venezuela didn't managed to do what they wanted to do, the Europeans, the Turks, etc bent over yet again. Nothing to see here, actually.
So what I'm saying is he didn't make his point. I wish it were true. But a bit of grumbling and (a tiny amount of) foot-dragging by some pygmy leaders (Merkel) does not signal a global change.
orange cats , February 1, 2019 at 11:22 am
"So what I'm saying is he didn't make his point. I wish it were true. But a bit of grumbling and (a tiny amount of) foot-dragging by some pygmy leaders (Merkel) does not signal a global change."
I'm surprised more people aren't recognizing this. I read the article waiting in vain for some evidence of "the end of our monetary imperialism" besides some 'grumbling and foot dragging' as you aptly put it. There was some glimmer of a buried lede with INTEX, created to get around U.S. sanctions against Iran ─ hardly a 'dam-breaking'. Washington is on record as being annoyed.
OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , February 1, 2019 at 1:41 pm
Currency regime change can take decades, and small percentage differences are enormous because of the flows involved. USD as reserve for 61% of global sovereigns versus 64% 15 years ago is a massive move. World bond market flows are 10X the size of world stock market flows even though the price of the Dow and Facebook shares etc get all of the headlines.
And foreign exchange flows are 10-50X the flows of bond markets, they're currently on the order of $5 *trillion* per day. And since forex is almost completely unregulated it's quite difficult to get the data and spot reserve currency trends. Oh, and buy gold. It's the only currency that requires no counterparty and is no one's debt obligation.
orange cats , February 1, 2019 at 3:47 pm
That's not what Hudson claims in his swaggering final sentence:
"The end of our monetary imperialism, about which I first wrote in 1972 in Super Imperialism, stuns even an informed observer like me."
Which is risible as not only did he fail to show anything of the kind, his opening sentence stated a completely different reality: "The end of America's unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected" So if we hold him to his first declaration, his evidence is feeble, as I mentioned. As a scholar, his hyperbole is untrustworthy.
No, gold is pretty enough lying on the bosom of a lady-friend but that's about its only usefulness in the real world.
skippy , February 1, 2019 at 8:09 pm
Always bemusing that gold bugs never talk about gold being in a bubble . yet when it goes south of its purchase price speak in tongues about ev'bal forces.
timbers , February 1, 2019 at 12:26 pm
I don't agree, and do agree. The distinction is this:
- Will the USD lose reserve currency soon? Probably no. And that is where I agree with you that the elites will fight to save USD as reserve currency.
- Will USD lose it's hegemony? Probably yes, and I don't think the U.S., The Empire, or the elites can stop that.
If you fix a few of Hudson's errors, and take him as making the point that USD is losing it's hegemony, IMO he is basically correct.
Brian (another one they call) , February 1, 2019 at 9:56 am
thanks Mr. Hudson. One has to wonder what has happened when the government (for decades) has been shown to be morally and otherwise corrupt and self serving. It doesn't seem to bother anyone but the people, and precious few of them. Was it our financial and legal bankruptcy that sent us over the cliff?
Steven , February 1, 2019 at 10:23 am
Great stuff!
Indeed! It is to say the least encouraging to see Dr. Hudson return so forcefully to the theme of 'monetary imperialism'. I discovered his Super Imperialism while looking for an explanation for the pending 2003 US invasion of Iraq. If you haven't read it yet, move it to the top of your queue if you want to have any idea of how the world really works. You can find any number of articles on his web site that return periodically to the theme of monetary imperialism. I remember one in particular that described how the rest of the world was brought on board to help pay for its good old-fashioned military imperialism.
If it isn't clear to the rest of the world by now, it never will be. The US is incapable of changing on its own a corrupt status quo dominated by a coalition of its military industrial complex, Wall Street bankers and fossil fuels industries. As long as the world continues to chase the debt created on the keyboards of Wall Street banks and 'deficits don't matter' Washington neocons – as long as the world's 1% think they are getting 'richer' by adding more "debts that can't be repaid (and) won't be" to their portfolios, the global economy can never be put on a sustainable footing.
Until the US returns to the path of genuine wealth creation, it is past time for the rest of the world to go its own way with its banking and financial institutions.
Oh , February 1, 2019 at 3:52 pm
The use of the stick will only go so far. What's the USG going to do if they refuse?
Summer , February 1, 2019 at 10:46 am
In other words, after 2 World Wars that produced the current world order, it is still in a state of insanity with the same pretensions to superiority by the same people, to get number 3.
Yikes , February 1, 2019 at 12:07 pm
UK withholding Gold may start another Brexit? IE: funds/gold held by BOE for other countries in Africa, Asian, South America, and the "stans" with start to depart, slowly at first, perhaps for Switzerland?
Ian Perkins , February 1, 2019 at 12:21 pm
Where is the left in all this? Pretty much the same place as Michael Hudson, I'd say. Where is the US Democratic Party in all this? Quite a different question, and quite a different answer. So far as I can see, the Democrats for years have bombed, invaded and plundered other countries 'for their own good'. Republicans do it 'for the good of America', by which the ignoramuses mean the USA. If you're on the receiving end, it doesn't make much difference.
Michael A Gualario , February 1, 2019 at 12:49 pm
Agreed! South America intervention and regime change, Syria ( Trump is pulling out), Iraq, Middle East meddling, all predate Trump. Bush, Clinton and Obama have nothing to do with any of this.
Oregoncharles , February 1, 2019 at 2:12 pm
" So last year, Germany finally got up the courage to ask that some of its gold be flown back to Germany. "
What proof is there that the gold is still there? Chances are it's notional. All Germany, Venezuela, or the others have is an IOU – and gold cannot be printed. Incidentally, this whole discussion means that gold is still money and the gold standard still exists.
Oregoncharles , February 1, 2019 at 3:41 pm
Wukchumni beat me to the suspicion that the gold isn't there.
The Rev Kev , February 1, 2019 at 7:40 pm
What makes you think that the gold in Fort Knox is still there? If I remember right, there was a Potemkin visit back in the 70s to assure everyone that the gold was still there but not since then. Wait, I tell a lie. There was another visit about two years ago but look who was involved in that visit-
And I should mention that it was in the 90s that between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were manufactured in the US under Clinton. Since then gold-coated tungsten bars have turned up in places like Germany, China, Ethiopia, the UK, etc so who is to say if those gold bars in Fort Knox are gold all the way through either. More on this at -- http://viewzone2.com/fakegoldx.html
Summer , February 1, 2019 at 5:44 pm
A non-accountable standard. It's more obvious BS than what is going on now.
jochen , February 2, 2019 at 6:46 am
It wasn't last year that Germany brought back its Gold. It has been ongoing since 2013, after some political and popular pressure build up. They finished the transaction in 2017. According to an article in Handelblatt (but it was widely reported back then) they brought back pretty much everything they had in Paris (347t), left what they had in London (perhaps they should have done it in reverse) and took home another 300t from the NY Fed. That still leaves 1236t in NY. But half of their Gold (1710t) is now in Frankfurt. That is 50% of the Bundesbanks holdings.
They made a point in saying that every bar was checked and weighed and presented some bars in Frankfurt. I guess they didn't melt them for assaying, but I'd expect them to be smart enough to check the density.
Their reason to keep Gold in NY and London is to quickly buy USD in case of a crisis. That's pretty much a cold war plan, but that's what they do right now.
Regarding Michal Hudsons piece, I enjoyed reading through this one. He tends to write ridiculously long articles and in the last few years with less time and motivation at hand I've skipped most of his texts on NC as they just drag on.
When I'm truly fascinated I like well written, long articles but somehow he lost me at some point. But I noticed that some long original articles in US magazines, probably research for a long time by the journalist, can just drag on for ever as well I just tune out.
Susan the Other , February 1, 2019 at 2:19 pm
This is making sense. I would guess that tearing up the old system is totally deliberate. It wasn't working so well for us because we had to practice too much social austerity, which we have tried to impose on the EU as well, just to stabilize "king dollar" – otherwise spread so thin it was a pending catastrophe.
Now we can get out from under being the reserve currency – the currency that maintains its value by financial manipulation and military bullying domestic deprivation. To replace this old power trip we are now going to mainline oil. The dollar will become a true petro dollar because we are going to commandeer every oil resource not already nailed down.
When we partnered with SA in Aramco and the then petro dollar the dollar was only backed by our military. If we start monopolizing oil, the actual commodity, the dollar will be an apex competitor currency without all the foreign military obligations which will allow greater competitive advantages.
No? I'm looking at PdVSA, PEMEX and the new "Energy Hub for the Eastern Mediterranean" and other places not yet made public. It looks like a power play to me, not a hapless goofball president at all.
skippy , February 2, 2019 at 2:44 am
So sand people with sociological attachment to the OT is a compelling argument based on antiquarian preferences with authoritarian patriarchal tendencies for their non renewable resource . after I might add it was deemed a strategic concern after WWII .
Considering the broader geopolitical realities I would drain all the gold reserves to zero if it was on offer . here natives have some shiny beads for allowing us to resource extract we call this a good trade you maximize your utility as I do mine .
Hay its like not having to run C-corp compounds with western 60s – 70s esthetics and letting the locals play serf, blow back pay back, and now the installed local chiefs can own the risk and refocus the attention away from the real antagonists.
ChrisAtRU , February 1, 2019 at 6:02 pm
Indeed. Thanks so much for this. Maybe the RICS will get serious now – can no longer include Brazil with Bolsonaro. There needs to be an alternate system or systems in place, and to see US Imperialism so so blatantly and bluntly by Trump admin – "US gives Juan Guaido control over some Venezuelan assets" – should sound sirens on every continent and especially in the developing world. I too hope there will be fracture to the point of breakage. Countries of the world outside the US/EU/UK/Canada/Australia confraternity must now unite to provide a permanent framework outside the control of imperial interests. The be clear, this must not default to alternative forms of imperialism germinating by the likes of China.
mikef , February 1, 2019 at 6:07 pm
" such criticism can't begin to take in the full scope of the damage the Trump White House is inflicting on the system of global power Washington built and carefully maintained over those 70 years. Indeed, American leaders have been on top of the world for so long that they no longer remember how they got there.
Few among Washington's foreign policy elite seem to fully grasp the complex system that made U.S. global power what it now is, particularly its all-important geopolitical foundations. As Trump travels the globe, tweeting and trashing away, he's inadvertently showing us the essential structure of that power, the same way a devastating wildfire leaves the steel beams of a ruined building standing starkly above the smoking rubble."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176373/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_tweeting_while_rome_burns
Rajesh K , February 1, 2019 at 7:23 pm
I read something like this and I am like, some of these statements need to be qualified. Like: "Driving China and Russia together". Like where's the proof? Is Xi playing telephone games more often now with Putin? I look at those two and all I see are two egocentric people who might sometimes say the right things but in general do not like the share the spotlight. Let's say they get together to face America and for some reason the later gets "defeated", it's not as if they'll kumbaya together into the night.
This website often points out the difficulties in implementing new banking IT initiatives. Ok, so Europe has a new "payment system". Has it been tested thoroughly? I would expect a couple of weeks or even months of chaos if it's not been tested, and if it's thorough that probably just means that it's in use right i.e. all the kinks have been worked out. In that case the transition is already happening anyway. But then the next crisis arrives and then everyone would need their dollar swap lines again which probably needs to cleared through SWIFT or something.
Anyway, does this all mean that one day we'll wake up and a slice of bacon is 50 bucks as opposed to the usual 1 dollar?
Keith Newman , February 2, 2019 at 1:12 am
Driving Russia and China together is correct. I recall them signing a variety of economic and military agreement a few years ago. It was covered in the media. You should at least google an issue before making silly comments. You might start with the report of Russia and China signing 30 cooperation agreements three years ago. See https://www.rbth.com/international/2016/06/27/russia-china-sign-30-cooperation-agreements_606505 . There are lots and lots of others.
RBHoughton , February 1, 2019 at 9:16 pm
He's draining the swamp in an unpredicted way, a swamp that's founded on the money interest. I don't care what NYT and WaPo have to say, they are not reporting events but promoting agendas.
skippy , February 2, 2019 at 1:11 am
The financial elites are only concerned about shaping society as they see fit, side of self serving is just a historical foot note, Trumps past indicates a strong preference for even more of the same through authoritarian memes or have some missed the OT WH reference to dawg both choosing and then compelling him to run.
Whilst the far right factions fight over the rudder the only new game in town is AOC, Sanders, Warren, et al which Trumps supporters hate with Ideological purity.
/lasse , February 2, 2019 at 7:50 am
Highly doubt Trump is a "witting agent", most likely is that he is just as ignorant as he almost daily shows on twitter. On US role in global affairs he says the same today as he did as a media celebrity in the late 80s. Simplistic household "logics" on macroeconomics. If US have trade deficit it loses. Countries with surplus are the winners.
On a household level it fits, but there no "loser" household that in infinity can print money that the "winners" can accumulate in exchange for their resources and fruits of labor.
One wonder what are Trumps idea of US being a winner in trade (surplus)? I.e. sending away their resources and fruits of labor overseas in exchange for what? A pile of USD? That US in the first place created out of thin air. Or Chinese Yuan, Euros, Turkish liras? Also fiat-money. Or does he think US trade surplus should be paid in gold?
When the US political and economic hegemony will unravel it will come "unexpected". Trump for sure are undermining it with his megalomaniac ignorance. But not sure it's imminent.
Anyhow frightening, the US hegemony have its severe dark sides. But there is absolutely nothing better on the horizon, a crash will throw the world in turmoil for decades or even a century. A lot of bad forces will see their chance to elevate their influence. There will be fierce competition to fill the gap.
On could the insane economic model of EU/Germany being on top of global affairs, a horribly frightening thought. Misery and austerity for all globally, a permanent recession. Probably not much better with the Chinese on top. I'll take the USD hegemony any day compared to that prospect.
Sound of the Suburbs , February 2, 2019 at 10:26 am
Former US ambassador, Chas Freeman, gets to the nub of the problem. "The US preference for governance by elected and appointed officials, uncontaminated by experience in statecraft and diplomacy, or knowledge of geography, history and foreign affairs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_882041135&feature=iv&src_vid=Ge1ozuXN7iI&v=gkf2MQdqz-o
Sound of the Suburbs , February 2, 2019 at 10:29 am
When the delusion takes hold, it is the beginning of the end.
The British Empire will last forever
The thousand year Reich
American exceptionalismAs soon as the bankers thought they thought they were "Master of the Universe" you knew 2008 was coming. The delusion had taken hold.
Sound of the Suburbs , February 2, 2019 at 10:45 am
Michael Hudson, in Super Imperialism, went into how the US could just create the money to run a large trade deficit with the rest of the world. It would get all these imports effectively for nothing, the US's exorbitant privilege. I tied this in with this graph from MMT.
This is the US (46.30 mins.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba8XdDqZ-Jg
The trade deficit required a large Government deficit to cover it and the US government could just create the money to cover it.
Then ideological neoliberals came in wanting balanced budgets and not realising the Government deficit covered the trade deficit.
The US has been destabilising its own economy by reducing the Government deficit. Bill Clinton didn't realize a Government surplus is an indicator a financial crisis is about to hit. The last US Government surplus occurred in 1927 – 1930, they go hand-in-hand with financial crises.
Richard Koo shows the graph central bankers use and it's the flow of funds within the economy, which sums to zero (32-34 mins.).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk
The Government was running a surplus as the economy blew up in the early 1990s. It's the positive and negative, zero sum, nature of the monetary system. A big trade deficit needs a big Government deficit to cover it. A big trade deficit, with a balanced budget, drives the private sector into debt and blows up the economy.
skippy , February 2, 2019 at 5:28 pm
It should be remembered Bill Clinton's early meeting with Rubin, where in he was informed that wages and productivity had diverged – Rubin did not blink an eye.
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Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com
At this point, deja vu mind-set returns to teach a powerful lesson. Having once witnessed a major historical reversal, one knows that historical determinism isan illusion -- opium for people on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Machiavelli insisted that surrender is a bad idea because we never know what surprises fortune may have in store for us. In Machiavelli's view, there are "good times" and "bad times" in politics, and the good ruler is not one who can fend off the "bad times" so much, as one who has accumulated enough goodwill among citizens to help him ride out those bad times.
The argument of this short book is that European Union is going through a really bad time today, torn apart by numerous crises that damage confidence in the future of the project among citizens across the continent. So the disintegration of the union is one of the most likely outcomes.
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Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com
Luc REYNAERT 5.0 out of 5 stars Dissent is the only thing worth globalizing October 29, 2009 Format: Paperback
For A. Roy, a writer has the responsibility to take sides overtly.
In these violent diatribes, she tears the masks of the `missionaries to redeem the wretched' and of those preaching privatization and globalization as the one and only solution for the whole world's economic problems.The hypocrisy of globalization
For A. Roy, globalization has nothing to do with the eradication of poverty. It will not pull the Third World out of the stagnant morass of illiteracy, religious bigotry or underdevelopment. In India, 70 % of the population still has no electricity and 30 % is still illiterate.
Globalization means crudely and cruelly `Life is Profit'. `Its realm is raw capital, its conquest emerging markets, its prayers profits, its borders limitless, its weapons nuclear.'
Privatization (of agriculture, seeds, water supply, electricity, power plants, commodities, telecommunications, knowledge) consists only in the transfer of productive public assets from the State to private interests (transnational corporations).
The globalization's economic agenda `munches through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts.' One example: by hugely subsidizing their farm industries, the rich countries put impoverished subsistence farmers in the Third World out of business and chase them into the cities.The hypocrisy of the war against terrorism
For A. Roy, the rich countries are the real worshippers of the cult of violence. They manufacture and sell almost all the world's weapons and possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, nuclear).
At the head of ICAT (The Coalition Against Terror) stays a country which spends mind-boggling military budgets to fight a few bunches of manipulated terrorists created by the hegemon himself. It committed `the most of genocides, ethnic cleansing, and human rights violations. It sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and supports military and economic terrorism.' Its aim is full spectrum dominance.
But, as Paul Krugman remarked, the replacement of the Cold War issue by the (manipulated) terrorism one as a justification for massive military spending was (and is) a very big failure.Arundhati Roy's bitter and angry texts are a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
C. Mclemore 4.0 out of 5 stars Fresh take on globalization June 1, 2003 Format: Paperback
Arundhati Roy bristles at being called a "writer-activist" (too much like sofa-bed, she says), but the rest of us should be grateful that the author of "The God of Small Things" is taking on the establishment, here and in India.
Part of Mrs. Roy's greatness is that she is not colored by the partisan debates that influence the dialogue on issues such as globalization in America. She is an equal-opportunity critic, taking on Clinton and Bush. Although other authors pledge no allegiance to either side of the aisle, Roy has a fresh perspective, and has a take on globalization that I haven't found in works by American authors.
This book is set up as a collection (a rather random collection) of several essays. The first essay gives a wonderful perspective of globalization (ie. the expansion of American business interests) from a foreign perspective. She examines the impact of the global economic movement on the actual people being affected by it at the lowest level. She reveals the influence of the privatization of the electric industry through the eyes of India's poorest citizens.
The second essay goes in-depth into politics in India, primarily addressing the enormous number of dams being built in the country, and the impacts (economic, environmental, social) that they will have. Mrs. Roy explicitly recounts how Enron scammed the Indian government into building new power generators, and how this will cost India hundreds of millions per year while lining the pockets of American business interests.
Critics will say that "Power Politics" is devoid of hard facts and analysis, but there can be no doubt that this book is worth a read. She may lack the economic background of Stiglitz, but her passion and style, in addition to her ability to articulate the important issues in the globalization debate in a readable manner, will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in global economic expansion.
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Dec 16, 2018 | www.unz.com
We face a world of multiple wars some leading to direct global conflagrations and others that begin as regional conflicts but quickly spread to big power confrontations.
We will proceed to identify 'great power' confrontations and then proceed to discuss the stages of 'proxy' wars with world war consequences.
In our times the US is the principal power in search of world domination through force and violence. Washington has targeted top level targets, namely China, Russia, Iran; secondary objectives Afghanistan, North and Central Africa, Caucuses and Latin America.
China is the prime enemy of the US for several economic, political and military reasons: China is the second largest economy in the world; its technology has challenged US supremacy it has built global economic networks reaching across three continents. China has replaced the US in overseas markets, investments and infrastructures. China has built an alternative socio-economic model which links state banks and planning to private sector priorities. On all these counts the US has fallen behind and its future prospects are declining.
In response the US has resorted to a closed protectionist economy at home and an aggressive military led imperial economy abroad. President Trump has declared a tariff war on China; and multiple separatist and propaganda war; and aerial and maritime encirclement of China's mainland
The first line of attack are Chinese exports to the US and its vassals. Secondly, is the expansion of overseas bases in Asia. Thirdly, is the promotion of separatist clients in Hong Kong, Tibet and among the Uighurs. Fourthly, is the use of sanctions to bludgeon EU and Asian allies into joining the economic war against China. China has responded by expanding its military security, expanding its economic networks and increasing economic tariffs on US exports.
The US economic war has moved to a higher level by arresting and seizing a top executive of China's foremost technological company, Huawei.
The White House has moved up the ladder of aggression from sanctions to extortion to kidnapping. Provocation, is one step up from military intimidation. The nuclear fuse has been lit.
Russia faces similar threats to its domestic economy, its overseas allies, especially China and Iran as well as the US renunciation of intermediate nuclear missile agreement
Iran faces oil sanctions, military encirclement and attacks on proxy allies including in Yemen, Syria and the Gulf region Washington relies on Saudi Arabia, Israel and paramilitary terrorist groups to apply military and economic pressure to undermine Iran's economy and to impose a 'regime change'.
Each of the three strategic targets of the US are central to its drive for global dominance; dominating China leads to controlling Asia; regime change in Russia facilitates the total submission of Europe; and the demise of Iran facilitates the takeover of its oil market and US influence of Islamic world. As the US escalates its aggression and provocations we face the threat of a global nuclear war or at best a world economic breakdown.
Wars by Proxy
The US has targeted a second tier of enemies, in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
In Latin America the US has waged economic warfare against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. More recently it has applied political and economic pressure on Bolivia. To expand its dominance Washington has relied on its vassal allies, including Brazil, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and Paraguay as well as right-wing elites throughout the region
As in numerous other cases of regime change Washington relies on corrupt judges to rule against President Morales, as well as US foundation funded NGO's; dissident indigenous leaders and retired military officials. The US relies on local political proxies to further US imperial goals is to give the appearance of a 'civil war' rather than gross US intervention.
In fact, once the so-called 'dissidents' or 'rebels' establish a foot hole, they 'invite' US military advisers, secure military aid and serve as propaganda weapons against Russia, China or Iran – 'first tier' adversaries.
In recent years US proxy conflicts have been a weapon of choice in the Kosovo separatist war against Serbia; the Ukraine coup of 2014 and war against Eastern Ukraine; the Kurd take over of Northern Iraq and Syria; the US backed separatist Uighurs attack in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
The US has established 32 military bases in Africa, to coordinate activities with local warlords and plutocrats. Their proxy wars are discarded as local conflict between 'legitimate' regimes and Islamic terrorists, tribality and tyrants.
The objective of proxy wars are threefold. They serve as 'feeders' into larger territorial wars encircling China, Russia and Iran.
Secondly, proxy wars are 'testing grounds' to measure the vulnerability and responsive capacity of the targeted strategic adversary, i.e. Russia, China and Iran.
Thirdly, the proxy wars are 'low cost' and 'low risk' attacks on strategic enemies. The lead up to a major confrontation by stealth.
Equally important 'proxy wars' serve as propaganda tools, associating strategic adversaries as 'expansionist authoritarian' enemies of 'western values'.
Conclusion
US empire builders engage in multiple types of aggression directed at imposing a unipolar world. At the center are trade wars against China; regional military conflicts with Russia and economic sanctions against Iran.
These large scale, long-term strategic weapons are complemented by proxy wars, involving regional vassal states which are designed to erode the economic bases of counting allies of anti-imperialist powers.
Hence, the US attacks China directly via tariff wars and tries to sabotage its global "Belt and Road' infrastructure projects linking China with 82 counties.
Likewise, the US attacks Russian allies in Syria via proxy wars, as it did with Iraq, Libya and the Ukraine.
Isolating strategic anti-imperial power via regional wars, sets the stage for the 'final assault' – regime change by cop or nuclear war.
However, the US quest for world domination has so far taken steps which have failed to isolate or weaken its strategic adversaries.
China moves forward with its global infrastructure programs: the trade war has had little impact in isolating it from its principal markets. Moreover, the US policy has increased China's role as a leading advocate of 'open trade' against President Trump's protectionism.
ORDER IT NOW
Likewise, the tactics of encircling and sanctioning Russia has deepened ties between Moscow and Beijing. The US has increased its nominal 'proxies' in Latin America and Africa but they all depend on trade and investments from China. This is especially true of agro-mineral exports to China.
Notwithstanding the limits of US power and its failure to topple regimes, Washington has taken moves to compensate for its failures by escalating the threats of a global war. It kidnaps Chinese economic leaders; it moves war ships off China's coast; it allies with neo-fascist elites in the Ukraine. It threatens to bomb Iran. In other words the US political leaders have embarked on adventurous policies always on the verge of igniting one, too, many nuclear fuses.
It is easy to imagine how a failed trade war can lead to a nuclear war; a regional conflict can entail a greater war.
Can we prevent World War 3? I believe it will happen. The US economy is built on fragile foundations; its elites are deeply divided. Its main allies in France and the UK are in deep crises. The war mongers and war makers lack popular support. There are reasons to hope!
Per/Norway , says: December 12, 2018 at 10:29 pm GMT
I disagree. The parasitic terror regime that runs washington believe they can win a nuclear war, i have no hope left for peace. They need a culling of the "useless eaters", we are stealing the food out of their poor frightened children`s mouths by existing.Anon [228] Disclaimer , says: December 12, 2018 at 11:28 pm GMT
Eric Zuesse wrote a decent article yesterday at the Saker blog about the US nuclear forces and its owners wet dream.
"The U.S. Government's Plan Is to Conquer Russia by a Surprise Invasion"
The actions of nato/EU/UK/ISR/KSA etc certainly supports his article, at least in my opinion.Useful and clear article.Godfree Roberts , says: December 12, 2018 at 11:32 pm GMTThe US, and the West, by instigating wars elsewhere, and selling weapons to those, destroy countries and prosperity abroad. Those living in target countries find themselves miserable, with loss of everything. It is only natural that they may try to escape a living hell by emigrating to the West.
People in the US and the West in general will not want mass immigration, and with good reason; but if you were in a war torn country or an impoverished country (as a result of western "help") you would also attempt to move away from the bombs, etc.
If the West left the rest of the world alone (in terms of their regimes and in terms of their weapons), they might prosper and no longer need to run away from their home countries.
Can we build a better world, please?!
The sanctions and embargoes have failed in the past, when China was much weaker, so we can be quite confident that they will fail again, and quickly, as this timeline suggests:peterAUS , says: December 13, 2018 at 1:02 am GMTSeptember 3, 2018 : Huawei unveils Kirin 980 CPU, the world's first commercial 7nm system-on-chip (SoC) and the first to use Cortex-A76 cores, dual neural processing units, Mali G76 GPU, a 1.4 Gbps LTE modem and supports faster RAM. With 20 percent faster performance and 40 percent less power consumption compared to 10nm systems, it has twice the performance of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 and Apple's A11 while delivering noticeable battery life improvement. Its Huawei-patented modem has the world's fastest Wi-Fi and its GPS receiver taps L5 frequency to deliver 10cm. positioning.
September 5, 2018 . China's front-end fab capacity will account for 16 percent of the world's semiconductor capacity this year, increasing to 20 percent by 2020.
September 15, 2018. China controls one third of 5G patents and has twice as many installations operating as the rest of the world combined.
September 21, 2018 . China has reached global technological parity and now has twelve of the world's top fifty IC design houses (China's SMIC is fourth, Huawei's HiSilicon is seventh), and twenty-one percent of global IC design revenues. Roger Luo, TSMC.
October 2, 2018 . Chinese research makes up 18.6 percent of global STEM peer-reviewed papers, ahead of the US at 18 percent. "The fact that China's article output is now the largest is very significant. It's been predicted for a while, but there was a view this was not likely to happen until 2025," said Michael Mabe, head of STM.
October 14, 2018 . Huawei announces 7 nm Ascend 910 chipset for data centers, twice as powerful as Nvidia's v100 and the first AI IP chip series to natively provide optimal TeraOPS per watt in all scenarios. Available 2Q19.
October 7, 2018 : China becomes largest recipient of FDI in H1, attracting an estimated 70 billion U.S. dollars, according to UNCTAD.
October 8, 2018: Taiwan's Foxconn moves its major semiconductor maker and five integrated circuit design companies to Jinan, China.
October 22, 2018 . China becomes world leader in venture capital, ahead of the US and almost twice the rest of the world's $53.4 billion YTD. The Crunchbase report says the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the world is undergoing a major transformation: it is now driven by China instead of the US.
Apart from that "nuclear war" from:Giuseppe , says: December 13, 2018 at 1:22 pm GMTIsolating strategic anti-imperial power via regional wars, sets the stage for the 'final assault' – regime change by cop or nuclear war
good article.
Only idiot can believe that nuclear war can be won, IMHO. Elites aren't suicidal, oh no. On the contrary.Can they make a mistake and cause that war, definitely.
Which brings us to the important part:
Can we prevent World War 3? I believe it will happen. The US economy is built on fragile foundations; its elites are deeply divided. Its main allies in France and the UK are in deep crises. The war mongers and war makers lack popular support.
Agree, but, that's exactly the reason I disagree with:
There are reasons to hope!
No need to be pedantic, of course there is always a reason for hope.
But, I see it as so fertile ground for making The MISTAKE .Splitpin , says: December 15, 2018 at 5:43 am GMTCan we prevent World War 3? I believe it will happen. The US economy is built on fragile foundations; its elites are deeply divided. Its main allies in France and the UK are in deep crises. The war mongers and war makers lack popular support. There are reasons to hope!
It's when the elite war mongers' backs are up against the wall that they come up with a cleverly designed false flag attack to rally public support for war. They are more dangerous now than ever.
Agree about Russia and China, however Iran needs to be viewed not as a play for oil or the Islamic crowd but driven wholly and solely by Israel. Iran is not a threat to US in any context, only Israel.Wally , says: December 15, 2018 at 7:05 am GMTquestion:Biff , says: December 15, 2018 at 8:57 am GMT
If the relatively small tariffs on Chinese goods amount to 'direct attacks on China', then what are the massive tariffs by China on US goods?The "Chess men" behind "The Wall Street Economy" have stated a few times that the only way to remain the dominant economy is to first: convince rivals that resistance is futile, and second: to atomize any potential rival (Ghaddaffi is a clear example).jilles dykstra , says: December 15, 2018 at 9:18 am GMTBreaking up Russia has been on the to-do list for decades, and I believe that the Chess Men have no idea what to do about containing China, and are clearly flat-footed, and desperate kidnapping a Chinese business executive.
The Wall Street Economy depended on cheap Chinese labor it's own profits, and that was Ok until .?
Until the writing on the Wall became ledgible .
The smell of genuine fear is in the air." The war mongers and war makers lack popular support. There are reasons to hope! "annamaria , says: December 15, 2018 at 11:39 am GMTIs popular support needed to get a people in a war mood ?
Both Pearl Harbour and Sept 11 demonstrate, in my opinion, that it is not very difficult to create a war mood.
Yet, if another Sept 11 would do the trick, I wonder.
Sept 11 has been debated without without interruption since Sept 11.
After the 1946 USA Senate investigation into Pearl Harbour the USA government succeeded in preventing a similar discussion.
Until now the west, Deep State, NATO, EU did not succeed in provoking Russia or China.
Each time they tried something, in my opinion they did this several times, Russia showed its military superiority, at the same time taking care not to hurt public opinion in the west.Is not it amazing that the morally miserable US, a "power in search of world domination through force and violence," is officially governed by self-avowed pious X-tians. What kind of corruption among the high-level clergy protects the satanists Pompeo, Bush, Rice, Clinton, Obama, Blair and such from excommunication?WHAT , says: December 15, 2018 at 12:48 pm GMTRussians explaining the perdition of the US deciders: https://www.rt.com/news/446533-sergey-shoigu-syria-inf/
"Washington does little to nothing to restore peace and help the devastated region to recover from the long war, while its [US] airstrikes continue to rack up civilian deaths At the same time, the US military presence at the Al-Tanf airbase and the "armed gangs" around it prevent refugees from returning home."
– Nothing new. The multi-denominational Syria has been pounded by the US-supported "moderate" terrorists (armed with US-provided arms and with UK-provided chemical weaponry) to satisfy the desires of Israel-firsters, arm-dealers and the multitude of war-profiteers that have been fattening their pockets at the US/UK taxpayers' expense.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article204373.html
"Timber Sycamore" [initiated by Obama] is the most important arms trafficking operation in History. It involves at least 17 governments. The transfer of weapons, meant for jihadist organizations, is carried out by Silk Way Airlines, a Azerbaïdjan public company of cargo planes."
-- Biochemical warfare by the UK & US
https://www.rt.com/news/424047-russian-mod-syria-statement/
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-23/us-history-chemical-weapons-use-complicity-war-crimes
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-deadly-chemical-weapons-war-10897
@Godfree Roberts Huawei can announce whatever, there are much more experienced adversaries(IBM, intel and ARM) who can`t beat nV in computation, and especially in integration of silicon. Guess who`s running inference and computer vision in all these car autopilots.Anon [424] Disclaimer , says: December 15, 2018 at 1:13 pm GMTI do not think there will be an atomic war .VirtualAnon34 , says: December 15, 2018 at 1:22 pm GMTI think we could have an economic collapse like the Soviet Union had , or like Argentina had in 2001 with the " corralito " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito .
Being the complex and global society that we are , it would be a disaster , it would produce hunger , misery and all types of local wars .
"Notwithstanding the limits of US power and its failure to topple regimes "Moi , says: December 15, 2018 at 2:02 pm GMTHave to agree with that statement. Seriously, wherein is this vaunted "superpower" that our American politicians always yap about? All I've seen in my lifetime is our military getting its butt kicked in Cuba, Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan. What, besides insanity and hubris, makes them think they could win anything much less a war against Iran, China or Russia?
@Splitpin It's the other way around–Israel is a threat to Iran.Ilyana_Rozumova , says: December 15, 2018 at 2:22 pm GMT@WHAT What worth what? It did not help too much to GM. GM is shutting five of its plants.SteveK9 , says: December 15, 2018 at 2:37 pm GMTMostly accurate, but 'closed protectionist society' ! Hardly. It's still very difficult to buy any manufactured goods made in this country. Of course this is part of the World economic circle countries use the US Dollar for all trade. They need dollars. We can print them and receive real goods in return. This has been going around and around for decades. It may come to an end in the not-too-distant future, but it has a lot of inertia.Bill Jones , says: December 15, 2018 at 2:47 pm GMT@jilles dykstra "Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."DESERT FOX , says: December 15, 2018 at 2:54 pm GMT–Goering at the Nuremberg Trials
A mere piker compared to the American, Bernays
The only threat to patriotic Americans is Zionism which has ruled the U.S. since it took control over the money supply and the taxes via the privately owned Zionist FED and IRS and has given America nothing to wars and economic destruction since the FED and IRS were put in place by the Zionist banking kabal in 1913 and both are UNCONSTITUTIONAL!wraith67 , says: December 15, 2018 at 2:57 pm GMTThe threat is not from China or Russia or Iran etc., the threat is from within the U.S. government which is controlled in every facet by the Zionists and dual citizens and is as foreign to the American people as if it were from MARS!
Until the American people wake up to the fact that we are slaves on a Zionist plantation and are used as pawns in the Zionist goal of a satanic Zionist NWO and abolish the FED and IRS and break the chains of slavery that the FED and IRS have place upon us, until then nothing will change and the wars and economic destruction by the Zionist kabal will continue!
Read The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed and The Committee of 300 by Dr. John Coleman and The Protocols of Zion, to see the Zionist satanic NWO plan.
Lost me at Kurd takeover of northern Iraq/Syria. The Kurds have defacto owned those areas since 1991, and earlier. Saddam gassing the Kurds didn't accomplish anything except for making himself a target, no Arab lived in those areas, the Kurds would kill them.Agent76 , says: December 15, 2018 at 3:22 pm GMTNov 28, 2018 Belt & Road Billionaire in Massive Bribery ScandalMiro23 , says: December 15, 2018 at 3:26 pm GMTThe bribery trial of Dr. Patrick Ho, a pitchman for a Chinese energy company, lifts the lid on how the Chinese regime relies on graft to cut Belt and Road deals in its global push for economic and geopolitical dominance.
I agree with Bob Sykes' commentary over on Instapundit:Winston2 , says: December 15, 2018 at 4:08 pm GMTWell, our "anti-ISIS" model in eastern Syria consists of defending ISIS against attacks by the Syrian government, allowing them to pump and export Syrian oil for their profit, arming them and allowing them to recruit new fighters. I suppose that means we should be arming the Taliban.
ISIS was created by the CIA to fight against Assad. But they slipped the leash and became the fighting force for the dissident Sunni Arabs all along the Euphrates Valley. We only began to oppose them when their rebellion reached the outskirts of Baghdad, and even then the bulk of the fighting was done by Iraq's Shias and Iran. Now we are transferring them, or many of them, into secure (for ISIS) areas of Iraq.
The three U.S. presidents, six secretaries of defense and five chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are, in fact, war criminals, in exactly the same sense that Hitler, Goebels, Goering, Himmler et al. were war criminals. Those presidents, secretaries and generals launched wars of aggression against Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Yemen not one of which threatened us in any way. They engineered coups d'état against two friendly governments, Egypt and Turkey. Now the fake American, anti-American neocons want to attack Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and even Russia and China.
Green needs to get his head out of his arse. We, the US, are the great rogue terrorist state. We are the evil empire. We are the chief source of death and destruction in the world. How many hundreds of thousands of civilians have we murdered in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia? How many cities have we bombed flat like Raqqa and Mosel. Putin is a saint compared to any US President.
Iran has always been at the center of the Great Game, the key square on the board to blockDurruti , says: December 15, 2018 at 4:29 pm GMT
Eurasia.You must either control Afghanistan AND Pakistan or Iran.
With Pakistan now in the SCO, Iran is a US imperative.
Israels antipathy is secondary and a useful foil, not the primary motive.
Read MacKinder, the imperial power has changed, not the strategy.Open Letter to James Petras.Durruti , says: December 15, 2018 at 5:09 pm GMTYour article has a glaring emptiness.
How is it possible for anyone to write an article titled:
A World of Multiple Detonators of Global Wars
without mentioning the Principal Detonator of Global Wars?? The Elephant!
The United States of America is no longer a Sovereign Nation.
The Local Political Power Elite (C. Wright Mills term), serve, are Minions, of the Zionist Jewish Financial Terrorist Initiators and Controllers of the Global New World Order.
I would express this point in stronger terms, but I have not yet finished my coffee. The "Mulitiple Detonators" Petras discusses are useless unless Triggered by the Global Controllers.
A Slight Digression: maybe:
Petras may have written his exposé this way, understanding that he might safely avoid mention of the anti-Semitic (they hate Palestinians and other Arabs – actual Semites), Zionist Land Thieves, because a clueless Anarchist would appear and complete his article for him. If that is the case, I want half of the $ Unz is paying Petras for this article.In Conclusion: and by the number###:
1. The American Power Elite and servile Politicians in America's Knesset in Washington DC, do not go to the Bathroom, without permission from their Zionist Oligarch masters.2. The American Gauleters, Quislings, (better known as Traitors), serve the Rothschild and other Foreign Oligarchs. Recently, only 1, of 100 'Senators' demanded that there be a discussion of the Bill to send another $35 Billion gift to the Zionist occupiers of Palestine. Poor Senator Rand Paul . How many ribs of his remain to be broken?
We the American people, have one Senator. And he has a great father.
3. Textbooks, Entertainment from Hollywood (key to all mind control), even Dictionaries, have been ruthlessly censored.
4. Our elected Zionist slaves in Congress, and all State and local governing bodies, live in fear of saying (accidentally), some truth, and ending up working at Walmart or 7-11, (if they are lucky).
5. Our young are effectively brainwashed in their schools; they have already been removed from their parents.
6. Our politicians are bribed with our own tax money (re-routed by the Zionists AIPAC, etc.).
7. The Zionist Entity has huge Financial Resources . They should be giving us 'Financial $$ Aid, not the other way around. Since NAFTA, we have entire cities & tons of infrastructure to rebuild.
Excuse me : Girlfriend thinks I should go to work.
Petras, I just fleshed out your, otherwise, promising article. You must understand – that the ethnic cleansing – genocide, against the Palestinian Nation, by the Terrorist Zionist Oligarchs, is the greatest single crime being committed on our Planet. All other crimes stem from this one.
We Americans must Restore Our Republic!
John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, M L King, Malcolm X. John Lennon; we are late, but we are coming.
God Bless!
Durruti
@DESERT FOX Agree with all.jilles dykstra , says: December 15, 2018 at 5:09 pm GMTWorth repeating:
The threat is not from China or Russia or Iran etc., the threat is from within the U.S. government which is controlled in every facet by the Zionists and dual citizens and is as foreign to the American people as if it were from MARS!
One comment:
Until the American people wake up to the fact that we are slaves on a Zionist plantation and are used as pawns in the Zionist goal of a satanic Zionist NWO and abolish the FED and IRS and break the chains of slavery that the FED and IRS have place upon us, until then nothing will change and the wars and economic destruction by the Zionist kabal will continue!
In order to accomplish the above , we American Citizen Patriots – must Restore Our Republic – that, with our Last Constitutional President, John F. Kennedy, was destroyed by the Zionist Oligarchs and their American underling traitors, in a hail of bullets, on November 22, 1963.
@Miro23 " same sense that Hitler, Goebels, Goering, Himmler et al. were war criminals. "Reuben Kaspate , says: December 15, 2018 at 5:17 pm GMT
Why were they war criminals ?
Because of the Neurenberg farce ?; farce according to the chairman of the USA Supreme Court in 1945:
Bruce Allen Murphy, 'The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices', New York, 1983
Churchill and Lindemann in fact murdered some two million German civilians, women, children, old men. Not a crime ?
Churchill refused the May 1941 Rudolf Hess peace proposal, not a crime ?
FDR deliberately provoked Pearl Harbour, some 2700 casualties, his pretcxt for war, not a crime ?
900.000 German hunger deaths between the 1918 cease fire and Versailles, the British food blockade, not a crime ?
Will these wild accusations ever stop ?I am all for the mother of all wars; however, it isn't going to come anytime soon, nay, not in our lifetime but when it does appear on the next century's horizon, it would be cathartic to all concerned. Rejoice!Charles Carroll , says: December 15, 2018 at 5:42 pm GMT@DESERT FOX If you want to know who rules over you, ask yourself who you are not permitted to criticize.Bill Jones , says: December 15, 2018 at 7:49 pm GMT@jilles dykstra ""Will these wild accusations ever stop ?"Ilyana_Rozumova , says: December 15, 2018 at 8:17 pm GMTNah, Don't you know that being a Holohoax victim is now genetically transmitted.
"visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;"
And after the forth generation, there'll be something else.
@jilles dykstra They were war criminals because they lost the war. But hanging of Bock was a little bit overboard.Ilyana_Rozumova , says: December 15, 2018 at 9:10 pm GMTEurope is realigning. England leaving Euro. French population is in upheaval. Eventually France will leave the Euro also.Most of German tourists now are going to Croatia. Italy is loosing tourists.Anon [118] Disclaimer , says: Website December 15, 2018 at 9:24 pm GMT
Italy living standard is declining. Germany is being pushed inevitably toward cooperation with Russia. Only supporter of Ukraine will remain USA. Ukraine will be only burden.
Brussels power will evaporate. NATO will remain only on paper and will cease to be reality.
.
This will be great step toward peace in the world.Unexpected turn of events.Ilyana_Rozumova , says: December 15, 2018 at 10:58 pm GMThttp://theduran.com/the-real-reason-western-media-cia-turned-against-saudi-mbs/
@Anon Outstanding analysis,Socratic Truth , says: December 16, 2018 at 12:58 am GMTUS is treating its allies as used toilet paper.
Obviously Kashogi was sentenced to death for high treason in absence. The sentence was carried out on Saudi Arabia's territory. So in reality it is nobody's business.
All hula-buu did happen because he was a reporter working for warmongering Zionist New york times.@Durruti I agree with you partly, especially when it comes to the US regarding Zionism and the power of the Israel lobby to influence US foreign policy and even domestic policy.anon_4 , says: December 16, 2018 at 1:18 am GMT
But when it comes to Global governance, you have a somewhat narrow minded approach.
Most of the ills today that happen in the world, is driven by the NEW WORLD ORDER OF NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION.
Unrelated phenomena, such as the destruction in the Middle East (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria), the destruction of Yugoslavia, the coup in Ukraine and the Greek economic catastrophe are a consequence of this NWO expansion. NWO expansion is the phasing out of national sovereignty (through economic and/or military violence) and its replacement by a kind of transnational sovereignty administered by a Transnational Elite. This is the network of the elites mainly based in the G7 countries, which control the world economic and political/ military institutions (WTO, IMF, World Bank, EU, European Central Bank, NATO, UN and so on), as well as the global media that set the agenda of the 'world community'.
The US is an important part of this since it provides the Military Means to integrate countries that do not "comply" with the NWO dictates.
The Zionists carry a lot of blame and are part of that drive for this NWO, but there are others, most of them in the US and Europe.Here's a good link to an article if you have time, with good info about NWO & Trasnational corporations that are mainly to blame about all the worlds and misery in our world today.
THE MYTHS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/15-12-2014/129299-new_world_order_myths-0/
@WHAT back door Intel , embedded ARM Open source Red Hat-IBM Hummm?.annamaria , says: December 16, 2018 at 1:28 am GMTI am not so sure, Mr. What. Experience may not mean much to abused IAI consumers. even if IAI catches up to the exponential fundamentals achieved by Huawei consumers might prefer back-door-free equipment and Operating Systems.
Russian times reported a few weeks ago that Russia has a quite different new processor and an OS that does not use any IAI stuff and is developing a backup Internet for Russians which it expects to expand regionally,
Here is lengthy repost from ZeroHedge (the comment section): https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-14/leaked-memo-touts-uk-funded-firms-ability-create-untraceable-news-sites-infowarSocratic Truth , says: December 16, 2018 at 1:31 am GMT"What we have then, are criminal syndicates masquerading as philanthropic enterprises
Norman Dodd, director of research for the (U.S.) REECE COMMITTEE in its attempt to investigate tax exempt foundations, stated:
"The Foundation world is a coordinated, well-directed system, the purpose of which is to ensure that the wealth of our country shall be used to divorce it from the ideas which brought it into being."
The Rothschilds rule the U.S. through the foundations, the Council on foreign Relations, and the Federal Reserve System, with no serious challenges to their power. Expensive 'political campaigns' are routinely conducted, with carefully screened candidates who are pledged to the program of the WORLD ORDER. Should they deviate from the program, they would have an 'accident', be framed on a sex charge, or indicted on some financial irregularity.
Senator Moynihan stated in his book, "Loyalties", "A British friend, wise in the ways of the world, put it thus: "They are now on page 16 of the Plan." Moynihan prudently did not ask what page 17 would bring.
"Tavistock's pioneer work in behavioural science along Freudian lines of 'controlling' humans established it as the world center of FOUNDATION ideology.
[MORE]
Its network extends from the University of Sussex to the U.S. through the Standford Research Institute, Esalen, MIT, Hudson Institute, HERITAGE FOUNDATION, Centre of Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown, where State Dept personnel are trained, US Air Force Intelligence, and the Rand and Mitre corporations.(at the time of writing, 1992) Today the Tavistock Institute operates a $6 billion a year network of foundations in the U.S., all of it funded by U.S. taxpayers' money. Ten major institutions are under its direct control, with 400 subsidiaries, and 3000 other study groups and think tanks which originate many types of programs to increase the control of the WORLD ORDER over the American people.
The personnel of the FOUNDATIONS are required to undergo indoctrination at one or more of these Tavistock controlled institutions.
A network of secret groups – the MONT PELERIN SOCIETY, TRILATERAL COMMISSION, DITCHLEY FOUNDATION, and CLUB OF ROME is the conduit for instructions to the Tavistock network.
Tavistock Institute developed the mass brain-washing techniques which were first used experimentally on AMERICAN prisoners of war in KOREA.
Its experiments in crowd control methods have been widely used on the American public, a surreptitious but nevertheless outrageous assault on human freedom by modifying individual behaviour through topical psychology.
A German refugee, Kurt Lewin, became director of Tavistock in 1932. He came to the U.S. in 1933 as a 'refugee', the first of many infiltrators, and set up the Harvard Psychology Clinic, which originated the propaganda campaign to turn the American public against Germany and involve the U.S. in WWII.
In 1938, Roosevelt executed a secret agreement with Churchill which in effect ceded U.S. sovereignty to England, because it agreed to let Special Operations Executive control U.S. policies. To implement this agreement, Roosevelt sent General Donovan to London for indoctrination before setting up the OSS (now the CIA) under the aegis of SOE-SIS. The entire OSS program, as well as the CIA has always worked on guidelines set up by the Tavistock Institute.
Tavistock Institute originated the mass civilian bombing raids [against the German people] carried out by [the ALL LIES] Roosevelt and Churchill as a clinical experiment in mass terror, keeping records of the results as they watched the "guinea pigs" reacting under "controlled laboratory conditions".
All Tavistock and American foundation techniques have a single goal – to break down the psychological strength of the individual and render him helpless to oppose the dictators of the WORLD ORDER.
Any technique which helps to break down the family unit, and family inculcated principles of religion, honor, patriotism and sexual behaviour, is used by the Tavistock scientists as weapons of crowd control.
The methods of Freudian psychotherapy induce permanent mental illness in those who undergo this treatment by destabilizing their character. The victim is then advised to 'establish new rituals of personal interactions', that is, to indulge in brief sexual encounters which actually set the participants adrift with no stable personal relationships in their lives – destroying their ability to establish or maintain a family.
Tavistock Institute has developed such power in the U.S. that no one achieves prominence in any field unless he has been trained in behavioural science at Tavistock or one of its subsidiaries. Tavistock maintains 2 schools at Frankfort, birthplace of the Rothschilds, the FRANKFURT SCHOOL, and the Sigmund Freud Institute.
The 'experiment' in compulsory racial integration in the U.S. was organized by Ronald Lippert of the OSS (forerunner of CIA) and the American Jewish Congress, and director of child training at the Commission on Community Relations.
The program was designed to break down the individual's sense of personal knowledge in his identity, his racial heritage. Through the Stanford Research Institute, Tavistock controls the National Education Association.
The Institute of Social Research at the Natl Training Lab brain washes the leading executives of business and government.
Another prominent Tavistock operation is the WHARTON SCHOOL OF FINANCE.
A single common denominator identifies the common Tavistock strategy – the use of drugs such as the infamous MK Ultra program of the CIA, directed by Dr Sidney Gottlieb, in which unsuspecting CIA officials were given LSD and their reactions studied like guinea pigs, resulting in several deaths – no one was ever indicted.
(Source of info: author Eustace Mullins "The World Order: Our Secret Rulers" 2nd ed. 1992. He dedicated his book "to American patriots and their passion for liberty". note: No copyright restrictions)
@Agent76 Excellent video. More people need to see this to understand how corrupt the China Totalitarian state works behind the scenes along with the US as part of the Globalization NWO movement to enrich the few and impoverish the rest of the world population.
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Nov 12, 2018 | www.unz.com
I personally don't understand the French electorate on these matters. Macron in particular did not promise anything other than to deliver more of the same policies, albeit with more youth and more vigor, as a frank globalist. Who, exactly, was excited at his election but is disappointed now? People with a short attention span or susceptibility to marketing gimmicks, I assume.
It is hard to talk about the French media without getting a bit conspiratorial, at least, I speak of "structural conspiracies." Macron's unabashed, "modernizing" globalism certainly corresponds to the id of the French media-corporate elites and to top 20% of the electorate, let us say, the talented fifth. He was able to break through the old French two-party system, annihilating the Socialist Party and sidelining the conservatives. The media certainly helped in this, preferring him to either the conservative François Fillon or the civic nationalist Marine Le Pen.
However, the media have to a certain extent turned on Macron, perhaps because he believes his "complex thoughts" cannot be grasped by journalists with their admittedly limited cognitive abilities . Turn on the French radio and you'll hear stories of how the so-called "Youth With Macron," whose twenty- and thirty-somethings were invited onto all the talk shows just before Macron became a leading candidate, were actually former Socialist party hacks with no grass roots. Astroturf. I could have told you that.
Macron has made a number of what the media call "gaffes." When an old lady voiced concern about the future of her pension, he answered : "you don't have a right to complain." He has also done many things that anyone with just a little sense of decorum will be disgusted by. The 40-year-old Macron, who has a 65-year-old wife and claims not to be a homosexual, loves being photographed with sweaty black bodies.
... ... ...
So there's that. But, in terms of policies, I cannot say that the people who supported Macron have any right to complain. He is doing what he promised, that is to say, steaming full straight ahead on the globalist course with, a bit more forthrightness and, he hopes, competence than his Socialist or conservative predecessors.
Link Bookmark In truth there are no solutions. There is nothing he can do to make the elitist and gridlocked European Union more effective, nothing he can do to improve the "human capital" in the Afro-Islamic banlieues , and not much he can do to improve the economy which the French people would find acceptable. A bit more of labor flexibility here, a bit of a tax break there, oh wait deficit's too big, a tax hike in some other area too, then. Six of one, half a dozen in the other. Oh, and they've also passed more censorship legislation to fight "fake news" and "election meddling" and other pathetic excuses the media-political class across the West have come up with for their loss of control over the Narrative.
Since the European Central Bank has been printing lending hundreds of billions of euros to stimulate the Eurozone economy, France's economic performance has been decidedly mediocre, with low growth, slowly declining unemployment, and no reduction in debt (currently at 98.7% of GDP). Performance will presumably worsen if the ECB, as planned, phases out stimulus at the end of this year.
There is a rather weird situation in terms of immigration and diversity. Everyone seems to be aware of the hellscape of ethno-religious conflict which will thrive in the emerging Afro-Islamic France of the future. Just recently at the commemoration of the Battle of Verdun, an elderly French soldier asked Macron : "When will you kick out the illegal immigrants? . . . Aren't we bringing in a Trojan Horse?"
More significant was the resignation of Gérard Collomb from his position as interior minister last month to return to his old job as mayor of Lyon, which he apparently finds more interesting. Collomb is a 71-year-old Socialist politician who has apparently awakened to the problems of ethnic segregation and conflict. He said in his farewell address :
I have been in all the neighborhoods, the neighborhoods of Marseille-North to Mirail in Toulous, to the Parisian periphery, Corbeil, Aulnay, Sevran, the situation has deteriorated greatly. We cannot continue to work on towns individually, there needs to be an overarching vision to recreate social mixing. Because today we are living side by side, and I still say, me, I fear that tomorrow we will live face-to-face [i.e. across a battle lines].
It is not clear how much Collomb tried to act upon these concerns as interior minister and was frustrated. In any case, he dared to voice the same concerns to the far-right magazine Valeurs Actuelles last February. He told them: "The relations between people are very difficult, people don't want to live together" (using the term vivre-ensemble , a common diversitarian slogan). He said immigration's responsibility for this was "enormous" and agreed with the journalist that "France no longer needs immigration." Collomb then virtually predicted civil war:
Communities in France are coming into conflict more and more and it is becoming very violent . . . I would say that, within five years, the situation could become irreversible. Yes, we have five or six years to avoid the worst. After that . . .
It's unclear why "the next five or six years" should be so critical. From one point of view, the old France is already lost as about a third of births are non-European and in particular one fifth are Islamic . The patterns of life in much of France will therefore likely come to reflect those of Africa and the Middle-East, including random violence and religious fanaticism. Collomb seems to think "social mixing" would prevent this, but in fact, there has been plenty of social and even genetic "mixing" in Brazil and Mexico, without this preventing ethno-racial stratification and extreme levels of violence.
I'm afraid it's all more of the same in douce France , sweet France. On the current path, Macron will be a one-termer like Sarkozy and Hollande were. Then again, the next elections will be in three-and-a-half years, an eternity in democratic politics. In all likelihood, this would be the Right's election to win, with a conservative anti-immigration candidate. A few people of the mainstream Right are open to working with Le Pen's National Rally and some have even defended the Identitarians. Then again, I could even imagine Macron posing as a heroic opponent of (illegal . . .) immigration if he thought it could help get him reelected. Watch this space . . .
utu , says: November 8, 2018 at 9:55 pm GMT
How many immigrants from Africa come to Europe depends only on political will of Europeans. The demography of African has nothing to do with it. Europe has means to stop immigration legal and illegal. Macron talking about how many children are born in Africa is just another cop out.utu , says: November 8, 2018 at 11:04 pm GMT
Armed force 'led by former MAFIA boss' causing dramatic reduction in migrants to ItalyFKA Max , says: Website November 9, 2018 at 8:07 pm GMTItaly passes sea rescue of 1,000 to Libya as EU nations hold informal talks on migration
https://www.thejournal.ie/migrants-italy-eu-spain-meeting-4089279-Jun2018/
@Dieter Kief I love Macron, too!notanon , says: November 9, 2018 at 8:25 pm GMTA few months ago I claimed that Emmanuel Macron has/holds an ""Alt Right" worldview" due to him having had interactions with an influential member of the French Protestant Huguenot minority in France: http://www.unz.com/article/collateral-damage/#comment-1955020
[...]
Macron : Germany is different from France. You are more Protestant, which results in a significant difference. Through the church, through Catholicism, French society was structured vertically, from top to bottom. I am convinced that it has remained so until today. That might sound shocking to some – and don't worry, I don't see myself as a king. But whether you like it or not, France's history is unique in Europe. Not to put too fine a point on it, France is a country of regicidal monarchists. It is a paradox: The French want to elect a king, but they would like to be able to overthrow him whenever they want. The office of president is not a normal office – that is something one should understand when one occupies it. You have to be prepared to be disparaged, insulted and mocked – that is in the French nature. And: As president, you cannot have a desire to be loved. Which is, of course, difficult because everybody wants to be loved. But in the end, that's not important. What is important is serving the country and moving it forward.– http://www.unz.com/article/the-elites-have-no-credibility-left/#comment-2042622
French army band medleys Daft Punk following Bastille Day parade
Who, exactly, was excited at his election but is disappointed now? People with a short attention span or susceptibility to marketing gimmicks, I assume.
people controlled by the media
the media are the main problem
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Nov 08, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Trump, Gorbachev, And The Fall Of The American Empire
by Tyler Durden Wed, 11/07/2018 - 23:25 13 SHARES Authored by Raja Murthy via The Asia Times,
"The only wealth you keep is wealth you have given away," said Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), last of the great Roman emperors. US President Donald Trump might know of another Italian, Mario Puzo's Don Vito Corleone, and his memorable mumble : "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse."
Forgetting such Aurelian and godfather codes is propelling the decline and fall of the American empire.
Trump is making offers the world can refuse – by reshaping trade deals, dispensing with American sops and forcing powerful corporations to return home, the US is regaining economic wealth but relinquishing global power.
As the last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika (restructuring) led to the breakup of its vast territory(22 million square kilometers). Gorbachev's failed policies led to the dissolution of the USSR into Russia and independent countries, and the end of a superpower.
Ironically, the success of Trump's policies will hasten the demise of the American empire: the US regaining economic health but losing its insidious hold over the world.
This diminishing influence was highlighted when India and seven other countries geared up to defy Washington's re-imposition of its unilateral, illegal sanctions against Iran, starting Monday.
The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station
The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station.
The law of cause and effect unavoidably delivers. The Roman Empire fell after wars of greed and orgies of consumption. A similar nemesis, the genie of Gorbachev, stalks Pennsylvania Avenue, with Trump unwittingly writing the last chapter of World War II: the epilogue of the two rival superpowers that emerged from humanity's most terrible conflict.
The maverick 45th president of the United States may succeed at being an economic messiah to his country, which has racked up a $21.6 trillion debt, but the fallout is the death of American hegemony. These are the declining days of the last empire standing.
Emperors and mafia godfathers knew that wielding great influence means making payoffs. Trump, however, is doing away with the sops, the glue that holds the American empire together, and is making offers that he considers "fair" but instead is alienating the international community– from badgering NATO and other countries to pay more for hosting the US legions (800 military bases in 80 countries) to reducing US aid.
US aid to countries fell from $50 billion in fiscal year 2016, $37 billion in 2017 to $7.7 billion so far in 2018. A world less tied to American largesse and generous trade tarrifs can more easily reject the "you are with us or against us" bullying doctrine of US presidents. In the carrot and stick approach that largely passes as American foreign policy, the stick loses power as the carrot vanishes.
Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in The Godfather. Big payoffs needed for big influence. A presidential lesson for Don Trump
More self-respecting leaders will have less tolerance for American hypocrisy, such as sanctioning other countries for nuclear weapons while having the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet.
They will sneer more openly at the hysteria surrounding alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, pointing to Washington's violent record of global meddling. They will cite examples of American hypocrisy such as its sponsorship of coups against elected leaders in Latin America, the US Army's Project Camelot in 1964 targeting 22 countries for intervention (including Iran, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia), its support for bloodthirsty dictators, and its destabilization of the Middle East with the destruction of Iraq and Libya.
Immigrant cannon fodderTrump's focus on the economy reduces the likelihood of him starting wars. By ending the flood of illegal immigrants to save jobs for US citizens, he is also inadvertently reducing the manpower for illegal wars. Non-citizen immigrants comprise about 5% of the US Army. For its Iraq and Afghanistan wars, US army recruiters offered citizenship to lure illegal immigrants, mostly Latinos.
Among the first US soldiers to die in the Iraq War was 22-year old illegal immigrant Corporal Jose Antonio Gutierrez, an orphan from the streets of Guatemala City. He sneaked across the Mexican border into the US six years before enlisting in exchange for American citizenship.
On March 21, 2003, Gutierrez was killed by friendly fire near Umm Qasr, southern Iraq. The coffin of this illegal immigrant was draped in the US flag, and he received American citizenship – posthumously.
Trump policies targeting illegal immigration simultaneously reduces the availability of cannon fodder for the illegal wars needed to maintain American hegemony.
Everything comes to an end, and so too will the last empire of our era.
The imperial American eagle flying into the sunset will see the dawn of an economically healthier US that minds its own business, and increase hopes for a more equal, happier world – thanks to the unintentional Gorbachev-2 in the White House.
PeaceForWorld , 3 minutes ago link
Condor_0000 , 23 minutes ago linkI am sure that many of us are OK with ending American Empire. Both US citizens and other countries don't want to fight un-necessary and un-ending wars. If Trump can do that, then he is blessed.
Golden Showers , 32 minutes ago linkImperialism and the State: Why McDonald's Needs McDonnell Douglas
http://www.isreview.org/issues/17/state_and_imperialism.shtml
Excerpt:
Another Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, put it this way:
The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries. The whole globe, the land and the sea, the surface as well as the interior, has become one economic workshop, the different parts of which are inseparably connected with each other. This work was accomplished by capitalism. But in accomplishing it the capitalist states were led to struggle for the subjection of the world-embracing economic system to the profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each country...Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 33 minutes ago linkSee a pattern here? Raja Murthy, you sound like a pro-American Empire shill. 1964 Project Camelot has nothing to do with the current administration. Raja, you forgot to wear your satirical pants.
The idea and catchy hook of 2016 was Make America Great Again, not wasting lives and resources on the American Empire. You point out the good things. Who might have a problem with the end of the American Empire are Globalists. What is wrong with relinquishing global power and not wasting lives and money?
"The only lives you keep is lives you've given away" That does not ring true. The only lies you keep are the lies you've given away. What? You're not making any sense, dude. How much American Empire are you vested in? Does it bother you if the Empire shrinks its death grip on Asia or the rest of the world? Why don't you just say it: This is good! Hopefully Trump's policies will prevent you from getting writers' cramp and being confusing--along with the canon fodder. Or maybe you're worried about job security.
America is a super power, just like Russia. Just like England. However, whom the US carries water for might change. Hope that's ok.
Condor_0000 , 29 minutes ago linkTrump is saving the US by destroying the empire. Both the US and the world will be happier for that.
FBaggins , 25 minutes ago linkNo he's not.
Trump is an empirial president, just like every other US president. In fact, that's what the article is describing. MAGA depends upon imperialist domination. Trump and all of US capitalism know that even if the brain-dead MAGA chumps don't.
Capitalism can't help but seek to rule the world. It is the result of pursuing capitalism's all-important growth. If it's not US capitalism, it will be Chinese capitalism, or Russian capitalism, or European capitalism that will rule the world.
The battle over global markets doesn't stop just because the US might decide not to play anymore. Capitalism means that you're either the global power who is ******* the royal **** out of everyone else, or you're the victim of being fucked up the *** by an imperialist power.
ebworthen , 33 minutes ago linkThe only thing which makes the US different from the rest of the world is its super concentration of power, which in effect is a super concentration of corruption.
Condor_0000 , 28 minutes ago linkQuite entertaining to be living in the modern Rome.
Condor_0000 , 34 minutes ago linkIt's a cross between ancient Rome and Nazi Germany. And you're right. It's fascinating.
LetThemEatRand , 52 minutes ago linkAnother day and another ZeroHedge indictment of American capitalism.
And how refreshing that the article compares US capitalism to gangsterism. It's a most appropriate comparison.
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Al Capone on Capitalism
It is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised crime and capitalist accumulation before on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided to put it up on Histomat for you all.
In 1930, Cockburn, then a correspondent in America for the Times newspaper, interviewed Al Capone at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, when Capone was at the height of his power. He recalls that except for 'the sub-machine gun...poking through the transom of a door behind the desk, Capone's own room was nearly indistinguishable from that of, say, a "newly arrived" Texan oil millionaire. Apart from the jowly young murderer on the far side of the desk, what took the eye were a number of large, flattish, solid silver bowls upon the desk, each filled with roses. They were nice to look at, and they had another purpose too, for Capone when agitated stood up and dipped the tips of his fingers in the water in which floated the roses.
I had been a little embarrassed as to how the interview was to be launched. Naturally the nub of all such interviews is somehow to get round to the question "What makes you tick?" but in the case of this millionaire killer the approach to this central question seemed mined with dangerous impediments. However, on the way down to the Lexington Hotel I had had the good fortune to see, I think in the Chicago Daily News , some statistics offered by an insurance company which dealt with the average expectation of life of gangsters in Chicago. I forget exactly what the average was, and also what the exact age of Capone at that time - I think he was in his early thirties. The point was, however, that in any case he was four years older than the upper limit considered by the insurance company to be the proper average expectation of life for a Chicago gangster. This seemed to offer a more or less neutral and academic line of approach, and after the ordinary greetings I asked Capone whether he had read this piece of statistics in the paper. He said that he had. I asked him whether he considered the estimate reasonably accurate. He said that he thought that the insurance companies and the newspaper boys probably knew their stuff. "In that case", I asked him, "how does it feel to be, say, four years over the age?"
He took the question quite seriously and spoke of the matter with neither more nor less excitement or agitation than a man would who, let us say, had been asked whether he, as the rear machine-gunner of a bomber, was aware of the average incidence of casualties in that occupation. He apparently assumed that sooner or later he would be shot despite the elaborate precautions which he regularly took. The idea that - as afterwards turned out to be the case - he would be arrested by the Federal authorities for income-tax evasion had not, I think, at that time so much as crossed his mind. And, after all, he said with a little bit of corn-and-ham somewhere at the back of his throat, supposing he had not gone into this racket? What would be have been doing? He would, he said, "have been selling newspapers barefoot on the street in Brooklyn".
He stood as he spoke, cooling his finger-tips in the rose bowl in front of him. He sat down again, brooding and sighing. Despite the ham-and-corn, what he said was probably true and I said so, sympathetically. A little bit too sympathetically, as immediately emerged, for as I spoke I saw him looking at me suspiciously, not to say censoriously. My remarks about the harsh way the world treats barefoot boys in Brooklyn were interrupted by an urgent angry waggle of his podgy hand.
"Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose bowls.
"This American system of ours," he shouted, "call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it." He held out his hand towards me, the fingers dripping a little, and stared at me sternly for a few seconds before reseating himself.
A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.'
hardmedicine , 41 minutes ago linkThis article was obviously written by someone who wants to maintain the status quo.
America would be much stronger if it were not trying to be an empire. The biggest lie ever told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to protect or favor the American people.
LetThemEatRand , 39 minutes ago linkexactly, please mr. author don't give us more globalist dribble. We want our wealth back and screw the rest of the world, America First
HopefulCynical , 26 minutes ago linkI truly believe that "America First" is not selfish. America before it went full ****** was the beacon of freedom and success that other countries tried to emulate and that changed the world for the better.
America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work.
Posa , 15 minutes ago linkEmpire is a contrivance, a vehicle for psychopathic powerlust. America was founded by people who stood adamantly opposed to this. Here's hoping Trump holds their true spirit in his heart.
If he doesn't, there's hundreds of millions of us who still do. We don't all live in America...
CTacitus , 15 minutes ago linkIt's the ruling capitalist Predator Class that has been demanding empire since McKinley was assassinated. That's the problem.
pitz , 55 minutes ago linkLetThemEatRand:
America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs [sic], not to protect or favor the American people.
And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? Oligarchs...you're FULL of ****. Who exactly pools all (((their))) money, makes sure the [s]elected officials know (((who))) to not question and, instead, just bow down to them, who makes sure these (((officials))) sign pledges for absolute commitment towards Israel--or in no uncertain terms-- and know who will either sponsor them/or opposes them next time around?
JSBach1 called you a 'coward', for being EXACTLY LIKE THESE TRAITOROUS SPINELESS VERMIN who simply just step outside just 'enough' the comfort zone to APPEAR 'real'. IMHO, I concur with JSBach1 ...your're a coward indeed, when you should know better ..... shame you you indeed!
- US Israel Lobby (part 1 and 2): https://electronicintifada.net/content/watch-film-israel-lobby-didnt-want-you-see/25876
- US Israel Lobby (part 3 and 4): https://electronicintifada.net/content/watch-final-episodes-al-jazeera-film-us-israel-lobby/25896
Posa , 12 minutes ago linkThere is little evidence, Trump's propaganda aside (that he previously called Obama dishonest for) that the US economy is improving. If anything, the exploding budget and trade deficits indicate that the economy continues to weaken.
Correct. The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades by the Predator Class...
the US can't even raise an army... even if enough young (men) were dumb enough to volunteer there just aren't enough fit, healthy and mentally acute recruits out there.
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Nov 01, 2018 | angrybearblog.com
Each year I choose a book to be the Globalization Book of the Year, i.e., the "Globie". The prize is strictly honorific and does not come with a check. But I do like to single out books that are particularly insightful about some aspect of globalization. Previous winners are listed at the bottom.
This year's choice is Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze of Yale University . Tooze, an historian, traces the events leading up to the crisis and the subsequent ten years. He points out in the introduction that this account is different from one he may have written several years ago. At that time Barak Obama had won re-election in 2012 on the basis of a slow but steady recovery in the U.S. Europe was further behind, but the emerging markets were growing rapidly, due to the demand for their commodities from a steadily-growing China as well as capital inflows searching for higher returns than those available in the advanced economies.
But the economic recovery has brought new challenges, which have swept aside established politicians and parties. Obama was succeeded by Donald Trump, who promised to restore America to some form of past greatness. His policy agenda includes trade disputes with a broad range of countries, and he is particularly eager to impose trade tariffs on China. The current meltdown in stock prices follows a rise in interest rates normal at this stage of the business cycle but also is based on fears of the consequences of the trade measures.
Europe has its own discontents. In the United Kingdom, voters have approved leaving the European Union. The European Commission has expressed its disapproval of the Italian government's fiscal plans. Several east European governments have voiced opposition to the governance norms of the West European nations. Angela Merkel's decision to step down as head of her party leaves Europe without its most respected leader.
All these events are outcomes of the crisis, which Tooze emphasizes was a trans-Atlantic event. European banks had purchased held large amounts of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that they financed with borrowed dollars. When liquidity in the markets disappeared, the European banks faced the challenge of financing their obligations. Tooze explains how the Federal Reserve supported the European banks using swap lines with the European Central Bank and other central banks, as well as including the domestic subsidiaries of the foreign banks in their liquidity support operations in the U.S. As a result, Tooze claims:
"What happened in the fall of 2008 was not the relativization of the dollar, but the reverse, a dramatic reassertion of the pivotal role of America's central bank. Far from withering away, the Fed's response gave an entirely new dimension to the global dollar" (Tooze, p. 219)
The focused policies of U.S. policymakers stood in sharp contrast to those of their European counterparts. Ireland and Spain had to deal with their own banking crises following the collapse of their housing bubbles, and Portugal suffered from anemic growth. But Greece's sovereign debt posed the largest challenge, and exposed the fault line in the Eurozone between those who believed that such crises required a national response and those who looked for a broader European resolution. As a result, Greece lurched from one lending program to another. The IMF was treated as a junior partner by the European governments that sought to evade facing the consequences of Greek insolvency, and the Fund's reputation suffered new blows due to its involvement with the various rescue operations.The ECB only demonstrated a firm commitment to its stabilizing role in July 2012, when its President Mario Draghi announced that "Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro."
China followed another route. The government there engaged in a surge of stimulus spending combined with expansionary monetary policies. The result was continued growth that allowed the Chinese government to demonstrate its leadership capabilities at a time when the U.S. was abandoning its obligations. But the ensuing credit boom was accompanied by a rise in private (mainly corporate) lending that has left China with a total debt to GDP ratio of over 250%, a level usually followed by some form of financial collapse. Chinese officials are well aware of the domestic challenge they face at the same time as their dispute with the U.S. intensifies.
Tooze demonstrates that the crisis has let loose a range of responses that continue to play out. He ends the book by pointing to a similarity of recent events and those of 1914. He raises several questions: "How does a great moderation end? How do huge risks build up that are little understood and barely controllable? How do great tectonic shifts in the global world order unload in sudden earthquakes?" Ten years after a truly global crisis, we are still seeking answers to these questions.
Previous Globie Winners:
- 2017 Stephen D. King, Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History
- 2016 Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality
- 2015 Benjamin J. Cohen. Currency Power: Understanding Monetary Rivalry
- 2014 Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned–and Have Still to Learn–from the Financial Crisis
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Nov 01, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Her refugee blunder changed the European continent in irreversible ways for decades to come. By Scott McConnell • November 1, 2018
Drop of Light/Shutterstock Whatever her accomplishments as pathbreaking female politician and respected leader of Europe's dominant economic power, Angela Merkel will go down in history for her outburst of naivete over the issue of migration into Europe during the summer of 2015.Her announcement on Monday that she will vacate the leadership of Germany's ruling center-right Christian Democrats marks the culmination of what has been a slow denouement of Merkelism.
She had seen the vote share of her long dominant party shrink in one regional election after another. The rebuke given to her last weekend in Hesse, containing the Frankfurt region with its booming economy, where she had campaigned extensively, was the final straw. Her CDU's vote had declined 10 points since the previous election, their voters moving toward the further right (Alternative fur Deutschland or AfD). Meanwhile, the further left Greens have made dramatic gains at the expense of Merkel's Social Democrat coalition partners.
Long the emblematic figure of "Europe," hailed by the neoliberal Economist as the continent's moral voice, long the dominant decider of its collective foreign and economic policies, Merkel will leave office with border fences being erected and disdain for European political institutions at their highest pitch ever. In this sense, she failed as dramatically as her most famous predecessors, Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl, succeeded in their efforts to make Germany both important and normal in the postwar world.
One can acknowledge that while Merkel never admitted error for her multiculti summer fling (beyond wishing she had communicated her goals better), she did manage to adjust her policies. By 2016, Germany under her watch was paying a healthy ransom to Turkey to keep would-be migrants in camps and preventing them from sailing to Greece. Merkel's departure will make the battle to succeed her one of the most watched political contests in Europe. She has turned migration into a central and quite divisive issue within the CDU and Germany, and the party may decide that it has no choice but to accommodate, in one way or another, the voters who have left them for the AfD.
Related to the issue of who should reside in Europe (objectively the current answer remains anyone who can get there) is the question of how are such questions decided. In July 2015, five years after asserting in a speech that multiculturalism has "utterly failed" in Germany (without addressing what policies should be pursued in an increasingly ethnically diverse society) and several weeks after reducing a young Arab girl to tears at a televised forum by telling her that those whose asylum claims were rejected would "have to go back" and that "politics is hard," Merkel changed course.
For those interested in psychological studies of leadership and decision making, it would be hard to imagine a richer subject. Merkel's government first announced it would no longer enforce the rule (the Dublin agreement) that required asylum claimants to be processed in the first country they passed through. Then she doubled down. The migrants fleeing the Syrian civil war, along with those who pretended to be Syrian, and then basically just anyone, could come to Germany.
"We can do this!" she famously declared. Europe, she said, must "show flexibility" over refugees. Then, a few days later, she said there was "no limit" to the number of migrants Germany could accept. At first, the burgeoning flood of mostly young male asylum claimants produced an orgy of self-congratulatory good feeling, celebrity posturing of welcome, Merkel greeting migrants at the train station, Merkel taking selfies with migrants, Merkel touted in The Economist as "Merkel the Bold."
The Angela Merkel Era is Coming to an End The Subtle Return of Germany HegemonyHer words traveled far beyond those fleeing Syria. Within 48 hours of the "no limit" remark, The New York Times reported a sudden stirring of migrants from Nigeria. Naturally Merkel boasted in a quiet way about how her decision had revealed that Germany had put its Nazi past behind it. "The world sees Germany as a land of hope and chances," she said. "That wasn't always the case." In making this decision personally, Merkel was making it for all of Europe. It was one of the ironies of a European arrangement whose institutions were developed in part to transcend nationalism and constrain future German power that 70 years after the end of the war, the privately arrived-at decision of a German chancellor could instantly transform societies all over Europe.
The euphoria, of course, did not last. Several of the Merkel migrants carried out terror attacks in France that fall. (France's socialist prime minister Manuel Valls remarked pointedly after meeting with Merkel, "It was not us who said, 'Come!'") Reports of sexual assaults and murders by migrants proved impossible to suppress, though Merkel did ask Mark Zuckerberg to squelch European criticism of her migration policies on Facebook. Intelligent as she undoubtedly is (she was a research chemist before entering politics), she seemed to lack any intellectual foundation to comprehend why the integration of hundreds of thousands of people from the Muslim world might prove difficult.
Merkel reportedly telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu to ask how Israel had been so successful in integrating so many immigrants during its brief history. There is no record of what Netanyahu thought of the wisdom of the woman posing this question.
In any case, within a year, the Merkel initiative was acknowledged as a failure by most everyone except the chancellor herself. Her public approval rating plunged from 75 percent in April 2015 to 47 percent the following summer. The first electoral rebuke came in September 2016, when the brand new anti-immigration party, the Alternative fur Deutschland, beat Merkel's CDU in Pomerania.
In every election since, Merkel's party has lost further ground. Challenges to her authority from within her own party have become more pointed and powerful. But the mass migration accelerated by her decision continues, albeit at a slightly lower pace.
Angela Merkel altered not only Germany but the entire European continent, in irreversible ways, for decades to come.
Scott McConnell is a founding editor of and the author of Ex-Neocon: Dispatches From the Post-9/11 Ideological Wars .
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Nov 01, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stepped down as the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, the party she has led for nearly two decades. Yesterday's election in Hesse, normally a CDU/SPD stronghold was abysmal for them.
She had to do something to quell the revolt brewing against her.
Merkel knew going in what the polls were showing. Unlike American and British polls, it seems the German ones are mostly accurate with pre-election polls coming close to matching the final results.
So, knowing what was coming for her and in the spirit of trying to maintain power for as long as possible Merkel has been moving away from her staunch positions on unlimited immigration and being in lock-step with the U.S. on Russia.
She's having to walk a tightrope on these two issues as the turmoil in U.S. political circles is pulling her in, effectively, opposite directions.
The globalist Davos Crowd she works for wants the destruction of European culture and individual national sovereignty ground into a paste and power consolidated under the rubric of the European Union.
They also want Russia brought to heel.
On the other hand, President Trump is pushing Merkel on policy on Russia and Ukraine that furthers the image that she is simply a stooge of U.S. geopolitical ambitions. Don't ever forget that Germany is, for all intents and purposes, an occupied country. So, what the U.S. military establishment wants, Merkel must provide.
So, if she rejects that role and the chaos U.S. policy engenders, particularly Syria, she's undermining the flow of migrants into Europe.
This is why it was so significant that she and French President Emmanuel Macron joined this weekend's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul.
It ended with an agreement on Syria's future that lies in direct conflict with the U.S.'s goals of the past seven years.
It was an admission that Assad has prevailed in Syria and the plan to atomize it into yet another failed state has itself failed. Merkel has traded 'Assad must go' for 'no more refugees.'
To President Trump's credit he then piggy-backed on that statement announcing that the U.S. would be pulling out of Syria very soon now. And that tells me that he is still coordinating in some way with Putin and other world leaders on the direction of his foreign policy in spite of his opposition.
But the key point from the Istanbul statement was that Syria's rebuilding be prioritized to reverse the flow of migrants so Syrians can go home. While Gilbert Doctorow is unconvinced by France's position here , I think Merkel has to be focused on assisting Putin in achieving his goal of returning Syria to Syrians.
Because, this is both a political necessity for Merkel as well as her trying to burnish her crumbling political throne to maintain power.
The question is will Germans believe and/or forgive her enough for her to stay in power through her now stated 'retirement' from politics in 2021?
I don't think so and it's obvious Davos Crowd boy-toy Macron is working overtime to salvage what he can for them as Merkel continues to face up to the political realities across Europe, which is that populism is a natural reaction to these insane policies.
Merkel's job of consolidating power under the EU is unfinished. They don't have financial integration. The Grand Army of the EU is still not a popular idea. The euro-zone is a disaster waiting to happen and its internal inconsistencies are adding fuel to an already pretty hot political fire.
On this front, EU integration, she and Macron are on the same page. Because 'domestically' from an EU perspective, Brexit still has to be dealt with and the showdown with the Italians is only just beginning.
But Merkel, further weakened by another disastrous state election, isn't strong enough to fend off her emboldened Italian and British opposition (and I'm not talking about The Gypsum Lady, Theresa May here).
And Macron should stop looking in the mirror long enough to see he's standing on a quicksand made of blasting powder.
This points to the next major election for Europe, that of the European Parliament in May where all of Merkel's opposition are focused on wresting control of that body and removing Jean-Claude Juncker or his hand-picked replacement (Merkel herself?) from power.
The obvious transition for Merkel is from German Chancellor to European Commission President. She steps down as Chancellor in May after the EPP wins a majority then to take Juncker's job. I'm sure that's been the plan all along. This way she can continue the work she started without having to face the political backlash at home.
But, again, how close is Germany to snap elections if there is another migrant attack and Chemnitz-like demonstrations. You can only go to the 'Nazi' well so many times, even in Germany.
There comes a point where people will have simply had enough and their anger isn't born of being intolerant but angry at having been betrayed by political leadership which doesn't speak for them and imported crime, chaos and violence to their homes.
And the puppet German media will not be able to contain the story. The EU's speech rules will not contain people who want to speak. The clamp down on hate speech, pioneered by Merkel herself is a reaction to the growing tide against her.
And guess what? She can't stop it.
The problem is that Commies like Merkel and Soros don't believe in anything. They are vampires and nihilists as I said over the weekend suffused with a toxic view of humanity.
Oh sure, they give lip service to being inclusive and nice about it while they have control over the levers of power, the State apparatus. But, the minute they lose control of those levers, the sun goes down, the fangs come out and the bloodletting begins.
These people are vampires, sucking the life out of a society for their own ends. They are evil in a way that proves John Barth's observation that "man can do no wrong." For they never see themselves as the villain.
No. They see themselves as the savior of a fallen people. Nihilists to their very core they only believe in power. And, since power is their religion, all activities are justified in pursuit of their goals.
Their messianic view of themselves is indistinguishable to the Salafist head-chopping animals people like Hillary empowered to sow chaos and death across the Middle East and North Africa over the past decade.
Add to this Merkel herself who took Hillary's empowerment of these animals and gave them a home across Europe. At least now Merkel has the good sense to see that this has cost her nearly everything.
Even if she has little to no shame.
Hillary seems to think she can run for president again and win with the same schtick she failed with twice before. Frankly, I welcome it like I welcome the sun in the morning, safe in the knowledge that all is right with the world and she will go down in humiliating defeat yet again.
Merkel is a lame-duck now. Merkelism is over. Absentee governing from the center standing for nothing but the international concerns has been thoroughly rebuked by the European electorate from Spain to the shores of the Black Sea.
Germany will stand for something other than globalism by the time this is all over. There will be a renaissance of culture and tradition there that is similar to the one occurring at a staggering pace in Russia.
And Angela Merkel's legacy will be chaos.
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Join my patreon because you hate chaos.
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Oct 02, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on September 28, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. Haha, Lambert's volatility voters thesis confirmed! They are voting against inequality and globalization. This important post also explains how financialization drives populist rebellions.
By Lubos Pastor, Charles P. McQuaid Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Pietro Veronesi, Roman Family Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Originally published at VoxEU
The vote for Brexit and the election of protectionist Donald Trump to the US presidency – two momentous markers of the ongoing pushback against globalization – led some to question the rationality of voters. This column presents a framework that demonstrates how the populist backlash against globalisation is actually a rational voter response when the economy is strong and inequality is high. It highlights the fragility of globalization in a democratic society that values equality.
The ongoing pushback against globalization in the West is a defining phenomenon of this decade. This pushback is best exemplified by two momentous 2016 votes: the British vote to leave the EU ('Brexit') and the election of a protectionist, Donald Trump, to the US presidency. In both cases, rich-country electorates voted to take a step back from the long-standing process of global integration. "Today, globalization is going through a major crisis" (Macron 2018).
Some commentators question the wisdom of the voters responsible for this pushback. They suggest Brexit and Trump supporters have been confused by misleading campaigns and foreign hackers. They joke about turkeys voting for Christmas. They call for another Brexit referendum, which would allow the Leavers to correct their mistakes.
Rational Voters
We take a different perspective. In a recent paper, we develop a theory in which a backlash against globalization happens while all voters are perfectly rational (Pastor and Veronesi 2018). We do not, of course, claim that all voters are rational; we simply argue that explaining the backlash does not require irrationality. Not only can the backlash happen in our theory; it is inevitable.
We build a heterogeneous-agent equilibrium model in which a backlash against globalization emerges as the optimal response of rational voters to rising inequality. A rise in inequality has been observed throughout the West in recent decades (e.g. Atkinson et al. 2011). In our model, rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth. Over time, global growth exacerbates inequality, which eventually leads to a pushback against globalization.
Who Dislike Inequality
Agents in our model like consumption but dislike inequality. Individuals may prefer equality for various reasons. Equality helps prevent crime and preserve social stability. Inequality causes status anxiety at all income levels, which leads to health and social problems (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009, 2018). In surveys, people facing less inequality report being happier (e.g. Morawetz et al. 1977, Alesina et al. 2004, Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Ramos 2014). Experimental results also point to egalitarian preferences (e.g. Dawes et al. 2007).
We measure inequality by the variance of consumption shares across agents. Given our other modelling assumptions, equilibrium consumption develops a right-skewed distribution across agents. As a result, inequality is driven by the high consumption of the rich rather than the low consumption of the poor. Aversion to inequality thus reflects envy of the economic elites rather than compassion for the poor.
Besides inequality aversion, our model features heterogeneity in risk aversion. This heterogeneity generates rising inequality in a growing economy because less risk-averse agents consume a growing share of total output. We employ individual-level differences in risk aversion to capture the fact that some individuals benefit more from global growth than others. In addition, we interpret country-level differences in risk aversion as differences in financial development. We consider two 'countries': the US and the rest of the world. We assume that US agents are less risk-averse than rest-of-the-world agents, capturing the idea that the US is more financially developed than the rest of the world.
At the outset, the two countries are financially integrated – there are no barriers to trade and risk is shared globally. At a given time, both countries hold elections featuring two candidates. The 'mainstream' candidate promises to preserve globalization, whereas the 'populist' candidate promises to end it. If either country elects a populist, a move to autarky takes place and cross-border trading stops. Elections are decided by the median voter.
Global risk sharing exacerbates US inequality. Given their low risk aversion, US agents insure the agents of the rest of the world by holding aggressive and disperse portfolio positions. The agents holding the most aggressive positions benefit disproportionately from global growth. The resulting inequality leads some US voters, those who feel left behind by globalization, to vote populist.
Why Vote Populist?
When deciding whether to vote mainstream or populist, US agents face a consumption-inequality trade-off. If elected, the populist delivers lower consumption but also lower inequality to US agents. After a move to autarky, US agents can no longer borrow from the rest of the world to finance their excess consumption. But their inequality drops too, because the absence of cross-border leverage makes their portfolio positions less disperse.
As output grows, the marginal utility of consumption declines, and US agents become increasingly willing to sacrifice consumption in exchange for more equality. When output grows large enough -- see the vertical line in the figure below -- more than half of US agents prefer autarky and the populist wins the US election. This is our main result: in a growing economy, the populist eventually gets elected. In a democratic society that values equality, globalization cannot survive in the long run.
Figure 1 Vote share of the populist candidate
Equality Is a Luxury Good
Equality can be interpreted as a luxury good in that society demands more of it as it becomes wealthier. Voters might also treat culture, traditions, and other nonpecuniary values as luxury goods. Consistent with this argument, the recent rise in populism appears predominantly in rich countries. In poor countries, agents are not willing to sacrifice consumption in exchange for nonpecuniary values.
Globalization would survive under a social planner. Our competitive market solution differs from the social planner solution due to the negative externality that the elites impose on others through their high consumption. To see if globalization can be saved by redistribution, we analyse redistributive policies that transfer wealth from low risk-aversion agents, who benefit the most from globalization, to high risk-aversion agents, who benefit the least. We show that such policies can delay the populist's victory, but cannot prevent it from happening eventually.
Which Countries Are Populist?
Our model predicts that support for populism should be stronger in countries that are more financially developed, more unequal, and running current account deficits. Looking across 29 developed countries, we find evidence supporting these predictions.
Figure 2 Vote share of populist parties in recent elections
The US and the UK are good examples. Both have high financial development, large inequality, and current account deficits. It is thus no coincidence, in the context of our model, that these countries led the populist wave in 2016. In contrast, Germany is less financially developed, less unequal, and it runs a sizable current account surplus. Populism has been relatively subdued in Germany, as our model predicts. The model emphasises the dark side of financial development – it spurs the growth of inequality, which eventually leads to a populist backlash.
Who are the Populist Voters?
The model also makes predictions about the characteristics of populist voters. Compared to mainstream voters, populist voters should be more inequality-averse (i.e. more anti-elite) and more risk-averse (i.e. better insured against consumption fluctuations). Like highly risk-averse agents, poorer and less-educated agents have less to lose from the end of globalization. The model thus predicts that these agents are more likely to vote populist. That is indeed what we find when we examine the characteristics of the voters who supported Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum and Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The model's predictions for asset prices are also interesting. The global market share of US stocks should rise in anticipation of the populist's victory. Indeed, the US share of the global stock market rose steadily before the 2016 Trump election. The US bond yields should be unusually low before the populist's victory. Indeed, bond yields in the West were low when the populist wave began.
Backlash in a booming economy
In our model, a populist backlash occurs when the economy is strong because that is when inequality is high. The model helps us understand why the backlash is occurring now, as the US economy is booming. The economy is going through one of its longest macroeconomic expansions ever, having been growing steadily for almost a decade since the 2008 crisis.
This study relates to our prior work at the intersection of finance and political economy. Here, we exploit the cross-sectional variation in risk aversion, whereas in our 2017 paper, we analyse its time variation (Pastor and Veronesi 2017). In the latter model, time-varying risk aversion generates political cycles in which Democrats and Republicans alternate in power, with higher stock returns under Democrats. Our previous work also explores links between risk aversion and inequality (Pastor and Veronesi 2016).
Conclusions
We highlight the fragility of globalization in a democratic society that values equality. In our model, a pushback against globalization arises as a rational voter response. When a country grows rich enough, it becomes willing to sacrifice consumption in exchange for a more equal society. Redistribution is of limited value in our frictionless, complete-markets model. Our formal model supports the narrative of Rodrik (1997, 2000), who argues that we cannot have all three of global economic integration, the nation state, and democratic politics.
If policymakers want to save globalization, they need to make the world look different from our model. One attractive policy option is to improve the financial systems of less-developed countries. Smaller cross-country differences in financial development would mitigate the uneven effects of cross-border risk sharing. More balanced global risk sharing would result in lower current account deficits and, eventually, lower inequality in the rich world.
See original post for references
JTMcPhee , September 28, 2018 at 10:34 am
"rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth. " For which definition of growth? Or maybe, observing that cancer is the very model of growth, for any definition?
Nice model and graphs, though.
What kind of political economy is to be discerned, and how is one to effectuate it with systems that would have to be so very different to have a prayer of providing lasting homeostatic functions?
The Rev Kev , September 28, 2018 at 10:50 am
And what happens in a world where, due to depleted resources, growth is no longer an option and we start living in a world of slow contraction?
paulmeli , September 28, 2018 at 12:28 pm
Starvation pain and death absent some kind of (fair) rationing mechanisms.
Olga , September 28, 2018 at 2:24 pm
Actually, I can hardly wait. If nothing else will get folks motivated to effect change – this could (let's hope).
drumlin woodchuckles , September 28, 2018 at 3:29 pm
The global overclass can hardly wait too. They think they are in position to guide the change to their desired outcome. Targeted applied Jackpot Engineering, you know.
joey , September 28, 2018 at 5:24 pm
hoping for an alpha test tube environment or better soma in my next go round?
Bobby Gladd , September 28, 2018 at 4:12 pm
Frase's "Quadrant IV" – Hierarchy + Scarcity = Exterminism (see "Four Futures")
d , September 28, 2018 at 2:11 pm
At some point if the majority dont think they get any benefit from the economy, they will put a stake through it, and replace it with some thing that works?now that could be some thing very different, but it will happen
Olga , September 28, 2018 at 2:22 pm
I had the same thought – growth as defined in the current, neoliberal model. There is nothing inevitable about inequality – it is caused by political choices.
Tony Wikrent , September 28, 2018 at 10:44 am
It is painful to find these assumptions accepted at NC.
"the economy is strong"
Not from my perspective. Or from the perspectives of the work force or the industrial base replacing themselves. Or the perspective of a 4 to 5 trillion dollar shortfall in infrastructure funding.
"In our model, rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth."
Well, that simply did not happen 1946 to 1971.
"populist delivers lower consumption but also lower inequality to US agents."
REALLY? Consumption of WHAT? Designer handbags and jeans? What about consumption of mass public transit and health care services? I'm very confident that a populist government that found a way to put a muzzle on Wall Street and the banksters would increase consumption of things I prefer while also lessening inequality.
Reading through this summary of modeling, it occurred to me that the operative variable was not inequality so much as "high financial development."
paulmeli , September 28, 2018 at 12:32 pm
It is painful to find these assumptions accepted at NC.
"the economy is strong"
"In our model, rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth."
"populist delivers lower consumption but also lower inequality to US agents."
Agreed, BS but likely to be skewered as the comment section picks up steam.
There's a lot of skeptics lurking here.
JEHR , September 28, 2018 at 1:09 pm
Thanks for pointing out the weaknesses in the article.
a different chris , September 28, 2018 at 12:33 pm
Posting doesn't apply "acceptance" at NC. I think that has been made pretty darn clear on a number of occasions.
Olga , September 28, 2018 at 2:45 pm
Yes and also, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. These days, just saying that globalisation leads to inequality and people act rationally, when they push back – even though choices are limited – is pretty revolutionary. We need other analyses along those lines, maybe with a few corrections. Thanks for posting!
shinola , September 28, 2018 at 1:01 pm
"Redistribution is of limited value in our frictionless, complete-markets model"
That's nice. But in what universe do these "frictionless, complete-markets" actually exist?
juliania , September 28, 2018 at 1:37 pm
" In our model, a populist backlash occurs when the economy is strong because that is when inequality is high. "
Yes to the above comments. This sentence really stuck in my throat. A strong economy to me is one that achieves balanced equality. Somehow this article avoids the manner in which the current economy became "strong". Perhaps a better word is "corrupt". (No 'perhaps' really; I'm just being polite.)
Otherwise some good points being made here.
juliania , September 28, 2018 at 1:41 pm
I also didn't like that the anti-neoliberalists are being portrayed as not having sympathy for the poor. Gosh, we are a hard-hearted lot, only interested in our own come-uppance and risk-adversity.
Robert Valiant , September 28, 2018 at 2:52 pm
Isn't equality just a value?
A "strong" economy is one that is growing as measured by GDP – full stop. Inequality looks to me like a feature of our global economic value system, not a bug.
paulmeli , September 28, 2018 at 3:29 pm
Inequality is a problem of distribution. Is a strong economy one that provides the most to a few or a fair share to the many?
High GDP growth could reflect either but which is most important?
If your neighbor is out of work it looks like a recession, if you're out of work it feels like a depression.
Synoia , September 28, 2018 at 2:22 pm
Friction-less Markets exist in where there is much lube.
Trump is probably an expert in that area.
paulmeli , September 28, 2018 at 3:30 pm
"Redistribution is of limited value in our frictionless, complete-markets model"
This is complete BS. So is your model.
Kit , September 28, 2018 at 5:36 pm
A universe with spherical consumers of uniform size and density.
Economics is like physics, or wants to be. If you want practicality, you need something more like engineering.
Andrew Watts , September 28, 2018 at 5:56 pm
I only read these articles to see what the enemy is thinking. The vast majority of economists are nothing more than cheerleaders for capitalism. I imagine anybody who strays too far from neoliberal orthodoxy is ignored.
Patrick , September 28, 2018 at 10:56 am
the Trump/Brexit populist thinking has nothing to do with equality. it has do do with who should get preferential treatment and why -- it's about drawing a tight circle on who get's to be considered "equal".
not sure how you can pull a desire for equality from this (except through statistics, which can be used to "prove" anything).
Outis Philalithopoulos , September 28, 2018 at 1:23 pm
I'm confused – so the evidence of statistics should be discounted, in favor of more persuasive evidence? Consisting of your own authoritative statements about the motives of other people?
In the future, please try to think about what sorts of arguments are likely to be persuasive to people who don't already agree with you.
paulmeli , September 28, 2018 at 3:35 pm
In the Trump/neoliberal world we get what we "deserve". Or do we deserve what we get?
The majority of the population believes the losers didn't try hard enough.
In a world full of Einsteins the bottom 20% would still live in poverty. Life is graded on a curve.
Louis Fyne , September 28, 2018 at 10:57 am
If you consider yourself an "environmentalist," then you have to be against globalization.
(From the easiest to universally agree upon) the multi-continental supply chain for everything from tube socks to cobalt to frozen fish is unsustainable, barring Star Trek-type transport tech breakthroughs.
(to the less easily to universally agree upon) the population of the entire developed (even in the US) would be stablized/falling/barely rising, but for migration.
mass migration-fueled population growth/higher fertility rates of migrants in the developed world and increased resource footprint is bad for both the developed world and developing world.
Jeremy Grimm , September 28, 2018 at 2:51 pm
The long, narrow, and manifold supply lines which characterize our present systems of globalization make the world much more fragile. The supply chains are fraught with single points of systemic failure. At the same time Climate Disruption increases the risk that a disaster can affect these single points of failure. I fear that the level of instability in the world systems is approaching the point where multiple local disasters could have catastrophic effects at a scale orders of magnitude greater than the scale of the triggering events -- like the Mr. Science demonstration of a chain-reaction where he tosses a single ping pong ball into a room full of mousetraps set with ping pong balls. You have to be against globalization if you're against instability.
The entire system of globalization is completely dependent on a continuous supply of cheap fuel to power the ships, trains, and trucks moving goods around the world. That supply of cheap fuel has its own fragile supply lines upon which the very life of our great cities depends. Little food is grown where the most food is eaten -- this reflects the distributed nature of our supply chains greatly fostered by globalization.
Globalization increases the power and control Corporate Cartels have over their workers. It further increases the power large firms have over smaller firms as the costs and complexities of globalized trade constitute a relatively larger overhead for smaller firms. Small producers of goods find themselves flooded with cheaper foreign knock-offs and counterfeits of any of their designs that find a place in the market. It adds uncertainty and risk to employment and small ventures. Globalization magnifies the power of the very large and very rich over producers and consumers.
I believe the so-called populist voters and their backlash in a "booming" economy are small indications of a broad unrest growing much faster than our "booming" economies. That unrest is one more risk to add to the growing list of risks to an increasingly fragile system. The world is configured for a collapse that will be unprecedented in its speed and scope.
Olga , September 28, 2018 at 2:54 pm
Actually, the way I see it – if one considers oneself an environmentalist, one has to be against capitalism, not just globalization. Capitalism is built on constant growth – but on a planet, with limited resources, that simply cannot work. Not long term unless we're prepared to dig up and/or pave over everything. Only very limited-scale, mom-and-pop kind of capitalism can try to work long term – but the problem is, it would not stay that way because greed gets in the way every time and there's no limiting greed. (Greed as a concept was limited in the socialist system – but some folks did not like that.)
tagyoureit , September 28, 2018 at 3:22 pm
"Capitalism is built on constant growth." I have a 'brand new' view of photosynthesis. Those plants (pun intended) are 'capitalist pigweeds'
John Wright , September 28, 2018 at 11:21 am
The paper posits:
" Given their low risk aversion, US agents insure the agents of the rest of the world by holding aggressive and disperse portfolio positions."
That low risk aversion could be driven by the willingness of the US government to provide military/diplomatic/trade assistance to US businesses around the word. The risk inherent in moving factories, doing resource extraction and conducting business overseas is always there, but if one's government lessens the risk via force projection and control of local governments, a US agent could appear to be "less risk averse" because the US taxpayer has "got their back".
This paper closes with
"If policymakers want to save globalization, they need to make the world look different from our model. One attractive policy option is to improve the financial systems of less-developed countries. Smaller cross-country differences in financial development would mitigate the uneven effects of cross-border risk sharing. More balanced global risk sharing would result in lower current account deficits and, eventually, lower inequality in the rich world."
Ah yes, to EVENTUALLY lower inequality, the USA needs to "improve the financial systems of less-well developed countries"
Perhaps the USA needs to improve its OWN financial system first?
Paul Woolley has suggested, the US and UK financial systems are 2 to 3 times they should be.
And the USA's various financial industry driven bubbles, the ZIRP rescue of the financial industry, and mortgage security fraud seem all connected back to the USA financial industry.
Inequality did not improve in the aftermath of these events as the USA helped preserve the elite class.
Maybe the authors have overlooked a massive home field opportunity?
That being that the USA should consider "improving" its own financial system to help inequality.
shinola , September 28, 2018 at 1:17 pm
In my model, eventually, we are all equally dead.
Lee , September 28, 2018 at 11:26 am
I'm glad to see that issues and views discussed pretty regularly here in more or less understandable English have been translated into Academese. Being a high risk averse plebe, who will not starve for lack of trade with China, but may have to pay a bit more for strawberries for lack of cheap immigrant labor, I count myself among the redistributionist economic nationalists.
jrs , September 28, 2018 at 1:59 pm
I suspect strawberries would be grown elsewhere than the U.S., without cheap immigrant labor (unless picking them is somehow able to be automated).
polecat , September 28, 2018 at 5:19 pm
Yes, it's called u-pickum @ home ..
Right now I'm making raisins from the grapes harvested here at home .. enough to last for a year, or maybe two. Sure, it's laborous to some extent, but the supply chain is very short .. the cost, compared to buying the same amount at retait rates, is minuscule, and they're as 'organic' as can be. The point I'm trying to make is that wth some personal effort, we can all live lighter, live slower, and be, for the most part, contented.
Might as well step into collapse, gracefully, and avoid the rush, as per J. M. Greer's mantra.Wukchumni , September 28, 2018 at 12:45 pm
The UK had become somewhat dependent on Switzerland for wristwatches prior to WW2, and all of the sudden France falls and that's all she wrote for imports.
Must've been a mad scramble to resurrect the business, or outsource elsewhere.
My wife and I were talking about what would happen if say the reign of error pushes us into war with China, and thanks to our just in time way of life, the goods on the shelves of most every retailer, would be plundered by consumers, and maybe they could be restocked a few times, but that's it.
Now, that would shock us to our core consumerism.
Inode _buddha , September 28, 2018 at 2:11 pm
People might actually start learning how to fix stuff again, and value things that can be fixed.
polecat , September 28, 2018 at 5:39 pm
I recently purchased a cabinet/shelf for 20 tubmans, from a repurposing/recycling business, and, after putting a couple of hundred moar tubmans into it .. some of which included recycled latex paints and hardware .. transformed it into a fabulous stand-alone kitchen storage unit. If I were to purchase such at retail, it would most likely go for close to $800- $1000.00 easy !!
With care, this 'renewed' polecat heirloom will certainly outlive it's recreator, and pass on for generations henceforth.Duck1 , September 28, 2018 at 6:24 pm
I thought a Tubman was a double sawbuck, or at least a Hamilton. Otherwise, you're doing it right kid.
HotFlash , September 28, 2018 at 1:09 pm
Oh well, Canada not on any of the charts. Again. We are most certainly chopped moose liver. Wonder what the selection criteria were?
JEHR , September 28, 2018 at 1:15 pm
Yes, thank goodness there was no mention of Canada's failure to negotiate a trade treaty with our best friend. All of a sudden, Canadians seem to be the target of a lot of ill will in other articles.
JTMcPhee , September 28, 2018 at 1:47 pm
I think it's just ill- informed jealousy. Us US mopes think Canadians are much better off than we Yanks, health care and such. You who live there have your own insights, of course. Trudeau and the Ford family and tar sands and other bits.
And some of us are peeved that you don't want us migrating to take advantage of your more beneficent milieu.
Wukchumni , September 28, 2018 at 1:54 pm
It's a different vibe up over, their housing bubble crested and is sinking, as the road to HELOC was played with the best intentions even more furiously than here in the heat of the bubble.
Can Canada bail itself out as we did in the aftermath, and keep the charade going?
Jonathan T McPhee , September 28, 2018 at 3:10 pm
Do they have a sovereign currency, and as yet not exhausted real world extractable resources?
And I guess by "Canada" you are talking about the elite and the FIRE, right? "There are many Canadas " https://www.youtube.com/user/RedGreenTV
Unna , September 28, 2018 at 3:20 pm
Feel free to fill out that 8 inch high pile of Canadian immigration documentation, so ya'all can come on up and join the party. Or just jump on your pony and ride North into the Land of the Grandmother. Trudeau wants more people and has failed to offer proper sacrifice to the god Terminus, the god of borders, so .
Just don't move to "Van" unless you have a few million to drop on a "reno'ed" crack shack. When the god Pluto crawls back into the earth, the housing bubble will burst, and it's not going to be pretty.
Wukchumni , September 28, 2018 at 3:29 pm
That's funny as our dam here is called the Terminus Reservoir, if the name fits
I'm just looking for an ancestral way out of what might prove to be a messy scene down under, i'd gladly shack up in one of many of my relatives basements if Max Mad breaks out here.
Unna , September 28, 2018 at 5:33 pm
Handwriting's been on the wall. Canada's very nice, not perfect, but what place is? And: It's not the imperial homeland.
JerryDenim , September 28, 2018 at 1:59 pm
Great article, interesting data points, but besides placing tariffs on Chinese imports there is nothing populist about Trump, just empty rhetoric. Highly regressive tax cuts for the wealthy, further deregulation, wanton environmental destruction, extremist right-wing ideologues as judges, a cabinet full of Wall Street finance guys, more boiler-plate Neo-Lib policies as far as I can tell.
I fear Trump and the Brexiters are giving populism a bad name. A functioning democracy should always elect populists. A government of elected officials who do not represent the public will is not really a democracy.
feox , September 28, 2018 at 2:43 pm
Aversion to inequality thus reflects envy of the economic elites rather than compassion for the poor.
That's ridiculous. Indeed, the Brexit campaign was all about othering the poor and powerless immigrants, as well as the cultural, artistic, urban and academic elites, never the the moneyed elites, not the 1%. The campaign involved no dicussion what's so ever of the actual numbers of wealth inequality.
When deciding whether to vote mainstream or populist, US agents face a consumption-inequality trade-off. If elected, the populist delivers lower consumption but also lower inequality to US agents.
How can anyone possibly write such a thing? The multi-trillion tax cut from Donald Trump represents a massive long time rise in inequality. Vis-à-vis Brexit, the entire campaign support for that mad endeavor came from free-trader fundamentalists who want to be free to compete with both hands in the global race-to-the-bottom while the EU is (barely) restraining them.
Trump and Brexit voters truly are irrational turkeys (that's saying a lot for anyone who's met an actual turkey) voting for Christmas.
Jonathan T McPhee , September 28, 2018 at 3:05 pm
Some of us mopes who voted for Trump did so as a least-bad alternative to HER, just to try to kick the hornet's nest and get something to fly out: So your judgment is that those folks are "irrational turkeys," bearing in mind how mindless the Christmas and Thansgiving turkeys have been bred to be?
Better to arm up, get out in the street, and start marching and chanting and ready to confront the militarized police? I'd say, face it: as people here have noted there is a system in place, the "choices" are frauds to distract us every couple of years, and the vectors all point down into some pretty ugly terrain.
Bless those who have stepped off the conveyor, found little places where they can live "autarkically," more or less, and are waiting out the Ragnarok/Gotterdammerung/Mad Max anomie, hoping not to be spotted by the warbands that will form up and roam the terrain looking for bits of food and fuel and slaves and such. Like one survivalist I spotted recently says as his tag-line, "If you have stuff, you're a target. If you have knowledge. you have a chance–" this in a youtube video on how to revive a defunct nickel-cadmium drill battery by zapping it with a stick welder. (It works, by the way.)He's a chain smoker and his BMI must be close to 100, but he's got knowledge
precariat , September 28, 2018 at 3:24 pm
The papers's framing of the issues is curious: the populace has 'envy' of the well-off; and populism (read envy) rises when the economy is strong and inequality rises (read where's my yaht?).
The paper lacks acknowledgement of the corruption, fraud, and rigging of policy that rises when an overly financialized economy is 'good.' This contributes to inequality. Inequality is not just unequal, but extremely disproportionate distributions which cause real suffering and impoverishment of the producers. It follows (but not to the writer of this paper) that the citizens take offense at and objection to the disproprtionate takings of some and the meager receipts of the many. It's this that contributes to populism.
And the kicker: to save globalization, let's financialize the less developed economies to mitigate cross-border inequalities. Huh? Was not the discussion about developed nations' voters to rising inequality in face of globalization? The problem is not cross-border 'envy.' It's globalization instrinsically and how it is gamed.
Mark Pontin , September 28, 2018 at 7:05 pm
Short version: It's the looting, stupid.
Agreed.
knowbuddhau , September 28, 2018 at 3:54 pm
I'm with Olga. It's good to see that voting "wrong" taken seriously, and seen as economically rational. Opposing globalization makes sense, even in the idiosyncratic usage of economics.
The trouble, of course, is that the world of economics is not the world we live in.
Why does the immigrant cross the border? Is it only for "pecuniary interests," only for the money? Then why do so many send most of it back across the border, in remittances?
If people in poor countries aren't willing to sacrifice for "luxuries," like a dignified human life, who was Simon Bolivar, Che Guevara, or more recently, Berta Cáceres?
Seems to be a weakness of economic models in general: it's inconceivable that people do things for other than pecuniary interests. In the reductionist terms of natural science, we're social primates, not mechanical information engines.
If this model were a back patio cart, like the one I'm building right now, I wouldn't set my beer on it. Looks like a cart from a distance, though, esp when you're looking for one.
Darthbobber , September 28, 2018 at 6:02 pm
To the extent that the backlash has irrational aspects in the way it manifests, I would suspect that it relates to the refusal of the self-styled responsible people to participate in opening more rational paths to solutions, or even to acknowledge the existence of a problem. When the allegedly responsible and knowledgeable actors refuse to act, or even see a need to act, it's hardly surprising that the snake oil vendors grow in influence.
Charlie , September 28, 2018 at 6:21 pm
I'm always leery of t-test values being cited without the requisite sample size being noted. You need that to determine effect size. While the slope looks ominously valid for the regression model, effects could be weak and fail to show whether current account deficits are the true source. Financialization seems purposely left out of the model.
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Sep 18, 2018 | www.unz.com
the obligatory four freedoms of the EU are free movement of goods, services, persons and capital throughout the Union. Open borders. That is the essence of the European Union, the dogma of the Free Market.
The problem with the Open Border doctrine is that it doesn't know where to stop. Or it doesn't stop anywhere. When Angela Merkel announced that hundreds of thousands of refugees were welcome in Germany, the announcement was interpreted as an open invitation by immigrants of all sorts, who began to stream into Europe. This unilateral German decision automatically applied to the whole of the EU, with its lack of internal borders. Given German clout, Open Borders became the essential "European common value", and welcoming immigrants the essence of human rights.
Very contrasting ideological and practical considerations contribute to the idealization of Open Borders. To name a few:
This combination of contrasting, even opposing motivations does not add up to a majority in every country. Notably not in Hungary.
It should be noted that Hungary is a small Central European country of less than ten million inhabitants, which never had a colonial empire and thus has no historic relationship with peoples in Africa and Asia as do Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. As one of the losers in World War I, Hungary lost a large amount of territory to its neighbors, notably to Romania. The rare and difficult Hungarian language would be seriously challenged by mass immigration. It is probably safe to say that the majority of people in Hungary tend to be attached to their national identity and feel it would be threatened by massive immigration from radically different cultures. It may not be nice of them, and like everyone they can change. But for now, that is how they vote.
In particular, they recently voted massively to re
Like the Soviet Union, the European Union is not merely an undemocratic institutional framework promoting a specific economic system; it is also the vehicle of an ideology and a planetary project. Both are based on a dogma as to what is good for the world: communism for the first, "openness" for the second. Both in varying ways demand of people virtues they may not share: a forced equality, a forced generosity. All this can sound good, but such ideals become methods of manipulation. Forcing ideals on people eventually runs up against stubborn resistance.
There are differing reasons to be against immigration just as to be for it. The idea of democracy was to sort out and choose between ideals and practical interests by free discussion and in the end a show of hands: an informed vote. The liberal Authoritarian Center represented by Verhofstadt seeks to impose its values, aspirations, even its version of the facts on citizens who are denounced as "populists" if they disagree. Under communism, dissidents were called "enemies of the people". For the liberal globalists, they are "populists" – that is, the people. If people are told constantly that the choice is between a left that advocates mass immigration and a right that rejects it, the swing to the right is unstoppable.
Johnny Rottenborough , says: Website September 17, 2018 at 11:17 pm GMT
Orban's reputation in the West as dictator is unquestionably linked to his intense conflict with Hungarian-born financier George SorosCarlton Meyer , says: Website September 18, 2018 at 4:30 am GMTAnd not only Soros, of course:
'I know that this battle is difficult for everyone. I understand if some of us are also afraid. This is understandable, because we must fight against an opponent which is different from us. Their faces are not visible, but are hidden from view; they do not fight directly, but by stealth; they are not honourable, but unprincipled; they are not national, but international; they do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs.' -- Viktor Orbán
Watch the great Hungarian foreign minister repel attacks by the BBCs arrogant open borders propagandist, rudely treating him like an ignorant child and calling him a racist for defending his nation.Anonymous , [224] Disclaimer says: September 18, 2018 at 5:34 am GMTjilles dykstra , says: September 18, 2018 at 7:19 am GMTEconomic liberals maintain that because Europe is aging, it needs young immigrant workers to pay for the pensions of retired workers.
Not gonna happen. Their 80 IQ skills are uncompetitive and useless in Europe even before Automation erases those low-skilled positions in the coming decade or two. Meanwhile, (real) European youth unemployment rate is 20%. Young Europeans are not making babies because they don't have a stable future. This can only get worse as the hostile invaders get preferential, Affirmative Action treatment, in schools and workplaces. None of this is accidental.
... ... ...
There are, in my opinion, two reasons for letting the mass immigration happen:John Siman , says: September 18, 2018 at 11:20 am GMT
- the Brussels belief, expressed in a 2009 official document, not secret, that the EU needs 60 million immigrants.
- a Merkel belief dat the Germans are bad, they caused two world wars and perpetrated the holocaust, so the German people must be changed through mass immigration.The Brussels belief seems to be based mainly on the increasing average age in the EU.
It is incomprehensible to me, at the same time fear that robots slowly will do all simple jobs.The Merkel belief, on the other side of the Atlantic, where few understand German, and cannot or do not watch German tv, I wonder how many understand that the 20th century propaganda of the victors still is decisive in German daily life and politics.
The danger of neonazi's and fascism is everywhere.
Nationalism, the equivalent of building gas chambers.The EU also is based on the 20th century fairy tales, only the EU prevented wars in Europe after WWII.
The idea that Germans were victims in two world wars, and, until Hitler became power in 1933, also between the world wars, in unthinkable.
The idea that Endlösung meant deportation to Madagaskar, even more unthinkable.That jews, as one Rothschild wrote to another around 1890, have and had but one enemy, themselves, the world unthinkable is too weak.
Yet
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA
explains it, things as 'close economic cooperation, intermarriage, ostentious behaviour'.
In this respect
'Christianity and the Holocaust of the Hungarian Jewry', Moshe Y Herclz, 1993 New York University press
also is a very interesting book, after jews in the thirties had been banned from many intellectual professions not a single Hungarian newspaper could be published any more.Soros trying to force Muslim immigrants on deeply catholic Hungary, he was born in Hungary, experienced anti semitism, revenge ?
I was recently in Budapest on business and will likely be returning soon: It is the most beautiful city I have ever seen, with stunning architectural restoration projects, almost non-existent police and military presence, food and wines that rival those of Paris, and a very friendly, non-bureaucratic and non-obsese (as opposed to the USA) population. I would like to hear from others who have recently visited and have knowledge of the country. Viszlát! -- JohnFelix-Culpa , says: September 18, 2018 at 11:27 am GMTWhen the fort of folly that Globalism is finally falls, Diana Johnstone's article will be cited as exemplary in exposing its hidden grammar. That fall cannot be far off now given that psy-ops can only work if people are ignorant of the manipulation afoot.Buzz Mohawk , says: September 18, 2018 at 11:46 am GMTGreat opening, Diana. For forty years the presstitude media have leaned on the use of implication as argument to have the ninety-nine percent buy what they are selling. What was not pointed out very well until now, is that their implications are all false. Now, only a dummy among the dumbed-down cannot see it.
For those who have the patience to read the English subtitles, here is an excellent speech given by Orbán in July. Here he outlines his thinking on the issues facing Hungary and the world.Hans Vogel , says: September 18, 2018 at 12:36 pm GMTViktor Orbán is a very intelligent leader, and he has the vast majority of the Hungarian people behind him. History has taught those people many things, and they have had enough. They are not fools. Look to them as an example for all of us.
@John Siman I was recently in Budapest on business and will likely be returning soon: It is the most beautiful city I have ever seen, with stunning architectural restoration projects, almost non-existent police and military presence, food and wines that rival those of Paris, and a very friendly, non-bureaucratic and non-obsese (as opposed to the USA) population. I would like to hear from others who have recently visited and have knowledge of the country. Viszlát! -- John Wherever US influence is not yet overwhelming (and such places are becoming fewer every day, unfortunately), you will still find "old-fashioned" ways of interaction, few fatties, and decent food and drink.Michael Kenny , says: September 18, 2018 at 1:44 pm GMTPeople may become fat for many reasons, but most fatties these days in the Anglosphere belong to the underclass. These wretches get fat from eating expensive trash at McDonald's and other fast food outlets, and drinking Coca Cola and similar sugar-saturated garbage. Their behavior may seem strange because their brains have largely withered away through endless TV watching (mainly US or US-inspired visual trash), their hearing impaired by ear- and mind numbing noise passing for music.
I am afraid the way out of that prison is long and tortuous for all victims of US neoliberalism.
The usual anti-EU propaganda that Ms Johnstone has been peddling for at least a dozen years, although she has recently moved from claiming to be a far-leftist to claiming to be a far-rightest. Whatever pretext "proves" the EU to be evil is trotted out! However, she points out very clearly Viktor Orban's dilemma. The choice for Hungary is between the EU and Putin's tanks. After 40 years of occupation by a Soviet Union in which the ethnic Russians acted as colonial overlords and the general contempt which Hungarians have for Slavs, choosing the latter option would be political suicide for any Hungarian leader. Thus, Orban is stuck with the EU whether he likes it or not and the other Member States are stuck with Orban whether they like it or not. In addition, two of Ms Johnstone's factual claims need to be corrected. The "EU" is taking no step whatsoever to strip Hungary of its political rights. The (according to Ms Johnstone, "largely rubber stamp") European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling on the Member States to sanction Hungary. The EP always does something attention-grabbing in the run up to elections and since Ms Johnstone once worked for the European Parliament (as a far-leftist!), I'm sure she knows that. Imposing sanctions, as always in the EU, is a matter for the sovereign Member States and the decision has to be unanimous. Poland has already said it will not vote for sanctions, so the whole thing is a dead letter. Secondly, the claim that Hungary "never had a colonial empire" is untrue. It never had a colonial empire outside Europe but before 1918, it ruled over Slovakia, most of Croatia, Transylvania, now part of Romania, and the Vojvodina, now part of Serbia (so much for Ms Johnstone's supposed "expertise" on ex-Yugoslavia!). In general, the frantic, almost hysterical, tone of the article suggests that Ms Johnstone doesn't believe that Viktor Orban is going to be the cause of the imminent and inevitable demise of the hated EU that she has been predicting for as long as I have been reading her articles (and that goes back at least 14 years!).Hans Vogel , says: September 18, 2018 at 2:38 pm GMT@Michael Kenny The usual anti-EU propaganda that Ms Johnstone has been peddling for at least a dozen years, although she has recently moved from claiming to be a far-leftist to claiming to be a far-rightest. Whatever pretext "proves" the EU to be evil is trotted out! However, she points out very clearly Viktor Orban's dilemma. The choice for Hungary is between the EU and Putin's tanks. After 40 years of occupation by a Soviet Union in which the ethnic Russians acted as colonial overlords and the general contempt which Hungarians have for Slavs, choosing the latter option would be political suicide for any Hungarian leader. Thus, Orban is stuck with the EU whether he likes it or not and the other Member States are stuck with Orban whether they like it or not. In addition, two of Ms Johnstone's factual claims need to be corrected. The "EU" is taking no step whatsoever to strip Hungary of its political rights. The (according to Ms Johnstone, "largely rubber stamp") European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling on the Member States to sanction Hungary. The EP always does something attention-grabbing in the run up to elections and since Ms Johnstone once worked for the European Parliament (as a far-leftist!), I'm sure she knows that. Imposing sanctions, as always in the EU, is a matter for the sovereign Member States and the decision has to be unanimous. Poland has already said it will not vote for sanctions, so the whole thing is a dead letter. Secondly, the claim that Hungary "never had a colonial empire" is untrue. It never had a colonial empire outside Europe but before 1918, it ruled over Slovakia, most of Croatia, Transylvania, now part of Romania, and the Vojvodina, now part of Serbia (so much for Ms Johnstone's supposed "expertise" on ex-Yugoslavia!). In general, the frantic, almost hysterical, tone of the article suggests that Ms Johnstone doesn't believe that Viktor Orban is going to be the cause of the imminent and inevitable demise of the hated EU that she has been predicting for as long as I have been reading her articles (and that goes back at least 14 years!). Judging by your name, you are not a European, but an Englishman, or from somewhere else in the Anglosphere. It is a good thing for England and especially the English to be leaving the EuSSR, which is more of a prison than commonly realized. Ruled by a greedy class of corrupt and, to make it worse, utterly mediocre, politicians, incompetent and stupid bureaucrats (yes, I know this is an oxymoron) in the exclusive interest of ruthless big corporations, human rights do not exist in the EuSSR.anonymous , [739] Disclaimer says: September 18, 2018 at 3:26 pm GMTSince the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe has seen a wave of privatizations on a scale only comparable to what happened in the former USSR. Nevertheless, taxation has increased to a point where today, the average EuSSR "citizen" pays between 75% and 80% taxes on every Euro he earns. The middle class is on its way to extinction. The judiciary is a joke, education has been dismantled or stupidified, health care is a disaster, save in Southern Europe where many doctors and nurses still have a sense of humanity.
The piece by Mrs. Johnstone may not be flawless, but it says what needs to be said.
Lots of important things switch sides.70 years ago the Democrat party in the American South was the party of regular working class White Southerners and promoted Southern heritage and Southern history including Confederate history.
Then things change.
Now the national Democrat party and the Democrat party in the South hates Whites Southerners, hates Southern heritage and Southern history and are promoting the desecration of Confederate monuments and confederate graves.
60 years ago Hungarian was under Soviet Communist domination and Hungarian patriots looked to the West – especially American and Great Britain to help them achieve some personal freedom from Communism.
Now things have completely changed. It's the Wester (EU) UK BBC, American mass media that restricts freedom and National Christianity in Hungary and pretty much everywhere else. Russia is once again a health European Christian nation. Nobody in Hungary, Eastern Europe or Russia wants to allow their countries to be invaded by millions of 3rd world Muslim rapists.
So I living in Chicago IL (Obama was my neighbor) look to Hungary, Poland, Russia and Eastern Europe for any small dose of freedom.
Things change.
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Sep 02, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Jim in MN -> Majestic12 Fri, 08/31/2018 - 20:30 Permalink
Ace006 -> Jim in MN Sat, 09/01/2018 - 03:36 PermalinkNot Pepe's best sauce, but always worth a read. He's best when he's reporting from the field. His armchair geopolitics aren't that much better than anyone else's.
That said, Eurasian integration, Western Hemispheric energy independence, the populist revolt against forced globalization/sovereignty elimination/kleptocracy and the outbreak of global peace are all changing the chessboard profoundly. Most of the premises of traditional imperialist power politics are simply blown away. Instead, a new 'Chinese Peace with Russian Muscle' is the de facto hegemony in the vast bulk of the world, including parts of South American and most of Africa. With the Brits and French too slow and stupid to react, the Germans as weaselly and venal as ever, and the Japanese comatose, the hulk known as the G7 is heeling over into full capsize mode. And, good riddance.
Now the G20 has to either stand up or collapse. Much depends on which outcome develops.
However it works out, we can all stand and cheer that it is not a US dependent historical course any more. We've ceded our moral and military leadership. Perhaps we can reform, even if by bloody revolution, and re-emerge with something to give the rest of the world. Free markets, liberty, democracy, freedom of thought......the future is now really a question of whether any of these ideas will have a chance in a remade global order dominated, so far, by dictatorship, corruption, and moral crime.
So, we tend to our own house now. Anyone got a pack of matches?
DEDA CVETKO -> Majestic12 Fri, 08/31/2018 - 21:57 Permalink** We've ceded our moral and military leadership **
Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Benghazi, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Georgia, NATO expansion, the Clintoons, the Bush dynasty of mediocrity, our open border, offshoring, Muslim ass kissing, free-ranging Antifa filth, media monopoly and lies, foreigners taking university slots, sexual confusion, ass kissing homosexuals, groveling before bat shit crazy feminists, destruction of our basic legal document through judicial usurpation, diseased leftists spouting lies and delusion, excusing black dysfunction, fiscal incontinence, unaddressd monopolies, attacks on free speech, criminal immunity for elites, a president who won't exercise his authority and tolerates insubordination, an unaccountable bureaucracy, a loose cannon prosecutor, Jewish political domination, slobbering over Israel as though Jerusalem is our capitol not Washington, denigration of the white majority culture, celebration of miscegenation, degradation of marriage, our diseased educational establishment, rampant vote fraud, illegal and unconstitutional wars, chest beating about "exceptionalism," and a generally crap culture all say you're right.
hongdo -> Conscious Reviver Sat, 09/01/2018 - 15:37 PermalinkThere will be no sudden and dramatic collapse. There will only be a slow, painful, never-ending, degrading decay into nothingness, a death from one million pundits, a process readily apparent (literally) all around us. Tune in to CNN, see for yourself.
sarz -> shuckster Sat, 09/01/2018 - 05:59 PermalinkI see your point, but I am not convinced bankers work independently. Bankers do not have a monopoly on psychotics. The psychotics in gov have as much greed and craving for power as the bankers and I believe they work around, with, and against each other for various reasons just like everything else in the world works. Thus a one dimensional theory will not be complete - and maybe that is what you are arguing: to include bankers in geopolitics. I agree the bankers are a big part of the rotten problem but like when I am overseas - I watch the guys with the guns.
me or you Fri, 08/31/2018 - 20:14 PermalinkMost of the planet has put up with a lot of shit from America It's good that it's finally coming to an end.
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction... We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
George Kennan, State Department memo, 1948
America never gave up on the idealistic slogans -- the figleaf for the Empire of Chaos. Finally shutting the fuck up after the game is over will be welcome.
At least neither Russia nor China are bombing hospitals, schools and bus full of children for oil.
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Sep 02, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Alastair Crooke took a great shot at deconstructing why Western global elites are terrified of the Russian conceptualization of Eurasia.
It's because "they 'scent' a stealth reversion to the old, pre-Socratic values: for the Ancients the very notion of 'man', in that way, did not exist. There were only men: Greeks, Romans, barbarians, Syrians, and so on. This stands in obvious opposition to universal, cosmopolitan 'man'."
So it's Heraclitus versus Voltaire – even as "humanism" as we inherited it from the Enlightenment, is de facto over.
Whatever is left roaming our wilderness of mirrors depends on the irascible mood swings of the Goddess of the Market.
No wonder one of the side effects of progressive Eurasia integration will be not only a death blow to Bretton Woods but also to "democratic" neoliberalism.
What we have now is also a remastered version of sea power versus land powers. Relentless Russophobia is paired with supreme fear of a Russia-Germany rapprochement – as Bismarck wanted, and as Putin and Merkel recently hinted at. The supreme nightmare for the U.S. is in fact a truly Eurasian Beijing-Berlin-Moscow partnership.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has not even begun; according to the official Beijing timetable, we're still in the planning phase. Implementation starts next year. The horizon is 2039.
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Aug 31, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
... ... ...
At that time I was certain that the globalists would find great use for a Trump presidency, more so in fact than a Clinton presidency. However, I was not sure whether Trump was controlled opposition or simply a useful scapegoat for the economic crisis that globalists are clearly engineering. Now it appears that he is both.
Trump's history was already suspicious. He was bailed out of his considerable debts surrounding his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City in the early 1990s by Rothschild banking agent Wilber Ross , which saved him from embarrassment and possibly saved his entire fortune . This alone was not necessarily enough to deny Trump the benefit of the doubt in my view.
Many businessmen end up dealing with elitist controlled banks at some point in their careers. But when Trump entered office and proceeded to load his cabinet with ghouls from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Council on Foreign Relations and give Wilber Ross the position of Commerce Secretary, it became obvious that Trump is in fact a puppet for the banks.
Some liberty movement activists ignore this reality and attempt to argue around the facts of Trump's associations. "What about all the media opposition to Trump? Doesn't this indicate he's not controlled?" they say. I say, not really.
If one examines the history of fake coups, there is ALWAYS an element of orchestrated division, sometimes between the globalists and their own puppets. This is called 4th Generation warfare, in which almost all divisions are an illusion and the real target is the public psyche.
This is not to say that leftist opposition to Trump and conservatives is not real. It absolutely is. The left has gone off the ideological deep end into an abyss of rabid frothing insanity, but the overall picture is not as simple as "Left vs. Right." Instead, we need to look at the situation more like a chess board, and above that chess board looms the globalists, attempting to control all the necessary pieces on BOTH sides. Every provocation by leftists is designed to elicit a predictable response from conservatives to the point that we become whatever the globalists want us to become.
... ... ...
As this is taking place, conservatives are growing more sensitive to the notion of a leftist coup, from silencing of conservative voices to an impeachment of Trump based on fraudulent ideas of "Russian collusion."
To be clear, the extreme left has no regard for individual liberties or constitutional law. They use the Constitution when it suits them, then try to tear it down when it doesn't suit them. However, the far-left is also a paper tiger; it is not a true threat to conservative values because its membership marginal, it is weak, immature and irrational. Their only power resides in their influence within the mainstream media, but with the MSM fading in the face of the alternative media, their social influence is limited. It is perhaps enough to organize a "coup," but it would inevitably be a failed coup.
Therefore it is not leftists that present the greatest threat to individual liberty, but the globalist influenced Trump administration. A failed coup on the part of the left could be used as a rationale for incremental and unconstitutional "safeguards." And conservatives may be fooled into supporting these measures as the threat is overblown.
I have always said that the only people that can destroy conservative principles are conservatives. Conservatives diminish their own principles every time they abandon their conscience and become exactly like the monsters they hope to defeat. And make no mistake, the globalists are well aware of this strategy.
Carroll Quigley, a pro-globalist professor and the author of Tragedy and Hope, a book published decades ago which outlined the plan for a one world economic and political system, is quoted in his address ' Dissent: Do We Need It ':
"They say, "The Congress is corrupt." I ask them, "What do you know about the Congress? Do you know your own Congressman's name?" Usually they don't. It's almost a reflex with them, like seeing a fascist pig in a policeman. To them, all Congressmen are crooks. I tell them they must spend a lot of time learning the American political system and how it functions, and then work within the system. But most of them just won't buy that. They insist the system is totally corrupt. I insist that the system, the establishment, whatever you call it, is so balanced by diverse forces that very slight pressures can produce perceptible results.
For example, I've talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are pretty generally in this group."
Is a "failed coup" being staged in order to influence conservatives to become the very "fascists" the left accuses us of being? The continuing narrative certainly suggests that this is the game plan.
* * *
If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here . We greatly appreciate your patronage.
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Aug 31, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Aug 30, 2018 5:38:27 PM | 34
Too Funny! Trump whines, threatens pullout from WTO again! After decades of bullying nations and impoverishing their people, other nations are using the Outlaw US Empire's WTO as a weapon against it, so Trump cries Unfair! As I wrote above, Big Money's trapped within its own web.
The "Softies" are yet another entity in the Smoke & Mirrors Fun House designed to fool and gain citizenry's consent to be robbed blind.
Russians already went through that and are very wary as illustrated by the very sensitive nature of the recent Pension System Reform Debate and legislation that Putin had to solve using his political capital.
As with all politicians, you won't know what you elected until you learn how your rep votes issues, although some can be anticipated by examining their past behavior as with our pseudo Democrat-Socialist.
For dessert today, I offer Russia's Grand Strategy Revisited published on the 24th. The Outlaw US Empire is in the midst of a Seldon Crisis but lacks the means to even recognize the spectacular mess its made for itself, much of which is quite visibly articulated in its NDS I linked to above.
By every metric I've observed, the USA's citizenry from all political POVs wants a return to Reality for that's the only basis from which to address and solve the many domestic problems.
Big Money refuses as its addicted to Smoke & Mirrors since that's what was used to gain its power and will now double-down.
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Aug 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,
No matter how globalism is repackaged, it always smells the same way in the end.
For decades, the globalists have subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) been moving us toward a world in which national borders have essentially been made meaningless . The ultimate goal, of course, is to merge all the nations of the world into a "one world socialist utopia" with a global government, a global economic system and even a global religion.
The European Union is a model for what the elite hope to achieve eventually on a global scale . The individual nations still exist, but once inside the European Union you can travel wherever you want, economic rules have been standardized across the Union, and European institutions now have far more power than the national governments.
Liberty and freedom have been greatly restricted for the "common good", and a giant horde of nameless, faceless bureaucrats constantly micromanages the details of daily life down to the finest details.
With each passing day the EU becomes more Orwellian in nature, and that is why so many in Europe are completely fed up with it.
Rich Monk Tue, 08/14/2018 - 16:28 Permalink
taketheredpill Tue, 08/14/2018 - 16:28 PermalinkThe (((Money Changers))) have always been Humanity's greatest threat!
I would support TERM LIMITS on Congress and Senate...
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Aug 14, 2018 | therealnews.com
PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay.
The Financial Times chief economic columnist Martin Wolf has called Trump's trade wars with Europe and Canada, but obviously the big target is China, he's called this a war on the liberal world order. Well, what does this mean for China? China's strategy, the distinct road to socialism which seems to take a course through various forms of state hypercapitalism. What does this mean for China? The Chinese strategy was developed in what they thought would be a liberal world order. Now it may not be that at all.
Now joining us to discuss what the trade war means for China, and to have a broader conversation on just what is the Chinese model of state capitalism is Minqi Li, who now joins us from Utah. Minqi is the professor, is a professor of economics at the University of Utah. He's the author of The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy, and the editor of Red China website. Thanks for joining us again, Minqi.
MINQI LI: Thank you, Paul.
PAUL JAY: So I don't think anyone, including the Chinese, was expecting President Trump to be president Trump. But once he was elected, it was pretty clear that Trump and Bannon and the various cabal around Trump, the plan was twofold. One, regime change in Iran, which also has consequences for China. And trade war with China. It was declared that they were going to take on China and change in a fundamental way the economic relationship with China and the United States. And aimed, to a large extent, trying to deal with the rise of China as an equal, or becoming equal, economy, and perhaps someday in the not-too-distant future an equal global power, certainly as seen through the eyes of not just Trumpians in Washington, but much of the Washington political and economic elites.
So what does this mean for China's strategy now? Xi Jinping is now the leader of the party, leader of the government, put at a level virtually equal to Mao Tse-tung. But his plan for development of the Chinese economy did not, I don't think, factor in a serious trade war with the United States.
MINQI LI: OK. As you said, Trump was not expected. Which meant that Trump in fact was not the consensus candidate of the American capitalist class back to the 2016 election. So with respect to these economic policies, especially about his trade protectionist measures, these new tariffs imposed on the Chinese goods, let's put it this way: These are not, certainly not the traditional kind of neoliberal economic policy as we know it. So some sections of the American manufacturing sector [capitalists] may be happy about this. But I would say the majority of the American capitalists probably would not approve this kind of trade war against China.
Now, on the Chinese part, and we know that China has been on these parts, there was capitalist development, and moreover it has been based on export-led economic growth model and with exploitation of cheap labor. So on the Chinese part, ironically, China very much depends on these overall what Martin Wolf called liberal global order, which might better be called the model of global neoliberal capitalism. So China actually much more depends on that.
And so you have, indeed there are serious trade conflicts between China and U.S. that will, of course, undermine China's economic model. And so far China has responded to these new threats of trade war by promising that China, despite whatever happened to the U.S., China would still be committed to the model of openness, committed to privatization and the financial liberalization. The Chinese government has declared new measures to open up a few economic sectors to foreign investment.
Now, with respect to the trade itself, at the moment the U.S. has imposed tariffs on, 25 percent tariffs on the worth of $34 billion of Chinese goods. And then Trump has threatened to impose new tariffs on the additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. But this amount at the moment is still a small part of China's economy, about 3 percent of the Chinese GDP. So the impact at the moment is limited, but certainly has created a lot of uncertainty for the global and the Chinese business community.
PAUL JAY: So given that this trade war could, one, get a lot bigger and a lot more serious, and/or even if they kind of patch it up for now, there's a lot of forces within the United States, both for economic and geopolitical reasons. Economic being the discussion about China taking American intellectual property rights, becoming the new tech sector hub of the world, even overpassing the American tech sector, which then has geopolitical implications; especially when it comes to the military. If China becomes more advanced the United States in artificial intelligence as applied to the military, that starts to, at least in American geopolitical eyes, threaten American hegemony around the world.
There are a lot of reasons building up, and it's certainly not new, and it's not just Trump. For various ways, the Americans want to restrain China. Does this start to make the Chinese think that they need to speed up the process of becoming more dependent on their own domestic market and less interested in exporting cheap labor? But for that to happen Chinese wages have to go up a lot more significantly, which butts into the interests of the Chinese billionaire class.
MINQI LI: I think you are right. And so for China to rearrange towards this kind of domestic consumption-led model of economic development, the necessary condition is that you have income, wealth redistribution towards the workers, towards poor people. And that is something that the Chinese capitalists will resist. And so that is why and so far China has not succeeded in transforming itself away from this export-led model based on exploitation of cheap labor.
PAUL JAY: You know, there's some sections of the left in various parts of the world that do see the Chinese model as a more rational version of capitalism, and do see this because they've maintained the control of the Chinese Communist Party over the politics, and over economic planning, that do see this idea that this is somehow leading China towards a kind of socialism. If nothing else, a more rational planned kind of capitalism. Is that, is there truth to this?
MINQI LI: Well, first of all, China is not socialist at all today. So income of economic sector, the [space] sector accounts for a small number, a small fraction of the overall economy, by various measurements.
And then regarding the rationality of China's economic model, you might put it this way: The Chinese capitalists might be more rational than the American capitalists in the sense that they still use most of their profits for investment, instead of just financial speculation. So that might be rational from the capitalist perspective. But on the other hand, regarding the exploitation of workers- and the Chinese workers still have to work under sweatshop conditions- and regarding the damage to the environment, the Chinese model is not rational at all.
PAUL JAY: My understanding of people that think this model works better, at least, than some of the other capitalist models is that there's a need to go through this phase of Chinese workers, yes, working in sweatshop conditions, and yes, wages relatively low. But overall, the Chinese economy has grown by leaps and bounds, and China's position in the world is more and more powerful. And this creates the situation, as more wealth accumulates, China is better positioned to address some of the critical issues facing China and the world. And then, as bad as pollution is, and such, China does appear to be out front in terms of developing green technologies, solar, sustainable technology.
MINQI LI: OK. Now, Chinese economy has indeed been growing rapidly. It used to grow like double-digit growth rate before 2010. But now China's growth rate has slowed down just under 7 percent in recent years, according to the official statistics. And moreover, a significant part of China's growth these days derives rom the real estate sector development. And so there has been this discussion about this growing housing market bubble. And it used to be that this housing price inflation was limited to a few big cities. But for the first half of 2018, according to the latest data, the national average housing price has grown by 11 percent compared to the same period last year. And that translates into a pace of doubling every six years.
And so that has generated lots of social resentment. And so not only the working class these days are priced out of the housing market. Moreover, even the middle class is increasingly priced out of the housing market. So that is the major concern. And in the long run, I think that China's current model of accumulation will also face the challenge of growing social conflicts. Worker protests. As well as resources constrained and environmental damage. And regarding the issue of China's investment in renewable energy, it is true. China is the largest investor in renewable energy development, in the solar panels. And although China is of all the largest investor in about everything.
And so China is still the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, accounting for almost 30 percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions in the world every year. And then China's own oil production in decline, but China's oil consumption is still rising. So as a result, China has become the world's largest oil importer. That could make the Chinese economy vulnerable to the next major oil price shock.
PAUL JAY: And how seriously is climate change science taken in China? If one takes the science seriously, one sees the need for urgent transformation to green technology. An urgent reduction of carbon emission. Not gradual, not incremental, but urgent. Did the Chinese- I mean, it's not, it's so not taken seriously in the United States that a climate denier can get elected president. But did the Chinese take this more seriously? Because you don't get the same, any sense of urgency about their policy, either.
MINQI LI: Well, yeah. So like many other governments, the Chinese government also pays lip service to the obligation of climate stabilization. But unfortunately, with respect to policy, with respect to mainstream media, it's not taken very seriously within China. And so although China's carbon dioxide emissions actually stabilized somewhat over the past few years, but is starting to grow again in 2017, and I expect it will continue to grow in the coming year.
PAUL JAY: I mean, I can understand why, for example, Russia is not in any hurry to buy into climate change science. Its whole economy depends on oil. Canada also mostly pays lip service because the Alberta tar sands is so important to the Canadian economy. Shale oil is so important to the American economy, as well as the American oil companies own oil under the ground all over the world. But China is not an oil country. You know, they're not dependent on oil income. You'd think it'd be in China's interest to be far more aggressive, not only in terms of how good it looks to the world that China would be the real leader in mitigating, reducing, eliminating the use of carbon-based fuels, but still they're not. I mean, not at the rate scientists say needs to be done.
MINQI LI: Not at all. Although China does not depend on all on oil for income, but China depends on coal a lot. And the coal is still something like 60 percent of China's overall energy consumption. And so it's still very important for China's energy.
PAUL JAY: What- Minqi, where does the coal mostly come from? Don't they import a lot of that coal?
MINQI LI: Mostly from China itself. Even though, you know, China is the world's largest coal producer, on top of that China is either the largest or the second-largest coal importer in the world market as well. And then on top of that, China is also consuming an increasing amount of oil and natural gas, especially natural gas. And so although natural gas is not as polluting as coal, it's still polluting. And so it's expected China will also become the world's largest importer of natural gas by the year 2019. So you are going to have China to be simultaneously the largest importer of oil, natural gas, and coal.
PAUL JAY: The Chinese party, just to get back to the trade war issue and to end up with, the idea of this Chinese nation standing up, Chinese sovereignty, Chinese nationalism, it's a powerful theme within this new Chinese discourse. I'm not saying Chinese nationalism is new, but it's got a whole new burst of energy. How does China, if necessary to reach some kind of compromise with the United States on the trade war, how does China do that without looking like it's backing down to Trump?
MINQI LI: Well, yes, difficult task for the Chinese party to balance. What they have been right now is that on the one hand they promise to the domestic audience they are not going to make concessions towards the U.S., while in fact they are probably making concessions. And then on the other hand the outside world, and they make announcement that they will not change from the reform and openness policy, which in practice means that they will not change from the neoliberal direction of China's development, and they will continue down the path towards financial liberalization. And so that is what they are trying to balance right now.
PAUL JAY: I said finally, but this is finally. Do the Americans have a case? Does the Trump argument have a legitimate case that the Chinese, on the one hand, want a liberal world order in terms of trade, and open markets, and such? On the other hand are not following intellectual property law, property rights and law, the way other advanced capitalist countries supposedly do. Is there something to that case?
MINQI LI: Well, you know, let's say the Chinese government right now, even though is led by the so-called Communist Party, is actually much more committed to the neoliberal global order that the Trump administration in the U.S. - but I don't want to make justifications for the neoliberal global order. But let's put it this way: The Trump administration of this trade protectionist policy, although not justified, it reflects fundamental social conflicts within the U.S. itself, and that probably cannot be sorted out by the Americans' current political system.
PAUL JAY: So the crisis- you know, when you look at the American side and the Chinese side, including the deep debt bomb people talk about in China, there really is no sorting out of this crisis.
MINQI LI: So the overall neoliberal regime has become much more unstable.
PAUL JAY: All right. Thanks for joining us, Minqi. I hope we can pick this up again soon.
MINQI LI: OK. Thank you.
PAUL JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
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Aug 14, 2018 | russia-insider.com
Tharoor quotes from New York Times columnist David Brooks who concluded that Trump's behavior was that "of a man who wants the alliance to fail." He quotes extensively from Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and leader of the Liberal political fraction in the European Parliament fighting for a much more integrated EU, who sees Trump as the enemy of liberal internationalism and ally of his own alt right enemies in Europe.
Tharoor also brings into play Martin Wolf of the Financial Times , who delivered a scathing attack on Trump for his rejection of the West: " today the U.S. president appears hostile to core American values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law; he feels no loyalty to allies; he rejects open markets; and he despises international institutions."
In the 23 July issue of "Today's World View," Tharoor takes advantage of the time gone by since Helsinki to refine the conclusions. He offers a pithy commentary from Susan Glasser of The New Yorker : "We are witnessing nothing less than the breakdown of American foreign policy."
In the same issue, Tharoor notes that public reaction to Trump in Helsinki is less pronounced than one might suppose from reading the pundits. He offers the following remarks of colleagues on the results of a recent poll: "Most Americans do not feel Trump went 'too far' in supporting Puitn, and while more Americans say U.S. leadership has gotten weaker than stronger under Trump, his ratings on this question are slightly improved from last fall."
If we go back in time to the days following Trump's visit to the NATO gathering in Brussels, we find in the headlines of the 11 July issue another take on what Trump is doing:
"Trump's NATO trip shows 'America First' is 'America Alone.'"
Here we read about Trump's insistence that America "stop footing Europe's bill" for its defense, namely his demand that all NATO allies pay up 2% of GDP at once, not in the remote future; and that they prepare to double that to 4% very quickly. By intentional abrasiveness, these moves by Trump are, Tharoor tells us, "undercutting the post-World War II order in pursuit of short-term, and likely illusory, wins."
All of these comments address the question of what Trump opposes. However, Tharoor is unable to say what, if anything, Trump stands for. There are only hints: continued US hegemony but without the ideological cover; might makes right; nationalism and the disputes that lead to war.
Does this make sense? Or is it just another way of saying that Trump's foreign policy stance is an inconsistent patchwork, illogical and doomed to fail while causing much pain and destruction along the way?
I fully agree with the proposition that Donald Trump is ripping up the post-Cold War international order and is seeking to end NATO and the rest of the alliance system by which the United States has maintained its global hegemony for decades. But I believe this destructive side is guided by a creative vision of where he wants to take US foreign policy.
This new foreign policy of Donald Trump is based on an uncompromising reading of the teachings of the Realist School of international affairs, such as we have not seen since the days of President Teddy Roosevelt, who was its greatest practitioner in US history.
This is not isolationism, because Trump is acting to defend what he sees as US national interests in foreign trade everywhere and in geopolitics in one or another part of the world. However, it is a world in which the US is cut free from the obligations of its alliances which entail maintenance of overseas bases everywhere at the cost of more than half its defense budget. He wants to end the risks of being embroiled in regional wars that serve our proxies, not core US national interests. And he is persuaded that by a further build-up of military might at home, by adding new hi-tech materiel the US can secure its interests abroad best of all.
I reach these conclusions from the snippets of Trump remarks which appear in the newspapers of daily record but are intentionally left as unrelated and anecdotal, whereas when slotted together they establish the rudiments of an integrated worldview and policy.
For example, I take his isolated remark that the United States should not be prepared to go to war to defend Montenegro, which recently passed NATO accession, because Montenegro had been a trouble-maker in the past. That remark underwent virtually no analysis in the media, though it could be made only by someone who understood, remarkably, the role of Montenegro at the Russian imperial court of Nicholas II precisely as "troublemaker," whose dynastic family aided in their own small way the onset of WWI.
Donald Trump is not a public speaker. He is not an intellectual. We cannot expect him to issue some "Trump Doctrine" setting out his Realist conception of the geopolitical landscape. All we get is Tweets. This inarticulate side of Trump has been used by his enemies to argue he has no policy.
In fact, Trump is the only Realist on the landscape.
Going back to 2016, I thought he was being guided by Henry Kissinger during the campaign and then in the first months of his presidency, I misjudged entirely. Trump is true to the underlying principles of Realism without compromise, whereas Henry K. made his peace with the prevailing Wilsonian Idealism of the American Establishment a couple of decades ago in order to remain welcome in the Oval Office and not to be entirely marginalized.
Trump's vision of Realism draws from the source in the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648 with its guiding concept of sovereign nation-states that do not intervene in others' domestic affairs. It further draws on the notions of raison d'état or national interest developed by the French court of Louis XIV and then taken further by "perfidious Albion" in the eighteenth century, with temporary and ever changing combinations of states in balance of power realignments of competitors. The history of the Realist School was set out magnificently by Kissinger in his 1994 work Diplomacy . It is a pity that the master himself strayed from true and narrow.
In all of this, you have the formula for Trump's respect, even admiration for Putin, since that also is now Vladimir Vladimirovich's concept of Russia's way forward: as a strong sovereign state that sets its own course without the constraints of alliances and based on its own military might.
The incredible thing is how a man with such poor communication skills, a man who does not read much came to such an integrated vision that outstrips the conceptual abilities of his enemies, his friends and everyone in between.
We are tempted to look for a mentor, and one who comes to mind is Steve Bannon, who is very articulate, razor-sharp in his intellect and who provided Trump with much of the domestic content of his 2016 campaign from the alt right playbook. And though Bannon publicly broke with Trump in their falling out over his ever diminishing role in the Administration, Bannon's ongoing project, in particular his Movement to influence European politics and shift it to the Right by coordinating activities across the Continent during the parliamentary elections of May 2019, very closely parallel what Trump's ambassador in Berlin seems to be doing in Trump's name.
It may well be that the President and his confidantes find it prudent for him to play the hapless fool, the clueless disrupter of the global political landscape until he has the support in Congress to roll out the new foreign policy that is now in gestation.
The logical consequence of such a Realist approach to foreign policy will be to reach an understanding with the world's other two principal military powers, Russia and China, regarding respective spheres of influence in their geographic proximity. But I do not believe we will see a G-3 succeeding America's unipolar moment. Given the predispositions of both Russia and China, we are more likely to see a broader board of governors of global policy in the form of the G-20, ushering in the multipolar age. In such a formulation, regional conflicts will be settled locally by the interested parties and with the major powers involved only as facilitators, not parties to conflict. That promises a much more stable and peaceful future, something which none of Donald Trump's detractors can begin to imagine as his legacy.
Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His latest book, "Does the United States Have a Future?" was published on 12 October 2017. Both paperback and e-book versions are available for purchase on http://www.amazon.com and all affiliated Amazon websites worldwide. See the recent professional review http://theduran.com/does-the-united-states-have-a-future-a-new-book-by-gilbert-doctorow-review/ For a video of the book presentation made at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. on 7 December 2017 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciW4yod8upg
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Aug 08, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com
DancehallStyle -> AgainstDarkness , 6 Aug 2018 20:02
US corps have bought out UK and EU corps and then outsource the work to India and China. US Corps = Globalisation.DancehallStyle -> AnthonyFlack , 6 Aug 2018 19:57IT tech and even intricate clothing are too fiddly for automata.ID4355982 , 6 Aug 2018 19:52Americans view is if other countries like China make too much money and will overtake them then they will take it all back.
They did that with Japan. They also destroyed Soviet's economy.
trump has wrecked environmental policy, trade policy and domestic social policy....the upshots will be: 1- a much more toxic environment & much higher level of respiratory disease and cancerous related ailments; overall poorer health & health care for the average citizen 2- higher prices for imported goods, lower level of trade exports, fewer US based jobs and more off-shoring of US jobs 3- a substantial increase in the homeless population in the urban areas of this country; increased rates of poverty for the poor, lower economic prosperity for the lower and lower middle class income brackets; wage stagnation for the middle & upper middle income brackets; less advanced education & lower worker productivity and innovation to name just a few of the impacts created by this idiot....in simple in English, Trump and his so-called initiatives are shafting this country in almost every way possibleIlya Grushevskiy -> RepaTea , 6 Aug 2018 19:17What part of international law is not just pissed on toiler paper strewn over the floors of a urinal? Which post WWII president respected this law?Brian Black -> bobthebuilder2017 , 6 Aug 2018 19:13None.
International law, since WWII failed. It failed in '47 when no referendum was held in Palestine - against Chapter 1, Article 1 paragraph 2 of the UN Charter. It failed in Crimea, when the results of such a referendum was spat on by the previous war criminal to sit in the Oval Office. It fails now as sanctions are used unilaterally - being equivalent to the use of force in result, they should be
But then let's not stop at after the war. The US is the only country to nuke civilians. 6/7 US four star generals at the time said the action had no strategic or tactical purpose whatsoever.
The US is what ISIS dreams to be, the sooner it falls into obscurity the better.
Pure nonsense. The Great Depression began on October 29, 1929. FDR was inaugurated on March 4, 1933 nearly 4 years after it began. Hoover had actually only been in office for just over 6 months before Black Tuesday. GDP began growing and unemployment began falling in 1933 shortly after FDR took office. The Depression officially came to an end in 1939 when GDP returned to pre-Depression levels.Ilya Grushevskiy , 6 Aug 2018 19:09There is no long term US growth. There is a debt default after people realize the fact that the top of the whole US government is incompetent. That it has chained itself to such astronomic liabilities for useless wars (as the Empire has not succeeded in world hegemony), is even sadder. It coould have spent the $5tn of Iraq and Afghanistan on building shit, but instead it bombed shit.gmiklashek950 , 6 Aug 2018 17:59Trump doesn't matter for US long run - in 5-10 years time the country will be only found in history books.
Remember Kruschev's (sp?) last words on leaving office, and I'm paraphrasing: "Don't worry about America, they'll spend themselves to death (just like we have)". Continued economic growth is a wet dream of Wall Street origin. We are massively overpopulated and rapidly using up earth's natural resources at an increasingly unsustainable rate. We must begin to reduce our growth, not keep increasing it. Population density stress is killing us now and only increasing every day along with the 220,000 new mouths to feed that we are turning out into a world that has no room for 28,000,000 homeless migrants already. Just how crazy are we really. If this article is to be believed, we are nuts. E.F. Schumacher is rolling in his grave! Stress R UsAgainstDarkness , 6 Aug 2018 16:56Trump/the US is attempting to renegotiate globalisation.Levente Tanka -> plakias , 6 Aug 2018 16:34It is time for the rest of the western world to follow suit.
The contribution of a president to the national debt depends a bit on how you calculate it. You could simply look at rhe dates of inauguration or go a step further and look at the fiscal years. For the latter see :https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-and-percent-3306296
In absolute terms Obama is indeed at the top of the list, percentagewise his predecessor played a larger part. No matter how you look at it or what the causes were, under Bush and Obama the U.S. debt seems to have spiralled out of of control and Trump is doing bugger all to stop that trend.
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Aug 07, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
For consider the fruits of free trade policy during the last 25 years : the frozen wages of U.S. workers, $12 trillion in U.S. trade deficits, 55,000 factories lost, 6 million manufacturing jobs gone, China surpassing the U.S in manufacturing, all causing a backlash that pushed a political novice to the Republican nomination and into the presidency.
To maintain a belief in the superiority of free trade to economic patriotism, in the face of such results, is to recognize that this belief system is impervious to contradictory proof.
Brazen Heist II -> brushhog Tue, 08/07/2018 - 09:51 Permalink
sarcrilege -> Brazen Heist II Tue, 08/07/2018 - 10:12 PermalinkThe sad reality that I see all around is that Western civilization has been hijacked by degenerate hyenas like Rome was sacked from within first before being sacked externally. The institutions that once made the West a leader and a model, have been corrupted, tainted and filled with anti-humanists and crony corporatists. Greed is out of control and "popular culture" is spreading decay. The hollowing out will continue until these parasites find another host to leech off. Will it be China? Will it be a global government? Will it be another planet? Who knows.
Once upon a time figures like Rosenstein, Mueller, Brennan, Browder, Clapper, Clinton etc would be just fucking taken out or punished. Instead of that, they get to wander their toxic asses around like protected peacocks, all on tax payers dime, with their shitty agendas, and their shitty handlers cheering on the degeneracy and assault on the truth and the people.
If this is what "civilization" has boiled down to, count me the fuck out of it. The 5000 year old human farming experiment is merely switching straight jackets. Its the same old story that ever was, ever since we gave up the nomadic lifestyle. In a way, its probably an inevitability, given our flawed human nature, and the size of the population....and average intellect. The desire to be 'lead' by some ruling class, no matter what flavour of 'ism' it is, eventually all turns to the same end result....shit. Unless this global awakening can muster into a force to be reckoned with, and not be swayed by divide and conquer tactics, nothing will change. So far with the toxic Left vs Right divide, and countless other divides, the only beneficiaries of this are the ones at the top of the pyramid.
HopefulCynical -> sarcrilege Tue, 08/07/2018 - 10:28 Permalinknature will take care of all this in due time...we just may not like the outcome
Endgame Napoleon -> Big Creek Rising Tue, 08/07/2018 - 12:14 PermalinkPat Buchanan: Are Globalists Plotting A Counter-Revolution?
HopefulCynical : Is the sky blue? Is water wet? Is fire hot?
FFS, look at the goddamn purge on (((Social media))). Of COURSE the (((globalists))) are attempting a counter-revolution.
We all need to move to alt-tech: Minds , Gab , Bitchute . Even if you don't have a (((social media))) presence, consider getting an alt-media presence. We've been wondering when the next phase would begin, whewn it would be time to take further action. Well, it's here.
First step in this next phase is to set up multiple lines of communication not under (((establishment))) control. Even if you seldom use them, set up accounts; advise those you know to do likewise. Wanna see the establishment panic? If they see the subscriber count for the alt-tech sites suddenly quadruple (or more) in response to their purge, they'll shit themselves. They'll probably attempt to pull domain registrars and financial processing services from those sites.
Then - the motherfucking games begin, bitchez.
[EDIT:] According to Styx, the alt-tech sites are already seeing a surge in membership. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZP1fwkdupg Let the (((establishment))) diaper-filling begin!
Chupacabra-322 -> Brazen Heist II Tue, 08/07/2018 - 12:36 PermalinkBut will "negotiations" and regulatory loosening on issues like the environment and worker safety, which have gotten out of hand in the US to the disadvantage of underemployed citizens, offset the extremely low wages offered to Asian and Latin American workers in the countries where American-owned companies shipped over 6 million jobs, canceling out the SS-retirement fund contributions that would have been made by American workers [and] employers if the jobs had been kept here?
Cheap labor seems to TRUMP everything with US employers.
Running from the SS trust fund might be another reason for their abandonment of America.
Cheap labor Trumps everything here in the USA, too, and the cheap-labor pool is aided and abetted by the welfare system. That is why US employers prefer an often extremely absentee welfare and progressive-tax-code-subsidized labor market, receiving .gov-financed monthly bills and up to $6,431 in refundable child-tax-credit cash for US-born instant-citizen kids.
Contrary to myth, hard work, daily and all-day attendance and even work productivity, like every-month quota meeting, is NOT preferred by American employers for most of the jobs left here in the USA.
The welfare-eligible 42 million are (on the books) not hard workers, but part-time workers, staying under the income limits for welfare programs. I KNOW that from working at the Department of Human Services, where single moms and the womb-productive girlfriends of illegal and legal immigrants MUST submit proof of a single-breadwinner's part-time, traceable earnings to get the free stuff.
The earnings must fall below the income limits for welfare programs that ALWAYS reward part-time work in womb-productive single-breadwinner households of citizens and noncitizens. You cannot work full time in a minimum-wage job while meeting the income limits. When I worked at DHS, both the EBT and monthly cash assistance income limits were BELOW $900 per month......
Even if Trump eventually lures US corporations back here with looser regulations and tax cuts, rather than just unleashing a stock buy-back spree, it will not matter to the 101 million American citizens of working age who are out of the labor force and the 78 million gig pieceworkers, not if this welfare-rigged labor market of citizens and noncitizens continues to be the norm.
You cannot compete with a bigly labor market full of welfare-fetching citizens & noncitizens who do not need pay sufficient to cover rent due to their womb production.
Only a Deplorables First immigration reform would address that issue, including a big reduction in the number of welfare-eligible legal immigrants let in each year. The number 1.5 million is too many. This -- no more and no less than illegal immigration -- keeps wages down, but the illegal immigration has the added bonus of making America more dangerous.
The impasse on the immigration issue is the reason why I am skeptical of the value of current trade-war maneuvering, even though I am glad that Trump is addressing that general issue.
The other thing that complicates this trade war is the way that globalist elites have sold America out over the years, not just destroying the middle class with all of this offshoring and welfare-supported illegal labor, but also getting the US economy 1) waist-deep in debt, 2) dependent on foreign investment and 3) subject to getting jerked around by Machiavellian currency manipulation that non-math people, like me, really don't understand.
It sounds kind of dangerous, though, even just the argument that Stockman makes about China being a house of cards that, if it came down, could have unintended consequences for the US.
I have no idea. But I do know that many of the people who voted for Trump are pretty adamant about the immigration issue, first and foremost, regarding it as an easier and less risky thing to get done as well.
Maybe, the children-at-the-border Movie of the Week has convinced most Trump voters to stay on the train, thinking something permanent has been done to contain the flow of welfare-rewarded illegal immigration.
I think many of the teenagers, released into the country to live with extended family or in foster care, will, in a few years, be entering the labor force as part-time workers, producing instant-citizen kids and getting free monthly bills and refundable child-tax-credit cash from .gov, while citizens like me will still face rent that eats up over half of our monthly, earned-only income from low-wage churn jobs.
As much of an enthusiastic Trump voter as I have been, going back a long way, I am not sure that I am going to vote in the mid-term general election. I am not going to vote for this Tammany Hall II Democratic Party, but I may just stay home.
There are many populists out there, not just on the right either, who are disgruntled for very real reasons, like this interesting article explains, so there will likely be wave after wave of non-centrist populism until globalism's shoreline has been redefined.
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/07/26/centrism-is-dead-and-it-never-really-existed/
Hmmm, weird, when I loaded the other link, it conformed to the format of this text box, but then when I loaded the link above this last paragraph, it reverted to cutting off the text on the side. Until I post it, I cannot see the full text after links are added.
Batman11 Tue, 08/07/2018 - 09:08 Permalink@ Brazen,
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on it favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests."
-Rothschild Brothers of London communique' to associates in New York June 25th, 1863.
The Difference.
J. Speer-Willams
June 16, 2010.
New-Cons. Love War & torture, increased regulations, tyranny and taxes; with our taxes going to the plutocrats of the private banking community. They support governmental destruction of our environment, under the pretender of protecting it. They, also, overtly support corporatism (Fascism for Oligarchs) and any measures supported by the Republican Party that enrich the private International Monetary / Banking Cartel at the expensive of the. American People.
New- Libs. Love War & torture, increased regulations, tyranny and taxes; with our taxes going to the plutocrats of the private banking community. They support governmental destruction of our environment, under the pretender of protecting it. They, also, overtly support corporatism (Socialism for Oligarchs) and any measures supported by the Democratic Party that enrich the private International Monetary / Banking Cartel at the expensive of the. American People.
TeethVillage88s -> Batman11 Tue, 08/07/2018 - 09:55 PermalinkNeoliberalism was just one huge debt fuelled boom, which was replicated across the UK, the US, the Euro-zone, Japan and China.
At 25.30 mins we can see the super imposed the debt-to-GDP ratios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6
The damage is done.
The economics of the neoliberal era had a fundamental flaw.
The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realised the problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at private debt, neoclassical economics.
Same economics, same problem, globally.
Batman11 -> TeethVillage88s Tue, 08/07/2018 - 10:04 PermalinkI think Pat also gets this sentence wrong and if so I say he misses details we would like to see
This is truly economics uber alles, economy before country.
The University Economist programs/studies were more oriented toward people in the old days. Economics today is used to justify Wall Street type finance and ideology. Economic study was hijacked to serve only those looking to get rich any way they can. CFR agenda comes to mind. Globalism comes to mind also and is an attack on all nations constitutions.
Felix da Kat Tue, 08/07/2018 - 09:12 PermalinkThe Americans have been discovering the problems of running an economy with bad economics.
Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the economy.
The Classical economist, Adam Smith, observed the world of small state, unregulated capitalism around him.
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."
How does this tie in with the trickledown view we have today?
Somehow everything has been turned upside down.
The workers that did the work to produce the surplus lived a bare subsistence existence.
Those with land and money used it to live a life of luxury and leisure.
The bankers (usurers) created money out of nothing and charged interest on it. The bankers got rich, and everyone else got into debt and over time lost what they had through defaults on loans, and repossession of assets.
Capitalism had two sides, the productive side where people earned their income and the parasitic side where the rentiers lived off unearned income. The Classical Economists had shown that most at the top of society were just parasites feeding off the productive activity of everyone else.
Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the economy.
How can we protect those powerful vested interests at the top of society?
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with "capital". They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical Economists to hide the effects of rentier activity in the economy.
The landowners, landlords and usurers were now just productive members of society again.
It they left banks and debt out of economics no one would know the bankers created the money supply out of nothing. Otherwise, everyone would see how dangerous it was to let bankers do what they wanted if they knew the bankers created the money supply through their loans.
The powerful vested interests held sway and economics was corrupted.
Now we know what's wrong with neoclassical economics we can put the cost of living back in.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Employees want more disposable income (discretionary spending)
Employers want to pay lower wages for higher profits
The cost of living = housing costs + healthcare costs + student loan costs + food + other costs of living
The neoliberals obsessed about reducing taxes, but let the cost of living soar.
The economists also ignore the debt that is papering over the cracks and maintaining demand in the economy. This can never work in the longer term as you max. out on debt.
Winston Smith 2009 Tue, 08/07/2018 - 09:22 PermalinkThe problem is the US has lost citizenry-control. A shadow-government along with media operatives work unseen to manipulate sentiment and events in-line with an overall globalist, world-government objective (Neo-Marxism). The so-called elites behind the curtain are after total control which is why we will continue toward totalitarian dictatorship. It will not be a one-man show nor will it be readily recognizable as such, rather there will be a secretive Cabal of select ultra-wealthy liberals who will negotiate with each other as to which levers to pull and valves to turn in order to "guide" culture and civilization. But the tightknit Cabal has more work to do to infiltrate deeper into US (and world) government. The EU's Parliament is a proto-type test to tweak how they must proceed. As the Cabal coalesces their power, more draconian rulership will become apparent. The noose will tighten slowly so as to be un-noticeable and unstoppable. Certain events are planned that will cause citizenry to demand totalitarianism (for safety reasons). For the Cabal, it'll be like taking candy from a baby. This, in a nutshell, is the outline of how the US (and Western civilization) loses its democracy.
SJ158 Tue, 08/07/2018 - 09:34 Permalink"...consider the fruits of free trade policy during the last 25 years..."
The point is that THAT is not "free trade," you idiot. Globalists just incorrectly call it that intentionally. HERE is what it is:
The Myth of Modern "Global Markets"
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/08/16/the-myth-of-modern-glob
Understanding how trillions of trade dollars influence geopolitical policy we begin to understand the three-decade global financial construct they seek to protect.
That is, global financial exploitation of national markets. FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS :
♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national outputs and industries of developed industrial western nations.
♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.
♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.
Pat must suffer from some kind of cognitive dissonance. There is no free trade, nor there was before Trump. In a world of flexible exchange rates and central banking backed-inflationary credit trade wars are the status quo. He willfully ignores all the effects of credit inflation, unsound money, tax structures, subsidies, regulatory burdens created internally and by those "trade deals" and last but not least the reserve status of the fiat dollar which basically turned the US in a huge nothing-for-something economy relative to its imports.
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Jul 28, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
In the long run, the US has two distinct advantages that offset some of the vulnerabilities in the US economy, brought about by 40 years of outsourcing. The US is energy independent to a very large extent, where China is greatly dependent on energy imports, largely priced in dollars. The US has a global military advantage that will persist for the next decade or more.
Hard to say where this will lead. Best option is for the US and China to resume the trade talks that broke off months ago. Economic mutually assured destruction is not a pleasant outcome, particularly at a moment when even the IMF is worrying about emerging market debt, corporate debt defaults and other signs of another global financial crisis.
kao_hsien_chih , 10 hours ago
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My sense is that the whole issue of trade disputes is not so much about trade and economics as much as politics and sovereignty. Not a whole lot will have changed in economic terms when the dust clears, but the underlying politics will have been altered unrecognizably. The whole idea of creating international bureaucratic bodies to oversee and regulate international trade (e.g. WTO) was to bypass the "normal" politics in the states involved. Long ago, the weaker countries cried "modern day imperialism" over these because they felt (not entirely without justification) that these arrangements took trade policy out of the hands of their domestic politics and unresponsive to their needs, interests, and demands--and, in a sense, this was exactly the point, since protectionism, even economically undesirable varieties, are product of "good" domestic politics. But since 1980s and 90s, the pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction where reclaiming a share of sovereignty over trade policy is preferred by many over trusting international bureaucracy. While not exactly "trade" policy (but it is economic), the experiences of the less well off countries in EU (as well as segments of the publics even in better off countries) has to be a fairly widespread worldview in many countries these days--certainly enough that it should make good politics to try to address them in some fashion, not try to override them by fiat (the latter seeming to be the preferred approach of the cosmopolitan elite)English Outsider -> kao_hsien_chih , 9 hours ago"My sense is that the whole issue of trade disputes is not so much about trade and economics as much as politics and sovereignty."kao_hsien_chih -> English Outsider , an hour agoThat has to be right, and it certainly applies to small countries. Small countries must always be aware that there is a loss of sovereignty implicit in the very act of trading with larger ones. The greater weight of the large country can enable it to impose trading terms that are sometimes disadvantageous to the smaller.
Tough. That's how it is. But the smaller country must always be on its guard against the very real danger of allowing that to extend to loss of political sovereignty.
What I don't see is how this applies to the US. The US is not a small country and need not fear any loss of political sovereignty attendant upon any lack of size or power. Therefore one could perhaps see the current US trade negotiations in a different light.
That is, that Trump is not defending his country against any such threat. He is merely attempting to level the playing field. For far too long that playing field has been tilted against the US worker and, ultimately, the US economy. He was elected to rectify that and will, I believe, be judged by his success in doing so.
If, in attempting that, he ruffles a few feathers - well, if he went the asking nicely route they'd walk all over him.
That quibble aside, I couldn't agree more with your note.
I don't think the size of the country is the decisive factor.Jack , 13 hours agoInternational trade always produces winners and losers. Depending on the particulars, the gains might be more widely spread than losses, or vice versa. Both sides want to play the political game to shape the terms of the trade in their favor. Generally, those who are in favor of more protection tend to do well in domestic politics, while those who tend to gain more by opening up trade don't. This is why international bureaucracy regulating trade winds up being set up, to bypass the domestic political process in favor of the free traders.
I don't think there is a fundamental relationship between the size of the country and the political conflict over free trade. It may be that smaller countries tend to be predisposed more towards protectionist policies, but counterexamples are found easily (e.g. Singapore). The real issue is that creation of and deference to international bureaucracy is a mechanism through which the winners from free trade shift the venue of politics from the domestic to the international and, in a sense, unfairly disadvantage their political enemies by depriving them of the means to affect trade policy easily. Or, in other words, international trade bureaucracy is NOT just a solution for trade conflict between nations, but a political weapon directed at the skeptics at home. If the winners of free trade were willing to share their gains with the losers, the conflict would not need to be so sharp. This has not been the case in US: more than in most other developed countries, the winners of free trade kept the gains only to themselves, claiming moral absolute of the free trade and their Mammon-given right to hold on to everything. Those who lose from the free trade are not only aggrieved, but find themselves at the wrong end of the political game specifically rigged to deprive them of influence. They don't want to play by its rules if they can--and Trump is providing them this option.
In this sense, Trump's actions are re-domesticalizing the politics of free trade, making trade policy responsive to domestic interests that were shunted side formerly. The internationalists have only their own short-sightedness to blame: if they were willing to build up a broader coalition, or at least, appease their domestic opponents better, the opposition to free trade detached from domestic politics would not have become so acrimonious.
Personally, I think it's not a good development: walking back from free trade is not easy, if at all possible--too many linkages have been built, too many sectors are dependent on access to foreign inputs or markets, that actual protectionism will be near impossible to bring back without major costs. Still, if you are creating international bureaucracy to bypass domestic politics, you'd better not piss off folks back home enough that they'd start with pitchforks, and this is among the many mistakes internationalists have made.
This interview of Sir James Goldsmith by Charlie Rose frames his debate with Laura Tyson, Clinton's trade representative. Well worth watching to understand the trade debate. Play HideSurfaceBook , 6 hours agoThe analyst in the link below explained the myth US energy independence. Although it is not as severe as china's need for foreign energy supply , but she got russian energy export via landline as opposed as sealane gulf imports.N.M> Salamon , 10 hours agoThere also this constant propaganda of better unemployment statistic , because of the way the data was processed to make it looks better (cooked)
-- -- -- -- --
From Srsroccoreport :
While the Mainstream media and the Whitehouse continue with the energy independent mantra, the U.S. is still highly reliant upon a great deal of foreign oil. Ahttps://d3hxt1wz4sk0za.clo... , why would the U.S. import 8 million barrels of oil per day if its shale oil production has surged over the past decade?
Well, it's quite simple. The U.S. Shale Oil Industry is producing way too much light tight oil, with a high API Gravity, for our refineries that are designed for a lower grade. So, as U.S. shale oil production exploded , the industry was forced to export a great deal more of this light oil overseas.
Thanks for your exposition.Fred -> N.M> Salamon , 9 hours ago
Some observations:
China's import of oil in US funds is about equal to USA's net import in US$ - the rest is in ruble/yuan.
The armed force imbalance is of no value, as attack on China is certain to get A-bombs into play [aside form danger to US ships both naval and other due to Chinese/Russian made anti ship missiles]
The USA can not maintain 25% duties on consumer goods for the simple reason that 75% of population can not afford to be consumer -debt levels are too high.
The USA can not maintain high tariffs as such would greatly increase the inflation rate applicable to the "deplorables" who are already on ropes [homelessness, welfare, food subsidies etc.] Notably the Fed would have to raise rates if inflation increases with dire result for the bond market and the federal deficit due to increased interest costs.
That the European satraps have bowed under US pressure is nothing new... there will be more changes in governments in the next cycle - the present bunch is too ripe [or rotten].
I do not imply by the above that China will not suffer, however they have a trillion dollar kitty to balance the external trade problems."75% of population can not afford to be consumer..."
They are in debt because they are consuming beyond thier income. "the Fed would have to raise rates if inflation increases" The Fed has already raised rates twice this year. It was less than ten days ago that Trump based the Fed for raising rates. The losers in that have always been Americans at the bottom.
http://thehill.com/policy/f...
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Jul 21, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
President's Trump successful summit with President Putin was used by the 'resistance' and the deep state to launch a coup-attempt against Trump. Their minimum aim is to put Trump into a (virtual) political cage where he can no longer pursue his foreign policy agenda.
One does not have to be a fan of Trump's policies and still see the potential danger. A situation where he can no longer act freely will likely be worse. What Trump has done so far still does not add up to the disastrous policies and crimes his predecessor committed.
The borg, financed and sworn to the agenda of globalists and the military-industrial-media complex, has its orders and is acting on them. The globalists want more free trade agreements, no tariffs and more immigration to prevent higher wages. Capital does not have a national attachment. It does not care about the 'deplorables' who support Trump and his policies:
[P]olls show that Trump appears to still have the support of the bulk of Republican voters when it comes to tariffs. Nearly three-fourths, or 73 percent, of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who responded to a Pew Research survey out this week said they felt increased tariffs would benefit the country.His 'isolationist' economic policies make Trump an enemy of the globalists :
Donald Trump is, indeed, a kind of traitor to the Washington Consensus, a hyper-militarized capitalist utopia of corporate dominated global supply chains that doubled the international wage-slave workforce in the last two decades of the 20th century and herded these desperate billions into a race to the bottom. The leadership of both corporate parties conspired to force U.S. workers into the global meat-grinder.The weapon industry and the military recognize that the 'war of terror' is nearing its end. To sell more they need to create an new 'enemy' that looks big enough to justify large and long-term spending. Russia, the most capable opponent the U.S. could have, is the designated target. A new Cold War will give justification for all kinds of fantastic and useless weapons.
Trump does not buy the nonsense claims of 'Russian meddling' in the U.S. elections and openly says so. He does not believe that Russia wants to attack anyone. To him Russia is not an enemy.
Trump grand foreign policy is following a realist assessment . He sees that previous administrations pushed Russia into the Chinese camp by aggressive anti-Russian policies in Europe and the Middle East. He wants to pull Russia out of the alliance with China, neutralize it in a political sense, to then be able to better tackle China which is the real thread to the American (economic) supremacy.
This week was a prelude to the coup against Trump :
Former CIA chief John Brennan denounced Trump as a "traitor" who had "committed high crimes" in holding a friendly summit with Putin.It can't get more seditious than that. Trump is being denigrated by almost the entire political and media establishment in the US as a "treasonous" enemy of the state.
Following this logic, there is only one thing for it: the US establishment is calling for a coup to depose the 45th president. One Washington Post oped out of a total of five assailing the president gave the following stark ultimatum: "If you work for Trump, quit now".
Some high ranking people working for Trump followed that advice. His chief of staff John Kelly rallied others against him:
According to three sources familiar with the situation, Kelly called around to Republicans on Capitol Hill and gave them the go-ahead to speak out against Trump. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan held televised press conferences to assert that Russia did meddle in the election.Others who attacked Trump over his diplomatic efforts with Russia included the Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats who used an widely distributed interview for that:
The White House had little visibility into what Coats might say. The intelligence director's team had turned down at least one offer from a senior White House official to help prepare him for the long-scheduled interview, pointing out that he had known Mitchell for years and was comfortable talking with her.Coats was extraordinarily candid in the interview, at times questioning Trump's judgment -- such as the president's decision to meet with Putin for two hours without any aides present beyond interpreters -- and revealing the rift between the president and the intelligence community.
FBI Director Wray also undermined his boss' position:
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday defended Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a "straight shooter," and said the Russia investigation is no "witch hunt."Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Wray said he stood by his view that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election in some capacity and that the threat remained active.
A day latter Secretary of Defense Mattis also issued a statement that contradicted his president's policy:
Secretary of Defense James Mattis took his turn doing the implicit disavowing in a statement about new military aid to Ukraine:"Russia should suffer consequences for its aggressive, destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of Ukraine. The fundamental question we must ask ourselves is do we wish to strengthen our partners in key regions or leave them with no other options than to turn to Russia, thereby undermining a once in a generation opportunity to more closely align nations with the U.S. vision for global security and stability."
Pat Lang thinks that Trump should fire Coats, Wary and Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General who is overseeing the Mueller investigation.
My advice is to spare Rosenstein, for now, as firing him would lead to a great uproar in Congress. The Mueller investigation has not brought up anything which is dangerous to Trump and is unlikely to do so in the immediate future. He and Rosenstein can be fired at a latter stage.
But Wray and Coats do deserve a pink slip and so do Kelly and Mattis. They are political appointees who work 'at the pleasure of the President'.
The U.S. has the legislative and the judicative as a counterweight to the president who leads the executive. The 'deep state' and its moles within the executive should have no role in that balance. The elected president can and must demand loyalty from those who work for him.
Those who sabotage him should be fired, not in a Saturday night massacre but publicly, with a given reason and all at the same time. They do not deserve any warning. Their rolling heads will get the attention of others who are tempted by the borg to act against the lawful policy directives of their higher up.
All this is not a defense of Trump. I for one despise his antics and most of his policies. But having a bad president of the United States implementing the policies he campaigned on, and doing so within the proper process, is way better than having unaccountable forces dictating their policies to him.
It will be impossible for Trump to get anything done if his direct subordinates, who work 'at his pleasure', publicly sabotage the implementation of his policies. Either he fires these people or the borg will have won.
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Jul 20, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
By Enrico Verga, a writer, consultant, and entrepreneur based in Milan. As a consultant, he concentrates on firms interested in opportunities in international and digital markets. His articles have appeared in Il Sole 24 Ore, Capo Horn, Longitude, Il Fatto Quotidiano, and many other publications. You can follow him on Twitter @enricoverga .
International commerce, jobs, and economic migrants are propelled by a common force: profit.
In recent times, the Western middle class (by which I mean in particular industrial workers and office employees) has lost a large number of jobs and has seen its buying power fall. It isn't true that migrants are the source of all evil in the world. However, under current conditions, they become a locus for the exasperation of the population at twenty years of pro-globalization politics. They are tragically placed in the role of the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Western businesses have slipped jobs overseas to countries with low labor costs, while the middle class has been pushed into debt in order to try to keep up. The Glass-Steagall law and other brakes on American banks were abolished by a cheerleader for globalization, Bill Clinton, and these banks subsequently lost all restraints in their enthusiasm to lend. The cherry on top of the sundae was the real estate bubble and ensuing crash of 2008.
A damning picture of the results of 20 years of globalization is provided by Forbes , capitalism's magazine par excellence. Already in 2016, the surprise victory of Trump led to questions about whether the blond candidate's win was due in part to the straits of the American middle class, impoverished as a result of the pro-globalization politics of figures like Clinton and Obama.
Further support for this thesis is furnished by the New York Times , describing the collapse of the stars-and-stripes middle class. Its analysis is buttressed by lengthy research from the very mainstream Pew Center , which agrees that the American middle class is vanishing.
And Europe? Although the European middle class has been squeezed less than its American counterpart, for us as well the picture doesn't look good. See for example the analysis of the Brookings Institute , which discusses not only the flagging economic fortunes of the European middle class, but also the fear of prosperity collapsing that currently grips Europe.
Migrants and the Shock Doctrine
What do economic migrants have to do with any of this?
Far be it from me to criticize large corporations, but clearly they – and their managers and stockholders – benefit from higher margins. Profits (revenue minus costs and expenses) can be maximized by reducing expenses. To this end, the costs of acquiring goods (metals, agricultural products, energy, etc.) and services (labor) need to fall steadily.
In the quest to lower the cost of labor, the most desirable scenario is a sort of blank slate: to erase ongoing arrangements with workers and start over from zero, building a new "happy and productive" economy. This operation can be understood as a sort of "shock doctrine."
The term "economic shock therapy" is based on an analogy with electroshock therapy for mental patients. One important analysis of it comes from Naomi Klein , who became famous explaining in 2000 the system of fashion production through subsidiaries that don't adhere to the safety rules taken so seriously in Western countries (some of you may recall the scandal of Benetton and Rana Plaza , where more than a thousand workers at a Bangladesh factory producing Benetton (and other) clothes were crushed under a collapsing building).
Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational corporations freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable (i.e. cheapest) labor force. Sometimes relocating from one nation to another is not possible, but if you can bring the job market of other countries here in the form of a low-cost mass of people competing for employment, then why bother?
The Doctrine in Practice
Continuing flows of low-cost labor can be useful for cutting costs. West Germany successfully absorbed East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the dirty secret of this achievement is the exploitation of workers from the former East, as Reuters reports .
The expansion of the EU to Poland (and the failed attempt to incorporate the Ukraine) has allowed many European businesses to shift local production to nations where the average cost of a blue or white collar worker is much lower ( by 60-70% on average ) than in Western European countries.
We see further evidence of damage to the European middle class daily, from France where the (at least verbally) pro-globalization Macron is cutting social welfare to attract foreign investment , to Germany where many ordinary workers are seriously exploited . And so on through the UK and Italy.
Political Reactions
The migrant phenomenon is a perfect counterpoint to a threadbare middle class, given its role as a success story within the narrative of globalization.
Economic migrants are eager to obtain wealth on the level of the Western middle class – and this is of course a legitimate desire. However, to climb the social ladder, they are willing to do anything: from accepting low albeit legal salaries to picking tomatoes illegally ( as Alessandro Gassman, son of the famous actor, reminded us ).
The middle class is a silent mass that for many years has painfully digested globalization, while believing in the promises of globalist politicians," explains Luciano Ghelfi, a journalist of international affairs who has followed Lega from its beginnings. Ghelfi continues:
This mirage has fallen under the blows it has received from the most serious economic crisis since the Second World War. Foreign trade, easy credit (with the American real estate bubble of 2008 as a direct consequence), peace missions in Libya (carried out by pro-globalization French and English actors, with one motive being in my opinion the diversion of energy resources away from [the Italian] ENI) were supposed to have created a miracle; they have in reality created a climate of global instability.
Italy is of course not untouched by this phenomenon. It's easy enough to give an explanation for the Five Stars getting votes from part of the southern electorate that is financially in trouble and might hope for some sort of subsidy, but the North? The choice of voting center right (with a majority leaning toward Lega) can be explained in only one way – the herd (the middle class) has tried to rise up.
I asked him, "So in your opinion, is globalization in stasis? Or is it radically changing?" He replied:
I think unrestrained globalization has taken a hit. In Italy as well, as we have seen recently, businesses are relocating abroad. And the impoverished middle class finds itself forced to compete for state resources (subsidies) and jobs which can be threatened by an influx of economic migrants towards which enormous resources have been dedicated – just think of the 4.3 billion Euros that the last government allocated toward economic migrants.
This is an important element in the success of Lega: it is a force that has managed to understand clearly the exhaustion of the impoverished middle class, and that has proposed a way out, or has at least elaborated a vision opposing the rose-colored glasses of globalization.
In all of this, migrants are more victims than willing actors, and they become an object on which the fatigue, fear, and in the most extreme cases, hatred of the middle class can easily focus.
What Conflicts Are Most Relevant Today?
At the same time, if we observe, for example in Italy, the positions taken by the (pro-globalization?) Left, it becomes easier to understand why the middle class and also many blue collar workers are abandoning it. Examples range from the unfortunate declarations of deputy Lia Quartapelle on the need to support the Muslim Brotherhood to the explanations of the former president of the Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, on how the status of economic migrant should be seen as a model for the lifestyle of all Italians . These remarks were perhaps uttered lightly (Quartapelle subsequently took her post down and explained that she had made a mistake), but they are symptomatic of a certain sort of pro-globalization cultural "Left" that finds talking to potential voters less interesting than other matters.
From Italy to America (where Hillary Clinton was rejected after promoting major international trade arrangements that she claimed would benefit middle-class American workers) to the UK (where Brexit has been taken as a sort of exhaust valve), the middle class no longer seems to be snoring.
We are currently seeing a political conflict between globalist and nationalist forces. Globalists want more open borders and freer international trade. Nationalists want protection for work and workers, a clamping down on economic migrants, and rules with teeth aimed at controlling international trade.
If for the last twenty years, with only occasional oscillation, the pro-globalization side has been dominant in the West, elections are starting to swing the balance in a new direction.
Meanwhile, many who self-identify as on the Left seem utterly uninterested in the concerns of ordinary people, at least in cases where these would conflict with the commitment to globalization.
If the distinction between globalism and nationalism is in practice trumping other differences, then we should not let ourselves be distracted by bright and shiny objects, and keep our focus on what really matters.
fresno dan , July 20, 2018 at 7:06 am
Enrico Verga , July 20, 2018 at 9:30 amFrom the Forbes link:
"The first downside of international trade that even proponents of freer trade must acknowledge is that while the country as a whole gains some people do lose."
More accurate to say a tiny, tiny, TINY percentage gain.Nice how they use the euphemism "country as a whole" for GDP. Yes, GDP goes up – but that word that can never be uttered by American corporate media – DISTRIBUTION – that essentially ALL gains in GDP have gone to the very top. AND THAT THIS IS A POLITICAL DECISION, not like the waves of the ocean or natural selection. There is plenty that could be done about it – BUT it STARTS with WANTING to do something effective about it .
And of course, the bizarre idea that inflation helps. Well, like trade, it helps .the very, very rich
https://www.themaven.net/mishtalk/economics/real-hourly-earnings-decline-yoy-for-production-workers-flat-for-all-employees-W4eRI5nksU2lsrOR9Z01WQ/Off The Street , July 20, 2018 at 9:43 amim used to use reliable link ( on forbes it's not Pew but i quoted also Pew) :)
Heraclitus , July 20, 2018 at 11:38 amNice how they use the euphemism "country as a whole" for GDP.
Fresno Dan,
You have identified one of my pet peeves about economists and their fellow traveler politicians. They hide behind platitudes, and the former are more obnoxious about that. Economists will tell people that they just don't understand all that complexity, and that in the name of efficiency, etc, free trade and the long slide toward neo-liberal hell must continue.Jean , July 20, 2018 at 12:21 pmI think the assertion that all economic gains have gone to the very top is not accurate. According to 'Unintended Consequences' by Ed Conard, the 'composition of the work force has shifted to demographics with lower incomes' between 1980 and 2005. If you held the workforce of 1980 steady through 2005, wages would be up 30% in real terms, not including benefits.
It's amazing that critics miss this.
makedoanmend , July 20, 2018 at 7:12 amBut you are ignoring immigrant based population increases which dilutes your frozen population number. How convenient for argument's sake.
Not mentioned in the article are rent increases caused by more competition for scarcer housing.
PlutoniumKun , July 20, 2018 at 8:30 amI think the author has highlighted some home truths in the article. I once remember several years ago just trying to raise the issue of immigration* and its impact on workers on an Irish so-called socialist forum. Either I met silence or received a reply along the lines: 'that when socialists rule the EU we'll establish continental wide standards that will ensure fairness for everyone'. Fairy dust stuff. I'm not anti immigrant in any degree but it seems unwise not to understand and mitigate the negative aspects of policies on all workers. Those chickens are coming home to roost by creating the type of political parties (new or established) that now control the EU and many world economies.
During the same period many younger middle and upper middle class Irish extolled the virtues, quite openly, of immigration as way of lowering the power and wages of existing Irish workers so that the costs of building homes, labour intensive services and the like would be concretely reduced; and that was supposed to be a good thing for the material well being of these middle and upper middle classes. Sod manual labour.
One part of the working class was quite happy to thrown another part of the working class under the bus and the Left**, such as it was and is, was content to let it happen. Then established Leftist parties often facilitated the rightward economic process via a host of policies, often against their own stated policies in election manifestos. The Left appeared deceitful. The Irish Labour party is barely alive and subsisting on die-hard traditionalists for their support by those who can somehow ignore the deceit of their party. Surreaslist stuff from so-called working class parties,
And now the middle-middle classes are ailing and we're supposed to take notice. Hmmm. Yet, as a Leftist, myself, it is incumbent upon us to address the situation and assist all workers, whatever their own perceived status.
*I'm an immigrant in the UK currently, though that is about to change next year.
** Whether the "Left", such as the Irish Labour Party, was just confused or bamboozled matters not a jot. After the financial crises that became an economic crisis, they zealously implemented austerity policies that predominantly cleared the way for a right wing political landscape to dominate throughout Europe. One could be forgiven for thinking that those who called themselves Leftists secretly believed that only right wing, neo-liberal economic policies were correct. And I suppose, being a bit cynical, that a few politicos were paid handsomely for their services.
makedoanmend , July 20, 2018 at 10:17 amI think its easy to see why the more middle class elements of the left wing parties never saw immigration as a problem – but harder to see why the Trade Unions also bought into this. Partly I think it was a laudable and genuine attempt to ensure they didn't buy into racism – when you look at much trade union history, its not always pleasant reading when you see how nakedly racist some early trade union activists were, especially in the US. But I think there was also a process whereby Unions increasingly represented relatively protected trades and professions, while they lost ground in more vulnerable sectors, such as in construction.
I think there was also an underestimation of the 'balancing' effect within Europe. I think a lot of activists understimated the poverty in parts of Europe, and so didn't see the expansion of the EU into eastern Europe as resulting in the same sort of labour arbitrage thats occurred between the west and Asia. I remember the discussions over the enlargement of the EU to cover eastern Europe and I recall that there seemed to be an inbuilt assumption (certainly in the left), that rising general prosperity would ensure there would be no real migration impact on local jobs. This proved to be entirely untrue.
Incidentally, in my constituency (Dublin Central) in past elections the local Labour party was as guilty as any of pandering to the frequent racism encountered on the doorsteps in working class areas. But it didn't do them much good. Interestingly, SF was the only party who would consistently refuse to pander (At least in Dublin), making the distinction between nationalist and internationalist minded left wingers even more confusing.
Glen , July 20, 2018 at 8:56 amYes, one has to praise the fact that the Unions didn't pander to racism – but that's about all the (insert expletive of choice) did correctly.
Your other points, as ever, are relevant and valid but (and I must but) I tend to think that parties like Labour were too far "breezy" about the repercussions about labour arbitrage. But that's water under the bridge now.
Speaking about SF and the North West in general, they have aggressively canvassed recent immigrants and have not tolerated racism among their ranks. Their simple reasoning was that is unthinkable that SF could tolerate such behaviour amongst themselves when they has waged a campaign against such attitudes and practices in the six counties. (SF are no saints, often fumble the ball badly, and are certainly not the end-all-be-all, but this is something they get right).
Felix_47 , July 20, 2018 at 9:18 amIt has to be understood that much of immigration is occurring because of war, famine, collapsing societies (mostly due to massive wealth inequality and corrupt governments). Immigration is not the cause of the economic issues in the EU, it's a symptom (or a feature if you're on top). If you don't correct the causes – neo-liberalism, kleptocracy, rigged game – what ever you want to call it, then you too will become an immigrant in your own country (and it will be a third world country by the time the crooks on top are done).
Don't get caught up in the blame the other poor people game. It's a means to get the powerless to fight among themselves. They are not in charge, they are victims just like you.
Louis Fyne , July 20, 2018 at 11:45 amHaving spent a lot of time in the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan and Iraq I have to say that rampant overpopulation plays a big part. Anyone who can get out is getting out. It makes sense. And with modern communications they all know how life is in Europe or the US in contrast to the grinding horror that surrounds them.
redleg , July 20, 2018 at 7:32 pmBut Conan tells me that Haiti is a tropical paradise! (my brother too spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and Iraq working with the locals during his deployments)
"Twitter liberalism" is doing itself by not recognizing that much of the developing world IS a corrupt cesspool.
Instead of railing against Trump, the Twitter-sphere needs to rail against the bipartisan policies that drive corruption, and economic dislocations and political dislocations. and rail against religious fundamentalism that hinders family planning.
But that can't fit onto a bumper sticker.
Calling Trump names is easier.
Oregoncharles , July 20, 2018 at 2:05 pmBut if you actually do that, rail against bipartisan neoliberal policies on social media and IRL, the conservatives are far less hostile than the die-hard Dems. This is especially true now, with all the frothing at the mouth and bloodlust about Russia. Its raised their "it's ALL *YOUR* FAULT"-ism by at least an order of magnitude.
makedoanmend , July 20, 2018 at 10:04 amActually, that's been true since the 18th C., at least for the US. TV may make it more vivid, and Europe has changed places, but most Americans have immigrant ancestors, most often from Europe.
nervos belli , July 20, 2018 at 10:20 amVery good points, and I agree with all of them.
However, it does seem that the policy of the EU, especially under the influence of Mutti Merkel, signalled a free-for-all immigration stance over the last several years, completely ignoring the plight of existing workers (many of whom would be recent immigrants themselves and the children of immigrants). That the so-called Left either sat idly by or jumped on Mutti's band wagon didn't do them any favours with working people. Every country or customs union has and needs to regulate its borders. It also makes some sense to monitor labour markets when unfavourable conditions appear.
It appears that only the wealthy are largely reaping the rewards of the globalist direction trade has taken. These issues need to be addressed by the emerging Left political parties in the West. Failure to address these issues must, I would contend, play into the hands of the more right wing parties whose job is to often enrich the local rich.
But, bottom line, your are correct workers do not come out well when blaming other workers for economies that have been intentionally created to produce favourable conditions for the few over the many.
Ben Wolf , July 20, 2018 at 7:36 amIt's a blade with two sides.
There are push factors like the wars and poor countries. However neither of these causes can be fixed. Not possible. Europe can gnash their teeth all they want, not even when they did the unthinkable and put the US under sanctions for their warcrimes would the US ever stop. First there would be color revolutions in western europe.As important as the push factors are the pull ones. 90% or so of all refugees 2015 went to Germany. Some were sent to other countries by the EU, these too immediately moved to Germany and didn't stay where they were assigned. So the EU has to clean up their act and would need to put the last 10 or so US presidents and administrations before a judge in Den Haag for continued war crimes and crimes against humanity (please let me my dreams). The EU would also need to clean up their one sided trade treaties with Africa and generally reign in their own corporations. All that is however not enough by far and at most only half the battle. Even when the EU itself all did these things, the poverty would remain and therefore the biggest push factor. Humans always migrate to the place where the economy is better.
The pull factors is however at least as big. The first thing to do is for Germany to fix their laws to be in sync with the other EU countries. At this point, Germany is utterly alone, at most some countries simply don't speak out against german policy since they want concessions in other areas. Main one here is France with their proposed EU and Euro reforms but not alone by far.
Enrico Verga , July 20, 2018 at 9:31 amNationalists want protection for work and workers, a clamping down on economic migrants, and rules with teeth aimed at controlling international trade.
Socialism in one country is a Stalinist theory, and falling back upon it in fear of international capital is not only regressive but (assuming we aren't intentionally ignoring history) relective of a defensive mentality.
In other words, this kind of thinking is the thinking of the whipped dog cringing before the next blow.
Andrew Watts , July 20, 2018 at 11:28 amAm i a dog? :)
Oregoncharles , July 20, 2018 at 1:47 pmOr perhaps they want to regulate and control the power of capital in their country. Which is an entirely impossible proposition considering that capital can flee any jurisdiction and cross any border. After all, transnational capital flows which were leveraged to the hilt in speculative assets played an oversized role in generating the financial crisis and subsequent crash.
It wouldn't be the first time I've been called a Stalinist though.
JBird , July 20, 2018 at 3:39 pmAnd why would we care whether it's a "Stalinist" theory? For that matter, although worker ownership would solve some of these problems, we needn't be talking about socialism, but rather about more functional capitalism.
Quite a leap in that last sentence; you haven't actually established anything of the sort.
disc_writes , July 20, 2018 at 8:10 ambut rather about a more functional capitalism.
Personally, I believe capitalism needs to go away, but for it, or any other economic system, to work, we would need a fair, equal, just, enforced rule of law that everyone would be under, wouldn't we?
Right now the blessed of our various nations do not want this, so they make so that one set is unfair, unequal, unjust, harshly enforced on most of their country's population while they get the gentle rules.
For a society to function long term, it needs to have a fair and just set of rules that everyone understands and follow, although the rules don't have to equal; people will tolerate different levels of punishments and strictness of the rules. The less that is the case the more dysfunctional, and usually the more repressive it is. See the Western Roman Empire, the fall of just about every Chinese dynasty, the Russian Empire, heck even the American War of Independence, and the American Civil War. In example, people either actively worked to destroy the system or did not care to support it.
Lambert Strether , July 20, 2018 at 4:00 pmThank you for the article, a pretty lucid analysis of the recent electoral results in Italy and trends elsewhere. Although I would have liked to read something about people voting the way they do because they are xenophobe fascist baby-eating pedophile racist Putin friends. Just for fun.
Funny how the author's company promotes "Daily international job vacancies in UNDP, FAO, UN, UNCTAD, UNIDO and the other Governative Organization, Non Governative Organization, Multinationals Corporations. Public Relations, Marketing, Business Development."
Precisely the sort of jobs that infuriates the impoverishing middle classes.
Felix_47 , July 20, 2018 at 9:16 amClass traitors are important and to be encouraged (though a phrase with a more positive tone would be helpful).
Andrew Watts , July 20, 2018 at 11:34 amAs recently as 2015, Bernie Sanders defended not only border security, but also national sovereignty. Asked about expanded immigration, Sanders flipped the question into a critique of open-borders libertarianism: "That's a Koch brothers proposal which says essentially there is no United States."
Unfortunately the ethnic division of the campaign and Hillary's attack seems to have led him to change his mind.Enrico Verga , July 20, 2018 at 9:36 amThat's probably due to the fact that just about everybody can't seem to differentiate between immigration and mass migration. The latter issue is a matter of distributing the pain of a collapsing order. state failure, and climate change while the former is simply engaging in the comfortable rhetoric of politics dominated by the American middle class.
MyLessThanPrimeBeef , July 20, 2018 at 9:40 amCiao .
Oki lemme see.
1 people vote they like. im not updated if the voters eat babies but i'll check and let u know.
2 My company is not dream job. It is a for free ( and not making a penny) daily bulleting that using a fre soft (paper.li) collect international qualified job offers for whoever is willing to work in these sector.
i'm not pro or contro migrants. i actually only reported simple fact collating differents point :)JBird , July 20, 2018 at 3:42 pmEconomic migrants seek prosperity and are justified in doing so, yet they can also be seen as pawns in an international strategy that destroys the negotiating leverage of workers. The resulting contradictions potentially render conventional political classifications obsolete.
This appears on the homepage, but not here.
In any case, the 10% also seek prosperity. They are said to be the enablers of the 1%.
Perhaps pawns too.
Are economic migrants both pawns and enablers?
Newton Finn , July 20, 2018 at 10:02 amYes. The economic migrants are both pawns and enablers as well as victims.
ROB , July 20, 2018 at 10:11 amUntil the left alters its thinking to reflect the crucial information presented in this video, information more clearly and comprehensively spelled out in "Reclaiming the State" by Mitchell and Fazi, resurgent rightwing nationalism will be the only outlet for those who reject global neoliberalism's race to the bottom. It's that simple and sad.
John Wright , July 20, 2018 at 11:16 amTo paint this as two pro-globalisation (within which you place the left) and pro-nationalism is simplistic and repositions the false dichotomy of left vs right with something just as useless. We should instead seek to speak to the complexities of the modern political spectrum. This is an example of poor journalism and analysis and shouldn't have been posted here, sorry Yves.
JTMcPhee , July 20, 2018 at 11:17 amBy "false dichotomy of left vs right" are you implying there is little difference between left and right?
Is that not one of the themes of the article?
Please speak to the complexities of the modern political spectrum and give some examples of better and more useful journalism and analysis.
John , July 20, 2018 at 11:44 amThanks for your opinion. Check the format of this place: articles selected for information or provoking thoughts, in support of a general position of driving toward betterment of the general welfare, writ large.
The political economy is at least as complex as the Krebs or citric acid cycle that biology students and scientists try to master. There are so many moving parts and intersecting and competing interests that in the few words that the format can accommodate, regarding each link, it's a little unkind to expect some master work of explication and rhetorical closure every time.
The Krebs cycle is basically driven by the homeostatic thrust, bred of billions of years of refinement, to maintain the healthy functioning and prolong life of the organism. There's a perceivable axis to all the many parts of respiration, digestion, energy flows and such, all inter-related with a clear organizing principle at the level of the organism. On the record, it's hardly clear that at the level of the political economy, and all the many parts that make it up, there is sufficient cohesion around a set of organizing principles that parallel the drive, at the society and species level, to regulate and promote the energy flows and interactions that would keep things healthy and prolong the life of the larger entity. Or that their is not maybe a death wish built into the "cultural DNA" of most of the human population.
Looks a lot to me that we actually have been invested (in both the financial and military senses of the word) by a bunch of different cancer processes, wild and unregulated proliferation of ecnomic and political tumor tissues that have invaded and undermined the healthy organs of the body politic. Not so clear what the treatments might be, or the prognosis. It is a little hopeful, continuing the biological analogy, that the equivalents of inflammation and immune system processes appear to be overcoming the sneaky tricks that cancer genes and cells employ to evade being identified and rendered innocuous.
jrs , July 20, 2018 at 6:40 pmYes, "invested in a bunch of cancer processes" is a good description of allowing excessive levels of predatory wealth. Thus you end up with a bunch of Jay Gould hyper capitalists whose guiding principle is: I can always pay one half of the working class to kill the other half. Divide and conquer rules.
JimmyV , July 20, 2018 at 12:04 pmIt's mostly simply wrong. This doesn't describe the political views of almost anyone near power anywhere as far as I can tell:
"Globalists want more open borders and freer international trade. Nationalists want protection for work and workers, "
Most of the nationalist forces are on the right and give @#$# all for workers rights. Really they may be anti-immigrant but they are absolutely anti-worker.
Outis Philalithopoulos Post author , July 20, 2018 at 1:02 pmThe middle class does not really exist, it was a concept invented by capitalists to distract the workers from their essential unity as fellow wage slaves. Some make more wages, some make less wages but they all have their surplus value, the money left over after they have enough to take care of themselves, taken by the capitalist and used for his ends even though he may not have worked in the value creation process at all.
Economic migrants are members of the working class who have been driven from their home country to somewhere else by the capitalist system. While the article does mention capitalist shock doctrine methods for establishing imperialism and correctly notes that economic migrants are victims, it then goes on to try to lay a weak and insidious argument against them. The author goes on citing multiple different cases of worker wages being driven lower or stagnating, many of these cases have differing and sometimes complex reasons for why this happened. But migrants and globalization are to blame he says and that our struggle is nationalism vs globalism. He refuses to see what is staring him in the face, workers produce surplus value for society, more workers produce more surplus value. If society finds itself wealthier with more workers then why do workers wage fall or stagnate? He does note correctly that this is due to the workers now having a weaker bargaining position with the capitalist, but he seems to conclude from this without stating outrightly that we should then reject the economic migrants because of this.
However, we could instead conclude that if more workers produce more surplus value but yet their wages fall because the capitalist takes a larger share of the overall pot, that the problem is not more workers but instead the capitalist system itself which was rigged to exploit workers everywhere. Plus the workers bargaining position only weakens with a greater number of them if they are all just bargaining for themselves, but if they were to bargain togather collectively then there bargaining position has actually only grown even stronger.
Also he falsly equates democratic party policies with leftists, instead of correctly noting that the democratic party represents capitalist interests from a centrist position and not the left. The strength of global capitalism can only be fought by a global coalition of the working class. The struggle of Mexican and American workers are interrelated to each other and the same goes for that of European and Middle Eastern workers. The time has come for the left to raise the rallying cry of its great and glorious past.
That workers of the world must unite!
Oregoncharles , July 20, 2018 at 1:56 pmYou claim, as if it were obvious, that "economic migrants are members of the working class who have been driven from their home country to somewhere else by the capitalist system."
Are all economic migrants therefore bereft of agency?
If the borders of the US were abruptly left completely open, a huge number of people would enter the country tomorrow, for economic reasons. Would they all have been "driven" here, or would they have some choice in the matter?
When you say, "he refuses to say what is staring him in the face, that [ ] more workers produce more surplus value," you are not only taking a gratuitously pedantic tone, you are actually not making a coherent critique. If economic migrants move from one country to another, the total pool of workers in the world has not increased; while according to your logic, if all the workers in the world were to move to Rhode Island, Rhode Island would suddenly be swimming in the richness of surplus value.
When you say, "we could instead conclude that [..] the problem is not more workers but instead the capitalist system itself which was rigged to exploit workers everywhere," you are straw-manning the author but also making a purely rhetorical argument. If you think the capitalist system can be replaced with a better one within the near future, then you can work toward that; but in the meanwhile, nations, assuming that they will continue to exist, will either have open borders or something short of that, and these decisions do affect the lives of workers.
When you say he "falsly equates democratic party policies with leftists," the false equivalence is coming from you. The article barely touches on the Democratic Party, and instead draws most of its examples from Europe, especially Italy. In Italy, the public figures he mentions call themselves part of the sinistra and are generally referred to that way. You might perhaps feel that they are not entitled to that name (and in fact, the article sometimes places "left" in quotation marks), but you should at least read the article and look them up before discussing the matter.
Oregoncharles , July 20, 2018 at 4:47 pmFrom the article: "Meanwhile, many who self-identify as on the Left seem utterly uninterested in the concerns of ordinary people, at least in cases where these would conflict with the commitment to globalization."
To Be Fair, Verga clearly is skeptical about those claims to be "on the Left," as he should be. Nonetheless, his initial mention of Democratic exemplars of globalization triggers American reflexes.
Lambert Strether , July 20, 2018 at 3:47 pmSomething before this failed to post; was rejected as a double post.
In brief: corporate globalization is a conservative, Republican policy that Bill Clinton imposed on the Dems, where it has since become doctrine, since it pays. It's ultimately the reason I'm a Green, not a Democrat, and in a sense the reason there IS a Green Party in the US.
Eduardo Pinha , July 20, 2018 at 1:00 pm> The middle class does not really exist, it was a concept invented by capitalists
Let's not be simplistic. They have people for that.
JBird , July 20, 2018 at 4:04 pmThe author points to stagnant middle class income in USA and Western Europe but fail to look the big picture. Middle class income has increased sharply in the past decades in Asia and Eastern Europe. Overall the gain huge, even though life is tougher in richer countries.
jrs , July 20, 2018 at 6:50 pmOverall the gain huge, even thought life is tougher in richer countries.
Please accept my apologies for saying this. I don't mean to offend. I just have to point out something.
Many in the Democratic Party, as well as the left, are pointing to other countries and peoples as well as the American 9.9% and saying things are great, why are you complaining? With the not so hidden implications, sometimes openly stated that those who do are losers and deplorables.
Saying that middle class incomes are merely stagnant is a sick, sick joke as well as an untruth. As an American, I do not really care about the middle classes in Asia and Eastern Europe. Bleep the big picture. The huge gains comes with a commensurate increase in homeless in the United States, and a falling standard of living for most the of the population, especially in the "wealthy" states, like my state of California. Most of us are using fingernails to stay alive and homed. If those gains had not been caused by the losses, I would be very please to see them. As it is, I have to live under President Trump and worry about surviving. Heck, worry about the rest of my family doing so.
David in Santa Cruz , July 20, 2018 at 1:24 pm"Saying that middle class incomes are merely stagnant is a sick, sick joke as well as an untruth."
+10,000
I mean I actually do care somewhat about the people of the world, but we here in "rich countries" are being driven to homelessness at this point and told the goddamn lie that we live in a rich country, rather than the truth that we live in a plutocracy with levels of inequality approaching truly 3rd world. We are literally killing ourselves because we have to live in this plutocracy and our one existence itself is not even worth it anymore in this economic system (and we are lacking even a few of the positives of many other 3rd world countries). And those that aren't killing ourselves still can't find work, and even if we do, it doesn't pay enough to meet the most basic necessities.
redleg , July 20, 2018 at 8:05 pmThought-provoking post.
1. It is unfortunate that Verga raises the rising cost of material inputs but fails to meaningfully address the issue. One of the drivers of migration, as mentioned in Comments above, is the population volcano currently erupting. Labor is cheap and globalization possible in large part because the world population has grown from 2 Billion to over 7 Billion in the past 60-odd years. This slow-growing mountain of human beings has created stresses on material inputs which are having a negative impact on the benefits derived from declining labor costs. This becomes a death-spiral as capital seeks to balance the rising cost of raw materials and agricultural products by driving down the cost of labor ever further.
2. Verga touches on the interplay of Nationalism and Racism in the responses of political parties and institutions in Italy and elsewhere. Voters appear to be abandoning Left and left-ish parties because the Left have been unable to come up with a definintion of national sovereignty that protects worker rights largely due to the importance of anti-racism in current Left-wing thought. Working people were briefly bought-off with cheap consumer goods and easy credit, but they now realize that low-wage migrant and off-shore workers mean that even these goodies are now out of reach. The only political alternative currently on offer is a brand of Nationalism defined by Racism -- which becomes acceptable to voters when the alternative is Third-World levels of poverty for those outside the 1% and their 9% enablers.
I don't see any simple solutions. Things may get very ugly.
PKMKII , July 20, 2018 at 1:59 pmThe "left" abandoned the working class. Denied a political champion, the right offered the working class scapegoats.
Tomonthebeach , July 20, 2018 at 3:23 pmI certainly see that policies tampering down free trade, both of capital and labor, can benefit workers within a particular country. However, especially in the context of said policies in "Western" countries, this can tend towards a, protect the working class within the borders, leave those outside of it in impoverished squalor. Which doesn't mesh well with the leftist goal of global class consciousness. Much like the racially segregated labor policies of yesteryear, it's playing a zero-sum game with the working class while the ownership class gets the "rising tide lifts all boats" treatment.
So how do we protect workers within the sovereign, while not doing so at the cost of the workers outside of it? Schwieckart has an interesting idea, that tariffs on imports are used to fund non-profits/higher education/cooperatives in the country of export. However, I think we'd need something a bit more fine-tuned than that.
whine country , July 20, 2018 at 4:28 pmIt has always baffled me that governments enable this global musical chairs game with the labor market. Nearly all Western governments allow tax dodging by those who benefit the most from their Navies, Armies, Patents, and Customs enforcement systems. However, it is the working class that carries the brunt of that cost while corporations off-shore their profits.
A simple-minded fix might be to start taxing foreign profits commensurate with the cost of enabling those overseas profits.
ChrisAtRU , July 20, 2018 at 3:59 pmInteresting that a corporation is a person just like us mortals when it is to their advantage, but unlike us humans, they can legally escape taxation on much of their income whereas a human being who is a US citizen cannot. A human citizen is generally taxed by the US on all income regardless of its source. OTOH, corporations (among other means) routinely transfer intellectual property to a non tax jurisdiction and then pay artificial payments to that entity for the rights to use such property. It is a scam akin to a human creating a tax deduction by transferring money from one pocket to another. Yes, proper taxation of corporations is a simple-minded fix which is absolutely not simple to legislate. Nice try though. Something else to ponder: Taxation without representation was said to be a major factor in our war of independence from Britain. Today no one seems to be concerned that we have evolved into representation without taxation. Doesn't see right to me.
Anonymous2 , July 20, 2018 at 4:40 pm"Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational corporations freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable (i.e. cheapest) labor force."
Indeed:
FWIW I don't think it's productive to talk about things like immigration in (or to) the US in terms of just the here – as in what should/could we be doing here to fix the problem. It's just as much if not more about the there . If we view the global economic order as an enriched center feeding off a developing periphery, then fixing the periphery should be first aim. #Wall or #NoBorders are largely incendiary extremes. Ending Original Sin and creating some sort of supranational IOU/credit system (not controlled by World Bank or IMF!) will end the economic imbalance and allow countries who will never export their way out of poverty and misery a way to become equal first world nation states. With this equality, there will be less economic migration, less peripheral poverty and potentially less political unrest. It's a gargantuan task to be sure, but with rising Socialist sentiment here and abroad, I'd like to think we are at least moving in the right direction.
JimmyV , July 20, 2018 at 5:02 pmNo mention of tax policy?
If the rich were properly taxed then social tensions would be greatly reduced and if the revenue raised were used to help the poorest in society much distress could be alleviated.
I worry that debate on migration/globalisation is being encouraged to distract attention from this issue.
Outis Philalithopoulos Post author , July 20, 2018 at 7:30 pmI may indeed have taken a gratuitously pedantic tone and could have chosen a better one, for that i apologise. I do however believe that much of my critique still stands, I will try to go through your points one by one.
"Are all economic migrants therefore bereft of agency?"
Not all but many are, especially the ones that most people are complaining about. Many of them are being driven from their home countries not simply for a better life but so they can have something approaching a life at all. While to fully prove this point would require an analysis of all the different migrants and their home country conditions, I do feel that if we are talking about Syrian refugees, migrants from Africa risking their lives crossing the Mediteranian sea, or CentralAmerican refugees than yes i do think these people to an extent have had their agency taken from them by global events. For Syrians, by being caught in an imperialist power struggle which while the civil war may not have been caused by it, it certainly has been prolonged because of it. Not too mention America played a very significant role in creating the conditions for ISIS, and western European powers don't have completely clean hands either due to their long history of brutal imperialism in the mideast. Africa of course also has an extensive past of colonization and suffers from a present of colonization and exploitation as well. For Central Americans there is of course the voracious american drug market as well as our politicians consistent appetite for its criminalisation to blame. There is also of course global climate change. Many of these contributing conditions are not being dealt with and so i believe that the migrations we have witnessed these last few years are only the first ining of perhaps even greater migrations to come. How we deal with it now, could determine whether our era is defined by mass deaths or something better. So to the extent that i believe many of these migrants have agency is similiar to how a person climbing onto the roof of there house to escape a flood does.
If the borders of the US were left completely open then, yes, there would most likely be a rush of people at first but over time they would migrate back and forth according to their needs, through the opening of the border they would gain agency. People often think that a country not permitting its citizens to leave is wrong and immoral, but if most countries close their borders to the people of a country going through great suffering, then it seems to me that is essentially the same even if the rhetoric may be different. The likeliness of this is high if the rich countries close there borders, since if the rich countries like the US and Italy feel they can not take them in, then its doubtful countries on the way that are much poorer will be able to either.
At the begining of your article you stated that "International commerce, jobs, and economic migrants are propelled by a common force: profit." This is the capitalist system, which is a system built upon the accumulation of capital, which are profits invested in instruments of labor, aka machines and various labor enhancements. Now Rhode island is quite small so there are geographical limitations of course, but if that was not an issue then yes. Wage workers in the capitalist system produce more value than they consume, if this was not the case they would not be hired or be hired for long. So if Rhode Island did not have the geographical limitations that it does, then with more workers the overall pot of valuable products and services would increase per capita in relation to the population. If the workers are divided and not unified into cohesive and responsive institutions to fight for there right share of the overall pie, which I believe should be all of it, then most of the gain to society will go to the capitalist as increased profits. So it is not the migrant workers who take from the native but instead actually the capitalist who exploits and trys to magnify there difference. So if the capitalist system through imperialism helped to contribute to the underlying conditions driving mass migration, and then it exploits there gratitude and willingness to work for less than native workers, than I believe it follows that they will wish to drive native anger towards the migrants with the ultimate goal of allowing them to exploit the migrant workers at an even more severe level. This could be true within the country, such as the US right now where the overarching result of anti-immigrant policies has been to not get rid of them but to drive there exploitation more into the shadows, or through mass deportations back to their home country followed by investments to exploit their desperation at super low wages that will then compete with the rich country workers, it is also possible they will all just die and everyone will look away. Either way the result will still be lower wages for rich country workers, it seems to me the only way out of the impass is for the native workers to realize their unity with migrant workers as exploited workers and instead of directing that energy of hostility at each other instead focus it upon the real root which is the capitalists themselves. Without the capitalists, more workers, held withing certain geographic limitations of course, would in fact only enrich each other.
So while nations may indeed continue to exist for awhile, the long term benefit of native workers is better served by making common cause with migrants against their mutual oppressors then allowing themselves to be stirred up against them. Making this argument to workers is much harder, but its the most beneficial if it can be made successfully.
This last point i do agree i may have been unfair to you, historically I believe the left generally referred to anarchists, socialists and communists. So I often dislike the way modern commentators use the left to refer to anything from a center right democrat like Hillary Clinton all the way to the most hard core communist, it can make understanding political subtleties difficult since anarchists, socialists and communists have radically different politics than liberals, much more so than can be expressed along a linear line. But as you point out you used quotes which i admit i did not notice, and of course one must generally use the jargon of the times in order to be understood.
Overall i think my main critique was that it seemed that throughout your article you were referencing different negative symptoms of capitalism but was instead taking that evidence for the negatives of globalism. I may come from a more radical tradition than you may be used to, but i would consider globalism to be an inherent aspect of capitalism. Capitalism in its algorithmic quest for ever increasing profits generally will not allow its self to be bound for long by people, nations, or even the physical and environmental limitations of the earth. While one country may be able to restrict it for a time unless it is overcome completely it will eventually reach out globally again. The only way to stop it is a prolonged struggle of the international working class cooperating with each other against capitalism in all its exploitive forms. I would also say that what we are seeing is not so much globalism vs nationalism but instead a rearrangement of the competing imperial powers, Russia, China, US, Germany and perhaps the evolution of multiple competing imperialisms similiar in nature to pre- world war times but that may have to wait for later.
A great deal of your article did indeed deal with Italy which I did not address but I felt that your arguments surrounding migrants was essentially of a subtle right wing nature and it needed to be balanced by a socialist counter narrative. I am very glad that you took the time to respond to my critique I know that putting analysis out there can be very difficult and i am thankful for your response which has allowed me to better express and understand my viewpoint. Once again I apoligise if I used some overly aggressive language and i hope your able to get something out of my response as well.
Raulb , July 20, 2018 at 8:57 pmI appreciate the more reflective tone of this reply. I believe there are still some misreadings of the article, which I will try to clarify.
For one thing, I am not the author of the article! Enrico Verga is the author. I merely translated the article. Enrico is Italian, however, and so for time zone reasons will be unable to respond to your comments for a while. I am happy to write a bit on this in the meantime.
You make two arguments.
The first is that many or most migrants are fleeing desperate circumstances. The article speaks however consistently of "economic migrants" – there are some overlapping issues with refugees, but also significant differences. Clearly there are many people who are economically comfortable in their home countries and who would still jump at a chance to get US citizenship if they could (look up EB-5 fraud for one example). Saying this does not imply some sort of subtle critique of such people, but they are not a myth.
I actually found your second argument more thought-provoking. As I understand you, you are suggesting something like the following. You support completely open borders. You acknowledge that this would lead at first to massive shifts in population, but in the long run you say things would stabilize. You acknowledge that this will lead to "lower wages for rich country workers," but say that we should focus on the fact that it is only within the capitalist system that this causality holds. You also suggest that it would probably lead, under current conditions, to workers having their anger misdirected at migrants and therefore supporting more reactionary policies.
Given that the shift to immediate open borders would, by this analysis, be highly detrimental to causes you support, why do you favor it? Your reasons appear to be (1) it's the right thing to do and we should just do it, (2) yes, workers might react in the way described, but they should not feel that way, and maybe we can convince them not to feel that way, (3) things will work themselves out in the long run.
I am a bit surprised at the straightforwardly idealistic tone of (1) and (2). As for (3), as Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead. He meant by this that phenomena that might in theory equilibrate over a very long time can lead to significant chaos in the short run; this chaos can meanwhile disrupt calculations about the "long term" and spawn other significant negative consequences.
Anyone who is open to the idea of radically new economic arrangements faces the question of how best to get there. You are perhaps suggesting that letting global capital reign supreme, unhindered by the rules and restrictions of nation-states, will in the long run allow workers to understand their oppression more clearly and so increase their openness to uniting against it. If so, I am skeptical.
I will finally point out that a part of the tone of your response seems directed at the impression that Enrico dislikes migrants, or wants other people to resent them. I see nothing in the article that would suggest this, and there are on the other hand several passages in which Enrico encourages the reader to empathize with migrants. When you suggest that his arguments are "essentially of a subtle right wing nature," you are maybe reacting to this misreading; in any case, I'm not really sure what you are getting at, since this phrase is so analytically imprecise that it could mean all sorts of things. Please try to engage with the article with arguments, not with vague epithets.
There is a bit of a dissonance here. Human rights has been persistently used by neoliberals to destabilize other regions for their own ends for decades now with little protest. And when the standard playbook of coups and stirring up trouble does not work its war and total destruction as we have seen recently in Iraq, Libya and Syria for completely fabricated reasons.
Since increased migration is the obvious first consequence when entire countries are decimated and in disarray one would expect the countries doing the destruction to accept the consequences of their actions but instead we have the same political forces who advocate intervention on 'human rights grounds' now demonizing migrants and advocating openly racist policies.
One can understand one mistake but 3 mistakes in a row! And apparently we are not capable of learning. The bloodlust continues unabated for Iran. This will destabilize an already destabilized region and cause even more migration to Europe. There seems to be a fundamental contradiction here, that the citizens of countries that execute these actions and who who protest about migrants must confront.
Maybe they should pay trillions of dollars of reparations for these intervention so these countries can be rebuilt and made secure again so migrants can return to their homes. Maybe the UN can introduce a new fund with any country considering destabilizing another country, for instance Iran, to first deposit a trillion dollars upfront to deal with the human fallout. Or maybe casually destabilizing and devastating entire countries, killing millions of people and putting millions more in disarray should be considered crimes against humanity and prosecuted so they are not repeated.
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Mar 25, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
mali , Mar 25, 2018 1:10:06 PM | 2
US demands China reconsider 'catastrophic' ban on importing foreign garbage & recyclables :james , Mar 25, 2018 1:19:22 PM | 3We request that China immediately halt implementation and revise these measures in a manner consistent with existing international standards for trade in scrap materials, which provide a global framework for transparent and environmentally sound trade in recycled commodities," the US spokesperson noted at the WTO Council for Trade in Goods session in Geneva.Love to see international-law-breaking US teaches other countries to abide internation laws with self-righteousness and entitlement. What an exceptional country!
would be nice if the world body demanded to those people buying plastic to figure out an alternative... apparently there is a lot of it the size of texas situated in the pacific ocean at present... or - 3 times the size of france...oldenyoung , Mar 25, 2018 2:12:27 PM | 9https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/23/world/plastic-great-pacific-garbage-patch-intl/index.html
And china quietly continues to sell off US bonds(debt)...this could turn into a serious problem for the US...If China wont buy our junk debt bonds who will?Things will go sideways fast when the credit card is maxxed out...
regards
OY
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Mar 20, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Having rejected a plan for imposing $30 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports last week, saying they weren't big enough ; President Trump is reportedly planning to unveil by Friday, a package of $60 billion in annual tariffs against China .
Trump is following through on a long-time threat that he says will punish China for intellectual property infringement and create more American jobs, and, as The Washington Post reports , the timing of the tariff package, which Trump plans to unveil by Friday, was confirmed by four senior administration officials.
The package could be applied to more than 100 products, which Trump argues were developed by using trade secrets the Chinese stole from U.S. companies or forced them to hand over in exchange for market access.
WaPo also notes that many of the financial ministers at the G-20 meeting have also alleged that China should make changes to its trade policies , but so far most have tried to cajole Beijing multilaterally, a strategy that Trump has said doesn't work.
Trump this month announced 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent for aluminum and they will also take effect Friday.
As Bloomberg reminds us, Canada and Mexico are already excluded from the levies, and the Trump administration has left the door open for Australia and possibly other allies to win a similar concession if they can show they are trading fairly and are national-security partners. Planned retaliation from the European Union to China has triggered concerns over a global trade war.
And as we warned previously , the recently announced global steel and aluminum tariffs (with various exemptions) by the Trump administration were just a (Section 232) preview of the main event : Trump's imminent trade war with China , which as Credit Suisse previews, will be unveiled any moment in the form of tariffs and restrictions on trade with China, reportedly in retaliation for Chinese IP violations.
First, a reminder on the all-important Section 301:
- What is Section 301? Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act allows the President to, among other things, " impose duties or other import restrictions on the products of [a] foreign country," if the President determines that that country is violating a trade agreement or "engages in discriminatory or other acts or policies which are unjustifiable or unreasonable and which burden or restrict United States commerce ." The U.S. relied heavily on the provision during the Reagan era (an administration in which the current USTR Robert Lighthizer served as Deputy USTR) into the early 1990s, but it has been used infrequently since the World Trade Organization was formed in 1995 and provided a forum for dispute resolution.
How will Section 301 figure in the upcoming US-Chinese trade war, and what are the key points:
- Last August, President Trump instructed his U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to initiate a Section 301 investigation into China's forced technology transfer policies.
- While the results of the 301 investigation are not due until August 2018, the President appears poised to act on the issue in the coming weeks.
- The President is reported to be seriously considering a package of tariffs on Chinese imports (targeting between $30BN and $60BN worth).
- Reports have stated that Administration officials have used China's manufacturing roadmap, "Made in China 2025," in deciding what goods to impose tariffs on. This will likely further concern Chinese leaders .
- In addition, the Administration has discussed rescinding licenses for Chinese businesses and employing other such methods to restrict Chinese investment in the United States . The President's recent decision to block a Singaporean company's bid to takeover a U.S. company underscores his aversion to Chinese direct investment (the company had Chinese affiliations).
- As part of the 301 action, the Administration has also reportedly discussed visa restrictions and a mandate that U.S. stock exchanges limit who can list in a U.S. market. It remains unclear whether the restrictions will go this far, but the President has, to date, been hawkish in his trade policy and there seem to be fewer and fewer moderating voices in the White House.
- The 301 investigation and potential actions resulting from it seem to complement congressional efforts to restrict Chinese investment through legislation broadening the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). We believe this legislation is on track to be signed into law in Q3 2018.
What to expect? here are some high-level thoughts from Credit Suisse:
- The Chinese will likely respond in kind, beginning a succession of tit-for-tat trade policies between the two countries.
- The United States has the option to take a multilateral approach and work with allied nations to initiate their own WTO dispute regarding Chinese technology transfer policies. However, at this point, the U.S. appears more likely to instead take unilateral retaliatory action without WTO authorization, which may run afoul of the U.S.'s WTO obligations.
- If the U.S. acts unilaterally (as it appears it will), China will likely bring a challenge before the World Trade Organization (WTO).
- The President appears committed to maintaining his "tough on China" stance. Even after losing top advisor Gary Cohn after the imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs , the President appears steadfast in his campaign against China's trade practices and Chinese investment in the U.S, and we expect continued restrictive trade policies with respect to China.
- The President's actions may not receive the congressional backlash that his steel and aluminum tariffs did. Many U.S. corporations are frustrated with China's policy requiring foreign companies to turn over source code and other proprietary technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market. However, if the President takes this as far as he currently seems to be planning to, punitive measures by China coupled with the chilling of foreign investment could be a major concern for U.S. corporations.
In terms of specifics, the US trade deficit last year hit an all time high of $375BN.
The Trump administration is planning imposing tariffs on up to $60bn of Chinese goods, or roughly 13% of goods import from China ($505BN), and 2.75% of total US goods import according to Danske Bank; the tariffs will target tech products, telecoms & clothing.
A snapshot of the key aspect of the US-China trade relationship:
- the US exports soybeans, pharmaceuticals, vehicles and aircraft.
- the US imports textiles,clothing, manufactures of metals,electronics and toys.
How to trade it?
As noted last week , when discussing which industries and companies would be impacted, we said that there are some obvious sectors such as industrials (cars, planes), agriculture, and technology. Below, courtesy of Strategas, is a list of US companies which derive the largest percentage of their total revenue from China. As trade war looms, it would be prudent for investors to start thinking about potential risks to the companies they own if they have sufficient business in China.
Pandelis Mon, 03/19/2018 - 18:00 Permalink
Four Star -> Pandelis Mon, 03/19/2018 - 18:03 PermalinkMAGA !! KAG !!!
go ahead with that petrodolar now ... yes, built the embassy in Beijing
here is something from a long long time ago ...
nmewn -> Four Star Mon, 03/19/2018 - 18:09 PermalinkAverage import tariffs in China vs the US:
http://thesoundingline.com/dissecting-us-trade-part-iv-free-trade/
Tariffs on China!
The Biden Family Hurt Most ;-)
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Mar 07, 2018 | angrybearblog.com
ProGrowthLiberal | March 6, 2018 7:26 am
Politics Taxes/regulation US/Global Economics Jeffrey Sachs on Trump's Trade Fallacies I heard on some news show an incredibly stupid statement from our President earlier today and in utter disbelief fired off this comment on some blog:Trump equates our trade deficit with us being ripped off. Let's do this as a simple example. You walk into Best Buy and purchase a $1000 computer but do not have cash. So you put it on your credit card incurring a $1000 liability. Even though you now have the computer and Best Buy does not – Best Buy just ripped you off as you have a $1000 financial obligation. An odd statement from someone who routinely defaulted on his financial obligations!
Never mind that as on Friday Jeffrey Sachs beat me to this:
But don't expect an impulsive and ignorant man like Trump to heed the lessons of economic history, logic of retaliation, and the basics of trade. His actions are based on three primitive fallacies. First, Trump thinks that America runs trade deficits with countries like China and Germany because the US is being swindled by them. The real reason is that the US saves too little and consumes too much, and it pays for this bad habit by borrowing from the rest of the world. The Trump theory of international trade is like a man in deep debt who blames his creditors for his spendthrift behavior. Come to think of it, that is precisely how Trump has spent his whole business career: over-borrowing, going bankrupt, and blaming his creditors.
Check out his discussion of the other two primitive fallacies! I guess Trump would argue that it was very unfair to me when Best Buy gave me a credit card.
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Mar 06, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Just on a different note, we haven't discussed donny senior's somewhat limpwristed attempt to reintroduce protected markets into the amerikan economy.
There is no doubt that 'something must be done' to provide a lifeline to the people of the midwest aka 'the rustbelt'. I'm not sure that resurrecting old programs is the best way forward; at least not solely. There must be more diversification if any resurrection hopes to endure.
The whole thing is classic trumpian right move for the wrong reasonWhen I began thinking about this I had a quick scout of the web to try to find out which nation is the largest supplier of steel to the US market. The financial times was about the only site which appeared to answer the query, but that was behind Murdoch's pay wall.
I have watched mainstream US/Oz/englander & Aotearoa coverage since donny said he was gonna tax steel imports and to my knowledge none of them have actually named the 'perps' aside from vague inferences vis a vis the People's Republic of China.
The allusions to China which is by far the largest producer of steel on the planet don't mention history. The Chinese did invent the steel-making process after all, but since 2007's allegations of dumping, China has moved well down the hierarchy of amerikan steel suppliers to somewhere around #8.
I don't like to guess but I suspect South Korea is copping the rough end of the pineapple too. That leaves India, Mexico, Brazil and Canada as the likely 'top 4'.IMO steel manufacturing in amerika became unsustainable because manufacturers chose not to reinvest in newer tech/newer processes that would make production more efficient. Plus the neolibs refused to force foreign manufacturers to wear a surcharge based upon the (at that time) superior working conditions of amerikan steel workers. Anyone else conclude that the badly thought through 'plan' was to force amerikan steel workers to give up their conditions?
I suspect Trump will encourage the growth of non-union 'scab' steel plants to get around one issue while 'trusting' amerikan manufacturers to wake the fuck up amd modernise to cover the other.
I doubt the latter will eventuate to the point donny anticipates. Where new plants are constructed it will be in regions where there wasn't a steel industry previously so as to make acceptance of non-union plants easier.
Nobody ever screwed up underestimating Wall St cupidity & where possible there will be little investment in new steel manufacturing tech as that is akin to robbing stockholders as far as corporate capitalists believe.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 5, 2018 9:19:41 PM | 87 NemesisCalling , Mar 6, 2018 1:31:42 AM | 92
@87 debThere is no doubt that 'something must be done' to provide a lifeline to the people of the midwest aka 'the rustbelt'. I'm not sure that resurrecting old programs is the best way forward; at least not solely. There must be more diversification if any resurrection hopes to endure. The whole thing is classic trumpian right move for the wrong reason.This is the same logic that Obama used to defend neoliberalism: "those jobs aren't coming back." Oh yeah...Americans can't make shoes and clothes anymore, huh? Too beneath us? Is that why the international intelligentsia rails against the ignorance of the fly-over states? Same twisted logic...same obfuscation. So which is it? Is America still a potentially diverse working force which needs a little help from combatting the hella-not-free-Chinese-protectionism and outright theft of intellectual property? Or are those days over with so America really doesn't need market commodities like domestically-produced shoes, clothes, steel, etc.? Did I miss something, because a lot of people feel like since the iPAD was created, we don't need a darn thing as long as Foxconn over in China is holding a gun to their workers temple and keeping up with demand. Or making a pair of Nikes for a dollar and selling it for $200.
My friend...anything would be an improvement.
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Feb 17, 2018 | economistsview.typepad.com
Trump Doesn't Give a Dam, by Paul Krugman, NY Times : Donald Trump doesn't give a dam. Or a bridge. Or a road. Or a sewer system. Or any of the other things we talk about when we talk about infrastructure.
But how can that be when he just announced a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan ? That's easy: It's not a plan, it's a scam. The $1.5 trillion number is just made up; he's only proposing federal spending of $200 billion, which is somehow supposed to magically induce a vastly bigger overall increase in infrastructure investment, mainly paid for either by state and local governments (which are not exactly rolling in cash, but whatever) or by the private sector.
And even the $200 billion is essentially fraudulent: The budget proposal announced the same day doesn't just impose savage cuts on the poor, it includes sharp cuts for the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy and other agencies that would be crucially involved in any real infrastructure plan. Realistically, Trump's offer on infrastructure is this: nothing .
That's not to say that the plan is completely vacuous. One section says that it would "authorize federal divestiture of assets that would be better managed by state, local or private entities." Translation: We're going to privatize whatever we can. It's conceivable that this would be done only in cases where the private sector really would do better, and contracts would be handed out fairly, without a hint of cronyism. And if you believe that, I have a degree from Trump University you might want to buy. ...
So why isn't Trump proposing something real? Why this dog's breakfast of a proposal that everyone knows won't go anywhere?
Part of the answer is that in practice Trump always defers to Republican orthodoxy, and the modern G.O.P. hates any program that might show people that government can work and help people.
But I also suspect that Trump is afraid to try anything substantive. To do public investment successfully, you need leadership and advice from experts. And this administration doesn't do expertise, in any field. Not only do experts have a nasty habit of telling you things you don't want to hear, their loyalty is suspect: You never know when their professional ethics might kick in.
So the Trump administration probably couldn't put together a real infrastructure plan even if it wanted to. And that's why it didn't.
pgl , February 13, 2018 at 03:19 PM
We need a lot more government financed infrastructure investment. Trump the clown is selling us a major cut in what the Federal government pays for. And some people are praising this proposal? Pardon me for calling Trump the clown as he is playing the rest of us as clowns.kurt -> pgl... , February 13, 2018 at 05:07 PM
As a corollary, what we DON'T need is to spend more $$ blowing up people in third world countries at the behest of oil companies.ilsm -> kurt... , February 13, 2018 at 06:08 PM
US could have Clinton blowing up the Russian Federation while doing for the Wahhabi profiting ARAMCO as Trump does.DeDude , February 14, 2018 at 07:11 AMFederal input to roads and waterways is traditionally a small part of the total. 80% or so funded is by state and local sources where the economic benefit arises.
IIRC "indivisible public goods" are not a federal concern........ while the common defense is a preamble dictate.
The last Krugman criticism was about deficits hawks splurging when the economy is "good".
Why worry infrastructure in a good economy, the states enjoy it as well as the central government?
The private sector will usually just extract huge rents if you give them unrestricted monopoly rights - and they will either refuse to play or go bankrupt if you put restrictions on their ability to extract rents as they please.https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-13/trump-s-huge-infrastructure-plan-is-a-flop
If you want to make $1.5 trillion of infrastructure someone will have to borrow that money. The government can borrow at a much lower rate than the private sector. So by moving the project into the private sector you make them a lot more costly - its just that we will pay for them in user fees rather than taxes. That means poor people will pay more and rich people will pay less (and harvest profits in their investment portfolios).
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Feb 15, 2018 | www.unz.com
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, many states and localities have blocks to prevent privatization, and they want to prevent what's happening to them from what happened in Indiana with the toll road. They say, "Wait a minute. Privatization is going to be a giveaway. It's going to triple the costs of providing infrastructure services. It's going to price our cities and states out of the market if we try to go along with this plan." And Trump says, "Well, in order to qualify for public funding, you have to abolish these restrictions on private funding."
You have to let yourself be robbed blind by the hedge funds and Wall Street. That's basically what he said. He said just as the hedge funds robbed Chicago blind on the parking meters getting a huge rate of return that probably will force Mayor Rahm out of office, you have to let other privatizers come in and vastly increase your cost of living.
So, the infrastructure is going to really destroy America's competitiveness instead of contributing to it. It's going to vastly raise the price of the cost of living rather than providing more resources and making things easier for the population.
SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, the American Society of Civil Engineers agrees with you that this is inadequate in terms of funding, that the Trump plan is just not sufficient. In fact, it needs, they say, just to deal with the backlog a $4.6-trillion investment by 2025 and Trump's plan doesn't even come close. What do you make of this?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, to begin with, Trump's plan would triple the cost of what the engineers say to $22 trillion and the reason is that it's a Thatcherite privatization plan. Trump's plan reverses the last 150 years of public infrastructure. And in fact, it's the biggest attack on industrial capitalism in over 100 years, more serious than a socialist attack.
Now, America's first professor of economics at the first business school, Simon Patten, said public infrastructure is a fourth factor of production, but unlike labor, land, and capital, the role of public infrastructure is not to make a profit. It's to provide public services that are basic for the economy's living standards and capacity to produce at a subsidized rate. So, America got rich and came to dominate the world industrial economy by subsidizing all of the basic costs. Low-cost roads, low-cost infrastructure. The government bore these costs so that, in effect, public infrastructure subsidizes the economy to lower the cost of production.
Trump's plan is to vastly increase it because he forces all of this into the marketplace. Instead of offering, say, roads at the cost of production, he'd actually triple the cost of production by insisting that it be privately financed, probably by hedge funds and by bank credit that would add the interest charges, the capital gains charges, the management fees, the oversight charges and the fines for criminal fraud that goes with it by factoring all these prices into the cost.
Look at the, for instance, the Indiana Toll Road. That was done by a Trump-style private and public infrastructure and the toll roads are so high to try to pay off the hedge fund backers that people don't use them. They go on the free, slower internal roads. And that sort of is a horror story that anyone who's thinking of Trump's plan should be there.
Trump mentions, for instance, water privatization. All you have to do is look at Thatcher's water privatization in Britain, which has vastly increased the price of water. The water companies have been bought out by hedge funds, registered abroad by foreign owners that are opaque and it's become probably the most unpopular privatization plan of all. So that part's a disaster.
SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, another part of the plan is what is known as value capture financing in order to raise more funds. First of all, what is value capture financing? And what are its implications for states and communities that apply this principle?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Value capture financing is a wonderful idea. It's so wonderful I don't know how it got into the plan. It says that if you build transportation along a route, sort of like the Second Avenue Subway in New York, that transportation is going to increase the value of land and real estate all along the route because now people are going to be closer in access to the subways, to the roads, to the railroads. Many Hollywood movies in the 1930s were all about building roads up to politicians' houses.
So, the idea is that in the future, if New York City were to do something like build the Second Avenue Subway for $3 billion, that this would raise the rental value, already has raised the rental value along the subway line by $6 billion because now, I'm sorry, 6 trillion, I forget whether it's billion or trillion at this point. But at any rate, it's raised it by so much because now people don't have to walk a mile to an overcrowded Lexington Subway.
Well, under Trump's plan, the cities, in order to get federal funding, would have to help themselves by recapturing the real estate value created by this added transportation instead of leaving it in the hands of the landlords as the Second Avenue Subway extension was left or as the West Side extension to the Javits Center increased value of real estate all along there or the Wall Street luxurious restructuring at the subway, another 3 billion there.
This is the best idea of the plan and the one thing that should be kept, which is, of course, why the Democrats don't mention it at all because they're backing the real estate and the financial interest in this. It's such a good idea, I don't know how, Rick Rybeck has written a wonderful article on this recently. So, there are a lot of followers of Henry George that love this aspect of the plan.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Michael, this is your opportunity to lay out a infrastructure plan that you think will work for this country.
MICHAEL HUDSON: The government would finance it, and it would finance it by creating its own credit in the same way that it created the 4.6 trillion to bailout the banks on Wall Street. Instead of creating money to give to Wall Street, you'd spend money into the economy to build up the infrastructure. And ideally, you'd tax the rich for this, but now that Trump has untaxed the wealthy, the only way that you could possibly do it under his tax giveaway to Wall Street is for the government simply to print the money, create the money as the Federal Reserve or the Treasure can easily do, and finance it all public, and provide the basic infrastructure services at cost or freely. So, instead of tripling the cost of water, instead of tripling the cost of transportation, you'd actually reduce the cost of transportation, you'd reduce the cost of water, and you'd still get the value recapture tax but at least, the whole idea is you'd make it less expensive for the economy to produce and to live.
SHARMINI PERIES: And Michael, much of this country doesn't believe that government is capable of doing this because they have been given example after example of how government bureaucratic structures aren't working. And, of course, this deterioration of the civil service, it plays a big role in all of this. How do you rebuild confidence in the state structures?
MICHAEL HUDSON: You write a history of America's success in doing this. You can look at Eisenhower's road building plan of the 1950s, for instance. You can look at the whole history of America's infrastructure spending and the whole logic that was spelled out by Simon Patten at the Wharton School and by the economic theorists of industrial capitalism when America was really taking off in the late 19th and early 20th century. The whole history of how America built its roads, how it built the communication system, public health are examples of how governments make things work.
ORDER IT NOW
You can look at Germany, you can look at other successful economies. And you look at what went well, but you have to look at what went wrong so you see how the financial interests can take over these plans, privatize them, and somehow gut them, and turn them around and make them predatory instead of productive.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Michael. As always, great pleasure to have you on and thank you for joining us.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Thank you. It's good to be here, Sharmini.
SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.
Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of many books, including The Bubble and Beyond, and Finance Capitalism and its Discontents, Killing the Host- How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy , and most recently J is for Junk Economics: A Survivor's Guide to Economic Vocabulary in an Age of Deception .
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Jan 29, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org
January 29, 2018 Leaked Trump Infrastructure Plan is a Blueprint for Corporate Subsidies
by Pete Dolack
byThe Trump administration's plans to rebuild infrastructure in the United States have been leaked, and it appears to be as bad as feared. At least three-quarters of intended funding will go toward corporate subsidies, not actual projects. It is possible that no funding will go directly toward projects.
There's no real surprise here, given that President Donald Trump's election promise to inject $1 trillion into infrastructure spending was a macabre joke. What is actually happening is that the Trump administration intends to push for more "public-private partnerships." What these so-called partnerships actually are vehicles to shovel public money into private pockets. These have proven disastrous wherever they have been implemented, almost invariably making public services more expensive. Often, far more expensive. They are nothing more than a variation on straightforward schemes to sell off public assets below cost, with working people having to pay more for reduced quality of service.
That is no surprise, as corporations are only going to provide services or operate facilities if they can make a profit. And since public-private partnerships promise guaranteed big profits, at the expense of taxpayers, these are quite popular in corporate boardrooms. And when those promises don't come true, it taxpayers who are on the hook for the failed privatization.
The collapse earlier this month of Carillion PLC in Britain put 50,000 jobs at risk, both those directly employed and others working for subcontractors. The holder of a vast array of government contracts for construction, services and managing the operations of railways, hospitals, schools and much else, Carillion received contracts worth £5.7 billion just since 2011. Overall, an astonishing £120 billion was spent on outsourcing in Britain in 2015.
What did British taxpayers get for this corporate largesse? It certainly not was the promised savings. Parliament's spending watchdog agency, the National Audit Office, found that privately financing public projects costs as much as 40 percent more than projects relying solely on government money. The office estimates that existing outsourcing contracts will cost taxpayers almost £200 billion for the next 25 years. (This report was issued before Carillion's collapse.) In response, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said, "These corporations need to be shown the door. We need our public services provided by public employees with a public service ethos and a strong public oversight," The Guardian reported.
Naturally, there was one group that did quite well from this privatization: Carillion's shareholders, who reaped £500 billion in dividends in the past seven years. But it is the government that will have to pick up the tab if the company's employees are to continue to be paid. On top of that, the company's pension shortfall reached £900 billion, according to Reuters.
By no means is Carillion's collapse the only privatization disaster in Britain. A bailout of the corporate-run East Coast rail system is expected to cost hundreds of millions of pounds. There are numerous other examples that have proven windfalls for corporate executives but expensive mistakes for the public.
Offer subsidies first, ask questions later
One of the many empty promises made by President Trump during the 2016 campaign was that his infrastructure plan would "leverage public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral."
"Spur" investment, not actually spend on investment. This supposed plan originated with Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, a conservative economics professor. Ross, now Commerce secretary (although perhaps not for long if recent reports are to believed), was an investment banker who specialized in buying companies and then taking away pensions and medical benefits in order to quickly flip his companies for a big short-term profit. The two recommended the Trump administration allocate $137 billion in tax credits for private investors who underwrite infrastructure projects. The two claimed that over 10 years the credits could spur $1 trillion in investment.
So the new administration won't actually spend $1 trillion to fix the country's badly decaying infrastructure; it hopes to encourage private capital to do so through tax cuts.
That brings us to this week's leak. The news site Axios published the Trump administration's six-page outline for infrastructure investment on January 22. The document mentions no dollar figures. But what the document does do is to discuss where money will be sent. First up is "infrastructure incentives initiative," which is to account for 50 percent of total appropriations. This category will provide grants to be used for "core infrastructure" projects and requires "Evidence supporting how applicant will secure and commit new, non-federal revenue to create sustainable long-term funding" and requires new sources of "revenue for operations, maintenance and operations."
Although it is possible that local- or state-government funding could provide the required revenues, given the intentions of the Trump régime, what this means is that privatization is being counted on for these projects, with corporations taking over public facilities providing the required ongoing revenue streams.
A hint that this is intended is that the first item on a list of "Principles for Infrastructure Improvements" is an intention to make it easier for tolls to be placed on highways. That item is this: "Allow states flexibility to toll on interstates and reinvest toll revenues in infrastructure." Again, it is possible that state governments might do this themselves. But the more likely scenario is the privatization of highways, with the corporations gaining control then installing toll booths to not only provide funds for maintenance but to hand themselves a perpetual profit. And if the profits don't materialize, it won't be private capital holding the bag. For example, nine privatized toll roads in Spain will cost taxpayers there €5 billion because the roads are being nationalized in the wake of the private operators' failures.
A further hint is found buried in the section on water infrastructure, where we find this passage: "Remove the application of Federal requirements for de minimis Federal involvement." This is likely intended to provide a green light to privatization of water systems. That has been done in France and Germany, with disastrous results. For example, water prices in Paris doubled over 25 years before the city took back its water system, saving €35 million in the first year and cutting rates. The German city of Bergkamen reduced costs by as much as 30 percent after returning its basic utilities to the public sector.
No details for a plan not based in reality
Another 25 percent of the total appropriations for the White House infrastructure investment plan is a "rural infrastructure program," under which state governments are "incentivized to partner" with "private investment." Various other programs constitute the remainder of the plan, none of which are clear as to who or what will be eligible.
The official unveiling of the plan will likely not be released until after the January 30 State of the Union address, according to a report in The Hill. A further sign of the lack of specifics is that the White House has had nothing substantial to say on the topic. The most recent statement on infrastructure that a search of the official White House web page could find was an August announcement that the president had signed an executive order making the "environmental and permitting processes more efficient."
Channeling the president's usual disregard for reality, the announcement claimed that "delays" in infrastructure projects cost "trillions" of dollars. The only actual projects mentioned are three pipelines, including the Keystone XL and Dakota Access lines, of which the announcement claims will "create over 42,000 jobs and $2 billion in earnings." (Those figures appear directly copied from a widely discredited State Department environmental impact statement issued in 2014, when the Obama administration was supporting them.) In reality, a study by the Cornell Global Labor Institute found that, when all effects are calculated, there may be a net loss of jobs. Additional fuel costs in the Midwest, pipeline spills, pollution and the rising costs of climate change would contribute to job losses.
Of course, environmental damages are not considered in Trump administration projections, putting them even more in the realm of fantasy. Consider two World Health Organization studies that concluded polluted environments cause 1.7 million children age five or younger to die per year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated a year ago that 230,000 lives would be saved and 120,000 emergency-room visits saved in 2020 if the Clean Air Act is left intact. Globally, air pollution could lead to nine million premature deaths and US$2.6 trillion in economic damage from the costs of sick days, medical bills and reduced agricultural output by 2060, according to an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development study.
This doesn't come cheap, either -- a study of energy subsidies estimates the totality of subsidies given to fossil fuels for 2015 was $5.6 trillion. Lest you think some "anti-oil" group made that calculation, that figure comes to us courtesy of the International Monetary Fund! The Trump administration will only add to this mind-boggling total as it has made clear its intentions to further subsidize gas, oil and especially coal, no matter the lack of rational economics. And the cost of global warming? Incalculable. What would be the future cost of hundreds of millions displaced from drowned cities? Or, in the long term, of destroying the Earth's ability to maintain a stable environment?
Although Donald Trump is the worst yet of a long line of disastrous U.S. presidents, let's forgo the easy idea that he alone is responsible for facilitating corporate plunder at the cost of all other human considerations. He is highly useful to the plutocrats who control the Republican Party, so much so that talk of a Trump impeachment should be relegated to the level of fantasy for the foreseeable future, barring an all-time wipeout in the 2018 midterms despite the Democratic Party's uncanny ability to blow elections. The greater question is if sufficient numbers of Trump voters come to realize the degree they were hoodwinked for believing that a billionaire who built his fortune by screwing working people would somehow come to their rescue.
That's the short term. For the longer term, humanity finding its way out of the dead end it is speeding toward depends on freeing itself from the grips of a system that repeatedly throws up Trumps, Bushes, Harpers, Thatchers and the like. The Trump administration is a symptom, not a cause, of morbid decay.
Pete Dolack writes the Systemic Disorder blog and has been an activist with several groups. His book, It's Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment , is available from Zero Books.
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Dec 13, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
diptherio , December 13, 2017 at 2:40 pm
Apologies if I posted this already:
Credit Union Sues Donald Trump to Save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
https://madmimi.com/p/a2194bDecember 5, 2017 – This afternoon, the law firm of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP (ECBA) filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union against Donald Trump and Michael Mulvaney. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan.
The lawsuit challenges President Trump's recent, illegal takeover of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), in which he installed his at-will White House employee, Michael Mulvaney, to be Acting Director of the CFPB. The CFPB protects millions of Americans from unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices in the financial marketplace. Mr. Mulvaney has called the CFPB a "sad, sick joke."
"We support the CFPB as a protector of our low income members' financial rights, and fear that the appointment of an Acting Director beholden to the White House could result in upheaval and ultimate dissolution of this critical agency," said Linda Levy, CEO of the Credit Union. "Having experienced the devastation that the 2008 mortgage crisis wreaked on our low income members, we need the CFPB to protect communities targeted by financial predators."
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Nov 17, 2016 | www.theguardian.com
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians.
The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation of a disintegrating neoliberal order – a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness.
White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process.
This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future.
What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering of poor and working people and obsessed with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness to justice. We must ground our truth-telling in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist domination. Third we must remember courageous exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral and spiritual inspiration as we build multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall Street crimes and war crimes, global warming and police abuse – and to protect precious rights and liberties.
Feminists misunderstood the presidential election from day one Liza Featherstone By banking on the idea that women would support Hillary Clinton just because she was a female candidate, the movement made a terrible mistake Read moreThe age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad.
Rightwing attacks on Obama – and Trump-inspired racist hatred of him – have made it nearly impossible to hear the progressive critiques of Obama. The president has been reluctant to target black suffering – be it in overcrowded prisons, decrepit schools or declining workplaces. Yet, despite that, we get celebrations of the neoliberal status quo couched in racial symbolism and personal legacy. Meanwhile, poor and working class citizens of all colors have continued to suffer in relative silence.
In this sense, Trump's election was enabled by the neoliberal policies of the Clintons and Obama that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. The progressive populism of Bernie Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat Trump to avert this neofascist outcome!
Click and elect: how fake news helped Donald Trump win a real election Hannah Jane Parkinson The 'alt-right' (aka the far right) ensnared the electorate using false stories on social media. But tech companies seem unwilling to admit there's a problemIn this bleak moment, we must inspire each other driven by a democratic soulcraft of integrity, courage, empathy and a mature sense of history – even as it seems our democracy is slipping away.
We must not turn away from the forgotten people of US foreign policy – such as Palestinians under Israeli occupation, Yemen's civilians killed by US-sponsored Saudi troops or Africans subject to expanding US military presence.
As one whose great family and people survived and thrived through slavery, Jim Crow and lynching, Trump's neofascist rhetoric and predictable authoritarian reign is just another ugly moment that calls forth the best of who we are and what we can do.
For us in these times, to even have hope is too abstract, too detached, too spectatorial. Instead we must be a hope, a participant and a force for good as we face this catastrophe.
theomatica -> MSP1984 17 Nov 2016 6:40
To be replaced by a form of capitalism that is constrained by national interests. An ideology that wishes to uses the forces of capitalism within a market limited only by national boundaries which aims for more self sufficiency only importing goods the nation can not itself source.
farga 17 Nov 2016 6:35
The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang.
Really? The white house and congress are now dominated by tea party politicians who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand.....read Breitbart news to see how Thatcher and Reagan are idolised.
That in recent decades middle ground politicians have strayed from the true faith....and now its time to go back - popular capitalism, small government, low taxes.
if you think the era of "neo liberalism" is over, you are in deep denial!
Social36 -> farga 17 Nov 2016 8:33
Maybe, West should have written that we're now in neoliberal, neofascist era!
ForSparta -> farga 17 Nov 2016 14:24
Well in all fairness, Donald Trump (horse's ass) did say he'd 'pump' money into the middle classes thus abandoning 'trickle down'. His plan/ideology is also to increase corporate tax revenues overall by reducing the level of corporation tax -- the aim being to entice corporations to repatriate wealth currently held overseas. Plus he has proposed an infrastructure spending spree, a fiscal stimulus not a monetary one. When you add in tax cuts the middle classes will feel flushed and it is within that demographic that most businesses and hence jobs are created. I think his short game has every chance of doing what he said it would.
SeeNOevilHearNOevil 17 Nov 2016 6:36
The age of Obama was the last gasp of neoliberalism. Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad.
Didn't Obama say to Wall Street ''I'm the only one standing between you and the lynch mob? Give me money and I'll make it all go away''. Then came into office and went we won't prosecute the Banks not Bush for a false war because we don't look back.
He did not ignore, he actively, willingly, knowingly protected them. At the end of the day Obama is wolf in sheep's clothing. Exactly like HRC he has a public and a private position. He is a gifted speaker who knows how to say all the right, progressive liberal things to get people to go along much better than HRC ever did.
But that lip service is where his progressive views begin and stop. It's the very reason none of his promises never translated into actions and I will argue that he was the biggest and smoothest scam artist to enter the white house who got even though that wholly opposed centre-right policies, to flip and support them vehemently. Even when he had the Presidency, House and Senate, he never once introduced any progressive liberal policy. He didn't need Republican support to do it, yet he never even tried.
ProbablyOnTopic 17 Nov 2016 6:37
I agree with some of this, but do we really have to throw around hysterical terms like 'fascist' at every opportunity? It's as bad as when people call the left 'cultural Marxists'.
LithophaneFurcifera -> ProbablyOnTopic 17 Nov 2016 7:05
l0Ho5LG4wWcFJsKg 17 Nov 2016 6:40True, it's sloganeering that drowns out any nuance, whoever does it. Whenever a political term is coined, you can be assured that its use and meaning will eventually be extended to the point that it becomes less effective at characterising the very groups that it was coined to characterise.
Keep "fascist" for Mussolini and "cultural Marxist" for Adorno, unless and until others show such strong resemblances that the link can't seriously be denied.
I agree about the importance of recognising the suffering of the poor and building alliances beyond, and not primarily defined by, race though.
Hang about Trump is the embodiment of neo-liberalism. It's neo-liberalism with republican tea party in control. He's not going to smash the system that served him so well, the years he manipulated and cheated, why would he want to change it.garrylee -> l0Ho5LG4wWcFJsKg 17 Nov 2016 9:38West's point is that it's beyond Trump's control. The scales have fallen from peoples eyes. They now see the deceit of neo-liberalism. And once they see through the charlatan Trump and the rest of the fascists, they will, hopefully, come to realize the only antidote to neo-liberalism is a planned economy.Nash25 17 Nov 2016 6:40
This excellent analysis by professor West places the current political situation in a proper historical context.
However, I fear that neo-liberalism may not be quite "dead" as he argues.
Most of the Democratic party's "establishment" politicians, who conspired to sabotage the populist Sanders's campaign, still dominate the party, and they, in turn, are controlled by the giant corporations who fund their campaigns.
Democrat Chuck Schumer is now the Senate minority leader, and he is the loyal servant of the big Wall Street investment banks.
Sanders and Warren are the only two Democratic leaders who are not neo-liberals, and I fear that they will once again be marginalized.
Rank and file Democrats must organize at the local and state level to remove these corrupt neo-liberals from all party leadership positions. This will take many years, and it will be very difficult.
VenetianBlind 17 Nov 2016 6:42Not sure Neo-Liberalism has ended. All they have done is get rid of the middle man.
macfeegal 17 Nov 2016 6:46
It would seem that there is a great deal of over simplifying going on; some of the articles represent an hysteric response and the vision of sack cloth and ashes prevails among those who could not see that the wheels were coming off the bus. The use of the term 'liberal' has become another buzz word - there are many different forms of liberalism and creating yet another sound byte does little to illuminate anything.
Making appeals to restore what has been lost reflects badly upon the central political parties, with their 30 year long rightward drift and their legacy of sucking up to corporate lobbyists, systems managers, box tickers and consultants. You can't give away sovereign political power to a bunch of right wing quangos who worship private wealth and its accumulation without suffering the consequences. The article makes no contribution (and neither have many of the others of late) to any kind of alternative to either neo-liberalism or the vacuum that has become a question mark with the dark face of the devil behind it.
We are in uncharted waters. The conventional Left was totally discredited by1982 and all we've had since are various forms of modifications of Thatcher's imported American vision. There has been no opposition to this system for over 40 years - so where do we get the idea that democracy has any real meaning? Yes, we can vote for the Greens, or one of the lesser known minority parties, but of course people don't; they tend to go with what is portrayed as the orthodoxy and they've been badly let down by it.
It would be a real breath of fresh air to see articles which offer some kind of analysis that demonstrates tangible options to deal with the multiple crises we are suffering. Perhaps we might start with a consideration that if our political institutions are prone to being haunted by the ghost of the 1930's, the state itself could be seen as part of the problem rather than any solution. Why is it that every other institution is considered to be past its sell by date and we still believe in a phantom of democracy? Discuss.
VenetianBlind -> macfeegal 17 Nov 2016 7:00
I have spent hours trying to see solutions around Neo-Liberalism and find that governments have basically signed away any control over the economy so nothing they can do. There are no solutions.
Maybe that is the starting point. The solution for workers left behind in Neo-Liberal language is they must move. It demands labor mobility. It is not possible to dictate where jobs are created.
I see too much fiddly around the edges, the best start is to say they cannot fix the problem. If they keep making false promises then things will just get dire as.
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Sep 17, 2017 | vascript:void 0
There are two real question facing the US as to what sort of president will Trump be.
1. Thus far he looks to me to be a man who will run a tight ship deciding major issues himself and will make deals with whomever has the power to enable him to reach his goals.
IMO that means that the Republicans in Congress will either go along with Trump's legislative proposals or see Trump go across the aisle to seek votes.
A good example would be whatever it is that Trump decides that he wants to do about the obvious failure that is the ACA, presently sinking under the weight of far higher costs than expected and smaller enrollments. Democrats understand that the law must be modified to survive and to preserve the increase in health care coverage that it has brought. The hardline Republicans in both Houses of Congress want to destroy Obamacare and they have no realistic alternative other than the usual blather about private health accounts. Trump will not want to alienate his working class followers. Why would Trump not make a deal with the Democrats to get what he wants and needs?
ISL said... Dear Colonel,
Obamacare is a symptom of a bigger American health care cost problem. If How much larger portion of the US economy can healthcare take before the entire system collapses? Its currently 17% heading for 20%, while competitor nations spend half that. Obamacare, was a hail mary to continue the party for the health insurance and overall industry at tax payer expense, and it was so poorly conceived that as you note, it is falling apart.
I am hopeful that Pres Trump, who is not beholden to the insurance industry, unlike Obama, will take the side of the US (non-health care) business community and pull our costs to be more in line with those of the rest of the world.
I predict twitter storms against recalcitrant Repubs and Dems that mobilize via social media Trump's constituency to =scare the bejeezus of them for the mid terms. Reply 10 November 2016 at 11:08 AM
Pete Deer said... "Why would Trump not make a deal with the Democrats to get what he wants and needs?"
He doesn't care about health insurance for anyone other than himself or his family. He is on record as supporting repeal and replace. And he is an incompetent person who is not a very good negotiator. In fact, he won't do any negotiating at all, leaving that to his staff as that would imply doing the hard work of governing, which is something he is really not all that interested in doing. I say that after having watched him over the past 30 years as he has bankrupted several business, stiffed his contractors and investors and cheated on his various wives. Why should he be any different now?
Pete Reply 10 November 2016 at 11:13 AM Anna said... Medicare for all would solve the crushing ACA problem at once - and this would endear Trump to the working class, progressives, small-business owners... to the absolute majority of the US citizenry. A process of reorganization from the current mess of viciously-profiteering middlemen (insurance companies) toward the Medicare for all could be achieved in one year. The reorganization must be approached as a nationwide emergency that demands a swift, drastic solution. There can be no restoration of the middle class and its purchasing power without first solving the scandalous healthcare crisis. The current system of penalties for not buying a health insurance is in fact a clear case of taxation without representation. Moving to a Single-payer system is perhaps the most urgent task for the US government Reply 10 November 2016 at 12:40 PM shaun said in reply to Anna... we don't do solutions this is the USA./ Reply 10 November 2016 at 02:13 PM
Edward Amame said in reply to Anna... Anna
Do you remember why there was no banking reform in the aftermath of the 2008 crash? A very frustrated Sen. Dick Durbin admitted on the radio, "And the banks, hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created, are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
Likewise with health insurance reform. HRC ran into an insurance industry/health care industry firestorm when she tried to reform the system in the early 1990s.
That's how we got Obamacare. Democrats had the full support of most of the base because the other side and the the insurance industry/healthcare industry were not willing to even entertain the idea of Medicare for all. We thought Obamacare was something that could get passed in a bi-partisan way because it was a "market-based" solution birthed in the Heritage Foundation that the insurance industry/healthcare industry got sort-of behind.
Obamacare got passed without the public option because the insurance industry, the GOP, and some Blue Dog Dems demanded it be gone and yet the final version of Obamacare did not get a single GOP vote.
Based on what do you think Trump and the GOP House/Senate would even consider a major new entitlement like Medicare for all? Reply 10 November 2016 at 02:49 PM
Anna said in reply to Edward Amame... If the only sensible solution to the healthcare crisis - the Single payer system - were not implemented, then Trump's other important projects will be destined for failure. Reply 10 November 2016 at 05:51 PM
FourthAndLong said in reply to Anna... That it is. But medical care has always been for the priveleged historically. Emergency care and first aid excepted. Believing politicians actually care about the public is sort of like thinking parents will be around forever to look out for you, or worse. Egotist desire for a legacy is the best bet. Reply 10 November 2016 at 08:52 PM r whitman said... The individuals speaking out against the ACA do not have insurance under that program. They are medically secure under Medicare, Tricare, Corporate care, etc. The 6 people I know personally that have ACA insurance are happy with it within limits compared to their choices if any before the program.
The excuse that the finances are out of whack is a nonstarter. Every government program that subsidizes an area loses money--Medicare, Medicaid, the Military commissary system, the Farm program, AFDC, food stamps. All these were supposed o be self sustaining but as usual politicians lied about them. The ACA deficit is just more of the same. I am sure that it will evolve into a better system in time. In the meantime 20 million US citizens have some health insurance, same as the rest of us. Reply 10 November 2016 at 02:16 PM
ISL said in reply to r whitman... r whitman,
Oh come on, do you really think that poorly of Americans that we are incapable of doing as poorly as the vast majority of European countries (if not sabotaged by crony capitalism), which have better health outcomes that the US? If we could do as well as Belgium (forget Denmark) costs would be half and people would live years longer.
Its not rocket science. Its that Obama was the single largest receiver of donations of any senator by a factor of TWO from the health insurance industry. Deplorable USA sent a message - the pay to play corruption of the establishment sucks. Expect the same message again in two years if their voice is ignored.
Reply 10 November 2016 at 04:29 PMr whitman said in reply to ISL... You miss my point. These people have health insurance. They did not have it before. They are reasonably happy with it. Do not confuse it with the cost. The USA always has the highest cost of government programs, health care or otherwise. Reply 10 November 2016 at 05:20 PM
Could you conceive an idea that the majority of people that are against the ACA are very unhappy with paying the racket money to insurance companions while, at the same time, having no real coverage because of the exorbitant deductibles? The ACA is going to be more expensive next year - up at least 25% and to the whooping 144% - with zero (0) improvement in the coverage. But the most insulting aspect of the program is the penalty for not buying an insurance from the national racketeers; in some states the federal penalty has an additional state penalty. Instead of imposing an honest tax and providing the citizenry with universal health care (at least on the basic level), the racketeering class managed to tax the populace without representation. This is an act of murder of small businesses in the US. Reply 10 November 2016 at 06:09 PMYou need to divorce actual health care from the cost of health care. Health care is beneficial and in some cases curative. The cost is a racket like most government subsidy programs Reply 11 November 2016 at 10:45 AM
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