Big tech disrupters may pose risk to financial stability, warns global regulator FT
The U.S. government and Facebook are negotiating a record, multibillion-dollar fine for the company’s privacy lapses WaPo. Martha Stewart when to jail on a nothingburger insider trading charge. Why are we even “negotiating” with Zuckerberg?
Australian senator smears blood on Pauline Hanson’s door after parliament brawl Channel News Asia
For a commission of inquiry into SNC-Lavalin and the Prime Minister’s Office MaCleans. Political chaos reigns across the Anglosphere. Australia, Canada, the U.S. and, of course, the U.K.–
Brexit
U.K. Set to Tell EU It Doesn’t Want to Renegotiate Brexit Deal Bloomberg
Can you negotiate with people who are certifiable? Ask the EU Guardian
Investors are shrugging off Brexit and pouring money into UK fintech startups Quartz
I scrape mould off the top of jam and eat what’s underneath, admits PM: Theresa May shares hot tip with Cabinet in discussion over food waste Daily Mail. Too much information!
A feud between France and Italy sums up the deep rift over Europe Quartz
What the Yellow Vests Have in Common with Occupy In These Times
The new political battlefield is the road FT
Syraqistan
Rebuking Trump, House passes measure to end U.S. involvement in Yemen NBC. With loophole on Saudi intelligence sharing, but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, certainly.
As Giuliani Calls for Regime Change in Iran, Netanyahu Raises the Specter of “War” The Intercept
Iran tries to run out the clock as Trump bears down Politico
Dozens of Zimbabwean miners feared dead after shafts flood CBC. “Artisanal miners.”
How South Africa’s Blackouts Are Crippling Businesses Bloomberg
Venezuela
AP Interview: Maduro reveals secret meetings with US envoy Associated Press
Roberto Lovato: Elliott Abrams Is Bringing Violence of 1980s U.S. Latin America Policy to Venezuela Democracy Now
What’s at Stake in Venezuela? Greg Grandin, LRB. From last week, still germane.
North Korea
USFK chief says American troop presence not related to end-of-war declaration or peace treaty Korea Herald
[News analysis] N. Korea demands partial relaxation of sanctions in exchange for Yongbyon inspections The Hankyoreh
Pelosi’s Korea junket:
Wow, thanks Democrats. To the visiting S Korean Nat'l Assembly members (incl. the speaker,) Nancy Pelosi openly criticized the peace process | 펠로시, 문희상 면전서 "김정은, 남한 무장해제 원한다" https://t.co/EypcrJKulZ
— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) February 14, 2019
China?
China Explained: The Rise, Fall, and Uncertainty of Didi’s Ride-Hailing Dynasty Radii
In China, government policies tell us more about the economy than GDP numbers South China Morning Post
Why U.S. Debt Must Continue to Rise Michael Pettis, China Financial Markets. From last week, still germane.
Electronic waste is recycled in appalling conditions in India Asian Correspondent
New Cold War
Every Day Is a New Low in Trump’s White House Andrew McCabe, The Atlantic. Book excerpt.
The FBI’s Aborted Plan to Remove Trump From Office Was Delusional New York Magazine
The Russian Spy Who Wasn’t The New Republic. Maria Butina.
* * * Munich Security Report 2019: Who Is to Blame and What to Do? Valdai Discussion Club
Trump Transition
Immigration spending pact has more than a border wall Associated Press. “The agreement provides $1.375 billion for 55 miles (88 kilometers) of Trump’s wall.” After all the yammering and virtue signaling. Well played, all.
An emergency declaration by Trump will lead to lawsuits. Lots of them. WaPo
Senate confirms Barr amid questions about Mueller report Roll Call
The Green New Deal: What’s Really Green and What’s Really New Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (MR).
In Germany, the Green New Deal Actually Works Bloomberg. For some defintion of GND, to be sure. However:
The mammoth task of making all buildings more energy efficient — yes, all, just like the Green New Deal says — hasn’t cowed the authorities in Europe. The German Energy Agency calculates that to make the country’s building stock almost carbon-neutral by 2050 about 1.4 percent of buildings a year will need to be refurbished; the current rate is about 1 percent, so the goal looks ambitious, but not unattainable.
Saudi Aramco Makes Existential Bet On Oil Oilprice.com
Guillotine Watch
Is Burning Man casting out the super-rich? The Tatler
Imperial Collapse Watch
Navy Admiral on ship collisions: Those were tragedies, but what about the other 280 ships that didn’t collide? Task and Purpose
Class Warfare
A billion-dollar empire made of mobile homes WaPo
What to do with homeless college students? Let them sleep in the parking lot, new bill says Sacramento Bee. Liberal incrementalism is the only way forward.
Conditional dishonesty Thomas Lauer, Anna Untertrifaller Researchgate (PDF). n = 212. “In a laboratory experiment we find that indeed and irrespective of whether others’ lies affect one’s own payoff one third of all subjects are dishonest if others are too. Having only one dishonest group member makes the vast majority of these conditional liars switch from being honest to being dishonest. The size of a lie increases with the number of dis- honest group members that one faces. Overall, we find that conditional liars tell smaller lies than always liars do.”
COMPare: a prospective cohort study correcting and monitoring 58 misreported trials in real time Trials (part two).
Antidote du jour:
See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
195 comments
Comments are closed.
Re: the articles on Iran.
I wonder what Trump himself thinks of the Iran situation. He seems to be letting the neocons in his administration guide policy on Iran but during the 2016 election I got the sense that Trump understood that his base was tired of war and thought Iraq was a mistake. Is there any chance that Trump, as bad as he is, could act as a brake on the neocons? Or is Trump all in on war with Iran too?
With respect to the neo-con leadership on Iran policy, it is good to bear in mind LBJ’s observations about pissing and tents. Seems pretty clear that Trump supports regime change in Iran but it is not at all clear he will go to war, or support on Israeli war, to achieve that. This is especially the case since going to war with Iran might mean going to (nuclear, tactical, to be sure) war with Russia. From a neocon perspective that might be a feature. Putting Russia in its place in the middle east; that is, out, would be strategically pleasing and is probably a prerequisite for any intense bombing war against Iran.
Taking away Kushner, israel, and Saudi Arabiq, didn’t Kissinger oppose Syria and maybe even Libya at least he wasn’t for them?
His claim to fame outside of thuggery was Nixon going to China, more accurately disrupting the Sino-Soviet alliance. If I’m over thinking this, the rhetoric out of Trump sees to revolve around getting the Russians and Syrians to dictate to Iran which is a major player in Silk Road 2.0. These fp types besides being racist also think they are quite bright, but I think the goal is to disrupt Silk Road relationships to combat China versus the Obama Administration goal of destroying the end points. The goal is to get Tehran mad at Moscow and make Tehran unpalatable to Beijing.
The neoconservatives are just rabid dogs, but disrupting the Silk Road should theoretically be the primary strategy for holding U.S. empire.
“thuggery” == gratuitiously and deliberately killing 4 million people in southeast Asia, plus many more elsewhere.
Eichmann was hung for killing 6 million. Kissinger is Hillary Clinton’s drinking buddy.
Yes, but the Germans were not exceptional.
Exceptional has more than one meaning, roughly:
1. Well above average,
2. Being an exception
We have been lead to believe the US was (1), but out beloved leaders and their wonderful foreign policy experts appear to believe we are (2).
“…killing 4 million people in southeast Asia, plus many more elsewhere.”
But we meant well! That counts for something, doesn’t it?
it was on Israel’s orders.
Errr… I am so old I remember the 1950s and ’60s, and despite right-wing propaganda, the USSR and China were involved in hostilities along their common border from 1953. After 1949, the USSR provided aid and advisers to China. In 1953 Stalin and Mao had an ideological dispute (the real reasons may have been something else) and the USSR suddenly cut off all aid and recalled their technical advisers. The “worldwide monolithic Communist conspiracy” was a propaganda ploy that played on establishment control of the news media and Americans’ general ignorance of international affairs. It was a lie. The funny thing is, I remember seeing news items that reported the border clashes and there was concern published that the two countries might go to war during the 1950s. After John Foster Dulles became Secretary of State he and his brother were able to enforce the idea of “monolithic Communist conspiracy” more stringently, but there were still occasional reports.
In his campaigning it was clear that, if he was being truthful, his instincts were anti-war. What I doubted was whether he’d have the intellect, the agility, the backbone, and the stamina to impose those instincts on policy.
One obvious problem was that he’d find it very difficult to hire staff who would combine useful experience with those same intentions; that would put a huge proportion of the burden on his own shoulders.
If he carries out his policy to pull out of Syria I shall be impressed. If he manages to wind up the war in Afghanistan I shall applaud. Because he would have imposed those policies in the face of the slow-motion coup against him, with its absurd fantasies about those darned Russkis.
But suppose he succeeds. Suppose he even wins a second term – what could he do to implant anti-war sentiment in DC? My own recommendation is that he persuades Tulsi Gabbard to be his running mate so that she can later run for President as the sitting VP. Fat chance, I suppose, but he likes pretty girls, eh?
and we keep the baby prisons?
No*, but we keep not losing our national sovereignty completely under TPP, and we keep not being at war with Russia (and it may be that Venezuela, too, will be a damp squib; we can’t seem to get the military on our side, and sending in our own troops is not on. So, crossed fingers, the lunatic Bolton was given enough rope to hang himself).
NOTE How We Got Here: The Disturbing Path that Leads to Child Prison Camps Texas Observer:
And it goes on; Pelosi just gave Trump 58 miles of wall (after endless yammering and virtue signaling about how evil it all was. So either it’s not evil after all, or Pelosi’s evil too. Take your pick.
Honestly, it’s getting so any time I see “babies” invoked I immediately think it’s an argument made in bad faith (all the way back to the ventilator babies justifying the first Iraq War under Bush the Elder, which, naturally, turned out to be a fake story). Which is a shame, because I think our children is the only persuasive argument for avoiding cooking the planet. Certainly 40 years of “save the planet” ain’t it. Not a good well to poison….
Contrary to his general statements about endless wars as a foolish drain on resources, as I recall Iran was ALWAYS an exception for him, perhaps the influence of Israel via evangelicals (his base). He criticized the Iran deal while campaigning and withdrew from it as far as I know without any outside pressure.
It was particularly perverse timing because they had just elected a more moderate president after Ahmadjinebad.
Trump seems highly motivated by the need roll back and undo everything done by Obama. Since the Iran deal was one of Obama’s few positive foreign accomplishments, Trump has a psychological need to destroy it out of spite. A pity Trump doesn’t seem equally motivated to undo Obama’s foreclosure epidemic or carte blanche for Wall Street. Funny how such things only swing in one direction, amirite?
Every Day Is A New Low…
We will see more of this. All of those who are at risk of prosecution will be busy trying to shape the narrative in the media. I found a good analysis at The Conservative Treehouse of the different and mostly former players in the Justice department. They are divided into two camps and may well start to fight in an effort to shift the blame for the attempted coup. Seven Days in May anyone? Linky:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/02/14/william-barr-and-spygate-watch-the-teams/#more-160056
Martin Oline: Thanks. And we should bear in mind that McCabe falls under It’s All about the Benjamins. Today’s NY Times, + note paragraph:
“The Threat”: More special pleading by the so-called intelligence community to America’s fear-ridden citizens. I’m no fan of Trump, who is just a louder (although not much louder) version of Bezos or Rauner or the Rickettses or any number of coprolicious U.S. managers. Ironically, Trump has never been accused of quite as horrifying labor practices as Bezos has (see Yves Smith’s post today). But the idea that the so-called intelligence agencies were contemplating what amounts to a coup d’état and are now trying to sell that load of guano as a dozen roses is rich indeed.
But, as is well known, everyone at this site is Russian stooge. I sold my vote to a guy named Pyotr for two jars of pickled mushrooms.
What? He only gave me one! And I voted twice!/s…see that fbi? I was just kidding, i didn’t vote for either one of them…
Da Da :)
> coprophagous
Rather, coprophagous?
Attempted coup? I don’t see anything unlawful here. A top official in the government was alarmed about the behavior of Trump and asked others if they would invoke the constitutional process to remove him. It’s big news but hardly a coup.
Think about it. McCabe is saying that Trump is a secret agent of the Russia Federal Security Service. That he is betraying America to a foreign power. That he is continuously committing treason – presumably for money – and has sold out the country. They put people in Fort Leavenworth and even execute them for less than that. And we are expected to take McCabe’s word for it? That’s a coup that both by intent and purpose. Speaking as a non-American, then **** McCabe and the horse that he rode into town on.
Invoking the 25th to oust a president you disagree with would be an incredible abuse. You can’t reasonably argue that Trump has been incapacitated, but a conspiracy to claim he is, in bad faith, is a coup plot. We call it that when they play the same trick in Venezuela.
On the House of Saud”s “existential bet” — “When asked by the FT if Saudi Aramco is looking to become an international player like ExxonMobil or Shell, al-Falih responded: “Correct.”
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/041818-analysis-oil-majors-see-reserves-slip-for-fourth-straight-year
“The world’s top seven western integrated oil majors collectively saw their proven reserves slip to 86.93 billion barrels of oil equivalent last year, down 0.7% year on year and 9% below 2013 levels, according to an analysis of annual filings by S&P Global Platts.”
“New discoveries of conventional oil and gas have fallen sharply since 2015 and last year was particularly bad for drilling results.
According to Rystad, less than 7 billion barrels of conventional oil equivalent was discovered in 2017, the lowest since the 1940’s and enough to replace just 11% of global oil and gas production last year.”
When Ghawar goes, so too the Saudi oil industry, bet on that.
so us crazy doomers were right, after all,lol.
in …say…2006…we didn’t even contemplate fracking/tight oil becoming such a big deal; still, more or less on schedule.
interestingly, regarding oil/gas related things…
of the 4 sandplants up around brady, texas, 3 have closed, and moved out west(kermit and environs). turns out that they’ve figured how to use the “softer” and more common sand to prop open the strata….so “Brady Brown” is a sort of luxury. it costs $$$to truck that Brady Brown all the way to the Permian.
ergo, they’re cutting costs with a will.
since conventional peaked out there in the 70’s, this whole exercise is almost literally scraping the dregs any way.
I expect the end of that party sometime soon.
then they’ll likely(imo, confirmed by people i talk to peripheral to all that) move the whole kit and caboodle to east texas…where it all began…and bottle brush that, too.
Brady is in shock, meanwhile….sand was a major employer/tax base…with lots of multipliers out into the surrounding economy.
we’re in the county to the south of there, so I’ll be watching for any ecocontagion spreading down here.
Let’s face it – ‘modern’ Saudi Arabia *is* an existential bet on oil.
“The U.S. government and Facebook are negotiating a record, multibillion-dollar fine for the company’s privacy lapses”
That multi billion dollar fine. After they pay it, will it be a tax-deductible item in their tax statement as a necessary business expenditure?
Pay close attention, well, as close as they’ll let you, to the terms of the fine/settlement. Perhaps, a $5,000,000,000 fine will consist of $100,000 in cash and $4,900,000,000 of deferred advertising equivalence with an opaque and seriously smelly present value computation. But, it’s the top line number at the presser that counts, right?
This. And fully expect some large element of it will be related to a revised altruistic approach to political campaign advertising.
Er, make that $4,999,900,000. Sorry. Two math errors in the past two months. I need to concentrate!!!
Pay it?
Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother tried to corner the physical silver market by completely legal means, and they had succeeded largely, with the spot price octupling in around 6 months from mid 1979 to early 1980, that is until the powers that be @ the CBOT changed the rules on them, game so over.
They incurred massive losses @ the time, causing NBH to utter in despair:
“A billion dollars isn’t what it used to be.”
make them pay for the wall?
Re: trouble in Anglosphere–
I noted in a comment yesterday about “Pine Gap,” the new Netflix series produced in Australia, about the listening post jointly operated by Australia and the United States. I finished the six episodes and would like to include a stretch of dialog from the last episode. The conversation takes place between the American and Australian supervisors that jointly run Pine Gap. Just prior to this scene, the Australian supervisor declared a failure of concurrence and demanded that Pine Gap be shut down before it was used to assist an American attack on the Chinese man-made islands in the South China Sea. At an impasse, the two supervisors leave the room to work things out:
The American supervisor is convinced. He proceeds immediately to a visual call with the POTUS, a Trump-like hothead, and tells the President that as far as they can tell, China is ready to launch nukes if the islands are attacked. The POTUS angrily backs down.
The foreign policy discussion could have been taken out of NC or Moon of Alabama.
Overall, the show portrays a world in which we should be very, very thankful to someone for each day that we have not been plunged into World War III by our lunatic leadership seeking to maintain their dominance even though it’s clear to the rest of the world that America is no longer the GOAT.
Sounds good. As a netflix DVD subscriber by necessity I am constantly amazed and disappointed at how many things are not available on DVD/Blu. We need an alternative.
I watched those episodes. Creepy how even intimate partners were always spying on each other, playing each other–for their country. The Aussies had a big trade deal with China at stake that they didn’t want to be jeopardized.
Besides corporate espionage, the Colonial Powers were still colonial powers after World War II. The seizure of Suez Canal springs to mind.
I know “the it was a different time” canard, but our problems more stem from not reassessing bad decisions or at least temporal decisions. Keeping an eye on each other probably made sense, and organizations that get too large morph into existing to exist.
As the dialogue excerpted above indicates, the show is very much set in the 21st century.
I know. I’m suggesting its a long term holdover of entrenched behavior that survives behind the veil of “classified.”
got it ;-)
Speaking of colonial powers, get this:
There was an unintentionally hilarious discussion on French radio yesterday about how China’s investments in Africa were actually going to impoverish African countries and attach them to China for the foreseeable future, forcing them to pay off enormous debts in the name of “development”
I swear to G-d, there were no comments from these “experts” on France’s exploitation and exercise of economic, industrial and military control for the past 150 years over most of the Magreb and West Africa. Insanity.
Bugs Bunny,
I agree with your point.
China has been getting some strong pushback for its lending-for-development policies, though.
The money lent is in dollars, so the recipient has debts to repay in dollars (not easy for many small countries), infrastructure loans are often for no-bid contracts that go to a Chinese company that supplies the workers from back home, and China’s “We don’t concern ourselves with internal affairs of other countries” approach, which China considers a selling point, has led to huge overborrowing in countries without any sort of oversight of the government and with much of the money going into rulers’ pockets. One result has been a couple of countries replacing such governments with more democratic ones (really!) and repudiating loans left to them by the corrupt former one. Malaysia is a recent example.
The problem with these modern drama series, is that too many unthinking folk have a tendency to internalize them, and think what they see on their screens is the real deal … rather than the fiction that it is. Yes, I know that’s not a new concept …. but the ‘entertainment’ industry continues to produce this junk, season after season, year after year, non-stop ! Who has time for reality anymore ??
Doesn’t help that every MIC & IC, and every other expert has their mitts in virtually every aspect of production … same as with ‘news’ programing ….
it seems you didnt actually read the full memo…the only two nations larger than the you ess of hay hey haeee were forced inventions…
yuan and qing monarchies are the max extended boundaries of historic china…twenty languages…
india, a nation of hundreds of principalities which still hold some dominion over their local subjects, 20 plus main languages…only one, hindu, with a possible lingual claim as top dog, but spread out as to not be a threat, financially nor physically
to the ultimate goal…
of the USA being the largest nation on the globe by population…
remember…tiananmen almost destroyed the red communist army…no one wanted to go in and remove the protesters…army groups from other parts of the country who could not communicate in the same language as the protesters were brought in to save the communist party…
the goal is not to contain…but to wear out…and let the chinese leadership devolve their nation by over extension…and work to break the two nations up to coincide with the population of the usa reaching somewhere between 425 million and 500 million…
draw them out and wear them out…muhammad ali…rope-a-dope…
help them lose by exhaustion…
we now return you to our regularly scheduled programming…
Waiting for China or India to fission could work if only TPTB is not letting the US devolve into the Coast vs Flyover. The two coast, being non-contiguous, will split a’la Pakistan and Bangladesh. That is a more likely scenario as the China leadership seems to care about “preserving the union” and acting accordingly.
‘Pine Gap’ has not been universally well received, though the commenters generally disagree with the author’s condemnation of it as propaganda. I guess I will have to watch it myself, though if it evades mention of or allusion to the most important ‘failure of concurrence’ at Pine Gap, then it is a whitewash. Whitlam’s threat to close it signed his political death warrant. Nearly 50 years later, the importance of Pine Gap to US goals is ongoing.
It will be interesting to compare this series to another Netflix drama Secret City, a quietly effective dramatisation of the very real but subterranean battle between China and the US via proxies in the Australian political and bureaucratic establishment.
Thanks for making that transcript!
“Mr. Facebook, would you please do us the honor of allowing us to contemplate issuing a fine against you? You can decide the amount.”
fined, jailed, drawn and quartered
The Valentine’s Day Mass Occur ended up to the north and south of us, with areas from Palm Springs to the Mexican border setting all-time records for the day’s deluge.
These atmospheric rivers are oddly similar to hurricanes in that you know it’s coming at you en masse, but where is it going to hit?
We got around an inch of rain when it was 60 degrees-no biggie, but if we’d gotten the big 10 inch recorded near Tijuana-adjacent, the climax would’ve been less satisfying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rws_7mLTqj8
Too much rain?
No (more, please)……………ah (it’s over)…………..
“Australian senator smears blood on Pauline Hanson’s door after parliament brawl”
Sigh! Having to explain Australian politics. OK – here goes with a very simplified version. That Pauline Hanson is kinda like our Trump and has been in politics on and off for the past twenty years and specializes in xenophobia. She helped formed the One Nation party as her vehicle back in 1997. That Brian Burston was there from soon after its founding. There has been a lot of bad blood between them over the years and just this month Burston accused Hanson of sexual harassment from way back in 1998. Last year he turned his back on the party and had to resign whereupon he joined the United Australia Party which was formed by a mining billionaire named Clive Palmer. This later party just put up a TV ad which reckons that the Chinese built an airstrip in Western Australia so that Chinese carriers can bring in fighters to land there and take over this part of Australia. In short, all these parties and their participants are considered bad jokes and the whole thing has the ring of thieves falling out.
Can’t have a primer on Pauline without including I Don’t Like It :-)
LOL – what a strange video! From the ’80s, or a parody?
She was making an ass of herself, and this guy (the one performing in drag) took recordings of her voice and manipulated it to produce the song. It got significant air-play JJJ (state-run radtio station) and outrage ensued. Wiki entry
Is there one for Theresa May because that was hilarious?
Also, can’t do a primer on Pauline Hanson and not mention that before politics she worked in a ‘fish & chip’ shop :)
A white nationalist, but no billionaire.
The best primer on Hanson comes from the estimable Margo Kingston, whose Webdiary at the Sydney Morning Herald in the first years of the millennium was the prime mover of the (now virtually dead) progressive Aussie blogosphere.
Kingston, a real journalist who when the Herald began morphing into Hello magazine was, along with Webdiary, deemed surplus to requirements, decided the best way to get to the heart of the Hanson phenomenon in the late 90s was to travel with her on the campaign trail. A book resulted, and so did a regard for and understanding of Hanson, despite the huge gulf in political convictions between the two. Most of her cohort thought Hanson was a ‘deplorable’ and so beyond their remit.
She is no Aussie Trump (Clive Palmer has a lock on that role) but this from the Kingston piece provides a flavour of their shared anti-establishment appeal:
‘Her supporters were by and large nice people with little money who were largely uninterested in politics. They were suffering badly from the effects of competition policy, which had seen basic services and jobs stripped out of their towns. They loved Hanson’s grit and plain speaking. Most of all, they loved that she listened’
I’d agree with that assessment. What I remember most from that period was video of ordinary – usually older – people being attacked by leftists when going into meeting halls to listen to her and both the media and the police seemed to think that that was OK. Said the other day that her success at the time was mostly due to the fact that both main political parties had long given up paying attention to the wants and needs of ordinary voters leaving a massive gap for a demagogue. But I am betting that readers here would be familiar with that scenario from back in 2016.
re: Brexit
After yesterday’s vote Mrs. May, instead of taking a stand against ERG – finally – said a no-deal Brexit was still on the table. I now think Mrs. May is a stealth ERG supporter. The tactics are all there: stall and stall on necessary decisions while appearing to work toward resolution hoping to run out the clock before the other side can make preparations; present so soft a target no one can aim at it. Once the clock has run out declare what you didn’t want you must now accept because there’s no more time. I have seen this play too many times to count in the US. Here it’s back by the same ultra right billionaire funded think tanks like ALEC that have also been in league with UK Altantic Bridge and ERG and Leadsom and Fox. (Guardian and desmogblog articles.)
The response time for people who do not want a no-deal Brexit has been shortened to one month. One month. Not much time.
Wish I was wrong about all this. If you accept that May is secretly working toward a no-deal, (or is too inept to prevent one, but I don’t think she’s a second Neville) how do you proceed?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/feb/15/brexit-erg-denies-holding-the-uk-to-ransom-after-refusing-to-back-pm-live
The fascinating thing on this is the shift of the window.
Pre-referendum? “We want to leave, but of course we want to be in single market etc. etc.. “.
Post referendum? Various unicornish combinations, but strong inclination to hard brexit.
Now: No deal.
A great case on how you can shift the meaning…
Why do you suppose they want a Hard Brexit, despite all the warnings against it? I doubt it is as delusional as The Sun / Daily Mail / Millwall supporters would have us believe. I suspect there is an utterly unspeakable plan afoot. I wonder what it entails. Do you have any theories?
1. Brexit was always Crash Out or Remain. There was never going to be any reasonable set of conditions for some extended transition period. When you piss in your neighbors fish pond for years, call his wife ugly, and insult his club repeatedly, there is no space for negotiations.
2. Corbyn needs a crash out if he is to promote any measure of socialism, as the EU is a Neo-liberal cesspit of favors for the Rich and Connected. He is firmly in the leave column, for his own reasons.
They only question is: Will the Conservatives (Tories) accept becoming the EU vassals, under some negotiated “Brexit Agreement.” Personally I’d bet on “not under any circumstances.”
Whatever happens this applies:
“It’s the rich wot get the pleasure
It’s the poor wot gets the blame!”
Whatever happens, the UK working class will loose. Possibly by cancelling the National Health Service. If it become that extreme, then I’d recommend taking futures in pick axe handles and bricks. But, there are long memories, and the UK ruling class has no hesitation is using extreme violence on its working class.
The French are, as they did historically, taking the lead in this Civil Unrest. I do admire the French, they are willing to stand up against what they perceive as wrong, unlike the British who tend to go and sink their sorrows in a beer, and take out their misery on their families.
I’d like to be wrong. As a sanity check, the Colonel could comment.
I believe that the various interests have ’emergency legislation’ ready to be applied when the crisis hits. Classic shock therapy, really. Like the Patriot Act, the legal ground will be replaced under your feet overnight. I expect massive deregulation, privatisation, and dismantling of social infrastructure.
Adding:
1. Corbyn needs to wake up.
2. People calling for a change in UK politics during this crisis and saying maybe the Constitution needs to be changed are singing the billionaire neoliberals song though they do not know it. That’s the ultimate trap, and ALEC and other groups are ready to spring it shut. I know this sounds unbelievable, like a movie script or stage play. I’m in the US and have been watching these people and groups for many years. They are well funded, smart, careful planners, uncompromising in their goals, and keep themselves well hidden from the spot lights.
I wish this comment was mere foil bonnet.
With regard to 1), what exactly would you have an awake Corbyn do?
And what result would he with some degree of confidence expect to achieve by doing it?
Most of the alternatives I’ve seen bandied about for labor seem to me no less futile than the course he appears to be pursuing.
Not waste time going to Brussels to try and get a better deal when he’s out of power. Brussels will politely listen and change nothing. (Shades of Greece and Y.V. promising to ‘talk Brussels into reason’…) Corbyn’s fight is at home, it’s the only ground he has to stand on at the moment, and hunting for unicorns is wasting time if the first goal is to prevent a no-deal crash out. Imo, preventing a no-deal crash-out is the first order of business.
And, since I’m approaching a rant, might as well continue. (sorry)
I think the large majority in UK do not want a no-deal departure from the EU. Preventing that crash out is the first order of business. Leaving with decent terms is one thing. Crashing-out is something else all together.
The ERG and UKIP and their fellow travellers, if I may put it that way, (and here comes the rant) are deluding themselves if they think a crash-out puts them in the driver’s seat wrt the UK’s future. It does no such thing. It delivers the UK and UK govt to US global corps and US libertarian/billionaires (not the UK billionaires, no matter what sweet talk ALEC and Exxon have used to tickle ERG ears – remember, they lie). In a crash-out ERG will be no more in control of UK’s future than, for example, CalPERS will be in control of its own finances if it gives that financial control to PE (which CalPERS looks to be doing).
End rant. And sorry for what must sound like an overheated comment.
They are all acting like March 29th isn’t a hard date. It is a hard date.
flora I think your theory on May’s take on brexit has merit. One of the reasosns I give it merit is that it looks like an excellent strategy to confuse the Labour as it has occured. Now, when brits face the no-deal scenario won’t be able to see the Labour as the spirit that fiercely tried to avoid it.
So there are two possibilities:
1) May is a real no-deal brexiteer
2) May (and some many more) is the useful idiot of ERG
I second. Have been following your comments on this and you seem prescient. No foil bonnet.
Yikes, sorry for the repetition. It seems a comment I thought had been eaten below has been regurgitated.
Corbyn maybe wants to be seen trying to do something… same as may. Probably helps the post brexit food fights. Does seem he thinks hard best or only option.
That still doesn’t tell me what you think he SHOULD do, and why doing whatever that is would produce any better results than the aimless shuffling of his rooks he seems to be engaged in.
How about make common cause with all other MPs of any party who do not want a no-deal and work from that base for that particular outcome before March 29th? Focus on that outcome instead of chasing unicorns? (The unicorns have been well listed already on NC: ‘ yes, but first we need to… and there will be time for doing that first because…’ No. There isn’t anymore time to chase the unicorn first.) All MPs who do not want no-deal face a ‘common enemy’, if I can put it like that.
Well, that does sound a bit… um… But there it is, I think.
And, if Corbyn wants a no-deal (but won’t exactly say so), then it’s left to the MPs themselves, though I can’t imagine how that works in Parliament.
Fair enough. But I think it produces the same result.
Crash out doesn’t give the EU time to beat a safe retreat prior the chaos. Pain all around. It also prevents a situation where thousands of Millwall fans go on the rampage wearing yellow vests. Lets have the crash, show everyone what a good (lol) or bad idea it was. If it’s as bad as you think, let’s round up the people responsible and try them for treason.
Anything else is a big win for the EU. European business will want to relocate even if Brexit is cancelled. Brexit will always be hanging over us like the proverbial sword of Damocles. Any future problems will be because we “bottled it on Brexit” and the people responsible for this mess will get away with it..
Not doing a no-deal does not mean not doing a Brexit. At this late date it may mean voting for May’s plan (loath as I am to write this), but I think even May’s plan is better than a doing no-deal Brexit.
Deals can be amended and modified after the fact.
Shorter: At this late date on the calendar, May’s deal might be like jumping from an airplane at altitude with a damaged parachute, v.s. a no-deal, which would be like jumping from an airplane at altitude with no parachute, I think.
Withdrawing A.50 seems highly unlikely. Getting an extension from the EU to hammer out new withdrawal agreement details seems unlikely. And there is no more time on the calendar.
And this is about the UK’s future. Not the EU’s.
Maybe you meant your comment as a humorous snark and I missed the points. It wouldn’t be the first time I missed the humorous intent of a remark. ;)
adding:
Deals can be amended and modified after the fact.
By which I’m referring to modification in active, enacted trade and international deals, not in before the fact still-to-be-enacted deals. The current WA is still to be enacted. I expect this is clear.
May’s deal is just metaphorically letting the EU have its wicked way (Before it flounces off and leaves us bleeding in a ditch). No thanks.
I would prefer Brexit never happened at all. However, we are damned if we do and damned if we dont. Why not maximize collateral damage and go out with a bang? (Hurting European interests as much as possible in the process). Think of it as the price for their “computer says no” negotiating tactics. Can they really afford to take that economic hit, or do they just think that no deal cannot happen? I dont know the answer, but since the UK is screwed anyway…why not find out.
After the dust settles, the people can survey the damage. If the results are as bad as expected, we can arrest those responsible and send them off to the Tower of London.
I still hear no concrete actions for Corbyn to take. There are no other choices than May’s agreement and crash out. The right thing to do for the country would be to shout about revoking A50, but he would do nothing but upset half his constituents. I see no path by which he could achieve this, and anything short of that doesn’t help anyone.
“… and I hire the mould for DExEU!” Ba-doom tish.
I struggle to believe that this mess is a nefarious plan by May but …
She always chafed at being in the European Court of Human Right’s jurisdiction. Leaving the convention on human rights is a separate decision to leaving the EU but there can be no agreement with the EU on the Irish border (or even some common market type of arrangement) if the UK exits the convention so maybe, just possibly? What would she have done differently if this was her cunning plan?
May’s record is as someone who defines her particular job in an almost monomaniacal way. I believe she sees her job as, in no particular order.
1. ‘Delivering’ Brexit
2. Keeping the Tory party together.
By definition, achieving (2) means delivering (1) in a manner which will minimise any split.
Since Tory Remainers are scattered and relatively small in number, while the ERG have disproportionate power due to their popularity with the grassroots, then this means that the ERG must be either kept on board or at least made feel they have not been entirely routed. This means that in the entire 2 year process since A.50 was launched, either by design or default, the entire debate has swung away from any type of soft Brexit or BINO, the entire opposite of what many assumed would happen.
I don’t think May wants a no-deal. She wants her deal, and she believes she can get it by pushing up to the wire. In her mind, this means she has succeeded. If there is a no-deal, then she will see herself as having done the honorable thing to ensure the Party stayed together – she will retire so some sort of comfortable sinecure arranged by some rich Brexiteers. In other words, for her a ‘no deal’ is a good runner-up position.
The fact that in doing this she may well have laid waste to the economy and maybe the end of the Union seems somewhat irrelevant to her.
TBH, I suspect if the latter (wasted economy and the Union destroyed) happens, she’ll be sorry to see it, but blame the other parties. She has repeatedly shown she’s totally incapable of any self-reflection.
I’d just add “keeping her job” before anything else, which requires (1) and (2). What this means in practice is that any outcome which can be called “Brexit” and which keeps the Tory Party together will do, irrespective of its consequences for the UK and Europe. I find that terrifying.
“The rule is, in a jam tomorrow and in a jam yesterday – but never today.” “It must come sometimes to in a ‘jam today’,” Theresa objected. “No it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s a jam every other day: today isn’t any other day, you know.”
I have been following your comments on this, Flora, and though I have a limited grasp of everything at play in this, I can’t help but think you are prescient.
+1
Sorry, misplaced reply to Livius Drusus.
What to do with homeless college students? Let them sleep in the parking lot, new bill says Sacramento Bee.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
‘College loan debt 101’
well folks are reportedly missing car payments so isn’t this just another stealth bailout by getting students to buy a car with their (nondischargeable) student loans so they can save money on housing…does amazon deliver to parking lots?
Sleep the USA
In your Chevrolet
American students
Favorite way to lay
A viable business will deliver to where ever there is a potentially paying customer.
A real life example. When I was at university, (an abortive affair, alas,) we once held a Friday night party in the left elevator of our dorm building, a multi story place. We tapped into the power outlet on top of every elevator, there for repair tools, and had the stereo cranked. A chair and a small couch, standing lamp. Just add people. Halfway through the night, we became hungry. We ordered pizza from a local non-chain pizza joint. They delivered two pizzas to the left hand elevator in the “XXXXXXX ” Residence Hall, on campus at about 1AM Saturday morning.
I would refer back to the James Carville quote about “…dragging a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park…” but consider that, since this happened at a “Poison Ivy League College,” dragging a ten thousand dollar bill down the middle of “K” Street, Washington, the District of Columbia would be a more appropriate trope.
Sleep in the parking lot?
Is sleeping in class not allowed now?
Have read that in LA that typhoid is present in the skid row homeless streets. Also, that the carriers, fleas on rats, are not just in the homeless camps, but that the rats are in city hall and other city buildings. Apparently, a city official got typhoid and said it was hell. You can look it up on the intertube. So, if homeless kids are sleeping in parking lots, how long before the fact that , if even in a car, that disease of some type will spread in unsafe and unhealthy conditions? Another crumbling brick on the disintegrating wall of this country’s decline and degradation as a society.
due to wife’s chemo-compromised immune system, we’ve been in close contact with the school nurse…doing surveillance, and linking that up with what my kids overhear..
the only kids who had/have the flu, are also antivaxxers…parroting their parents’ lunacy.
makes me wonder about what else they ain’t getting….remembering the more and more common measles outbreaks of late.
my brother and his bunch won’t get the flu shot…rely on tamiflu after the fact.
brought it up here for thanksgiving a few years ago and almost killed us all…and of course, my mom refuses to get it..
it’s maddening.(i like not getting the flu(or polio, etc)
(i am a strong advocate of doing the holidays in july for just this reason)
of course, typhus is one of those lack-of-sanitation diseases…third world america…banana empire.
I remember something this week about the LA cop shop being overrun with rats…maybe the rat catchers have been outsourced, budgetcut or roboticised.
Musing on that other story above, where hedge funds are picking up mobile home parks and making windfall profits.. connecting dots.. the smartest guys in the room on Wall St made billions under the shade of the ‘Greenspan put’ from defrauding people out of their homes (and also from betting on that result), maybe some of the same actors are among those making a motza out of the mobile homes.
If so I’m a bit surprised there appears (so far) to be no news of these vultures descending on the college car park sector, there to make another ‘killing’. Toll gated communities with (of course) strict ‘security’, and contracts with connected vendors for exclusive rights to peddle ‘food’ and drink. Security would ensure no competing perishables enter the premises. Health services too could be provided, for a competitive fee.
Next order of business: getting in on the ground floor of the typhoid vaccine spike…
California does not have a “housing crisis”, it has an “immigration overpopulation crisis.”
3,059,000 illegals.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/undocumented-immigrants-in-california/
How many low income units do they occupy?
They’re taking our tenements!
No, they’re taking up the converted garages, back yard cottages, funky apartments and motel like apartments that poor Americans used to live in as well as regular cheap housing. In addition, they are raising housing prices.
You get to compete with immigrants, legal and otherwise for housing.
Here’s a story from the Marin Independent Journal discussing the effects of all immigrants on housing costs.
November 20, 2018
“Nearly a quarter of immigrants in San Jose’s expensive real estate market are homeowners, the second highest rate of any major city in the country.
LendingTree, an online loan marketplace, ranked home ownership rates among immigrants for the 50 largest U.S. cities. Four other California cities cracked the top 10: Los Angeles in third, San Francisco in fourth, Riverside in fifth and San Diego in 10th.
Of the 50 cities studied, San Jose also had the second-highest share of foreign-born residents, nearly 39 percent, which includes naturalized citizens, permanent residents, visa holders and undocumented migrants. A third of the city’s native born residents are homeowners.
Tendayi Kapfidze, chief economist at LendingTree, said cities with high rates of home ownership among immigrants also had some of the most expensive housing markets.”
But you still need to slag ‘illegals’? Those darn illegals buying up all the Marin McMansions!
Maybe if the state could educate citizens instead of handing cash to charter school con artists and college administrators, they wouldn’t need to bring in so many foreign professionals to keep things booming.
Is this getting any play in the UK media?
https://twitter.com/samjknights/status/1096396471258267648
Only a little. There is some coverage of the school ‘climate strike’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47250424
This is not directly organised by Extinction Rebellion – though they are promoting it. It feels like XR are being largely ignored by the UK press (as the Yellow Jackets are).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47250424
XR are organizing though https://rebellion.earth/events/
My expectation – however optimistic – is that XR will take off in a big way this year.
Well, it looks like they got May to chime in. Job well done.
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1096428372547260416
Rentiers parasatizing working people living in mobile home trailers, in part using a $1.3 billion loan from Fanny and Freddy.
Because Fanny and Freddy couldn’t provide a loan to the residents of the park to buy the park?
If this is making America great again, I suspect such people are going to be willing at some point to vote for someone who is going to make these rentier types live in trailers
I wouldn’t be surprised if Fanny and Freddie actually couldn’t, due to some regulation or another. But you know who could? ROC (Resident Owned Communities) USA.
https://rocusa.org/
They’re legit. Tell all your friends (who live in mobile home parks).
Is Burning Man casting out the super-rich? The Tatler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only thing you can spend money on @ Burning Man is bags or blocks of ice for $3, or a coffee/tea for $3 at the one place that sells hot beverages in the entire city of some 70,000.
Money has never mattered all that much in what some call a ‘gift economy’. When I used to go, our camp had a bar and the booze budget for a week was around $1000 divided among a dozen, so everybody was on the hook for $88, and we gave every last distilled drop away for free, and it was fun playing bartender, even more so when you eliminated the money exchange part.
The one camp in the article mentioned was everything that Burning Man isn’t in spirit, defeat the rich.
It mattered by not mattering
Does ergot grow on jam?
It would explain a lot.
She really broke the mold?
Sounds like quite the exporience.
Really now, everyone knows that “reality” is a fungiable commodity.
Treason Maize.
Anyone else not see the antidote? It is right there is the RSS mail I received but I don’t see it above.
Same here. That beautiful cat is in hiding.
Thanks, Lambert, for resetting that photo to enable viewing in full.
Pretty cat & cool photo!
Man, that is a cold looking kitty. Looks wind blown as well and you wonder how they go in freezing weather with such small body masses.
If there’s an antidote, I can’t see it either
Nor me
Schrödinger’s antitdote
Alright Wukchumni, don’t try to box us in now.
Come to think of it, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen ‘Schrodinger’s Futures’ on any market.
Could be he’s talking ’bout a dead catbox bounced. Quite a mess I imagine …
It’s the place where physics and dirty finance meet headlong.
Lambert, is that a Maine Coon pal of your acquaintance? And that would be the summit of “Mount Catahdin”, yes?
Ha.
“What to do with homeless college students? Let them sleep in the parking lot, new bill says”
Would it be so expensive to build them Japanese-style capsule hotels then? Just put in the term “japan hotel capsules” into Google Images to see what I mean.
Japanese capsule hotels are way too luxurious. I’m sure our betters would be more comfortable building Hong Kong style “Coffin Homes”.
http://www.realclearlife.com/real-estate/coffin-homes-hong-kong/#1
Then again I hear from all the Trumpsters on my FB feed that Socialism=Free Stuff. Can’t have that. So I’m sure even the parking lot idea is a no go, let alone building any kind of low cost housing.
i drove almost 900 miles of backroads from here to matagorda texas and back last june…I saw miles of empty boxcars on sidings.
used to be similar, but much larger, “storage sidings” out in west texas.
some paint…maybe some weeds in a jar to brighten up the place…
Re: secret meetings with Abrams. I wonder if this was a missed opportunity for Maduro. If they could get Abrams on their territory, whether in Venezuela or in one of their embassies, and have the ICC arrest him for war crimes and deported to the Hague for trial his problems just might go away.
Abrams literally knows where all of the neocon bodies are buried; they could mine him for a generation. The panic that would ensue from such an action would prolly give Maduro all of the leverage he might want, and getting such as Clinton and Bolton together to support his cause would be a rich reward, indeed.
Or maybe I just want to see them in the dock so badly I am missing something.
American Service-Members’ Protection Act
I’d like to see Abrams take an involuntary trip to the Hague too, but in light of the above, I doubt the ICC would be game to detain a U.S. official.
An entertaining Tom Cruise movie that’s loosely about Barry Seal, a CIA/drug running pilot in the Contra diction, is “American Made”
A taste:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3532216/videoplayer/vi1710864665
Directed by the great Doug Liman.
“Live. Die. Repeat.” aka ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ is one of the best modern Sci Fi films.
Tom Cruise (IMO the greatest American Actor living besides Meryl Streep), Emily Blunt (WOWZERS), and Brendan Gleeson (star of In Bruges!!!!).
American Made is seconded by me as well!
I’m sorry, I just saw this. IIRC, treaties are considered Constitutional law insofar as ratified treaties are considered adjuncts to the Constitution itself. Whether they like it or not, the law you cite wouldn’t mean diddly in the face of a judgment by the ICC were a case brought by a constituent member. We could ignore their judgments, and have done, but we couldn’t actually argue that such a law was legally defensible even in our own courts.
To bring up something like that would only discredit our support for all of the other treaties that we are signatories to, and an invasion of Europe would put the final nail in the coffin of whatever international credibility we might still have. You can’t piss them all off at once, even Neocons would have to admit that.
Not saying you are wrong, but Obama spent entirely too much time crushing any potential opposition at the ICC level behind the scenes (Spain and Germany) to think that he wasn’t worried about the furor that such a case might cause in world opinion. At some point that law is going to get tested, and I don’t think it will end up being much more than the bluster of someone who hasn’t got anything to back it up.
Well, the alleged crimes would have to be within the ICC’s jurisdiction and committed after the entry into force of the Rome Statute in 2002.
They are on the case already:
https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=180927-otp-stat-venezuela
Interesting that the oppo is trying to work the refs, but from what I read elsewhere it may backfire on them.
https://off-guardian.org/2019/02/09/what-the-press-hides-from-you-about-venezuela/?fbclid=IwAR2O76QiYubOp_MyBYsyf9SFsYwKe0G5p7SACgZp0cx6YKNTXF1B8WnROeM
nippersdad
Abrams is a US-ite. He cannot be prosecuted at The Hague or anywhere else except in the US. The US does not recognize the jurisdiction of the World Court, or any of its institutions for the exceptional (American citizens), except when they themselves use it to get rid of fleas–ie: any leaders of other countries they want to control or destroy.
The problem is not that he cannot be prosecuted because the US doesn’t recognize the authority of the world court, but that the world court has not had the temerity to prosecute Americans, yet. Not for lack of trying, though. Judges in Germany and Spain had both started the process of judging people in absentia, and a CIA operative was nearly snatched from Panama for that purpose. In all of these instances the Obama Administration short circuited the process either by applying political pressure to the judges or getting to the person that was to be rendered first.
Further, while the US is not party to the World Court it is a signatory to most of the treaties that the Word Court has jurisdiction over. If you want to argue that they are illegitimate it brings into question the laws that we ratified; if they are legitimate then so is the court that administers them.
For a proceeding to go forward one need only to have a case and a member of the ICC to push for it. People like Abrams are likely suspects for rendition because they are clearly war criminals (Abrams admitted guilt prior to being pardoned by George HW Bush) and there are no statutes of limitations for war crimes. Elie Weisel’s organization was still getting Nazis right up until his death.
So as far as I know it is not a matter of cannot but will not, and that,hopefully, may soon change.
Thanks, Obama!
“The FBI’s Aborted Plan to Remove Trump From Office Was Delusional”
“Treason”
/ˈtriːz(ə)n/
noun: treason; noun: high treason; plural noun: high treasons
the crime of betraying one’s country, especially by attempting to kill or overthrow the sovereign or government.
“they were convicted of treason”
synonyms: treachery, lese-majesty
disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness, perfidy, perfidiousness, duplicity, infidelity;
sedition, subversion, mutiny, rebellion;
high treason;
rarePunic faith
antonyms: allegiance, loyalty
In the US, treason is defined differently:
You know, you’re perfectly right. So by the same token, Trump is innocent of treason. Maybe there might be a better word-
“Sedition”
/sɪˈdɪʃ(ə)n/
noun: sedition; plural noun: seditions
conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.
synonyms: incitement (to riot/rebellion), agitation, rabble-rousing, fomentation (of discontent), troublemaking, provocation, inflaming
This is worth a read – on Davos and more;
https://adamtooze.com/2019/02/09/framing-crashed-10-a-new-bretton-woods-and-the-problem-of-economic-order-also-a-reply-to-adler-and-varoufakis/
Tooze is usually worth a read.
Thank you Paul. Yes, worth a read!
From the link:
This would also be germane here: Who Is Really A Socialist?
Fascinating. Thank you for this link. Would love Michael Hudson’s take on this.
Yes. Thanks.
We’re crossing an odd Rubicon with this national emergency nonsense, but it’s par for the course, Fore!
Fore! indeed!
Like Golf, this game also requires balls to play.
Pride goeth before a wall.
My musical interlude for the ‘Saga of the Wall’ would be by Jerry Jeff Walker and Ray Wylie Hubbard.
Partake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j-Qt1PXZQs
If we only have 10 or 12 years (though some say it’s already too late*), Globall Warming is a national and globle emergency.
And the first step required is to confront that reality by declaring it to be so.
*already too late would require something more drastic, perhaps – martial law (if the situation is worse than when Sec. Paulson got on one knee a decade or so ago). I hope this is not the case.
Personally, I think we crossed a more important one with the relatively recent idea that pres can go to war without congress authorization, either before or after the fact.
I don’t see anything wrong with spending mil funds to build a wall or fence along our own border… remember we now call it a department of defense, not war. d-fence, as they say at the ball games. Way better expenditure than bombs.
I’m not all that excited about living in a gated community, but it’s sadly typical that we’d build something that will never be used, as before too long, we’ll construct a kill zone that somewhat resembles something on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, rendering it redundant.
Waiting for the headline: Chinese investors pour billions into Wisconsin ladder manufacturer to meet explosive export demands.
In reference to the Pettis piece about debt, the Maria Butina story in TNR, and the conditional dishonesty piece there is one thought that sticks in my head and that is the failure of most commentators to notice the extraordinary growth in corruption in the US and much of the world. To be clear, corruption is not a bad thing by itself–it can merely be about mutual favors and if it may be just the thing that keeps the wheels turning between the rigid world of laws and regulations. But if this “corruption” is motivated by alienation and greed it becomes predatory and that will tend to gradually spread to sectors of society who still live by moral values of some called back in the day the “yeoman class” of skilled workers who act responsibly not primarily because it profits them to do so but because it’s the right thing to do. As morals of all kinds are undermined by systemic corruption that most of us see erupting all around us these moral standards decline on every level. If everyone lies then, to keep up we must, to conform socially, also lie and lie upon lie breeds just the society we have–sick, collectively immoral to a cartoonish degree (Trump), brutality is administered by authorities by sick assholes whether in the military, police force, prisons, the “justice” system and so on. The treatment of by the FBI who spent maybe half-a-million dollars to arrest Roger Stone (someone I used to know and actually like) in pre-dawn “arrest” of an older man and his 73 year-old wife rousted out of bed at gunpoint as CNN is filming outside. Ultimately the trial and arrest was manufactured to break Stone because our “justice” system is used by the powerful not to convict suspects but to destroy lives of anyone who the State dislikes through forcing them to pay lawyers (don’t get me started on that) to stay out of jail. There may be nothing or very little there just as there’s nothing there to cause Butina to be jailed in solitary confinement (at least Stone, after the CNN/FBI show) got to go home–solitary confinement for any extended time is considered torture in more civilized countries and is routine in the USA.
Also we are a society with massive legal and illegal drug addiction problems, obsession with entertainment and escapist/addictive tendencies, falling life-expectancy, and a kind of cultural madness that for some of us old dudes just makes us scratch our heads. The sad part, is that we have technology to create any kind of world we want debt notwithstanding as the Germans and other European countries are trying to do and can do because the level of their corruption is much lower–Germany can make goals and come close to achieving them–the USA can not only not make goals but can’t achieve them even if we made them. Compare this state of the country to the USA that created the atomic bomb, went to the Moon, built (for better or worse) the interstate highway system, built the internet and so on and so on.
The reason we can’t do anything positive at this point in our history is because the country, as a system, is systemically corrupt and plagued with perverse incentives almost everywhere. The fact things function as well as they do in our daily lives is a miracle of human ingenuity that applied in a system with non-perverse incentives would explode in creativity in solving real problems other than root out Russian spies or whatever. The USA is still filled with creative energy but it will go out unless nurtured somehow but the current System must be torn down.
Starting with Citizens United.
Starting with the rise of neo-liberalism in the mid-70s. Literally everything can be for sale, including state functions (“Because markets”). Not everything is is for sale, but the point is that you can never tell, and so it makes sense to assume corruption going in…
Here Here!
Dont u worry tho, us Milennials are on the case!
In my short 34 years, my parents have been in and out of substantial credit card debt and default, my dad got fired cuz VHS tapes went away, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Global Financial Collapse, Latin Degree from LSU, deployed to Afghanistan in US Army, Homeless in Denver, Rehab.
Lotta trauma going on. The way i see it, most folks are ready for a change. We need to start in our own backyards-Louisiana for me. Start radicalizing high schools and colleges and service industry sectors against management and the bureaucracy.
Nice comment.
system selects for psychopathy.
I’ve long considered 1971-75 the high point of usa civilisation(mostly due to music)
and have felt like i was among sleepwalking dead things for most of my conscious life.
I suspect that the masters got word around then that the jig was up, and that the choice was change the operating system(sustainability, cooperation, etc) or put the pedal to the metal and damn the torpedoes(current OS of harvest, greed is good, dog eat dog, etc).
they seem to have chosen the latter, and the harvest is almost complete.
“our betters” are like the aliens in Independence Day…interstellar locust civilisation, roaming around consuming everything.
it’s just now valentines day(happy massacre!),it’s 85 degrees and i’ve got some flowers and trees that are 2 weeks early…and some that are more than a month early.
we had a year’s worth of rain in sept-oct last year.
and 2 years in a row of actual locusts.
disturbance in the force, and all….
and I keep coming back to that apparent decision in the early 70’s…”f&&ck it, lets rape the planet!”…
what was an inchoate vibe in my youth is now filled in with multiple…unnecessary… disasters, that no one really understands, yet, in any kind of comprehensive way.(PeakTopsoil! fgs..)
What I fail to understand is how ‘the masters’ failed to understand a truth so banal it needs no introduction: ‘don’t eat the seed corn’ !
Whose wealth can be stolen when there is no wealth to steal?
I guess it comes back to the short termist, Greshamite greed of the people who own us, best summed up by the great Chuck Prince: ‘“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing’
I think the problem is, they don’t really know what their seed corn *is* at this point. The economy is so opaque I don’t think most of them fully understand where their money actually comes from or how the global economy actually works outside the niches they extract rents from
> that apparent decision in the early 70’s…”f&&ck it, lets rape the planet!”
I once collected charts that showed inflection points in the mid-70s; there were a lot, but the big one was real wages; that’s when they flattened. Our health care costs as a percent of GDP also began to diverge from world trends at that time (upward).
The advent of neoliberalism, and I don’t recall an election fought on that. Well before Reagan, too; at some point during the Nixon and Ford presidencies.
I wish somebody like Thomas Frank would write this history and name some names.
yup. see Duncan’s “road to the Olduvai Gorge”.
it was the zenith of energy usage per capita, as well.
and Illargi, recently, made a big deal about the end of “Real Growth” around that time…it’s been financial/paper since.
we’re submerged in a soup of ahistorical ignorance…no narrative to frame the world with(or, rather, no narrative that convincingly gels with observed reality).
we hafta talk about it in allegory(“wherefrom words turn back, together with the mind, not having attained…”):
wizard of oz, the matrix, the adventures of alice…hell, did you know that some russian dude wrote a companion to lord of the rings from the POV of Mordor…characterising elves and such as stalinist totalitarians, and orcs and such as the quintessence of randian ambition?
lol.
(last i looked, it’s not in print(in english), due to the tolkien estate blocking it)
Good comment. Hope that it does not get as bad as the old Ottoman empire. There, appointed officials were expected to make six times their official salaries via scams and bribes with part of that unofficial salary used to bribe the official above him. The old Roman empire too ended up choking on its own corruption and not being able to meet new challenges. It will eventually come down to finding another Solon the reformer or collapse in place.
Am I alone in thinking that JPMorgan opening a cryptocurrency desk is a big sign that a top has been reached?
“Ready for the break Mr. DeMille.”
It seems more akin to an oil company going after tar sands now, an err of desperation.
Your comment made me think of that good old fashioned “Honey Badger Theme Music for Strippers,” “Heir on a G-string.” All that’s needed is some serious Baching and you’ve got this market cornered.
Just another “channel”.
Marianas tranche
You are plumbing new depths with this latest example. Keep down the good work!
ChanL #5? For the sweet smell of defaulting debentures?
JPM should call the new cryptocurrency “Fiata Morgana”.
And … it’s gone!
XYZ Affair then:
“Millions for defense, but not one Cent for tribute”
XYZ Affair now:
Billions for defense, but not one sent to jail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYZ_Affair
American Airlines: 700 Phoenix flight attendants will need to move [USA Today]
Natural attrition and transfers. And if the EEOC comes knocking: TINA. The IT system made us do it.
etymology of attrition…
https://www.etymonline.com/word/attrition
early 15c., “a breaking;” 1540s, “abrasion, scraping, the rubbing of one thing against another,” from Latin attritionem (nominative attritio), literally “a rubbing against,” noun of action from past-participle stem of atterere “to wear, rub away,” figuratively “to destroy, waste,” from assimilated form of ad “to” (see ad-) + terere “to rub” (from PIE root *tere- (1) “to rub, turn”).
The earliest sense in English is from Scholastic theology (late 14c.), “sorrow for sin merely out of fear of punishment or a sense of shame,” an imperfect condition, less than contrition or repentance. The sense of “wearing down of military strength” is from World War I (1914). Figurative use by 1930.
Sending them all to rehub, eh?
It’s kind of scary to think that because the NYMag points out that our top law enforcement offers are too stupid to know how the 25th amendment works, we’re in the clear on an open discussion of removing a democratically elected president:
Such fears seem well grounded to me, at least.
Yes. The “delusion” was that the 25th Amendment gambit would work, *not* that the Russian collusion case was bulls**t or that they were committing treason (see Rev Kev above)!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/us/politics/national-emergency-trump.html/
“The declaration will enable Mr. Trump to divert $3.6 billion budgeted for military construction projects to the border wall, White House officials said. Mr. Trump will also use more traditional presidential budgetary discretion to tap $2.5 billion from counternarcotics programs and $600 million from a Treasury Department asset forfeiture fund.”
I know it’s early in the game, but this looks like Drug War funds being raided (excuse me, “tapped”). And aren’t there nuances about this that could have the Democrats defending the Drug War?
Robbing busting Peter’s habit to pay Paul to build a wall?
i’ll betcha 10 bucks that it ends up being Pablo that actually builds the damned thing.
The mammoth task of making all buildings more energy efficient — yes, all, just like the Green New Deal says — hasn’t cowed the authorities in Europe. The German Energy Agency calculates that to make the country’s building stock almost carbon-neutral by 2050 about 1.4 percent of buildings a year will need to be refurbished; the current rate is about 1 percent, so the goal looks ambitious, but not unattainable.
—
Germany’s doing it already.
And the target is 2050, at the current rate of 1% a year (which would imply 100 years, with a constant rate…meaning it started in 1950).
But that is doubting (starting in 1950). The implication is likely an accelerated rate, not a constant rate. Accelerated because…? Gaining experience and expert as they go along?
“The goal looks ambitious” – I assume that is referring to the German goal of 2050.
For the US (which is bigger than Germany, more buildings to upgrade, raising question if the 1% rate is applicable, or the 1% should be translated to number of builidings, in which case, it’s much less than 1% for the US), the goal to do the same in 10 or 12 years would be more than ambitious…more than just over-ambitious, even.
Germany doesn’t have as cheap energy as the US, and seems to make better tech/industry policy. We do stuff like corn ethanol, and subsidize auto use…
This can (has to, but how?) change.
“The mammoth task of making all buildings more energy efficient — yes, all, just like the Green New Deal says — hasn’t cowed the authorities in Europe. The German Energy Agency calculates that to make the country’s building stock almost carbon-neutral by 2050 about 1.4 percent of buildings a year will need to be refurbished …”
That’s 20 years too late, isn’t it? I thought the UN climate report said we had only until 2030 to get everything done. Even so, this mid-century year keeps cropping up.
Conservation is fine, but from what I’ve been reading, it appears we’ve run out of time for anything but a global program of mass building of nuclear power plants, sweeping away all the regulatory obstructions. Wind and solar are a costly and even tragic distraction, and conservation is apparently too slow.
Granted, the accelerated construction of nuclear plants may or even probably will lead to a number of catastrophic meltdowns. But we’ve fiddled around so long with unenforceable photo-op climate agreements and other baby steps that we’ve run out of other options. By virtually excluding nuclear, the Green New Deal may end up creating the biggest distraction yet.
Or not. Any thoughts on this?
We’ve potentially ruined this good Earth for some time to come through rather conventional means, but if we were to mess it up for time immemorial through nuclear, that’d be better?
Four forces – gravity, electro-mag, weak, strong.
The fifth force – mental.
We could try, letting the will triumph, to impose consumption quotas, with a declaration of global emergency.
Is that on the table for discussion? If the situation is critical enough (everyday, it gets worse)…
if i put on my black robe and go stand in the dark and laugh maniacally in my best darth cheney impression…it would seem that the easiest way to curtail this global catastrophe is to reduce the number of humans currently alive on the planet.
what would that look like?
everything from antivaxx social movements to hormones in the water supply to limit births(last week’s news), to a proliferation of small arms, coupled with widespread despair and lack of basic necessities…maybe antibiotic resistance from CAFO could contribute, too.
if all else fails, there’s always a great big war with sufficient nukes to EMP enough sacrifice zones to ensure an efficient follow on reduction.
where there’s a will…
When it gets hot enough, I think it’s possible we see a strong-willed Green Dictator.
> the easiest way to curtail this global catastrophe is to reduce the number of humans currently alive on the planet.
Well, life expectancy is dropping and the birth rate is falling (at least in the United States). So everything’s going according to plan!
finally getting to Framing Crash: new bretton woods piece.(I overdid it with the gardening, yesterday, and will pay the price, today)
part IV talks about the response to the 08 crises:”…One could hardly ask for a more direct expression of Neumann’s basic diagnosis: the survival of oligopolistic capitalism requires adhocracy. When the going gets rough, as it inevitably does, order goes out the window.”
bubbling up from the unconscious at this is Carl Schmitt’s “State of Exception”.
That’s where the “leadership” lives, it turns out.
The question remains, however, whether the Davos Set is smoking it’s own stash.
with the almost complete colonisation of the mind…TINA…where we can’t really delineate an alternative(as in that enumeration, of sorts, of the varieties of things called “socialism”)…i reckon it’s more necessary than ever to do that work, in spite of the yelling and often actual death threats that ensue from the “Baronial model of economic governance”.
reading this stuff, another thing bubbles up—the prohibition, written into the unwritten rules, of thinking of Political Economy(a la Polyani), as opposed to separating politics and economy, as is currently the essence of TINA.
econ considerations are removed from democratic influence, or even awareness…and placed firmly in the hands of an unaccountable priesthood of Very Smart Men(tm).
i figger this is why folks like bernie and AOC scare the hell out of them.
in the same way that the 08 crises were unleashed unwittingly by some minor functionary at Bear Stearns leaving a window open, and letting the Holy of Holies loose in the world(that there’s no there, there…no legitimacy, it all relies on belief(sola fide!!))….the Masters are terrified that the secret will get out….in a more comprehensible form…
it’s all really too much to digest with what all I’ve got going on…so i’m stuck with contemplating this in a more or less trancelike meditative manner as i water the seedlings and set up tomato fences and wait around while the chemo is ongoing.
I’m certainly glad that all y’all– folks with more time and erudition than I– are on the case.
Trudeau’s in big trouble. I won’t recount the facts. See the cited article in Links and anything in the Canadian Press. But the most interesting thing I came across was the other day in the Globe and Mail, Canada’s so called Rag of Record, which was about Trudeau’s management practices – or rather, the substantive absence of any. Read below, but it really seems that Trudeau really is nothing more than a woof haired spokesperson front man for whatever power constellation stands behind and profits from his regime and nothing more. See this:
“This is, after all, a Prime Minister who reportedly brushed off repeated requests from his own foreign affairs minister for a private meeting during the entire 14 months Stéphane Dion served in the job. And one who, when the two men did find themselves stuck on a plane together, balked at Mr. Dion’s attempt to engage him in a serious discussion on Canada’s policy toward Russia, according to a book on Canadian foreign policy by former Dion aide Jocelyn Coulon.
“This is also a Prime Minister who, in 2017, told then-ethics commissioner Mary Dawson that he viewed his role as “ceremonial” in testimony he provided during an investigation into his 2015 Christmas vacation on the Aga Khan’s private island.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-justin-trudeaus-management-style-fails-him-again/
To read the article you may have to click through with “Reader View open in New Tab” as in the Pale Moon Browser.
So, Boy Wonder Trudeau may not be a merely dysfunctionally “light touch” manager, but actually a no touch manager with no ideas, policy, or anything else of his own. I’m waiting to see how this develops, but if true, I, as they say, have no words.
Unna
AAAaah! You’ve caught on. His election was revenge against Stephen Harper. Other than that, he always was pretty much a nonentity, riding on his much more substantial father’s reputation.
Yes. I realized Trudeau was a nonentity. And I certainly didn’t vote for him. But, wow, this guy is pure nonentity. The PM as spokesperson cum socks and hair and nothing more. Something I would never have imagined possible. Trudeau as PM as fraud on the people of Canada in the very act of pretending to occupy the position.
Last election there was a lot of strategic voting to get Harper out. Same thing may happen this time around only in reverse. Maybe the Liberals will go back to third place and stay there for awhile.
I’m thoroughly disappointed with Trudeau. He supports Freeland’s “Russia, Russia, Russia is evil” mantra and is in the bag of Israel.
But, I’ll vote for him ’cause the alternative is worse.
What a mess!
May and Mould. As I’m sure Theresa does her own canning, she ought to consider using smaller jars. Theresa has likely fallen into the trap of misleading herself and others by taking the short cut of using larger jars than she ought to have simply because she’s lazy and tried to get away with using half the number of large jars rather than twice the number of smaller ones. Which would, of course, require twice the work. Or, maybe, she’s simply lacking in foresight about the future, which in this case concerns her consumption of jam. Whatever.
Heading: ” What AreThe actual Costs Of Execessive Debt”? First…
“…debt does not generate real wealth real wealth creation.”
“it does generate economic activity and the illusion of wealth creation. ”
These stztemenys are the first real warning the author is going off the MMT tracks.
Then he throws gasoline on the fire.
“…there are limits to a country’s debt capacity, ” only in the sense of the nations natural resourses.
“…once the economy has reached those limits ” What limits: no unemployment, all the nations natural resources are used to keep all manufacturing capacity occupied.??
“Navy Admiral on ship collisions: Those were tragedies, but what about the other 280 ships that didn’t collide?”
The ocean is a pretty big place, so that’s a pretty low bar…
Probably a ‘half of the ocean is full’ guy, that admiral, when in fact, half of the ocean is empty.
Well, its going to get much more full by the end of the century thanks to sea level rise!
Oh wait, you mean its empty of boats. Well, its going to get emptier, because there can’t be boats without ports, and we won’t have any of the ones we have now by the end of the century