L 7-17 Biden tweet — 2020 guarantees re covid BP MNE
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L 7-19 Snowden tweet on Assange BP MNE
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WC 7-20 2 on Biden, Dems unpopular
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WC 7-21 tweets MI; John Marshall; NYT union
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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 24, 2022
by Tony Wikrent
Michael Hudson — Capitalism’s Self-Destructive Nature
Global energy shift as USA self-destructs
Alfons Mais: “Russia has resources that are almost inexhaustible”
[Handelsblatt, via Naked Capitalism 7-20-2022] Original right here.
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 7-21-2022]
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Twitter, through Naked Capitalism 7-23-2022]
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Record-breaking Chinese bridge clears hurdle to sooner transport in border province
South China Morning Post, through Naked Capitalism 7-19-2022]
PHOTO Luzhijiang Bridge within the southwestern province of Yunnan
China has constructed the world’s longest single-tower suspension bridge
[Interesting Engineering, July 17, 2022]
The 800-meter-long (2,625 toes) bridge is being constructed to enhance the connection between China and Southeast Asia. It will drastically minimize the journey time between the cities of Yuxi and Chuxiong from an hour and a half to solely two minutes….
The Luzhijiang Bridge can also be spectacular due to the extremely steep valley cliffs it rises out of. Drivers sticking to a 100 mph velocity restrict will come straight out of tunnels onto the 300-meter-tall bridge from both aspect. The metal cables used for the suspension bridge needed to be secured by drilling a 100-meter tunnel for an anchor.
The bridge will even type a part of a brand new 200 km (124 miles) expressway by means of Yunnan that may enhance the passage to nations together with Myanmar, Vietnam, and Laos. The expressway is a part of the nation’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is designed to enhance connections with 140 different nations.
China Maritime Report No. 22: Logistics Support for a Cross-Strait Invasion: The View from Beijing (PDF)
[China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
Coming Shift in Global Economic Power?
Barry Ritholtz, July 17, 2022 [The Big Picture]
GRAPH
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Liberalism, conservatism and the dearth of dialogue of civic republicanism
Conservative Blocs Unleash Litigation to Curb Public Health Powers
[Kaiser Health News, via Naked Capitalism 7-20-2022]
Galvanized by what they’ve characterised as an overreach of covid-related well being orders issued amid the pandemic, attorneys from the three overlapping spheres — conservative and libertarian assume tanks, Republican state attorneys basic, and non secular liberty teams — are aggressively taking up public well being mandates and the federal government businesses charged with defending group well being.
“I don’t think these cases have ever been about public health,” stated Daniel Suhr, managing lawyer for the Liberty Justice Center, a Chicago-based libertarian litigation group. “That’s the arena where these decisions are being made, but it’s the fundamental constitutional principles that underlie it that are an issue.”
[TW: Remember that for these bastards, promotion of the General Welfare is NOT a “fundamental constitutional principle.” To stop the conservative / libertarian shredding of the Union, we need to replace (anti)Federalist Society “originalist” jurisprudence with John Marshall’s and Joseph Story’s understanding and defense of vigorous national AND state governments, as exemplified in the Munn and Granger cases. ]
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 7-18-2022]
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From 21 months in the past:
[Twitter, October 20, 2020, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
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The pandemic
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-20-2022]
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[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 7-23-2022]
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The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
Free Markets, Besieged Citizens
Robert Kuttner [New York Review of Books, July 21, 2022 issue]
Why did Democratic presidents embrace an financial credo that annihilated their very own public philosophy and its attraction to the voters?
Reviewed: The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World within the Free Market Era
by Gary Gerstle
Oxford University Press, 406 pp., $27.95
….The time period “neoliberalism” itself is complicated, as a result of for not less than a century “liberalism” within the United States has meant reasonable left, not free-market proper…. The time period was additionally used to explain Senators Gary Hart and Paul Tsongas, amongst others. See Peters, A New Road for America: The Neoliberal Movement (Madison, 1985).
Neoliberalism in its present financial sense attracts on the older that means of liberalism, which continues to be frequent in Europe and which holds that free markets are the counterpart of a free and democratic society. That was the declare of classical liberals like Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson….
Gerstle’s lens helps us recognize the self-reinforcing energy of neoliberalism. As authorities grew to become a much less reliable supply of financial safety, folks had been made to really feel that they had been on their very own, thus internalizing an individualist moderately than collectivist view of citizen and society. [TW: leading to the collapse of citizen’s understanding and appreciation of civic republicanism; this is why I decided that we had to go beyond a mere restoration of liberalism, and began promoting civic republicanism instead.]
….The neoliberal perspective, as first articulated within the Nineteen Thirties by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and by Henry Simons of the University of Chicago, holds that if we would like entrepreneurs, financiers, and unusual residents to be liberated from state regulation, sturdy authorities guidelines should defend the market from the state. Milton Friedman, in a 1951 essay titled “Neo-Liberalism and Its Prospects,” agreed that this challenge went properly past laissez-faire. Gerstle writes, “This strategy was built on a paradox: namely, that government intervention was necessary to free individuals from the encroachments of government.” The historian Quinn Slobodian, in his authoritative mental historical past of neoliberalism, Globalists (2018), goes additional: “The neoliberal project was focused on designing institutions—not to liberate markets but to encase them, to inoculate capitalism against the threat of democracy.”
….Gerstle explains how the cultural left additionally discovered the libertarian and antibureaucratic facets of neoliberalism interesting, weakening the New Deal order and its political coalition in yet one more means. In the tradition wars of the Nineteen Sixties, the New Left rejected company chilly battle liberalism and unresponsive huge authorities in favor of a wished-for “participatory democracy.” Some of this entailed difficult public establishments. “Both left and right, in their new incarnations, shared a deep conviction,” Gerstle writes, that the bureaucratized system “was suffocating the human spirit.” Just a few years later, Ralph Nader grew to become satisfied that a number of regulatory businesses had turn out to be hopelessly captured by the industries that they regulated and helped persuade Carter that the treatment was deregulation….
Neoliberalism not solely protects the market from the regulatory state; extra radically, it expands market rules to realms considered partially social. Whereas Polanyi, for example, warned concerning the tendency of a market society to relentlessly “commodify” social relations, neoliberal theorists embrace this as a advantage, arguing that market measures could be effectively utilized to worth every thing from human life to the setting….
This has certainly been the dominant set of beliefs behind the insurance policies of the previous 4 many years. Was it a hit or a failure? That is dependent upon who you’re. For financial elites and the Republican Party, it has been a splendid success. For the Democratic Party, the neoliberal order has been a disaster, eviscerating the core declare of progressives since FDR that authorities can serve the frequent folks. Neoliberalism has thus been each antidemocratic and anti-Democratic….
…in the course of the neoliberal period, productiveness progress has been no higher than it was within the postwar interval. Health insurance coverage grew to become extra pricey and fewer dependable as each insurance coverage firms and hospitals had been more and more reworked into for-profit establishments, avoiding unprofitable sufferers. Retirement safety was weakened, as assured pensions had been shed by companies in favor of marketized 401(okay) accounts that shifted all the chance and many of the price to employees. The deregulation of economic markets led to improvements, however they primarily served hypothesis by insiders and resulted within the monetary collapse of 2008.
Politically, the consequence was a broad lack of confidence in Democrats because the get together that championed the pursuits of working folks, and in authorities as an instrument of broad public profit….
The new regime was codified within the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has far higher enforcement powers than the GATT. As Rodrik has written, this new type of globalization has made capitalism extra impervious to regulation and to nationwide democratic accountability. Globalization has turn out to be a main instrument of neoliberalism, each ideologically and institutionally. Gerstle omits this facet of the story virtually totally.
Unsatisfactory Musings on the Rise of the Neoliberal Order Brad DeLong, through Naked Capitalism 7-18-2022]
[TW: DeLong tries to deal with Kuttner’s review of Gerstle. I include it hear, because it is both amusing and informative to see how a self-described “Davos Man” still clinging to a belief in free trade, tends toward incoherence without civic republicanism as a firm foundation. ]
“Trying to come to grips with the fact that post-World War II Global North social democracy failed its sustainability test.”
[TW: Lambert Strether asks: “Did it fall, or was it pushed?” hinting at the massive role played by USA plutocrats in developing and lavishly funding the libertarian and conservative movements, as well as the neoliberal thought collective. But the other factor to consider is how organized crime began to rise in the 1970s to influence much of Wall Street, international banking, corporate raiding, and private equity in the 1990s.]
The funding drought of the previous 20 years is catching up with us
[Financial Times, via Naked Capitalism 7-20-2022]
whatsnew2day.com/…
France and the US have invested almost two share factors of GDP much less this century than within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties; Germany and Italy about 4.5 factors much less; the UK and Japan 6 and 10 share factors much less respectively. These are large numbers. The G7 accounts for about $45 trillion in annual GDP. Restoring their funding ratios might fill almost half of the worldwide deficit to the $4 trillion the International Energy Agency calls for in annual investments in clear know-how if we wish to hit net-zero by 2050.
Those are whole funding numbers, however the same story solely applies to the general public sector. In the US, internet public funding (after considering the depreciation of the prevailing public capital inventory) declined by almost two-thirds within the decade to 2014, when it fell to 0.5 % of GDP.
“The Pete Buttigieg Fake Governing Problem”
Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-22-2022]
“The reality is that our industrial systems are breaking down because our government isn’t constraining the powerful people who run them according to short-term profit maximizing goals. That’s why the airlines, for instance, are a mess. Despite consumer complaints about the industry being up 300% since 2019, and $5-15B of tickets that went un-refunded during Covid, the airlines are unchastened. And the reason is that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has created an environment ripe for cheating by having his agency issue a record low number of aviation enforcement orders….. The airlines cheated people during the initial stages of the pandemic, but so did banks. Bank of America, for instance, froze people’s accounts who were getting unemployment help. But unlike with airlines, there is a real regulator on consumer protection for banks – the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra. And the CFPB forced Bank of America to refund customers, and on top of that fined the bank $100 million for “botching the disbursement of unemployment insurance.” Another financial institution regulator adopted the CFPB and issued a separate $125 million wonderful. The distinction between Chopra and Buttigieg is stark…. There are additionally quieter levers helpful to governing. There’s quite a lot of carping about dangerous judges of late, and for good motive. But enforcers may form how judges take into consideration the legislation. For occasion, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, run by anti-monopolist Jonathan Kanter, simply issued a ‘statement of interest’ in a non-public lawsuit opposing trucking companies that agree with each other to not rent truckers from one another. The Antitrust Division not solely enforces the legislation instantly, however shapes the legislation by means of these sorts of briefs. Kanter is attempting to create a authorized prohibition towards these ‘no-hire’ agreements. It isn’t flashy, it isn’t prompt, nevertheless it restructures markets.”
An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 7-22-2022]
Today, this intermediary mannequin is so pervasive that enterprise capitalists at the moment are selling funding fashions based mostly on express violation of antitrust legal guidelines. Take a seed fund referred to as Equal Ventures, launched just a few years in the past with a selected thesis of on the lookout for middlemen monopolist. In a Medium submit, one of many founders famous that his enterprise invests in monopolization, which, although it feels quaint to say this, is actually outlawed by the Sherman Antitrust Act. I’ve bolded the related elements as a result of it’s simply so stark.
“A big part of our belief in transforming legacy markets is understanding the economics of those industries and determining the opportunity for the company to carve out a “moat” in that business’s worth chain. While firms by no means have a moat on Day One, we attempt to consider their “moat trajectory”, which is the long-term sustainable benefit they will have over rivals IF every thing goes in accordance with plan. Generally this implies the corporate has the power to monopolize a phase of the worth chain and maintain it given a flywheel inherent of their enterprise mannequin.
“Generally talking, we wish to see the capability to monopolize a $1b+ phase of a complete addressable market (margin, not income). We can get snug with smaller TAM segments supplied that 1) there’s a near-term path to attaining that (will talk about this shortly) and a couple of) we imagine the phase lends itself properly to monopolization, moderately than many gamers.
“Ultimately, we want companies capable of generating long term FCF, and that requires a defensible moat position in the market, not a leaky bucket with lots of revenue.”
The textual content of the Sherman Act bars ‘monopolization,’ so to put in writing that one is attempting to construct companies that may ‘monopolize’ is, properly, outstanding. Equal Ventures organizes its investments by placing cash into what it thinks will likely be middlemen monopolies, like an AirBNB for little one care or an eBay for extra stock. These are affordable enterprise concepts, however the aim right here isn’t merely to ship some helpful matching service and earn cash, however to make sure dominance. Such funding methods find yourself pushing danger or manufacturing off to others, whereas seizing management of a key hyperlink in a provide chain. That’s not simply my view, it’s actually what the traders say they’re doing once they state they need investments the place the “company has the ability to monopolize a segment of the value chain.” ….
One core drawback we’ve with our financial system is that our enterprise individuals are centered on controlling what others produce, as a substitute of manufacturing themselves. If we merely removed the authorized preparations fostering this enterprise mannequin, then we’d have a really completely different set of economic preparations.
The Hidden Fees Making Your Bananas, and Everything Else, Cost More
[Pro Publica, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
When Austerity Is a Bigger Problem Than Inflation
John Authers [Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 7-18-2022]
What to do concerning the current inflation
[Joseph Stiglitz, Lars. P Syll, via Naked Capitalism 7-21-2022]
Trickle down. Remember that. The proof base proceed to reject the notion as a rip-off
Bill Mitchell [via Naked Capitalism 7-23-2022]
Trickle down. Remember that? This was the concept if we redirect actual earnings in the direction of capital by boosting income through actual wage suppression and/or company tax cuts, as if by magic, companies will begin investing the largesse in productive capital, which stimulates financial progress, and, the advantages ‘trickle down’ to the employees who made the preliminary sacrifices. The proof base has by no means supported the thought but it nonetheless resonates. I learn two attention-grabbing articles yesterday, that are associated even when at first blush they might not seem like. The first reveals the stunning decline in productive funding by each non-public and public sectors and the long-term harm that that may have for our capability to fulfill the local weather problem. The second reveals that the arguments that slicing company taxes is sweet for financial progress is fake.
They’re not capitalists – they seem to be a legal predatory class
Switzerland, Playground of Russian Oligarchs, Emerges as Sanctions Weak Link
[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture 7-17-2022]
Ownership shuffles and custom of secrecy thwart efforts by Alpine monetary haven to punish billionaire allies of Vladimir Putin
[TW: At least one Ukranian has figured out a different means of punishing the bastards: ]
The Haves and the Have-Yachts
[New Yorker, via The Big Picture 7-20-2022]
And but the marina in Palm Beach was thrumming with anxiousness. Ever for the reason that Russian President, Vladimir Putin, launched his assault on Ukraine, the superyacht world has come underneath scrutiny. At a port in Spain, a Ukrainian engineer named Taras Ostapchuk, working aboard a ship that he stated was owned by a Russian arms seller, threw open the ocean valves and tried to sink it to the underside of the harbor. Under arrest, he advised a choose, “I would do it again.” Then he returned to Ukraine and joined the army. Western allies, within the hope of pressuring Putin to withdraw, have sought to chop off Russian oligarchs from companies and luxuries overseas. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains,” President Joe Biden declared, in his State of the Union tackle….
In Palm Beach, the yachting group apprehensive that the identical scrutiny is likely to be utilized to them. “Say your superyacht is in Asia, and there’s some big conflict where China invades Taiwan,” Denison advised me. “China could spin it as ‘Look at these American oligarchs!’ ” He puzzled if the seizures of superyachts marked a rising political animus towards the very wealthy….
In a candid apart to a French documentarian, the American yachtsman Bill Duker stated, “If the rest of the world learns what it’s like to live on a yacht like this, they’re gonna bring back the guillotine.” The Dutch press lately reported that Jeff Bezos, the founding father of Amazon, was constructing a crusing yacht so tall that town of Rotterdam would possibly quickly dismantle a bridge that had survived the Nazis in an effort to let the boat go to the open sea. Rotterdammers weren’t happy. On Facebook, an area man urged folks to “take a box of rotten eggs with you and let’s throw them en masse at Jeff’s superyacht when it sails through.” At least 13 thousand folks expressed curiosity. Amid the uproar, a deputy mayor introduced that the dismantling plan had been deserted “for the time being.”
Alex Finley, a former C.I.A. officer who has seen yachts proliferate close to her house in Barcelona, has weighed the superyacht period and its discontents in writings and on Twitter, utilizing the hashtag #YachtWatch. “To me, the yachts are not just yachts,” she advised me. “In Russia’s case, these are the embodiment of oligarchs helping a dictator destabilize our democracy while utilizing our democracy to their benefit.” But, Finley added, it’s a mistake to assume the poisonous symbolism applies solely to Russia. “The yachts tell a whole story about a Faustian capitalism—this idea that we’re ready to sell democracy for short-term profit,” she stated. “They’re registered offshore. They use every loophole that we’ve put in place for illicit money and tax havens. So they play a role in this battle, writ large, between autocracy and democracy.”
….[Captain]
O’Shannassy as soon as labored for an proprietor who restricted the variety of newspapers on board, in order that he might watch his visitors wait and squirm. “It was a mind game amongst the billionaires. There were six couples, and three newspapers,” he stated, including, “They were ranking themselves constantly.” On some boats, O’Shannassy has discovered himself taking part in host within the awkward minutes after visitors arrive. “A lot of them are savants, but some are very un-socially aware,” he stated. “They need someone to be social and charming for them.” Once everybody settles in, O’Shannassy has discovered, there may be usually a delicate shift, when a mogul or a politician or a pop star begins to loosen up in methods which are not often doable on land. “Your security is relaxed—they’re not on your hip,” he stated. “You’re not worried about paparazzi. So you’ve got all this extra space, both mental and physical.”
O’Shannassy has come to see huge boats as an area the place highly effective “solar systems” converge and mix. “It is implicit in every interaction that their sharing of information will benefit both parties; it is an obsession with billionaires to do favours for each other. A referral, an introduction, an insight—it all matters,” he wrote in “Superyacht Captain,” a brand new memoir. A visitor advised O’Shannassy that, after a lavish show of hospitality, he lastly understood the enterprise case for purchasing a ship. “One deal secured on board will pay it all back many times over,” the visitor stated, “and it is pretty hard to say no after your kids have been hosted so well for a week.”
There Are Three Separate Cases in Federal Court Accusing JPMorgan Chase of a Culture of Fraud
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, July 19, 2022 [Wall Street on Parade]
Exclusive: Hyundai subsidiary has used little one labor at Alabama manufacturing facility
[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 7-23-2022]
The nonstop rip-off financial system is costing us extra than simply cash
[Washington Post, via The Big Picture 7-17-2022]
Relentless waves of subtle telephone and on-line scams are impacting folks’s psychological well being.
Complaints to Government Show Americans’ Slow Descent Into Madness Over Spam Calls
[Vice, via The Big Picture 7-19-2022]
People on the restrict of their persistence with spam calls have been emailing the chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, in a determined try to make the undesirable calls from scammers and robocallers cease. Emails paint an image of determined individuals who simply need the telephone to cease ringing.
Celsius attorneys declare customers gave up authorized rights to their crypto
[Cointelegraph, via Naked Capitalism 7-20-2022]
[TW: ha ha ha — so much for property rights. This is kharma kicking libertarian ass.]
Revealed: oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day income for final 50 years
[The Guardian, July 21, 2022, via DailyKos “If only they had told the truth” 7-22-2022]
Big enterprise goes after one other Regulator for doing his job, which is defending shoppers
[Los Angeles Times, via The Big Picture 7-17-2022]
Chopra isn’t minimize from that fabric. As CFPB chair, he has taken purpose at bank card late charges and financial institution overdraft charges, which he fairly rightly calls “junk fees” by means of which “large financial institutions feast on their customers,” leaving them feeling “gouged,” as he stated in a January information convention asserting an inquiry into these fees.
How Uber received entry to world leaders, deceived investigators and exploited violence towards its drivers in battle for international dominance
[The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
Hubert Horan and Izabella Kaminska: Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Thirty: The “Uber Files” Are Not the Uber Exposé You Are Looking For
[Naked Capitalism, July 21, 2022]
A degree usually missed in Uber media protection is that in 12 years of operation the ride-hailing app is but to provide a greenback of constructive money circulate. As of the top of 2021, Uber’s ongoing automobile and supply providers had produced GAAP internet losses of $31bn. [8]
The different too continuously untold reality is that moderately than being a beacon of transportation progress, Uber is definitely a considerably much less environment friendly, higher-cost producer of city automobile providers than the standard taxi operators it has pushed out of enterprise. Uber’s enterprise mannequin has by no means had any capability to profitably produce very large-scale operations at costs the market is prepared to pay.
Uber’s fast progress and skill to drive rivals out of {the marketplace} have by no means had something to do with superior productiveness pushed by technological breakthroughs. They had been pushed totally by tens of billions in unsustainable and predatory subsidies supplied by traders who had hoped that some mixture of community and scale economies would enable Uber to realize international dominance of the automobile service business. [9]
The main drawback with The Guardian’s “Uber Files” collection is that it completely ignores the economics of Uber’s enterprise mannequin. Uber’s huge losses are by no means talked about. Nor does the collection point out the staggering and completely unprecedented $20bn in investor funding, 2300 instances the pre-IPO funding Amazon required. It makes no try to elucidate how Uber’s traders thought they could finally generate sustainable income, a lot much less returns on that stage of funding.
In the grand scheme of issues, Uber has contributed completely nothing to total financial welfare. Thus there was by no means any tradeoff of dangerous behaviour versus advantages produced to think about. The short-term shopper good points it claimed to ship (decrease costs/elevated service) had been at all times unsustainable. In actuality, the mannequin didn’t enhance the general productiveness of city taxi providers, which suggests its inventory value by no means had something to do with future revenue potential. Uber’s efforts to suppress driver compensation and steamroll native officers attempting to implement longstanding laws had been purely harmful. So too was its impact of driving extra environment friendly rivals out of enterprise, growing congestion and diverting site visitors that weakened native transit methods.
Restoring steadiness to the financial system
The wreck of Bidenomics: Fortunately, we’ve a good suggestion of the place to go from right here.
[Noahpinion, via The Big Picture 7-19-2022]
But the failure really goes lots deeper than Manchin. One motive is that what I regarded as the primary pillar of Bidenomics — money advantages — turned out to not be as common as many had hoped. The concept was that as a result of the expanded little one allowance was quasi-universal, it could garner broad assist like Social Security did. Initial broad assist for the coverage appeared to validate that hope. But then, surprisingly, most Americans didn’t wish to make the kid profit everlasting. Whether that’s as a result of Americans are in a stingy temper, or as a result of they imagine that authorities advantages ought to include work necessities, or as a result of they’re apprehensive concerning the inflationary results of money advantages will not be but clear. But what is evident is that money advantages didn’t get the broad common buy-in that FDR’s social insurance coverage or Reagan’s tax cuts secured.
Climate funding bumped into the same drawback. Despite accelerating warmth waves, wildfires, and floods, Americans place a reasonably low precedence on local weather motion….
But there’s a 3rd huge motive Bidenomics failed, and it’s that substantial elements of this system didn’t really tackle the wants of the nation as a lot as I assumed they might….
The drawback right here is the macroeconomic state of affairs. In the Great Depression, our financial drawback was unemployment, because it additionally was throughout many of the Obama administration. In 2022 our drawback is unquestionably inflation. And whether or not or not the money advantages handed out throughout Covid had been a serious trigger of the present inflation, it’s undoubtedly true that money advantages are inflationary. This is as a result of poorer folks spend much more of their earnings than wealthy folks, so giving poor folks a bunch of cash means a lift in spending, whether or not or not you pay for it with taxes on wealthy folks. If you don’t pay for it with taxes, and simply borrow to pay for the advantages, it’s much more inflationary….
All of this leaves us with the massive query: Where will we go from right here? As I see it, the reply must be some type of what Ezra Klein calls “supply-side progressivism” and Derek Thompson calls “the abundance agenda”. America isn’t coping with a disaster of jobs proper now; we’re coping with a disaster of prices, each within the macroeconomic inflation sense, and in the long run everything-costs-too-damn-much sense. Making life inexpensive for normal Americans is a mission that matches the instances we’re in.
Government funding — and encouragement of elevated non-public funding — has received to be a giant a part of this. High-quality infrastructure and public items like R&D funding are necessary for reinforcing progress in actual incomes. And a giant push for considerable inexperienced vitality — whose prices are already decrease than fossil fuels and falling by the day — is essential to making all types of issues cheaper.
It’ll additionally imply a giant push for affordable housing and higher transit. That will embody a number of upzoning and different deregulation, but in addition a push for government-constructed housing. The YIMBY motion reveals the best way forward right here; with cities throughout the nation following coastal hubs into unaffordable territory, this must be a nationwide motion.
It will even imply establishing a nationwide medical health insurance system. This shouldn’t be an expansive single-payer system just like the plan superior by Bernie Sanders, centered on eliminating out-of-pocket prices; as a substitute, it needs to be a system the place the federal government pays some portion of each medical invoice and leaves the remaining to personal insurance coverage. That’s the system utilized in Japan and South Korea, and it’s superb at preserving prices down,
Governments Can No Longer Afford To Leave Energy Security To Market Forces
Alex Kimani [Oilprice, via Mike Norman Economics 7-21-2022]
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created an vitality disaster in Europe and international vitality markets won’t ever be the identical.
The new world vitality order will likely be outlined by authorities intervention on a scale not seen in latest reminiscence.
European governments must work laborious to keep away from extreme authorities interventions in vitality markets that may exacerbate the vitality crises
Actually, the more and more threatening results of local weather change had been a extra important wakeup name than battle, though traditionally battle has justified elevated authorities intrusion within the financial system. Now the world is dealing with a twin menace, both of which might result in extinction or not less than mass culling of the inhabitants and realignment of the ecosystem.The twin menace implies that the world’s leaders are caught in a double-bind attempting to deal with each without delay. Climate change requires concerted motion, whereas battle locations the best precedence on ramping up use of present vitality sources, that are mainly carbon-based.
France to pay $10 billion to take full management of EDF
[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 7-20-2022]
PARIS, July 19 (Reuters) – France’s authorities is providing to pay 9.7 billion euros ($9.85 billion) to take full management of EDF (EDF.PA), in a buyout deal that provides it a free hand to run Europe’s greatest nuclear energy operator because it grapples with a continent-wide vitality disaster.
Conservative / Libertarian Drive to Civil War
“Half of Americans expect a civil war ‘in the next few years’”
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-22-2022]
”A examine launched Wednesday discovered that about half of all Americans anticipate a civil battle to happen ‘in the next few years.’ Researchers from the University of California-Davis Violence Prevention Research Program and the California Violence Research Center reported that fifty.1 % of survey respondents stated they not less than considerably agree {that a} civil battle will occur quickly, whereas 47.8 % disagreed. About 14 % stated they ‘strongly’ or ‘very strongly’ agree {that a} civil battle is imminent, whereas 36 % stated they considerably agree…. Two-thirds of respondents stated there’s a ‘serious threat’ to the nation’s democracy, and virtually 90 % stated it’s ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ necessary for the United States to stay a democracy. But greater than 40 % stated having a ‘strong leader’ for the nation is extra necessary than having a democracy. Almost 1 in 5 stated they agreed ‘strongly’ or ‘very strongly’ with that assertion.”
Trumper screams “Bolsheviks!”
Heather Cox Richardson, July 20, 2022 [Letters from an American]
In a webcast after his testimony, Garrett Ziegler, an aide to commerce advisor Peter Navarro who seems to have been the one who admitted Trump allies to the White House for the stunning assembly of December 18 the place they mentioned martial legislation, continued to say that the 2020 election was stolen.
As for the January 6 committee: “They’re Bolsheviks,” he stated, in an echo of Republican rhetoric calling all opponents communists, “so, they probably do hate the American Founders and most White people in general. This is a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign. If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed. And so, they see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right?” He attacked the ladies who’ve cooperated with the committee with offensive language.
Growing assist for political violence raises alarms
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
Steve Bannon discovered responsible of contempt of Congress for defying House January 6 committee
[Business Insider, via Naked Capitalism 7-23-2022]
“independent state legislature doctrine”
Heather Cox Richardson, July 18, 2022 [Letters from an American]
The case, Texas v. Pennsylvania, argued that these 4 states, whose voters had chosen Biden and whose electoral votes would give Biden the presidency, had violated the novel “independent state legislature doctrine,” which says state legislatures alone have the fitting to find out election procedures. This doctrine defies historical past by saying that when the Framers of the Constitution stated that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators,” they actually simply meant the legislatures, with none verify by the state constitutions or courts. This would allow a legislature to override the desire of the folks totally, however, its adherents insist, that was the Framers’ plan.
In truth, the Framers had been so leery of state legislatures’ oversight of elections that James Madison insisted on giving Congress the ability to overrule them. Since the Civil War, till very lately, the phrase “legislatures” has been interpreted to imply the state authorities, so {that a} state’s legislature can’t, for instance, act in ways in which the state courts discover violate the state structure. But for the reason that 2000 Bush v. Gore case, through which the Supreme Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court to cease a recount of the votes in 4 Florida counties when Chief Justice William Rehnquist prompt limits to the ability of state judges, these fascinated about lowering the ability of the voters in favor of the state legislatures have centered on honing this argument.
What actually drives anti-abortion beliefs? Research suggests it is a matter of sexual methods
[Phys.org, via Naked Capitalism 7-20-2022]
The crux of this argument is that, for sexually restricted folks, different folks’s sexual freedoms signify threats. Consider that sexually restricted ladies usually get married younger and have youngsters early in life. These decisions are simply as legitimate as a call to attend, however they will also be detrimental to ladies’s occupational attainment and have a tendency to go away ladies extra economically depending on husbands.
Other ladies’s sexual openness can destroy these ladies’s lives and livelihoods by breaking apart the relationships they depend upon. So sexually restricted ladies profit from impeding different folks’s sexual freedoms. Likewise, sexually restricted males are likely to make investments lots of their youngsters, in order that they profit from prohibiting folks’s sexual freedoms to preclude the excessive health prices of being cuckolded.
According to evolutionary social science, restricted sexual strategists profit by imposing their strategic preferences on society—by curbing different folks’s sexual freedoms.
How can restricted sexual strategists obtain this? By making informal intercourse extra pricey.
For instance, banning ladies’s entry to secure and authorized abortion basically forces them to endure the prices of bearing a baby. Such hikes within the value of informal intercourse can deter folks from having it.
How conservatism conquered America — and corrupted itself
Zack Beauchamp [Vox, via The Big Picture 7-17-2022] WC 7-20
The right-wing smear marketing campaign towards a physician who helped a 10-year-old rape sufferer
[Popular Information, via The Big Picture 7-17-2022]
An editorial revealed within the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday night referred to as it a “fanciful tale that was too good to confirm.” Ignoring first-hand accounts, the editorial claimed there may be “no evidence the girl exists.” The piece criticizes not offering particulars that might expose the id of the 10-year-old, calling it a hoax. Fox News stated supporters of abortion rights invented a “fake” rape sufferer.
Unimaginable abortion tales will turn out to be extra frequent. Is American journalism prepared?
[Nieman Lab, via The Big Picture 7-17-2022]
In America after the top of Roe v. Wade, one courageous supply, on the file, is commonly the very best we’re going to get. Countless different tales won’t ever be advised.
Just 3 Weeks Post-Roe, The Stories Emerging Are Worse Than Anyone Imagined
[Jezebel, via Naked Capitalism 7-19-2022]
“The Abortion Vote In Kansas Looks Like It’s Going To Be Close”
[FiveThirtyEight, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-21-2022]
“On Aug. 2, Kansans will vote on a state constitutional amendment that would clarify that the state’s bill of rights does not protect Kansans’ right to an abortion. And even though the state leans Republican, new polling and fundraising numbers suggest it’s a close race. The proposed amendment, as its supporters are quick to point out, wouldn’t ban abortion, but it would remove one of the biggest obstacles to making abortion illegal in Kansas. In 2019, the state Supreme Court ruled that the right to bodily autonomy in the state’s bill of rights includes the right to abortion — separate from any rights guaranteed (or not guaranteed) by the U.S. Constitution…. If the amendment passes, on the other hand, the Kansas constitution would no longer protect abortion and more restrictions are likely, particularly if Republicans take back the governor’s mansion in the midterm elections. The vote will be an early bellwether for how Americans are thinking about abortion in the lead-up to the midterms….. Regardless of the outcome, the vote in Kansas will tell us something important about how the public is reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to abortion. The court’s decision wasn’t popular — but now we’ll get our first chance to see if the ruling will actually spur voters into action.”
As professionals flee antiabortion insurance policies, purple states face a mind drain
[Los Angeles Times, via The Big Picture 7-21-2022]
Early indications, nonetheless, are that they might elevate new obstacles to recruiting employees whose abilities and {qualifications} enable them to select from a number of job alternatives.
Information age dystopia
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 7-21-2022]
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A variety of routers are underneath assault by new, unusually subtle malware
[Ars Technica, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
IRS refuses to repair controversial ‘math error’ notices which have baffled hundreds of thousands of taxpayers
[Fast Company, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
The Slow Erosion of Amazon’s Power
Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
Nearly half of Gen Z is utilizing TikTookay and Instagram for search as a substitute of Google, in accordance with Google’s personal knowledge
[Business Insider, via Naked Capitalism 7-17-2022]
Climate and environmental crises
At Peak of Its Wealth and Influence, Arizona’s Desert Civilization Confronts A Reckoning Over Water
[Circle of Blue, via Naked Capitalism 7-18-2022]
The most revealing and menacing proof of that truth has emerged on the Colorado River, which provides 36 % of the state’s water. The river’s circulate is 20 % decrease than it was within the Nineties. The nation’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Mead, which opened in 1934, and Lake Powell, in 1963 — are on the river and had been designed to carry 55 million acre-feet of water. (One acre-foot equals 325,852 gallons.) At 30 % of capability mixed, they now maintain much less water than at any time since quickly after they had been opened. In whole, 36 million acre-feet, or almost 12 trillion gallons, of cupboard space is empty….
State lawmakers and enterprise executives have anticipated the confrontation for almost a decade and demand that there is no such thing as a quick disaster. More than 13 million acre-feet of water — an almost two-year provide — has been purposefully saved in underground reserves particularly to be used in emergencies. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has convened knowledgeable committees. He’s additionally urging the Legislature to ascertain a brand new state company, the Arizona Water Authority, and commit over $1 billion to a brand new technique for securing further sources of water, like constructing desalination crops and harvesting flood waters from the Mississippi River. Arizona and the six different Colorado River Basin states have a 2026 deadline to achieve a brand new settlement on sharing the river’s water.
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 7-21-2022]
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John Phipps: Why Can’t the U.S. Figure Out a Way to Move Water From the Great Lakes to the West?
[AgWeb, via Naked Capitalism 7-21-2022]
Governments Are Ignoring An Easy Climate Fix
[The Lever, July 18, 2022
To reduce methane emissions, U.S. and European officials recently suggested targeting livestock and agriculture in Asia and Africa — but ignored oil and gas emissions on their home turf.
Democrats’ political suicide
“Democrats’ Problems Go Beyond Joe Manchin”
Ross Barkan [The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-18-2022]
“[Manchin’s] clout, however, is a greater reminder of Democratic failure. It didn’t have to be this way. The 50-50 Senate could have been a 51-49 Democratic Senate or even 52-48. In the last two election cycles, Democrats lost winnable races with flawed candidates or struggled, in the case of Bill Nelson of Florida, to defend an incumbent in a blue-wave year. Manchin agita is better reserved for the disastrous campaign of Sara Gideon, the Maine Democrat who spent more than $63 million to lose to Susan Collins and still had almost $15 million left in her account after the election. Gideon’s 2020 loss was galling because Joe Biden ran strongly in Maine, beating Trump 53 to 44 percent. Collins, a moderate Republican, was one of the few candidates anywhere to manage an effective ticket-splitting bid, winning over many Biden voters. Gideon’s uninspiring and overtly nationalized campaign was an ill fit for Maine, emblematic of all the ways Democrats in D.C. have failed to connect in rural America. Beyond Maine, Democrats’ missed opportunities in Florida and North Carolina will probably haunt them for years to come. While Florida has become, since 2020, a foreboding state for left-of-center candidates, 2018 was a rare opportunity for Democrats to at least defend their gains. As Republican Ron DeSantis very narrowly defeated Andrew Gillum, Florida senator Bill Nelson fell to Governor Rick Scott, a GOP arch-conservative. Nelson lost by just 10,033 votes, an absurdly close margin…. Unlike Maine, North Carolina was not a Biden state in 2020: Trump won it by just a single percentage point. A strong Democratic contender, however, could have run ahead of the presidential ticket and won a slim victory. Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s Democratic governor, accomplished this twice. But the national Democrats’ choice of Cal Cunningham, a moderate former state senator, to take on Republican Thom Tillis would backfire when news of an extramarital affair broke shortly before Election Day. The affair, though, did not doom Tillis alone. The Cunningham campaign was a milquetoast, insipid endeavor, offering little in the way of a compelling policy or vision. Had Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee been more encouraging to a young, energetic state senator named Jeff Jackson, it’s possible Democrats would be holding the seat today. None of this should spare Manchin criticism. Rather, it’s a reminder for activists and ordinary Democratic voters that one senator from West Virginia does not encompass all that is wrong with the party.”
‘The Art of Losing the Abortion War,’ for our pricey American leaders
[Washington Post, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-19-2022]
It’s not simply the abortion battle. “The art of war is of vital importance, Sun Tzu once said, ‘a matter of life and death,’ a ‘subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.’ His goal was to teach leaders how to secure victory in battle. But securing defeat is also an art. Here is how American leaders can elegantly lose to their opponents and confidently expose our nation to danger.” Just a few of the gadgets: “2. All losing in warfare is based on falling for deception,” “3. Self-deception is also key to defeat,” “16. Above all, do not react quickly,” “20. In war, always practice disorder. Drain the motivation of your supporters and give confidence to your opponent, and the fruits of political defeat will be yours.” • Terrific format, and really humorous.
The Good, the Bad and the Omitted within the Electoral Count Act
Harold Meyerson, July 21, 2022 [The American Prospect]
If ever there was a bit of laws that embodied the phrases “necessary but not sufficient,” it’s the Electoral Count Act, which a bipartisan group of 16 senators introduced yesterday that they’d agreed upon its phrases and had been introducing into the Senate.
The proposed act addresses a lot that’s flawed with our Electoral College setup, besides the Electoral College itself. And the timing of its launch—on the eve of a primetime listening to telling us extra about Donald Trump’s culpability for the January 6th rebel – seems to be a Republican try to upstage the hearings and its devastating revelations….
To ensure, the proposed laws, which already has 9 Republican senators supporting it and thus wants only one extra to get previous the filibuster, fails to cease Republican-run states from doing all they will to make it laborious for residents they worry might vote Democratic—mainly minorities and the younger—from voting.
“Glenn Ivey wins a Maryland Democratic House primary seen as a proxy fight over Israel”
[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-21-2022]
“Glenn Ivey, a former state’s attorney for Prince George’s County, rode a wave of support from pro-Israel groups to win the Democratic nomination to represent a House district in the predominantly Black middle-class suburbs north and east of Washington, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Ivey defeated Donna Edwards, the first Black woman elected to the House from Maryland, who left the seat to run unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 and had hoped to return. The district is heavily Democratic, meaning Mr. Ivey will almost certainly win the general election this fall. The race, dominated by Mr. Ivey and Ms. Edwards, was not an ideological contest. Both candidates are progressive Democrats and Black lawyers. Instead, it became a proxy fight over Israel between the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee’s new super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and progressive groups led by J Street, a liberal Jewish organization pushing for change in the static conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The United Democracy Project and another group, the Democratic Majority for Israel, spent more than $6.3 million to defeat Ms. Edwards, over her early support for a nuclear deal between Iran and five industrial countries, including the United States, and votes she took in the House that were seen as critical of Israel.”
“Democrats spend millions on Republican primaries”
[Open Secrets, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-21-2022]
“Political groups and nonprofits aligned with the Democratic Party have spent nearly $44 million on advertising campaigns across five states’ Republican primaries to boost the profile of far-right candidates in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Maryland. Democrats strategy is rooted in the belief that these candidates — many of whom spread unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential race was stolen from former President Donald Trump — will be easier to defeat in a general election. Democratic spending has helped secure Republican nominations for candidates in Illinois and Pennsylvania. In Maryland, Democrats are spending on a Republican gubernatorial primary that is still ongoing and is viewed as a tossup. But in California and Colorado, Democrats spent money elevating the profile of candidates who did not advance to the general election.” • It’s as if the Social Democrats had been spending cash on the Nazis. Amazing to see the Democrats doubling down on the Pied Piper technique after it failed catastrophically in 2016. Perhaps they assume their present candidates are lots higher than Clinton? Trust me, they’re not — not less than not the candidates the mind geniuses at DNC are funding. Granted $44 million isn’t all that a lot, nevertheless it’s not nothing, particularly in a main.
Disrupting mainstream politics
Protecting Rights Threatened by Clarence Thomas
Robert Kuttner, July 20, 2022 [The American Prospect]
Yesterday the House took step one, passing the coyly titled Respect for Marriage Act, which codifies the Court’s 2015 Obergefell resolution defending same-sex marriage. The technique of splitting Republicans labored superbly….
Even higher, as my colleague David Dayen pointed out, a number of Republicans dealing with shut re-election races in swing districts voted no. This technique is a template for 2022. Democrats ought to transfer different laws codifying primary rights underneath menace by the present court docket, in addition to measures common with voters akin to payments to drastically minimize drug prices, and dare Republicans to vote towards them.
All of this strikes the 2022 midterm elections to a terrain the place Democrats can win, and takes the highlight off issues like gasoline costs and Biden’s private reputation. It reminds voters simply how excessive most Republicans are.
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“$100K got Uber research published in prestigious outlet”
Felix Salmon, Axios [Axios, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-19-2022]
“A major NBER research paper c0-authored by Alan Krueger, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was revealed last week to have been paid for by Uber as ‘part of a production line of political ammunition that could be fed to politicians and the media,’ in the words of Guardian investigative reporter Felicity Lawrence…. Uber paid Krueger $100,000 for the controversial 2016 study, which has been cited by 981 scholarly articles to date. A payment of that magnitude “is not trivial and is relevant,” one high-profile economist tells Axios.”