NPC Skating night, Washington DC 1919
“..the same unreconstructed global capitalism that was still sucking the life from the lower classes that it always had. Only now it was doing so with explicit public backing and with an abandon it had not enjoyed since the roaring twenties.”
• How The Global Left Destroyed Itself -Or, All Sex Is Not Rape- (DLS)
With a Republican Party on its knees, Obama was positioned to restore the kind of New Deal rules that global capitalism enjoyed under Franklin D. Roosevelt. A gobalisation like the one promised in the brochures, that benefited the majority via competition and productivity gains, driven by trade and meritocracy, with counter-balanced private risk and public equity. But instead he opted to patch up financialised capitalism. The banks were bailed out and the bonus culture returned. Yes, there were some new rules but they were weak. There was no seizing of the agenda. No imprisonments of the guilty. The US Department of Justice is still issuing $14bn fines to banks involved yet still today there is no justice. Think about that a minute. How can a crime be worthy of a $14bn fine but no prison time?!?
Alas, for all of his efforts to restore Wall Street, Obama provided no reset for Main Street economics to restore the fortunes of the US lower classes. Sure Obama fought a hostile Capitol but, let’s face it, he had other priorities. And so the US working and middle classes, as well as those worldwide, were sold another pup. Now more than ever, if they said say so they were quickly shut down as “racist”, “xenophobic”, or “sexist”. Thus it came to pass that the global Left somehow did a complete back-flip and positioned itself directly behind the same unreconstructed global capitalism that was still sucking the life from the lower classes that it always had. Only now it was doing so with explicit public backing and with an abandon it had not enjoyed since the roaring twenties.
Which brings us back to today. And we wonder how it is that an abuse-spouting guy like Donald Trump can succeed Barack Obama. Trump is a member of the very same “trickle down” capitalist class that ripped the income from US households. But he is smart enough, smarter than the Left at least, to know that the decades long rage of the middle and working classes is a formidable political force and has tapped it spectacularly to rise to power. And, he has done more. He has also recognised that the Left’s obsession with post-structural identity politics has totally paralysed it. It is so traumatised and pre-occupied by his mis-use of the language of power – the “racist”, “sexist” and “xenophobic” comments – that it is further wedging itself from its natural constituents every day.
Don’t get me wrong, I am very doubtful that Trump will succeed with his proposed policies but he has at least mentioned the elephant in the room, making the American worker visible again.
I like this: in the 1930s you had “Hoover blankets” for newspapers and “Hoover leather” for cardboard, and now there’s “Trump Towers” for shantytowns.
• Of Hoovervilles and Trump Towers (Thomas)
In 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected as president of the US. He took office in March of 1929. The following October, the stock market crashed, heralding in the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes and/or starved in the ensuing years. Countless people, having nowhere to live, set up shantytowns that came to be known as “Hoovervilles.” Their new residents relied for the most part on public charities or begging for whatever income they could attain. Was Mister Hoover responsible? Well, no. When elected, he had never held public office before and had not contributed to the cause of the depression. So why was he blamed? Well, whenever there’s disaster, it’s human nature to want to put a face on the cause of the problem. We tend to need to have someone at whom we can point our angry finger.
(Almost immediately after the shooting of John Kennedy, the public were shown a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle; the day after the destroying of the Twin Towers, the television news showed a photo of Osama bin Laden. The viewers didn’t question whether these were indeed the culprits; they simply accepted them, as their need to have someone to blame was greater than their need to have truth.) As a Republican, Mister Hoover became an easy target for Democrats seeking to further their own careers. Although the events that led up to the depression were caused by both Democrats and Republicans, both within politics and without, Mister Hoover was a convenient target for Democrats. In fact, the term “Hooverville” was created by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee. Democrats also came up with other pejoratives, such as “Hoover blankets” for newspapers and “Hoover leather” for cardboard used in a shoe when the sole had worn through.
Throughout the 1930s, hundreds of Hoovervilles sprang up, housing hundreds of thousands of recently homeless people. There was even one in New York’s Central Park. By ascribing the Great Depression and everything that went with it to Mister Hoover, it was a foregone conclusion that in the next presidential election, the Democratic candidate would win by a landslide. For the next 20 years, Democrats held the US presidency and, in that time, the government made a major transformation towards collectivism. In spite of the fact that the Great Depression dragged on for around a decade, few Americans grasped the fact that collectivist policies prolonged the depression, rather than alleviated it.
[..] If history were to repeat, Mister Trump would find that, within months of his ascendancy to the throne, market crashes would occur, followed by monetary collapse, diminishment of entitlements, loss of homes and jobs and a return to Hoovervilles. It wouldn’t be surprising if the present generation of collectivist spin doctors choose to call the new shantytowns “Trump towers.” There can be no doubt that it would be a successful political move and, along with other pejoratives, would be extremely likely to result in a one-term presidency for Mister Trump, followed by a landslide victory in 2020 for the Democratic Party. [..] Mister Trump will be no more to blame than Mister Hoover but, as the present economic cycle will reach the tipping point on his watch, there can be little doubt as to who will receive the blame. Just as in 1929, the tail will blindly be pinned on the elephant, not the donkey, and a long era of increased collectivism will be heralded in.
“The end had come, but it was not yet in sight”.
• The Blinkered Elite Who Still Think Austerity Works (Aditya Chakrabortty)
On 11 September 1929 the Wall Street Journal quoted Mark Twain for its thought of the day: “Don’t part with your illusions; when they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.” Whatever that day’s subeditors thought they were doing, their choice now sounds as falsely confident as a rambler about to step off a ledge. Markets were already in turmoil, America was sinking into economic depression and running through the daily news was a thin, high note of hysteria. Still, Irving Fisher and the other wise men foresaw only the slightest of setbacks, and the brokers couldn’t take the cash fast enough. As John Kenneth Galbraith writes in his classic, The Great Crash 1929: “The end had come, but it was not yet in sight”.
Just six weeks later shares nosedived, countless families had their life savings destroyed, and an entire ruling class was stripped of its illusions. It took another 25 years, the Great Depression, the New Deal and a world war before stocks regained their 1929 levels. Look around today: the political class of 2016 is stuffed with people firmly clinging on to their illusions. Come Brexit, come Trump, come possible break-up of Europe: no lessons will be learned, barely an inch will be deviated from the ordained course. For some, the best pose is an uncomprehending defiance. Taking a break from tending to his £27m property portfolio, Tony Blair tells the New Statesman, “I can’t come into front-line politics. There’s just too much hostility.” Thus does the patron saint of exasperation inform his ex-voters: it’s not me, it’s you.
Others are smart enough at least to pay lip service to the new times. A couple of months ago George Osborne told the Financial Times how much he’d learned from Brexit: “There’s a pretty profound sense out there that the system’s not working for people, and instead of telling people, ‘Shut up, you’ve never had it so good,’ you’ve got to respond to that … I want to use this time out of office to try and understand it better.” Trouble is, lip service doesn’t pay so well. Days after that interview, the recently ejected chancellor began a speaking tour of America. In just a month, it was revealed last week, he raked in £320,400. Osborne made more from five speeches (nearly all to the finance industry, naturally, and putting in what his parliamentary register records as a total of 13 and a half hours’ work)than the average British worker will earn in over 11 years.
Good cop, bad cop. Rinse and repeat.
• Athens Fears IMF, Berlin Will Reach Deal For Further Austerity (Kath.)
With the government banking on securing a “political decision” at Monday’s Eurogroup – as the conclusion of the bailout review is now seemingly out of reach – the prospect of further austerity as demanded by the International Monetary Fund remains the biggest thorn in its side. Indeed, Athens’s biggest fear is that the IMF and Berlin will strike a deal demanding more measures as highlighted in comments by Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos Monday that the government cannot accept “compromise deals made between the IMF and the European countries on the back of Greece.” Tsakalotos criticized the IMF for pressuring Greece to implement more measures while failing to urge European countries to grant the country debt relief, and aimed fire at the eurozone for agreeing to discuss labor measures that stray beyond accepted European principles.
Referring to the labor regulation demands, he said: “Those institutions should not consider a country that is in a [bailout] program to have lesser rights. I think it’s not right, not morally right.” Government aides Monday, meanwhile, said the review would have already been concluded had it not been for the IMF’s demand for more measures in exchange for its participation in the bailout. However, Athens’s case for debt relief received a boost Monday after senior European officials said a solution was overdue. ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure, who was in Athens Monday, said the ECB was “looking forward to a solution” and “all stakeholders in the Greek adjustment program must realize that there are serious concerns about the sustainability of the Greek public debt.”
Really? There’s a business cycle left?
• Where Are We In The Business Cycle? (ZH)
On the bullish side, MS writes a trend of rising yields, steeper curves and better earnings has been in place for months. It forecasts that this trend will continue through 1Q17, as still-easy year-over- year comparisons mean headline inflation and global earnings continue to rise. The bank also points out something the Fed is well aware off: avoid giving the market much, if any, information. Namely, “an initial lack of policy clarity from the Trump administration may actually be helpful allowing investors to believe that the US ultimately will pursue ‘good’ projects (e.g., infrastructure spending) and avoid ‘bad’ ones (trade protectionism), while dangling the possibility of large corporate tax cuts. ”
However, shortly thereafter the initial optimism will fade and by 2Q17, this picture is set to change: global yields and USD to rise in 1Q as markets anticipate that better growth and inflation will cause the Fed to hike twice later in the year. That will mean a material tightening in financial conditions. [..] Around the same time, China growth will slow as credit-fueled stimulus is dialed back. And high expectations that the new US administration will be market-friendly raise the likelihood of disappointment. Even with expectations of fiscal stimulus, Morgan Stanley’s full year 2017 GDP forecast is just 2%. More troubling is that the expansion, already the 4th longest in US history, and set to be the third longest by the time Trump is inaugurated… is very long in the tooth.
Which brings us to the most concerning observation by Morgan Stanley, according to which 2017 is a year in which the bank’s odds of a boom and bust have materially increased, a finding consistent with a late-cycle US environment. So late, in fact, that one look at the chart below shows the US cycle has not only plateaued but is now stalling and is turning over. This, as Morgan Stanley writes, “is a change. Our long-running narrative had been “slow growth, slow reflation, and slow policy normalization”, a backdrop that we’ve seen as favorable to credit. The prospect for more fiscal stimulus in the US and elsewhere affects all three. Our new forecasts call for higher growth, inflation and policy rates than before, an uncertain cocktail for an expansion that is already one of the longest on record.”
Martin rants: “..even the Ten Commandments state clearly that socialism is wrong..”
• Cash is for Criminals – Taxing Cash Withdrawals from ATMs (Armstrong)
We are entering a very dark phase in this battle to retain our liberty. A proposal now being whispered behind the curtain in Europe is to impose a tax on withdrawing your own money from an ATM. The banks support this measure as a whole because they see this as preventing bank runs. Nobody will look at the direction we are headed. I am deeply concerned that these type of proposals will send the West in a real revolution not much different from that of Russia in 1917. The divide between left and right is getting much deeper and the left is hell bent on stripping those who produce of their liberty and assets. This type of confrontation is in line with our War Cycle, which we will update in 2017.
This is the most dangerous period we are heading into for governments will respond only in their own self-interest to survive. The socialists hate those who produce. That is just the bottom line. Nobody should have wealth more than they and this is the same human emotion that has cost tens of millions of lives in civil conflicts through out the centuries. Proof this is a persistent problem is the fact that even the Ten Commandments state clearly that socialism is wrong: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house … or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17). Nevertheless, this is repuidiated by socialists who say it’s not fair that anyone has something more than they do.
This material jealousy has been the source of so much death throughout the centuries because it has been exploited by the ruling class to justify their thievery. We will review all our models and update this after the U.S. inauguration since the socialists are trying to figure out how to steal the election from Trump. There is no way to overturn Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania without fraud and they need all three overturned to claim victory. This will not end nicely. The divide will only get bigger. The future is anything but stable and safe.
Only China can save the day now?!
• Canada Watchdog Warns Lenders Face Big Losses If Housing Market Turns (FP)
Recent increases in mortgage interest rates should be a wake-up call that lenders and borrowers should not be making decisions based on a short-term ability to repay, particularly given the risks created by high house prices and a long period of record low rates, Canada’s top banking regulator said Monday. “The recent uptick in mortgage interest rates should serve as a reminder that low rates are not a given, especially over longer periods of time,” Jeremy Rudin, head of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), told an audience of mortgage professionals in Vancouver. In prepared remarks for the Mortgage Professionals Canada National Conference, Rudin said risks in the market include rising rates and falling house prices.
“A pronounced or prolonged economic downturn could well involve a meaningful housing price correction. This could translate into significant losses for lenders and insurers,” he said. Moody’s Investors Service has estimated that a U.S.-style housing meltdown with home prices falling by as much as 35% could result in combined losses of more than $17 billion for the Canadian banks and mortgage insurers. “Given the risks and vulnerabilities arising from the current environment, sound underwriting is now more important than ever,” Rudin said. This month, Canada’s banks started raising their mortgage prime rates or posted variable rates in what market watchers said was a response to moves by the federal government to cool the housing market. On Nov. 11, mortgage tracker RateSpy.com said the typical five-year discretionary variable rate for Canada’s six largest banks had increased to 2.3% from 2.25%.
Warnings from all sides now.
• Canada House Price Bubble Threatens ‘Financial Stability’ (WS)
In its economic outlook released today, the OECD is generally gung-ho about the Canadian economy, and practically bubbling over with new enthusiasm for the global economy. It now expects global growth to accelerate from 2.9% this year to 3.3% in 2017 and to 3.6% in 2018. Call it the “Trump effect” gone global. But for Canada, despite its hunky-dory economy due to the “moderately expansionary policy stance in the 2016 federal budget,” the OECD has a stark warning: “House prices, housing investment and household debt are very high, posing financial stability risks.” The OECD’s chart shows the house price indices for Vancouver and Toronto, which make up about one-third of the national housing market, versus the index for the rest of Canada. Note the hook at the top of the red line: a feeble sign that house prices in Vancouver might be heading south:
A “disorderly housing market correction,” as envisioned by the OECD, would reduce residential investment, which has become a key in the Canadian economy. Through the reverse “wealth effects,” private consumption would take a hit, and in the end the banks are on the line, and it “could threaten financial stability.”The indebtedness of Canadian households, when measured against disposable income, continues to “edge up from already high levels,” encouraged and enabled by low interest rates. Of the OECD member states, only six have higher debt-to-disposable income ratios: Ireland, Sweden, Australia, Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark (the last two with a ratio of over 250%). All of them have majestic government-aided and abetted housing bubbles. For American debt slaves, this measure is just over 100%, below where Canada’s was in 2000!
Strange circus.
• Security Experts Join Jill Stein’s ‘Election Changing’ Recount Campaign (G.)
More election security experts have joined Jill Stein’s campaign to review the presidential vote in battleground states won by Donald Trump even as she sues Wisconsin to secure a full recount by hand of all of its 3m ballots. Half a dozen academics and other specialists on Monday submitted new testimony supporting a lawsuit from Stein against Wisconsin authorities, in which she asked a court to prevent county officials from carrying out their recounts by machine. Stein argued that Wisconsin’s plan to allow automatic recounting “risks tainting the recount process” because the electronic scanning equipment involved may incorrectly tally the results and could have been attacked by foreign hackers.
“There is a substantial possibility that recounting the ballots by hand will produce a more correct result and change the outcome of the election,” Stein argued in the lawsuit in Dane County circuit court. A copy was obtained by the Guardian. Stein, the Green party’s presidential election candidate, is working to secure full recounts in the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Trump surprised pollsters by narrowly beating Clinton on his way to a national victory in the electoral college. A petition from Stein requesting a recount was accepted by Wisconsin last Friday.
Her efforts to obtain a recount in Pennsylvania met serious difficulties on Monday as it became clear she needed three voters in each of the state’s 9,163 voting precincts to request a recount on her behalf, and that deadlines to do so had passed in many precincts. Wisconsin also told Stein on Monday that the recount, which was previously estimated to cost $1m, would actually cost her $3.5m and that the funds must be produced by the end of Tuesday. Stein has raised more than $6m for the three-state recount effort using online crowdfunding.
One of these years….
• France and Britain In Danger of Winter Power Shortages (BBG)
France and the U.K. are the two nations in Europe most at risk of power shortages this winter, particularly if there is a cold snap in early December or January. With availability of Electricite de France’s French nuclear fleet at the lowest level in a decade, the nation will need to rely on imports during several weeks and adding a cold spell to that could make the situation “tense,” according to European grid group Entsoe’s Winter Outlook report. Britain may face a power deficit in early January if temperatures fall below average, it said in the report. The Entsoe analysis indicated that even under severe conditions, demand can be met and reserves maintained across nearly all of Europe, thanks to surpluses in most regions and available interconnector capacity.
The U.K. potentially needs high imports from all neighboring countries in the week from Jan. 9. A combination of low wind and cold temperatures means there might be a deficit. Delays to restarts of several French reactors undergoing safety checks at the request of regulator ASN will mean “significantly” decreased margins in the first three weeks of December. French electricity demand is highly sensitive to cold weather and a drop of 1ºC below normal can add 2,400 megawatts, according to Entsoe. Reseau de Transport d’Electricite, the French grid operator, earlier this month warned of an increasing risk of power shortages in Europe’s second-biggest market. It has several options to reduce demand if needed, including the last-resort possibility of rolling blackouts. The U.K. has a reserve of power stations it can activate and National Grid has described this winter as “tight but manageable.”
The EU has so far sent 35 of 500 promised ‘staffers’ for asylum proceedings. Slow it down and they don’t have to resettle refugees. Convenient.
• Pressure Grows As Athens Eyes Faster Asylum Process (Kath.)
The municipal council on the Aegean island of Chios has voted against a government proposal to create a new reception center for migrants and refugees on the site of a former landfill with the aim of easing congestion at the existing Souda facility. Adding to the strain, heavy rainfall Monday flooded the Souda camp, forcing local authorities to transfer some 800 migrants and refugees into public buildings. On Lesvos, migrants and refugees marched in the island capital of Mytilene in protest at conditions at Moria camp, while demanding that they be allowed to leave the island. Meanwhile, Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas visited Germany to discuss ways of accelerating Greece’s asylum procedures within the framework of EU rules on refugee protection. According to official data, an additional 268 individuals arrived on Greece’s islands over the weekend.
Obviously.
• West Antarctic Ice Shelf Breaking Up From The Inside Out (AGU)
A key glacier in Antarctica is breaking apart from the inside out, suggesting that the ocean is weakening ice on the edges of the continent. The Pine Island Glacier, part of the ice shelf that bounds the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is one of two glaciers that researchers believe are most likely to undergo rapid retreat, bringing more ice from the interior of the ice sheet to the ocean, where its melting would flood coastlines around the world. A nearly 225-square-mile iceberg broke off from the glacier in 2015, but it wasn’t until researchers were testing some new image-processing software that they noticed something strange in satellite images taken before the event. In the images, they saw evidence that a rift formed at the very base of the ice shelf nearly 20 miles inland in 2013.
The rift propagated upward over two years, until it broke through the ice surface and set the iceberg adrift over 12 days in late July and early August 2015. Their findings were published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “It’s generally accepted that it’s no longer a question of whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt, it’s a question of when,” said Ian Howat, associate professor of Earth sciences at Ohio State and lead author of the new study. “This kind of rifting behavior provides another mechanism for rapid retreat of these glaciers, adding to the probability that we may see significant collapse of West Antarctica in our lifetimes.”
No return.
• Scientists Record Biggest Ever Coral Die-Off On Great Barrier Reef (R.)
Warm seas around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have killed two-thirds of a 700-km (435 miles) stretch of coral in the past nine months, the worst die-off ever recorded on the World Heritage site, scientists who surveyed the reef said on Tuesday. Their finding of the die-off in the reef’s north is a major blow for tourism at reef which, according to a 2013 Deloitte Access Economics report, attracts about A$5.2 billion ($3.9 billion) in spending each year. “The coral is essentially cooked,” professor Andrew Baird, a researcher at James Cook University who was part of the reef surveys, told Reuters by telephone from Townsville in Australia’s tropical north. He said the die-off was “almost certainly” the largest ever recorded anywhere because of the size of the Barrier Reef, which at 348,000 sq km (134,400 sq miles) is the biggest coral reef in the world.
Bleaching occurs when the water is too warm, forcing coral to expel living algae and causing it to calcify and turn white. Mildly bleached coral can recover if the temperature drops and the survey found this occurred in southern parts of the reef, where coral mortality was much lower. While bleaching occurs naturally, scientists are concerned that rising sea temperatures caused by global warming magnifies the damage, leaving sensitive underwater ecosystems unable to recover. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee stopped short of placing the Great Barrier Reef on an “in danger” list last May but asked the Australian government for an update on its progress in safeguarding the reef.
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