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Was this linked here not long ago? Well wherever it’s worth consideration. Note Albright is a fixture among Democratic Party foreign policy hands and so gets a pass by even the parties ‘liberal’ wing.
RE: It’s just that no one alive today has ever seen governments benefit the people by spending.
For better, and for worse, every single aspect of how you live your life is a product of government spending. Government is the the ground upon which is built society and culture. Government is the ground and society and culture are the field. I mean field and ground in the cognitive sense.
vase or faces
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A6jvknpKxgU/UnhRFnLBvWI/AAAAAAAAAaw/mGfUcfJigHI/s1600/oi_rubin_vase01.jpg
Now in many ways corporations are displacing government as the ground of our society and culture but recall that corporations themselves are a legal fiction created and made possible by government. They pretend to be the ground but it is pretense. Or one may posit that ‘markets’ are becoming the ground but under the neoliberal model which is infecting all aspects of our society and culture these ‘markets’ are themselves a creation of government. The great falacy is that neoliberalism is lazzez faire but in truth the neoliberal project is to take over government in order to create the markets those in power desire.
Well I go off into the weeds. Again, for better and for worse, our great modern centralized governments have created what for we middle class people is a very very comfortable and safe life. Some fantasy of an even more safe and comfortable and wealthy life with less government is just that, a fantasy. It is government which has allowed our bubble of a civilization.
Since 1978 when US federal tax cutting started and through all the changes in the tax laws the percent of taxes to GDP has been almost a constant near 20%. All the strum and drang has been about, nothing. Well the tax burden has shifted from corporations and the top to the middle which has always been the point. It isn’t about cutting taxes its about shifting taxes.
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/2016-budget-chart-spending-revenue-percent-of-gdp.png
All the squiggles since 1945 are due mainly to changes in tax collection because of cyclical changes in the economy and not rates
There is no way to asses the macro effect of cutting taxes because taxes have never been cut. Actually cutting taxes doesn’t effect GDP much at all. It doesn’t make any difference who spends the money. Only ideologues imagine that somehow government spending money is any different than you spending it. Of course you all know the complex fairy tale about the why of this, evil government and all that. This idea isn’t even economics, it’s religion. The worst religion in the universe. The religion of money.
It’s just another iteration of the same problem addressed a couple of days ago with the political continuum, where the left has disappeared. Of course if there was a left alternative then the opposition to the neoliberal order would just be divided.
Speaking from America the old center of the Democratic party was barely left but it was anti fascist. That is what make it honorable to hate Trump, who isn’t a fascist but he just as well be one. Being anti Le Pen or anti Trump is honorable, and yet disastrous. Illargi and everyone else in the alt econ community seemed to think Trump stood for some possible good change but they were wrong. The enemy of our enemy, the neoliberals and their fellow travelers, are not our friends.
Draghi has it right but allow that the stimulus could get much much much bigger and last a very long time. I am not saying it will I am just saying it could.
But Tsipras is of the far left don’t you know. Every article about him says so in the first or second sentence. Yesterdays pictures of the altered political continuum does as much as anything to explain what has happened to Greece. Nobody within 2 degrees of separation from power will question the fundamental status quo.
What passes for the ‘left’ in America is support for people with gender issues and abhorrence of racism. Neither of witch is insignificant but compared to the big picture they don’t amount to much. No ‘liberal’ web site I have ever seen has ever mentioned the plight of Greece. Just as they ignore the disasters in the Mediterranean.
The left was never and will never consistently hold political power in the US. That was never their roll. Their roll was to be a conscience, a check on power. Instead liberals in the English speaking world decided to cash in.
I’ve never heard of this Institute for Financial Transparency but the article smells like propaganda. Firstly the only thing on the table of the GOP, congress and the White House, now is to end some Dodd Frank rules, period. Saying that ending a few rules and regulations is “breaking up the Fed” is absurd, it’s a lie, it is disinformation. It isn’t even putting lipstick on a pig. It’s calling a pig a beautiful unicorn.
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true… Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.
The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness…
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
It is a grave error to think neoliberalism, or globalism if you will, is laissez faire. There is a profound difference although many famous neoliberals like Friedman muddied the waters by claiming to be all for laissez faire. Neoliberals actually support taking over governments in order to impose the markets which they believe will lead to ‘freedom’. Looked at this way it’s easy to understand why Hayak supported Pinoche.
There is no better example but the almost universal support for central bank’s extreme measures used to lower interest rates. What could possibly be more antithetical to ‘free markets’ than central banks controlling interest rates. Interest rates, the price of money and capital, is the most important price signal there is in a market economy.
I’ll keep posting links to Professor Mirowski, and keep searching him out, because he makes this point over and over and hits a lot of other ones too that get to the very heart of the issues AE hits upon over and over.
On Robert Parry, It’s a funny thing but two years ago he was pretty down with the ‘Putin is the devil’ idea.
I’d just like to thank IM for his yeoman work documenting the absurdities and atrocities that our world, dominated by Economics has wrought. I would hope he gets a chance soon for a vacation of at least a month. It wears on the spirit to be so immersed in such things that one has no control over. I’d recommend getting into the woods and the wilderness, into the quiet, for a time. Well if such is your thing. If it hasn’t been perhaps give it a try. Not just for relaxation either but to face some physical challenges, nothing major. It helps one to shut out all those thoughts about things you can’t control and that’s a good thing.
On the American Midwest. I grew up in Illinois, a good a place as any to be considered the heart of the Midwest. To me, someone with a keen interest in geography, the areas discussed in the NG article were never considered part of the Midwest, but that’s me. At any rate the term Midwest has no precise meaning. In historical terms however it’s best to understand the the Midwest ends at the 100th parallel.
https://greatplainstrail.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/rain.jpg
West of the 100th rainfall averages below 20″/yr and the elevation is mostly over 2000′. These are the High Plains and what was called well into the 19th century The Great American Desert. When the area was finally settled by homesteading it was wheat country but tapping the aquifer turned it into corn county. An insane thing made possible by economics. No economics is going to bring the water back just like it won’t bring the oil back and it should be noted that 100th parallel is a pretty good marker for where Americas oil was, and now still is via fracking.
Well all to do about nothing but just to say that this story of the Ogallala isn’t really about the Midwest but I’ll certainly forgive a Dutchman for thinking it is. Hell even many East and West coast Americans think it is.
“Instead of 220 nation states we should ideally have about seven billion. Everybody should be a sovereign individual.” That’s rich. Some global speculator thinks humankind should return to the basic tribalism of 12,000 years ago. but keep corporations and electronic financial markets one can suppose. How stupid can one person be? Well he probably thinks he wants 7 billion sovereign individuals but he wants what every rich person wants, sovereign corporations overseeing a ‘technosphere’ and what people are left serving them, stripped not of just sovereignty but their humanity.
And Americans get along just fine as long as they are not in the grip of thoughts and emotions thrust upon them modern communications.
IM, you’ve got to stop with this Zero Hedge stuff.
To repeat.
On Economics, big ‘E’, and its history. Listen to Professor Mirowski because he an historian of economics.And follow every other link to him. Also read his book,
https://www.powells.com/book/never-let-a-serious-crisis-go-to-waste-9781781683026/73-0The thing is, nobody cares. Nobody who is anybody anyway.. Even the nobody ‘liberals’ who fill ‘liberal’ web sites like Salon, Slate, Hullabaloo,they don’t care. Of course the ‘mainstream’ doesn’t care, and the ‘conservatives’, well goes without saying, they don’t care.
I hate to have to use the ironic quote marks, but how can one not?
Still, a good operational definition of austerity, for states and nations, is the availability of credit, money. Following the story of AE even part way down to it’s logical and stated conclusion the Greek story is a teeny tiny sliver of what is to come for billions of people.
Really, this ‘Fed raising rates’ thing has to stop. The raising of the Fed Funds rate doesn’t “raise rates”
Go here. 10 year Treasury note yeild.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5ETNX/?p=^TNXClick on the time period to make it 2 years.
Then go back to December 15 2015. Now did the Fed ‘raise rates’ then? Well sure, the Fed Funds rate, singular. Then what happend. Right, ‘rates’ hit all time lows 7 months later. Yes they have risen since but the Fed has nothing to do with it.
A break out over 2.59 will be a huge deal by the way.
On income. First, wildly unequal distribution of income (and wealth) is the feature of a Conservative society and perfectly in tune with neoliberal ideas. The idea that it is a problem is mostly beyond their conception. The belief that they deserve what they have and even earned it, if only because they had the right parents, is a foundation of how they see themselves.
Absent any high political or economic theory however the wealthy want to keep what they have, period, and they will accept the complete destruction of everything including themselves to keep it Besides there is not a politician in America who has even considered raising capital gains tax rates even a tiny bit so the idea that there will be any change in tax laws based upon that articles ideas is impossible.
I’ve said it before. Based only on hunch. I believe that the debt ceiling will not be raised any time soon but the government will not be shut down. Instead the White House will simply tell the Treasury which bills to pay. This will be a constitutional crisis for in part the constitution says that the legislature has the power to spend and after all the money is appropriated. That is why Clinton shut down the government. He said any non payment was default. But then who is going to stop them? The money isn’t there to pay all bills. The legal fight could go on for months.
Then there is the political crisis. Music to the Trump administrations ears and those of its fans. Then too without a Treasury supply the money has to go somewhere. Can you say stocks.
Lastly the approximate 3% of GDP deficit spending carries will disappear. Can you say recession.
One way to interpret Trump and the rise of alternate parties in Europe is they are proposing a sort of cure for low or no growth. Although certainly Trump and probably the others imagine growth will come again with the right mix of policies what they are actually proposing is to cut more and more people off from the system and thus maintain the modern lifestyle for fewer and fewer. It isn’t about growing the pie it is about taking it away from some to give to others. This is the only possible possible political path so that is the path being taken.
Trump wants to bring the jobs and money back to the US so as to to take growth away from others, while the GOP in general is working to take things away from the lower class and actually growing the lower class.
An alternate take on Kuntsler’s “The Russia paranoia frenzy is serious business because it indicates that a state-of-war exists between the permanent bureaucracy of government (a.k.a. the Deep State) and the new Trump administration.” is given by Pepe Escobar in some recent articles linked below.
That take is that the Deep State isn’t a unified entity but has factions and branches and those branches are now at war. The neocon and neoliberal branches are now doing battle with the nationalist, for want of a better term, who want reproachmont with Russia and to end the neoliberal/globalism stuff and bring the production back home, not to mention kick every minority you can name to the curb, or out.
Because I, and probably many here, come with political ideas that might best be summarized as Liberal it’s understandable that we don’t quite get where IM is coming from here. My sentiments will always be ‘Liberal’ because these sorts of things become second nature. Pretty long ago however I recognized that the dominant ‘Liberal’ cultures of the US, the Anglo speaking world and the EU part of Europe are totally contingent upon, as Pepe Escobar just put it “the West’s hegemonic narrative of the past 250 years”.
Here is the full quote and then the link to the whole article.
“It’s impossible to summarize all the rhizomatic (hat tip to Deleuze-Guattari) intellectual crossfire deployed by Age of Anger. What’s clear is that to understand the current global civil war, archeological reinterpretation of the West’s hegemonic narrative of the past 250 years is essential. Otherwise we will be condemned, like puny Sisyphean specks, to endure not only the recurrent nightmare of history but also its recurrent blowback”
Closer to to the Automatic Earth’s core idea that hegemonic narrative includes the absolute belief in economic growth. Without growth most everything we think of as liberal culture isn’t going to persist. Well that’s my opinion. I understand The Donald’s project as keeping the hope of growth alive, for a select fewer. That isn’t going to happen either and in a way right now seems worse only because it is selective. If that makes any sense.
Talk about howling error. Not by IM but by most everyone else. Only by selling it’s bond and MBS assets will the Fed raise interest rates. All these silly Fed Funds Rate target moves are pretend ‘raising rates”. Not that rates haven’t risen already with 10 year bond yields up 1% since July. I think we can be certain however that the Fed won’t start shrinking its balance sheet anytime soon.
Most don’t remember but Bernanke’s Fed started pretending that they were going to do that back in 2010 but instead we got QE2 nd QE3. If perchance the Fed did start selling its bond holdings in anything but token amounts the effects on the financial markets could be devastating, Already macro liquidity growth globally has stalled and it’s liquidity which keeps financial markets inflated.
Yes it’s a tough choice, Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence, Trumpism,; or malevolence tempered by good intentions, or at least some soothing rhetoric about noble goals, and incompetence,on a higher level, strategic vs tactical, as in Obama and the Clinton’s, and their party.
To put Trump in the proper context just look at the article Far-right leaders meet to discuss ‘free Europe’ vision.
The end of globalism and US total global dominance both military and monetary/financial was always fated to be followed by governments here and in Europe of the far right. I never envisioned the turn would come before some financial crisis. Which is why I have been cringing for months about the enthusiasm for Trump which has swept through the alt economic world.
Let me stipulate that Trump is going to be a total supporter of the bankers levering up again and all that goes with it and believes fully that growth will return with a vengeance with just the application of proper policies. Ultimately, economically, he will govern with neoliberal principals. Which makes the enthusiasm for him in these forums all the more puzzling.
Also the application of state police power against their political foes is going to skyrocket. A thing in itself which portends the very end of democracy.Yes the snowflakes, that disgusting term for today’s ‘Progressives’ that was born by avowed neo Nazi’s’ are oft time ridiculous and perhaps deserve some measure of contempt but not your hatred.
There is an older establishment in America, the one that hated Roosevelt as a crypto Jew or Jew lover a socialist, and who supported European fascism until it went to far, so to speak and that establishment never disappeared but found new areas of emphasis as modern ‘Conservatism’ of the populist variety emerged. That establishment is now in charge. Trump, mostly unwittingly, is their agent. Trump may break the shackels of the neo conservative establishment but don’t imagine that in any possible way this is going to lead to freedom for citizens, individuals. The rearranged establishments are I maintain not to be just, meet the new boss same as the old boss, but in may ways worse.
Please everyone do yourself a favor and listen to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I.
PS it does not display properly on my computer and the button to watch the YouTube original does not appear so do a search on YouTube for: Prof. Philip Mirowski keynote Live and Debt Conference
In regard to Keen and Illargi as well, the US deficit is going to rise but spending isn’t. I can’t get over how pervasive is this meme that there is going to be a huge fiscal stimulus. It isn’t going to happen. Taxes are going to be cut, defense and internal security is going to rise, and all other spending that can be cut will be cut. Net net, spending is not going to rise.
To be clear only congress and specifically the House of Representatives can appropriate money and the GOP lead House is not going to increase spending on anything but those things I mentioned. This weekend the GOP House leadership said they were going to cut total spending by $1TN a year, from a current $3.8TN a year.. Well that’s structurally impossible but the will is there. These guys have based their entire political lives on reducing government spending. It’s in their blood, their bone marrow. Trump and Bannon are not going to turn them.
One thing about Trump and his party is that they don’t buy into all this sustainable part of development. They know we don’t need no stinking ‘sustainable’ anything, for they know the earth and the market and God will provide as much growth and development as we want for ever and ever and ever.
So as far as anyone here should care about such matters if Trump is accidentally slightly more rational about international relations doesn’t really mean a thing.
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true… Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.
The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness…
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Hat tip to Jesse of Jess’s Cafe American for reminding off this. He of the profound belief in a certain type of Christian moral Philosophy.
Let those who want to rule the world continue to try, as is their wont, but they know little. I resolve to forget them now as much as possible. Try not to get lost in the words. Yes, i know it is said that in the beginning was the word and that is right in many ways but then came music, and music is better.
Kazuko (Peace Child)
Read Pepe Escobar. He always paints with a very broad brush so there is tons to quibble about but in the main he is worth considering. That is in the long term it’s going to be a new cold war between the US and its somewhat dwindling allies, and the East, ie. China, Russia, Iran and throw in Turkey
He thinks some reproachmont will be in the offing shorter term,, like equalizing tariffs, but in the long term it’s going to be island America, and surely the Anglo speaking world, with Europe sitting in the middle vs The East. Of course none of that includes any sort of large scale economic and social dislocations as we look out into the 21st century.
I have to take issue here. The NY Times 4 stories a week the last 4 years saying in essence that Putin is the devil is not fake news, it’s slanted news or even propaganda. Fake news was the story of a child sexual abuse club in the basement a DC pizzeria managed or attended by Hillary Clinton. It’s the ‘news’ that Trump won the popular vote by several million because of the millions of fraudulent votes for Hillary. I suppose some here might believe it but since 2000 a trillion votes have been cast in the US and there have been 30 or so cases of vote fraud prosecuted, and not for lack of trying to find them. Texas, Kansas and other states have relentlessly been investigating voter fraud and don’t forget voting in the US is a state and county run affair and now famously, 80% of US counties are GOP country.
The mainstream media comes from the neoliberal and neoconservative viewpoints of the most powerful entrenched elites and their stock and trade is news based upon the narrow confines of their views. Their views defining the limits of ‘serious’ and acceptable discourse. Call it propagandize or slanted but don’t call it fake news.
Let’s get our semantics straight. The entire ‘fake news’ thing has within one month become a meaningless buzz word. When entire US ‘conservative’ media, purveyors of the news that climate change is a hoax, a fallacy or a lie, you know you’ve gone down the rabbit hole when they start using fake news in every other paragraph. When the Washington Post starts publishing stories saying Trump is a Lizard person from the planet X then I’ll buy the mainstream is doing fake news.
You have hit the nail right on the head with institutions. I, a nobody, have been on this for a long time. Institutions be they governmental, NGO, corporate, political party and all the space in between define our age. Special mention must be made of the modern business corporation which is the perfect form or institution and all other institutions have adopted large parts of the corporate institutional form.
My focus is not on what institutions do but rather the people who willingly and eagerly become part of them. In a nutshell all ‘successful’ people are institutional people save entertainers of various types. The institutional person surrenders their individuality to become part of the group. Yes this sort of thing has gone on since humans emerged but the scope is far different now. In the US right through the 50’s ordinary workers often held a certain amount of contempt for what was called the “company man”. (An interesting side note is that in WWII, ordinary soldiers, GI’s often held some contempt the low and mid level officers, the brass. Who were selected and self selected because they were insteitutional men, who later become corporate managers, Read Catch 22 and look at Cathcart and Korn)That has disappeared and with it so too has our defense against institutions. Well I won’t ramble on but I would guess if you read Automatic Earth your not a company man, and institutional person. You may work for a corporation above the hourly level but you don’t fully check into all that goes with it, and your very limited to the upside. They want to weed you out and for the most part it is self weeding. Real individuals don’t want to be institutional people.
In defense of the Trump opponents in mentioning Nazi’s, American Nazi’s have been coming out of the woodwork for a year in support of him. Just last week some yahoo in Montana went on a tear against Jews and Trumps National Security Adviser just had a private meeting with the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party whose lineage extends back to actual Nazi’s from the Hitler era who formed the party in 56.
The whole Nazi thing is a can of worms because it’s a semantic wasteland. Whatever it is that the West is becoming, whatever the name, it has nothing to do with the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment and thus the very foundation of democracy. As neoliberals were our enemy it seems many calculated that a Trump cure, and the like on the Euro right would be better. It won’t be. It is going to be far more corporate, a true marriage not just with the government but in the US, with the Party, that being the GOP. along with ever larger doses of police power domestically and wall the wall authoritarianism. In the US The Party is the government now in a way profoundly different than it has ever been.
Laugh if you want, but know that on a daily basis Trump and is party have made no bones about insisting that they can have their own facts and/or there are no such things as facts. There is no use crying about the decimation of the earth verterbrae species if your going to laugh off the political opponents of Trump. Not the pros but the citizens. Yes many are being lead off into the weeds by Democratic party players but their concerns are no joke.
It’s the purest strain of neoliberalism imaginable wherein the market will be used to cure the problems caused by the market. Of course it won’t work to fix anything but it will generate profit, which is the whole point.
The most astounding thing is that the vast majority of the worlds literate people do not have the slightest inkling that the entire belief system based upon The Market has descended into pure evil. The Market is the anti Christ.
The Crudele story about Yellen and Trump is a silly mess. Mouthing a crude version of the newly minted ‘consensus’ of the Feds sins which is a sort of summary of what the alt economic community has been saying for 20 years. Then making the nonsensical case that “.. she already raised interest rates vigorously” That being a single raise of the Fed Funds rate by .25% one year ago. Yes rates have spiked but Fed words and the one tiny Fed Funds rate hike have had nothing to do with it.
As if Mr Crudele was a Fed critic, on any of the points he raised, in 1998 or 2001, or 2006 or 2008 or 2012.
The question left unanswered or really unasked is what Trump wants from the Fed or thinks he wants. Yes there are some people that have had his ear who are moderate skeptics of the activist Fed but no politician in his right mind can be anything but a huge fan of whatever it takes to keep the markets liquid and rates low. I think Trump might prefer to marry Hillary than see rates continue to rise. What Trump is fated to want is more QE, to infinity one can suppose, and then probably the Fed simply writing off its Treasury obligations.
I’ve always been most partial to Chimes of Freedom.
I also applaud his refusal to participate. I don’t care about the personality of an artist. The best are often shits in many ways. Dylan is that, in spades. True artists are a channel I believe.
I hold no pretense of purity in these matters. I’ve accumulated less stuff than many but have some energy wasteful hobbies and habits. It was in a somewhat different context that I rejected full on austerity in the mid 70’s as I saw the let’s call it naive hippie dreams that included a simpler way was not going to happen on any scale at all not even small. Hedonism and materialism barely took a breather in the ‘counter culture’ 60’s really.
The crash that now looms was not so apparent then in timing and shape but I made as I look back on it a conscious decision to live in the world I found myself in, but also consciously never to be a company man or a party man or such. 1 million or 10 million saints for a simpler life wouldn’t have meant a thing in the big picture.
https://previews.123rf.com/images/scusi/scusi1312/scusi131200010/24533220-Don-Quixote-and-Sancho-Panza-Stock-Vector.jpgIn an examined life I maintain that it is a sound moral decision to live in the world as it is.
While Trump may, or may not, scale back our boots on the ground military presence around the globe if you happen to live here you might not bet so giddy about it because he is bringing the wars back home. Three of the top four domestic security agencies are going to be lead by recently retired generals.
Then too praise of the nominee for Defense Secretary, Mattis, another ex general should be tempered as well,. His nickname is Chaos and among his accomplishments was the destruction of Fallujah as what was essentially payback for the murder and desecration of the corpses of 4 Blackwater mercenaries. The battle which essentially destroyed the city was aimed at ousting 500 to 1000 jihadists. Which brings us back to Trump, the isolationist. Any sleight much less attack on an American anywhere is certain to feel the wrath of Trump whose personality is founded upon domination.
This ascribing motive to Yellen, to hurt Trump, is the worst sort of nonsense. As if she like everyone didn’t expect Clinton to win, But even that matters not, The Fed is almost powerless against the forces causing the dollar to rise. What remains of it’s tattered credibility makes more QE or pretend rate cuts impossible. Global forces are driving the dollar higher.
Money is fleeing Europe and China. Since the ECB began their QE in 14 they have printed 1.8TN Euros yet European bank deposits are only up 250bn. That is money leaving Europe. Just to be clear, central bank bond purchases of necessity create bank deposits, period, no ifs ands or buts. It is the mechanism. I have no numbers on money fleeing China and i don’t think anyone really does but again much is fleeing into dollar prices assets.
Besides which can you imagine Trump thinking a weak dollar would show America’s strength? Well who knows what’s in that mind. It seems mostly to be whatever sells at any given moment. To the extent he can think strategically on technical l things like monetary matters then his America First idas must conclude that the key thing is Americas relative strength. What better way to be strong than to have others weak.
If, or is it when, the tax break for offshore money comes to pass then most of it is going to go into stock buybacks. Why everyone insists that there is going to be some huge infrastructure building program escapes me. The outline of the plan is for hundreds of billions of tax breaks and incentives for privatization of most anything you can think of. A 100 story Trump hotel in Yosemite and the like.
As to the recount exactly what is the harm? If someone is willing to throw the money down the rat hole then so be it.. If Trump would have lost the Electoral vote then the US would in political crisis today, 2000 X 10, with recounts in half a dozen states and then those results rejected by Trump and his supporters who would demand Electors nullify the results.
I like Pepe Escobar a lot but the entire monetary/debt thing is totally off his radar. Either he doesn’t know much about it, doesn’t understand it or perhaps most likely, dismisses it. We do have to consider that ever more extreme amounts, and even forms. of money ‘printing’, which is the only thing which will keep the system intact, could continue to delay a debt reckoning.
The Fed is about to open up the swap lines again with the ECB, in essence trading newly ‘printed’ Euros for newly ‘printed’ dollars. More QE is always an option at a moments notice. etc. etc.
