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The price for what may be more rational US economic and foreign policy is going to be the centralization of political power in the White House. The culmination of 70 years of power moving to the cente,r to let’s call it the Beltway, but now concentrating in the White House. I guess it is difficult for non Americans to grasp but Trumps ideas and most of his concepts of how they will be done are un or extra Constitutional.
Don’t get me wrong I am no fetishist of the Constitution or one of the millions who thinks the Constitution means exactly what they want it to mean. I am fully aware too that the centralization of power in the US as the result of WWII and its outcome stripped much basic character of what had been American Constitutional governance before. I know too that our ‘elites’ have failed in many many ways. Throw in there was almost certainly no way that the entrenched governing elites were going to be ushered out the door by any incremental change. I know all that.
What I also know which most all, alt economic denizens seem unable to grasp right now in their glee is that there is going to be no fundamental change from the centralization of economic power. None, nada, zilch. It’s going to be meet the new boss, same as the old. I also know that the fall of the ever more ridiculous cultural warriors is not going to be something better, some flowering of common sense, but something worse. That is the forces of right reaction coupled with police power, the ultimate state power over individuals is going to grow quickly. Throw in that if the Republican party has the will and I think they do, then America is going to be a one party state.
If some short term improvements are evident to your or any eyes let me suggest that never ever has more centralized economic and political power lead to a better outcome over a longer term. I had always made the mistake of thinking the financial/economic dislocation would trigger the political one. Now however it seems the financial/economic dislocation may be put off by the political one. The result will be just as bad but in the meantime the pain is going to be imposed selectively, on the bottom by the political order, in order to maintain the system for those at the top.
If it had not been for Bill Third Way Clinton or someone like him as obama was the Democrats would have been buried for the last 25 years, by those same ‘working class voters who are said to have put Trump in. There is no’ pro worker’ message that can win in English speaking countries. Let us not forget until Trump came along no matter how many countries we bombed or how many color revolutons we sponsored under Clinton and Obama the Democrats were reliably cast as pathetc weaklings and traitors, and worse by a large plurality of voters and most all ‘serious’ commentators.
The Democratic Party has always been the practical party. They did what they had to do to win. The powerful forces of centralization, corporatism and finance used them well. Why this delusion that Trump is different is surprising and sad to me.
Trump has no plans for huge infrastructure spending. The plan such as it is are public/private ‘partnerships’ which will amount to give aways of government land and assets combined with massive tax give aways.
There is no there there on the fiscal expansion. It is going to be all tax breaks, on top of other tax breaks. More deficit. That’s it. It is all rather hilarious how everyone in the alt econ world is all hot and bothered over this grand economic stimulus plan which doesn’t exist.
Pepe’s ‘ old order collapse’ is worth consideration but that has to include the old left/right continuum. The ‘left’ collapsed long ago and sold itself out to perpetual growth and retreated into identity politics, or such. My instinct says there is only corporatism and ?, I don’t know. Whatever it is it is going to be authoritarian here in the US. Lite, at first, I hope.
I have no real clue as to what Trump’s beef with Yellen is but I do know what it is going to be. It is going to be that the Fed is going to ‘raise interest rates’, probably in December. Never mind that the 10 year Treasury note closed today at 2.34% today, 30% higher than it was just before election day.
Actually I do have a clue what Trump’s beef with Yellen is. It is that she didn’t ‘raise rates’ in order to hurt Obama and help Trump or some such nonsense. Now however he is going to go nuclear when the Fed ‘raises rates’ when he is about to become president. I used the ironic quote marks around raising interest rates because the Fed does not set rates the market does. In any case if rates continue to rise then Trump is going to be the biggest fan of QE since Bernanke.
Everything Trump wants or thinks he wants is absolutely dependent upon abundant liquidity and ultra low interest rates and soon enough Trump is going to demand QE. Actually everything that everyone wants is contingent upon more QE. I expect $4TN during the next 4 years for starters, maybe more later. Which will have to include the purchase of corporate debt. Perhaps like the ECB’s direct purchase of corporate paper.
My scenario, and my scenarios never pan out, is a significant selloff in the stock market soon, possibly after a December ‘rate increase’ by the Fed, which will ‘force’ the Feds hand in announcing more QE and then a stupendous rally.
As to those wanting change, what were you thinking when you thought Trump would deliver it? Of course the exact same thing would have happend under Clinton except for the brief period when some people actually thought the president elect wanted higher rates. Trump pretended to or sort of maybe thought he did, but won’t now. In my minds eye I see massive rallies outside the Eccles building by Trump supporters demanding QE.
I have no real clue as to what Trump’s beef with Yellen is but I do know what it is going to be. It is going to be that the Fed is going to ‘raise interest rates’, probably in December. Never mind that the 10 year Treasury note closed today at 2.34% today, 30% higher than it was just before election day.
Actually I do have a clue what Trump’s beef with Yellen is. It is that she didn’t ‘raise rates’ in order to help Obama. Now however he is going to go nuclear when the Fed ‘raises rates’ when he is about to become president. I used the ironic quote marks around raising interest rates because the Fed does not set rates the market does. In any case if rates continue to rise then Trump is going to be the biggest fan of QE since Bernanke.
Everything Trump wants or thinks he wants is absolutely dependent upon abundant liquidity and ultra low interest rates and soon enough Trump is going to demand QE. Actually everything that everyone wants is contingent upon more QE. I expect $4TN during the next 4 years. Which will have to include the purchase of corporate debt.
My scenario, and my scenarios never pan out, is a significant selloff in the stock market soon, possibly after a December ‘rate increase’ by the Fed, which will ‘force’ the Feds hand in announcing more QE and then a stupendous rally.
As to those wanting change, what were you thinking when you thought Trump would deliver it? Of course the exact same thing would have happend under Clinton except for the brief period when some people actually thought the president elect wanted higher rates. Trump pretended to or sort of maybe thought he did, but won’t now. Inrmy minds eye I see massive rallies outside the Eccles building by Trump supporters demanding QE.
Trump is not going to square this circle. US Treasuries continued their post election melt up. The 35 year bull market in bonds is probably over. The only thing that could save it is another massive dose of QE, maybe. They may save the Treasury market but the rest of the worlds bond markets no, and that includes all manner of US bonds from the best corporate to the worst junk.
All the talk about him and his team being interest rate hawks is just that, talk, For every politician in the world low interest rates are always and in every case the best short term prescription. If you think Trump doesn’t want low rates your crazy. If the melt up in rates continues he will notice soon enough and he is going to rail against the ‘markets’ hurting him, mark my words. And his hawkish advisers are going to turn into ultra doves. Low rates are encoded into most of the worlds people as an unquestioned good and businessmen most of all.
The 35 year bull market has been a tailwind for the financial markets, governments, the real economy and most of all for the holders of bonds because you could always sell with a capital gain and liquidty was usually good in the bond markets. The marked to market losses in the bond market globally the last week are already surely in the hundreds of billions. If it’s over everything changes, every single thing.
I strongly suspect that Trump’s change will not amount to any more than Obama’s. I would be happy to be proven wrong. No change will play out with massive amounts of new money printing, the continued expansion of the power and reach of corporations and the linkedin corporate hierarchies at the expense of citizens and the same if not even more direct military action against ‘terrorism’.
I understood the basic common sense of many of Trump’s ideas but thought the huge amount of nonsense ideas negated them. A huge swath of the alt economic world have hinged their hopes that the basic ideas will see the light of day. We will see.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Trump is corrupt in the good old fashioned way. One on one, mano y mano. The Clinton’s and Obama in the new way, institution to institution. Linkedin institutional player to liinkedin institutional player. Trump’s way may be better system wide wise or it may not be but we may never find out. The linked in are already swarming to the administration and Trump, with the attention span of a gnat, is already talking about being a part time president.
If the bizarre reversal in the stock markets does not break down and the DOW rises above 19,000 then you will know the deal is done, the fix is in and the wiseguys are still in control.
Meanwhile “But not to worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for you to learn from your mistakes. You see, the battle that took place in your polling stations on the 8th of November was just that. A battle. We, the freedom loving peoples of the western world, well, we’re just getting warmed up. To quote the man: “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet“.
So retreat to your safe spaces, grab your adult colouring books and put on a happy face my special snow flakes because regardless of whoever/whatever you are and regardless of what nation it is you reside in, we, the deplorables, are coming for you”
Zero Hedge helpfully linked that article. So you see, free market fans and fascists can get along just fine thank you.
https://media.nbcphiladelphia.com/images/1200*675/Trump+Graffiti+nazi.jpg
Keen is a good diagnostician but Automatic Earth knows he is not a good predictor. There is no way to fix or repair the debt overhang. It will have to be written off or somehow inflated away. How that would bedone I have no clue but it would still leave the economy with no growth or a growth only after a shrinkage of gigantic proportion. This after all is the foundational AE position. Correct me if I am wrong.
At any rate Trump is not going to kill the financial asset inflation dream world of The Street since it’s the only dream he knows, like most Americans. The American dream is to own assets whose prices rise.. Absent that dream America lies prostrate, see the Great Depression.
Trump is different than most all businessman billionaires in that he did not get that money from asset inflation but rather by stripping cash from real estate partnerships or other business ventures. As a national model of wealth creation this is a non starter of course. No, he will be all in on credit expansion and low rates even as those things leave the scene.
In more general terms imagining Trump doing anything positive except maybe some reproachmont with Russia and scaling back the War on Terror is a pipe dream. To the extent he scales back our international military interventionist foreign policy will be part of the extent to which he attacks by laws and police power his domestic opposition. Hillary first perhaps.. Never mind the W Bush White House kept a private mail server for 6 years and ‘lost’ 23 million emails.
None of this is to defend Clintonism or any part the now dead establishment ways but it has pained me greatly to see Trump as some sort of victory. The choice was the devil or the deep blue sea. The deep blue sea has been chosen. Now we try to stay afloat as history wiil finally visit the homes of America.
I’m sorry Diablo but ” hold the new government to the law” is just too funny. The rule of law is over now and it will be the rule of men who say they are the law when it isn’t just passing laws to allow them to do whatever it is they want, to you. The demise of ossified corrupt so called liberalism is not to be followed by something happy. I’ve been amazed the the entire alt economic world has been thrilled by Trump instead of saddened by the of the inevitable arrival of authoritarian parties and then soon enough states.
Cue the Yeats, and this time it really truly fits.
That graphic is a stupendous find IM.and hats off to the artist.
The email thing is silly.What matters is she is a war criminal who had an active hand in the destruction of Libya, Ukraine, Syria and let’s not forget Yemen and Sudan and the absurd brand spanking new country we invented, South Sudan. Now all those places may have been screwed anyway but in every case we chose to help make them worse. None of which is mentioned by anyone except the vague Trump statements about not buying into the Putin as HitlerStalinDevil.
Emails. phttt. How pathetic.
The problem is would Trump be better? A man who lives for domination and humiliation. I suggest no. As the decline of the political economy is certain, whoever is in, the wreckage is going to be picked up by the reactionary right almost for sure. I would just prefer that to happen with a higher quality sort than Trump. Someone that actually has a clue and it would be better if they were not handed the keys in the belief they have some sort of mandate. Better it happen with by an overt semi or pseudo coup.
“You do realize that a Hillary vote is a vote for Nuland, right?” I am painfully aware. However if anyone harbors any illusion that Trump would be any better in any possible way forget it. The man and his followers are firstly and lastly about domination. Some hints may come out that Trumpism will be all about rational foreign policy but the first time anyone hints he is giving away one single thing or that some country is getting the better of the US then swords will be drawn.
Cripes, the man and his followers are unapologetic authoritarians and often sadists. The entire neo facist right in America is enthusiastically pro Trump.
While the establishment of Democratic leadership and really the leadership of both parties favors a ‘soft’ sort of domination via neoliberalism backed by ‘humanitarian and free market’ seeking military solutions. Both are terrible but the latter contains a hint of possible roll back while retaining some adherence to the rule of law, tattered as it is now.
If authoritarians were to actually believe they have a popular mandate, well the cure will be worse than the disease.
I’m thinking voting for Trump as a revolutionary or anarchic act is sort of silly idea. It would be self defeating in any short to medium term. Handing the keys over to the authoritarian who would think he has a popular mandate is not a wise move. It is unlikely that the National Security State would instantly bend to Trump’s will and move against anybody that strikes is fancy in the middle of the night, right away, but in a year, or two…?
I’ve thought this over and the thing is that yes, Hillary represents every entrenched institutional power there is. Protesting institutional power by voting against its top representative only now is cheap and lazy. A symbolic act which would amount to the cure being worse than the disease, again in any short to medium term. When the break comes in the financial economy and then the real economy surely the right will rise to fill the vacuum, probably uninvited. Don’t invite them in before hand.
As to his winning, winning voters? I will pass in silence.
I have a hunch that Lavrov is wrong about Obama approving the Syrian attack. Just a few weeks before was an announcement that we would be cooperating with the Russian military. My guess is that uber War Party leader and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and the whole gang at the Pentagon and the State Department decided to literally blow that idea up.
Forget it Illargi. Trump cannot win. If your applying the lessons of the Brexit vote those lessons would show that almost anyone could beat Hillary, but Trump. Trump is a bridge too far, to mix metaphors.
It has been universal in the alt econ community to say Trump will win. Many hope, oddly, that he is on their side, He isn’t on our side and he won’t win.
One explanation of Trumps candidacy , which I only half believe, is that Trump won the nomination because he was sure to lose. Thus Hillary, the champion of entrenched institutional power both economic/monetary and National Security State would surely win.
I should vote tor Trump as an act of anarchy because Trump would bring anarchy. The thing is I am too old for anarchy. I would prefer a slower slide into systematic dysfunction. If I was even slightly certain that Trump would mean no war with Russia or anyone else or one sided war and bombing of whoever then I would put my selfish cares aside and vote Trump. However Trump is even more likely to bring on wars. The man lives for domination after all. Domination and submission is his entire view of the world. Nothing else matters to him or is understood by him.
I’m holding out that the most likely scenario over the next 2 or 3 years is a virtual stall GDP wise and so continued unease, but no earthquakes. This is contingent on the ‘fiscal expansion’ talked about by the every economist and central banker and continued QE by central banks to soak up the new paper and will also include more purchases of corporate debt which will keep financial market values from falling and keep weak corporations humming along on borrowed money.
Others can disagree on the probability of such but it isn’t zero.
There has never been a recession when systematic credit is expanding and there has never been a depression, for want of a better term but you know what I mean, a large sudden contraction in demand and jobs, without a financial panic where liquidity in the financial markets fails suddenly.
Trump for all his bluster is likely to be a super fan of money ‘printing’ in every possible way and a friend of the banking giants when it is explained to him the country is toast if he isn’t nice to them and then the history books will have Trump’s picture on them when the dislocation comes. His chance of winning is exceedingly small however and Hillary is all in on more credit/money.
Europe is another story however. There the opposition to the status quo has some thought behind it and if France or Italy fall out of the EU then my no sudden change scenario is in question.Well who cares what I think but I urge everyone to accept the possibility of a less dramatic slog down for some years to come.
I don’t see why IM said Hempton knocked down the NYT story. The story is pretty straight forward but does have on very large an familiar hole which he attempts to fill. The hole is, were the losses shuffled off and hidden. For the Times part the story follows the template wherein it suggests the appearance of impropriety.. This ‘suggestion of impropriety’ is a common practice at the Times and all media and fine as a starting point. However the Times raised it to a high art with the Clinton’s and Whitewater and then again recently with Hillary’s email server. in the case of Whitewater the appearance of impropriety shtick went on and on for 3 years.
Trump’s business is exceedingly odd and not a standard sort of corporation at all. Untangling it is likely impossible which is probably why the IRS probably dropped the ball on this gigantic loss. All you need to know is the guy is a classic shyster, as opposed to the more modern corporate/institutional kinds of shysters who occupy Hillary’s establishment side. Pick your poison.
American’s perhaps above all peoples are suckers for con men, snake oil salesmen, or salesmen in general.
I hate to do this, another post, but it needs mention that Trump voters despise the Greeks as much as they despise the Syrian refugees stuck there. As opposed to Hillary voters who are sympathetic, to the refugees at least. less so the Greeks,,at those very odd times when the story of Greece enters their minds. Which is rarely.
The bleeding hearts of ‘liberals’ are maddening and oh so cheap. Such is the fate of liberals, think nice thoughts, and then do nothing.
PS
The link to the NYTimes story above didn’t work. If that fails do a web search
Millions in U.S. Climb Out of Poverty, at Long Last
I am not disagreeing but there is an odd thing and that is I live in a place in Michigan that has been in recession since 1973 and the employment situation is better now than it has been since then, even better than 99 and the end of the tech/low energy price bubble. Also I think we can take at half of face value the report that the official poverty rate in the US had the biggest year over year drop ever, 1.2%.
It doesn’t take much thought to figure out how this is misleading but still, it’s certainly above any hell on earth story. The local story is the auto industry going crazy after the longest expansion in its history and this too will pass.
I’m not in any way disagreeing or dismissing IM’s analysis but even more than England’s Brexit vote I don’t attribute the turn against the elites as the lack of growth story being overwhelmingly the main cause. The no Brexit people and the Hillary people are more than half right that the yes Brexit voters and the Trump voters are responding to reactionary and nationalist and racial appeals. I’ve always expected the political dislocation to come from the right and so here it is. And yes their appeal will be to bring back growth. In lieu of that impossible promise Trump will herald in a far more openly authoritarian kind of governance. As expected by me but as I am a nice white person of middle class trappings I won’t feel the humiliation and pain.
If you care about such things then here is a good a place as any. It aggregates many polls on a state by state basis and then gives the state, and its electoral votes, accordingly.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/election/2016/us-president
For those outside the US, final result comes not from the total amount of votes but from an intricate system where each states ‘vote’ is made based upon the popular vote winner in that state, winner take all (except 1 state apportions its vote) (I know confusing)
Bush won in 2000 despite getting 530,000 less votes.
There is no doubt the thumb on the scale in all popular media will be on the Hillary side but just forget all those words and all national polls. It’s the state by state polls that matter. So yes, a Trump win at this point would be out of the question. The Reuters poll is an outlier national poll, so it is meaningless.
In 2002 before I knew much of anything about money, monetary policy or bubbles I predicted that corporate issued paper, equity and debt, would be the basic store of value in the Western world and I think central banks monetizing corporate debt means that has come true. The levitation of stocks on the flood of money produced by monetizing soverign debt serves the same function but is indirect. The direct purchase of corporate debt by central banks is where the deed is officially done.
Next up is central bank or government purchase of stocks as is being done in China and in Japan too via ETF’s. Soon enough here too I suspect although who doubts that they are not involved in buying stock derivatives, futures especially, to launch the now so familiar rocket launches producing spike lows.
To my mind we now have had a monetary reset and it’s a whole new world. I differ from most here in that I think we are only in the early innings.I won’t be shocked if I am wrong and there is a crash but neither will I be shocked if the DOW is at 36,000 by the by.
Ask not how many dollars does it take to buy 1000 shares of a major corporation but rather how many dollars will 1000 shares buy.
IM said “It’s worrisome to me that the right seems to be the only side asking the right questions these days.” I sort of agree but as often as not it’s more they are asking the wrong questions for the wrong reasons but at least they are asking. Challenging the neoliberal and neocon consensus. Often the flood of refugees from Syria and Libya into Europe questions are being raised on racist grounds when all the right questions should be about how NATO and the US have eagerly helped destabilize and destroy those countries leading to the flood.
At any rate it may be worrying but I hope not surprising. Since seemingly forever I have figured that the troubles and dislocations anticipated by AE and others on all fronts, economic, social, cultural and environmental will bring the right, or whatever you call Trumpism, to the fore. It should at least be implicit in AE’s outlook that the political response to the challenges, as Nicole calls them going forward, will be causal in them only getting worse. In fact I forsee social/political reaction as the first major threat many in the West will see and suffer from. While the root causes of course will be kept in the background. Those being energy related, environmental change and of course debt.
So I would not have said “worrying” and certainly not surprising, just sadly or inevitably perhaps.
Oh I think a second vote is likely. There are all sorts of stories about how yes voters are feeling regret, saying it was just a protest and they didn’t think it would win. Throw in the markets having a tantrum and blaming it all on those nasty racist nationalist yes voters and I see another vote as a certainty.
If not the exit is going to be a looooooooooooooong drawn out affair, if it really happens at all. The important thing is how it will spurt others to go the same route.
I have no clue how those countries can reestablish their own currencies. I think the powers that be will say in no uncertain terms, ‘we ain’t going to take you stinking lire, franks or whatever. Of course that means certain defaults on all their Euro sovereign debt at .001% or whatever the hell it is. Oh, and no new way to borrow more. Hey Italy, you haven’t begun to see austerity, yet.
Japanese Structural reform has been at the front of the thoughts of BOJ and international entities like the IMF for going on 30 years. Yet every week, every month, every year someone says what is really needed is, you guessed it, structural reform.
Now structural reform is a loaded topic but the fact is what hinders the Japanese domestic economy is lack of population growth. In the end population growth is the primary determinant of economic ‘growth’. ( using the ironic quotes because growth itself is a loaded concept)
I suppose Nicole or IM have somewhere addressed the fraught concept that ‘growth’ is highly determined by population growth, on a planet groaning under 7 billion plus souls or I hope so. At any rate that is an elephant in the room at least as big as debt and energy depletion.
Nobody in the US, left or right pretends to know what Brexit is about but in vague and odd ways they both support stay because bad things will happen if they leave, or something. Actually I have seen almost nothing from the vast cadres of ‘Conservatives’ on the issue. The Democratic party leaders who we are always told are weak and liberal but actually solid neocons are 100% behind the EU and the ‘progressive’ crowd including Sanders are solidly behind a stay vote, and the EU, for reasons nobody ever really says.
Over here it is a vast tranquil ocean of ignorance. None of our great humanitarian ‘liberals’ ever mention the scores of the drowned or the growing interment camps in Greece, or anything about Greece. Hillary’s crowd at the State Department just issued a ‘letter’ to the NY Times who they identified as “diplomats” who urged striking Assad. Which means Putin too since the hallmark of our ‘diplomats’ is to identify leaders of state, as the state, who of course have to be eliminated. Well I run on but to tie it all up we are ruled by neocons and neoliberals but no politician even pretends they know what the terms mean. All they talk about is gender issues and guns, so strike up the band.
Americans do not want affordable housing. They want the price of their house to inflate. Even after the last bubble there is not single politician, economist or political/economic commentator that 99% of Americans are likely to hear that will even hint that increasing home prices is anything but an absolute good. Rising prices of all classes of assets is the American dream. Asset inflation is a virtual existential necessity for Americans. Absent that inflation the political system and society fall apart.
Nobody in America who is within spitting distance of the middle class gives a flying f about housing affordability. At a maximum they think they need more income but the idea that affordable home or rental prices is a good thing is a totally foreign concept. Suggesting that home prices should not rise at a the rate of the CPI, if not more, is beyond Americans understanding. You just as well be talking Klingon for all the understanding any such talk will penetrate Americans minds. Even the poorest of the poor live in the hope that they can somehow get in on the ground floor of some investment and see it explode. Absent that dream there is no America.
A Brexit yes vote doesn’t actually mean leaving.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36457120Euro banks don’t trust each other
Chart of the Decade – European Banks Fleeing German Banks Like Rats From A Sinking Ship
One result of that is deposits and other money is flowing into US banks and US markets. Don’t expect US stock and bond markets to fall much with the added liquidy coming from Europe, and China too.
The latest Credit Bubble Bulletin breaks out how our ‘wealth’ has grown since 1980
” As a percentage of GDP, Debt Securities increased to 221%. Debt Securities began the eighties at 74% of GDP; the nineties at 126%; and the new Millennium at 162%. Total Equities declined marginally during the first quarter to $35.496 TN, or 195% of GDP. Equity Securities began the eighties at 44% of GDP; the nineties at 67%; and ended 1999 at 201%. Total Securities (Debt and Equities) ended Q1 at $76.618 TN, or 420% of GDP. Total Securities began the eighties at 117% of GDP; the nineties at 193%; and the new Millennium at 362%. ”
https://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2016/06/weekly-commentary-historic-crazy.htmlThis inflation of financial assets explains everything, in a way.
There is a murmur now that if the Brexit vote is positive that Parliament will simply ignore it.
I believe total debt can double and then double again. There is no way of telling when the game will be up. Nobody wants it to end.
It was a milestone day as the ECB bought its first corporate debt, thus monetizing it. I can envision the day when central bank will stop monetizing soverign debt and monetize only corporate debt. Austerity for governments and unlimited liquidity for corporations, or aternately corporations become even more, the new sovereigns..
First Greenpa those ‘investors’ are the little guys and the little guys don’t count, on any systematic basis. In fact it’s better to protect them a bit since this is shrinking solid upper middle class who should not be screwed, like the real little guys. They are a vital part of maintaining the apparance that the status quo has solid support.
As for pensions they can never be kept safe. Any giant pool of money is going to be raided one way or another. The design of pensions is usually and mostly done with good intention but will always end in tears. The greedy and the selfish are drawn to any giant pool of money like moths to the flame.
Obama would never pardon Manning and Snowden has not even been charged with any crime nor convicted so no pardon is possible. Their ‘crimes’ lay at the intersection of Obama’s core governing principals, neoconservatism and neoliberalism. On the latter they both betrayed their organizations. They spoke out of school. They became individuals. There is no higher crime for organization men and neoliberals are organization men all. This isn’t actually part of neoliberal ideas but rather goes to the core of the culture neoliberalism has produced. The sins against neoconservatism are that ‘The Nation’, America, must use every available weapon in the fight against the others so as to achieve absolute hegemony over the globe.
The very idea that Obama would pardon either is absurd.
On Obama, I like to refer to what I think of as the greatest blog post of all time, Dark Comedy category.
Faith you can suspend your disbelief in.
https://fafblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/change-you-can-suspend-your-disbelief.html
RE, more QE
More QE is absolutely certain and buying corporate debt is certain as well, and then probably equities.
We may be only in the second inning, or mid first half for the soccer world, of central bank money printing and the next act is going to be to monetize corporate debt and even assets. I predicted this 14 years ago, in so many words, before I really knew what it meant. Not that I couldn’t be wrong but at least consider that the general trend of monetizing corporations and thus keep the system intact could stretch out for a very very long time, a decade or even two.
That isn’t to say the end won’t come a lot sooner for many humans, of which there is a huge supply. Or as has been said when disaster strikes because of war and other human folly’s, it won’t be the end of everything, just the end of you (them). This is especially true of America where isolation from histories vagaries and violence are the norm, and in fact this is obviously ingrained in Americas strategic thinking. For the less strategic thinking Americans, a large plurality, chaos and destruction and death in the rest of the world will vindicate the belief that American is favored by God.
As always you will know when the game is up, when rates rise on US Treasury and AA corporate paper.
Russia invade Latvia? Why would anyone invade Latvia? Our strategic thinkers just as well study the movie Mars Attacks. Come to think of it maybe they do. Russia has your 6.6 million square miles much of it empty and it’s going to invade
Latvia? Is there something in the water in the end corridor? Maybe the John Birch Society was right about floride in the water.Since Britain isn’t part of the monetary union the consequences of Brexit no matter what they are pale in comparison to nations that are in, For them exit is death. I think in the end Tsipras chose humiliation because the alternative was instant death for the country. No debt denominated in a new Greek currency would be bid and nobody outside Greece would hold accounts denominated in it. It would be a profoundly easy matter for the financial world to reject outright a Greek currency. I used to urge Greece to investigate implementing a new money but as of now it seems to me that such a thing is an impossibility. If someone would care to try and convince me otherwise have at it.
Now admittedly Italy or France for that matter would be a somewhat different thing in that they are the homes of many corporations with global reach. Still those corporations would be free to issue debt denominated in Euros or even dollars but still, the governments would not , or if they did it would be absurd.
The British Pound is absolutely protected by the US and the ‘special relationship’. That relationship amounting to defacto US statehood. This is a blood and tribal thing, a language thing, and nothing will ever sever it. It’s the English speaking world against the rest of the world, period.
To riff on that, language is highly determinate of what people think and how they think. Often those like me who are profoundly skeptical of the common and conventional view of all things is the result of an personal cognitive oddity wherein there is an excess of literal mindedness.
Trump is no plant or Manchurian candidate. He’s a fruitcake. Just yesterday he said the US should “renegotiate” its debt. Unless some very clever anarchists are pulling Trump’s strings then who could possibly be behind a man that proposes that the US Treasury default? There is no “renegotiation” of stated interest rate non callable bonds. Nobody is going to negotiate with the US Treasury about a haircut. I mean, how silly can a man be? Any haircut imposed by the Treasury, per the orders of a president, would be default. Period.
So let’s say they decide on a 10% haircut on the principal and interest on all notes and bonds. An impossibility but just for fun consider. Ooops, now there is a bear market in bonds. Interest rates spike. Game over, for the system.
Occasionally Trump babbles somethings which are common sense but far more often it is common nonsense. Come to think about it Trump is the perfect candidate, to insure Hillary wins and continues to make the world better for neoliberalism and the neocon New American Century crowd.
The why the enmity for Russia goes deeper than oil supplies to Europe in any medium term. I have a novel answer and it goes deeper than oil. It’s about debt, or rather an intrinsic Russian mistrust of debt.
I am sure your aware that Russian rhetoric often includes the term Zionist. This is typically associated with anti semitism but I think it pertains more to debt, and banking. Most forget that in the rise out of the middle ages that the Catholic church, which was all Christendom, forbade lending at interest. So it came to be that Jews literally became the leading bankers. Part of the deep well of anti semtism in the West owes to this now forgotten fact. Part of this fact is that people mistrusted debt and bankers. For reasons we here do now.
What we survey daily here is the empire of debt, bankers and finance. We don’t associate it with Jews anymore. This empire of debt and banks and finance is the Zionism the Russians refer to, to some large extent I propose.
The point being that the empire of banking and debt will not abide a place, Russia, which rejects their basic premise, which I think to some extent they do. That premise is that ‘growth’ via debt is good. This is the ultimate heresy for which Russia will be fought. So goes my crackpot idea.
The story of property, of the land sort, is not much considered by people. The article mentions tribal groups in a couple of contexts but he misses an important point. The arrival of land as property was coincident with the rise of what is called civilization. States, nations use your term, and as they arose it was always under kings, the sovereign. Sovereign over the land. Kings gave or ceded land ownership to others and gave them title to it and establishing that ownership as a matter of law. Not of force but of law.
Tribal societies may have had a sort of ownership but it was not a matter of law.
The New World, America, especially a recent event in Oregon, provides the very simplest example. England and Spain claimed sovereignty over North America. Americas revolution against England and subsequent formation of a national government meant first and above all that the United States government claimed sovereignty over all land that had not been assigned title to previously. Period. The USA gained sovereignty over western lands by purchase, war and in Oregon, simply decree, Much of the Western US, desert and mountains, which American claimed sovereignty over was never subsequently acquired by individuals. Nobody was ever given title to it. Then a bunch of yahoos declared that the US government does not really have sovereignty over a certain portion of it. No?
Their mixed up claim on the land was part force and then special pleading. In part these sorts of people long for the day when ownership was established by simple force. It’s mine, take it if you can. But then they want title to it, somehow. Or they want a local government, which they may happen to have strong influence on to be given sovereignty over the land. Well it isn’t thought out really. They sort of think that there should be no sovereign. Any sovereign is to them tyranny. However if there is no soverign then who will enforce their claim of title to the land. It’s all mixed up and so it is to some extent with many people.
