Edward Hopper People in the sun 1963
Lowest since 1949.
• The Velocity of Money… and Revolution (Brin)
A recent Mauldin missive correctly cites the most disturbing symptom of trouble in the U.S. economy: a plummet in Money Velocity (MV). To quote John: “You may be asking, what exactly is the velocity of money? Essentially, it’s the frequency with which the same dollar changes hands because the holders of the dollar use it to buy something. Higher velocity means more economic activity, which usually means higher growth. So it is somewhat disturbing to see velocity now at its lowest point since 1949, and at levels associated with the Great Depression.” Somewhat… disturbing? That’s at-best an understatement, since no other economic indicator is as telling. MV is about a bridge repair worker buying furniture, that lets a furniture maker get dentures, so a dentist can pay her cleaning lady, who buys groceries….
There are rare occasions when MV can be too high, as during the 1970s hyper-inflation, when Jimmy Carter told Paul Volcker “Cure this, and to hell with my re-election.” But those times are rare. Generally, for all our lives, Money Velocity has been declining into dangerous sluggishness, falling hard since the 80s, rising a little in the 90s, then plummeting. Alas, while fellows like Hunt and Mauldin are at last pointing at this worrisome symptom, they remain in frantic denial over the cause. Absolutely, it is wealth disparity that destroys money velocity. Bridge repair workers and dentists would spend money – if they had any. We have known – ever since Adam Smith gazed across the last 4000 years – that a feudal oligarchy does not invest in productive capacity.
Nor does it spend much on goods or services that have large multiplier effects (that give middle class wage earners a chance to keep money moving). Instead, aristocrats have always tended to put their extra wealth into rentier (or passive rent-seeking) property, or else parasitic-crony-vampiric cheating through abuse of state power. Do not let so-called “tea party” confederate lackeys divert you. The U.S. Revolution was against a King and Parliament and royal cronies who commanded all American commerce to pass through their ports and docks and stores, who demanded that consumer goods like tea be sold through monopolies and even paper be stamped to ensure it came from a royal pal. Try actually reading the Declaration of Independence. “Taxation without representation” was about how an oligarchy controlled Parliament through jiggered districts and cheating, and used that power to funnel wealth upward.
“The gravy train is running out of steam..”
• Ecology: The Keystone Science (Hawes)
A missing piece from most critiques of modern capitalism revolves around the misunderstanding of ecology. To put it bluntly, there will be no squaring the circle of mass industrial civilization and an inhabitable Earth. There is no way for energy and resource use, along with all the strife, warfare, and poverty that comes along with it, to continue under the business as usual model that contemporary Western nations operate under. There is also the problem of constructing millions of solar panels and gigantic wind farms to attempt to bring the entire world’s population to a middle class existence based on a North American, or even European levels of energy use.
All of the hypothetical robots and artificial intelligence to be constructed for such a mega-endeavor needed to enact such a project would at least initially rely on fossil fuels and metals plundered from the planet, and only lead to more rapacious destruction of the world. The dominant technological model is utterly delusional. Here I would urge each of us to consider our “human nature” (a problematic term, no doubt) and the costs and the manner of the work involved: if each of us had to kill a cow for food, would we? If each of us had to mine or blast a mountain for coal or iron, or even for a wind turbine, would we do it? If each of us had to drill an oil well or bulldoze land for a gigantic solar array next to many endangered species or a threatened coral reef, would we?
My guess would be no, for the vast majority of the population. Instead, we employ corporations and specialists to carry out the dirty work in the fossil fuel industries and animal slaughtering, to name just a few. Most of us in the West have reaped the benefits of such atrocities for the past few centuries of the industrial revolution. That era is coming to a close, and there’s no turning back. The gravy train is running out of steam, and our age of comfort and the enslavement of a global proletariat to produce and gift-wrap our extravagances will hopefully be ending shortly, too. Some may romanticize loggers, factory workers, oil drillers, coal miners, or steel foundries but the chance is less than a needle through a camel’s eye that those jobs are coming back in a significant way.
Overpopulation in much of the world continues to put strain upon habitat and farmlands to provide for the Earth’s 7.5 billion and growing humans. Tragically, many with the most influence on the Left today, such as Sanders, Corbyn, and Melenchon want to preserve industrial civilization. Theirs is an over-sentimental outlook which warps their thinking to want to prop up a dying model in order to redistribute wealth to the poor and working classes. Empathy for the less fortunate is no doubt a good thing, but the fact remains that the real wealth lies in our planet’s natural resources, not an artificial economy, and its ability to regenerate and provide the fertile ground upon which we all rely. If we follow their narrow path, we are doomed.
Happy 4th of July, Zuck.
• Facebook Flags, Removes Declaration of Independence Text as Hate Speech (Rea.)
America’s founding document might be too politically incorrect for Facebook, which flagged and removed a post consisting almost entirely of text from the Declaration of Independence. The excerpt, posted by a small community newspaper in Texas, apparently violated the social media site’s policies against hate speech. Since June 24, the Liberty County Vindicator of Liberty County, Texas, has been sharing daily excerpts from the declaration in the run up to July Fourth. The idea was to encourage historical literacy among the Vindicator’s readers. The first nine such posts of the project went up without incident.
“But part 10,” writes Vindicator managing editor Casey Stinnett, “did not appear. Instead, The Vindicator received a notice from Facebook saying that the post ‘goes against our standards on hate speech.'” The post in question contained paragraphs 27 through 31 of the Declaration of Independence, the grievance section of the document wherein the put-upon colonists detail all the irreconcilable differences they have with King George III. Stinnett says that he cannot be sure which exact grievance ran afoul of Facebook’s policy, but he assumes that it’s paragraph 31, which excoriates the King for inciting “domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages.”
The removal of the post was an automated action, and Stinnett sent a “feedback message” to Facebook with the hopes of reaching a human being who could then exempt the Declaration of Independence from its hate speech restrictions. Fearful that sharing more of the text might trigger the deletion of its Facebook page, The Vindicator has suspended its serialization of the declaration. In his article, Stinnett is remarkably sanguine about this censorship. While unhappy about the decision, he reminds readers “that Facebook is a business corporation, not the government, and as such it is allowed to restrict use of its services as long as those restrictions do not violate any laws. Plus, The Vindicator is using Facebook for free, so the newspaper has little grounds for complaint other than the silliness of it.”
Time to place a bet that Brexit will not happen.
• Theresa May To Pitch ‘Softest Possible Brexit’ Plan (R.)
British Prime Minister Theresa May will present to her team a new proposal for trade with the European Union that in effect comprises the “softest possible Brexit”, ITV’s political editor reported on Tuesday, citing sources. Britain’s exit from the bloc next year will mark its biggest trading and foreign policy shift in almost 50 years. But May has struggled to unite pro- and anti-Brexit camps in her cabinet and party around a plan for future trade with the EU. So far, May’s advisers have come up with two options, neither of which have the full support of her party. Both have already been dismissed in principle by EU officials.
With the clock ticking toward a March departure date and passions running high, May is holding a meeting of senior ministers on Friday at which she will pitch a compromise third option, ITV political editor Robert Peston said. She will ask her cabinet to back a plan that would see Britain collect duties on imports at the rate of the EU’s common customs tariff, in effect making Britain the EU’s tax collector, according to Peston. May and her officials believe this would avoid the need for border checks between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, Peston wrote in a Facebook post.
Opposition lawmaker Hilary Benn, who chairs parliament’s Brexit committee, said he thought it was “unlikely that the EU will agree to outsource the collection of its own tax revenues to a third country”. Peston also said May’s proposal would include IT and camera technology to help reduce bureaucracy around the border, as well as British alignment with EU standards for goods and agricultural products. On services, which make up the bulk of Britain’s economy, Peston said May wants to offer the EU preferential rights for its citizens who want to live and work in Britain, in exchange for better access to the EU’s services market.
Thatcher on steroids.
• UK Government ‘Will Miss Fuel Poverty Target By More Than Six Decades’ (G.)
The government will miss a key fuel poverty target by more than half a century at the current rate homes are being insulated and upgraded, a leading thinktank has warned. Ministers are drastically off course on ensuring as many fuel-poor homes – those which people cannot afford to keep adequately heated – as possible are upgraded to energy efficiency band C by 2030 in England, according to the IPPR. The target will not be met by 2091 at the earliest, a report by the thinktank found. England has about 2.5m fuel-poor households, and the hardship they face paying energy bills is set to rise this year because of price hikes.
“At its current rate of delivery, hundreds of thousands of fuel-poor households will be left out in the cold until the end of the century,” said Luke Murphy, associate director for energy, climate, housing and infrastructure at IPPR. The thinktank said the main scheme for tackling the problem – the energy companies obligation (ECO) – was not working, and called on the government to reform it. It is estimated only 11% fuel-poor homes had reached band C by 2017, up from 8% in 2015. The IPPR looked at the rate that energy efficiency measures were installed under the ECO between April 2017, when the scheme was rebooted, and February 2018.
Give me a break.
• ‘Unknown Substance’ Leaves Pair Critically Ill In Salisbury Hospital (G.)
A major incident has been declared in Wiltshire after it was suspected two people might have been exposed to an unknown substance in Amesbury. The man and woman, both in their 40s, were in a critical condition at Salisbury district hospital, Wiltshire police said. A number of scenes in the Amesbury and Salisbury area were cordoned off as a precaution, although the force said it was not yet clear if they were the victims of a crime. One of the sites cordoned off and guarded by three officers was the town’s baptist church, a modern red brick building, a few minutes’ drive away from the address where the man and woman were found.
Local radio station Spire FM reported that Queen Elizabeth Gardens in the centre of Salisbury had also been sealed off as part of the investigation. Public Health England (PHE) advised that it did not believe there to be a “significant health risk” to the wider public, although its advice was being continually assessed. The incident comes exactly four months after the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were left poisoned on 4 March by a suspected military nerve agent in Salisbury, around eight miles from Amesbury. Police said the man and woman were found unconscious at an address in Muggleton Road on Saturday evening and it was initially believed that they had taken illegal drugs, however further tests were being carried out.
Absolutely nobody.
• As The State Is Dismantled, Who Will Save Britain’s Wildlife? (Monbiot)
It feels like the collapse of the administrative state – and this is before Brexit. One government agency after another is losing its budget, its power and its expertise. The result, for corporations and the very rich, is freedom from the restraint of law, freedom from the decencies they owe to other people, freedom from democracy. The public protections that constrain their behaviour are being dismantled. An example is the cascading decline in the protection of wildlife and environmental quality. The bodies charged with defending the living world have been so enfeebled that they now scarcely exist as independent entities. Natural England, for example, has been reduced to a nodding dog in the government’s rear window.
Its collapse as an autonomous agency is illuminated by the case that will be heard next week in the high court, where two ecologists, Tom Langton and Dominic Woodfield, are challenging its facilitation of the badger cull. That the cull is a senseless waste of life and money is well established, but this is only one of the issues being tested. Another is that Natural England, which is supposed to assess whether the shooting of badgers causes wider environmental harm, appears incapable of discharging its duties.
As badger killing spreads across England, it intrudes upon ever more wildlife sites, some of which protect animals that are highly sensitive to disturbance. Natural England is supposed to determine whether allowing hunters to move through these places at night and fire their guns has a detrimental effect on other wildlife, and what the impact of removing badgers from these ecosystems might be. The claimants allege that it has approved the shooting without meaningful assessments.
Sadiq Khan and Ada Colau, mayors of London and Barcelona. Don’t understand that social housing doesn’t solve the problem.
• City Properties Should Be Homes For People First – Not Investments (G.)
For a number of years, cities around the world have been facing increasingly global and aggressive speculation in their property markets – from speculators who see housing in our cities as an asset from which to profit, rather than homes for the people we represent. In many cases, speculators take decisions from thousands of miles away. Yet for us their impact on the life and soul of our cities is very close to home. Our city centres risk being hollowed out as vibrant communities are displaced, local shops are closed, and the cost of housing rises exorbitantly. Our community groups and local government, as the part of civic life closest to local people and the most sensitive to their everyday problems, have often been the first to warn of the risks that these practices bring with them regarding the very survival of our cities.
For city leaders to be able to tackle this problem, they urgently need greater resources and powers both to increase their stocks of social-rented and other genuinely affordable housing and to strengthen tenants’ rights. Cities are not simply a collection of buildings, streets and squares. They are also the sum of their people. They are the ones who help create social ties, build communities and evolve into the places where we are so proud to live.
That is why we are determined to change the way that housing works in the cities we represent. We are building more social-rented and other genuinely affordable homes, doing all we can to strengthen the rights of tenants, and clamping down on bad practices of developers and landlords wherever we are able to. But we face a complex problem and one that operates at a global level. We still lack the powers and resources that would allow us properly to regulate the housing market, to protect tenants’ rights to remain in their homes, and to make homelessness and rough sleeping things of the past.
Punished for supporting Assange?!
• Ecuador Wants Ex-President Correa Extradited (DW)
Ecuador requested an Interpol red notice for ex-President Rafael Correa on Tuesday, hoping to have him extradited from Belgium. Correa claims the decision to request his detention and extradition from Belgium are part of an attempt by his former ally, the current president Lenin Moreno, to humiliate him and make him suffer. Correa had been ordered by Ecuadorean Judge Daniella Camacho to present himself before an Ecuadorean court every two weeks as part of the proceedings into the attempted kidnapping in Colombia of former opposition lawmaker Fernando Balda in 2012.
The former premier, whose wife is Belgian, has been living in Belgium since July last year, and has reported to the consulate in Brussels every 15 days starting June 2. On Tuesday, the judge claimed her orders for Correa to present himself to a court had been violated. According to a statement on Twitter, the public prosecutor requested the pre-trial detention of Correa for non-compliance. He called for Interpol to be notified through a red alert for Correa’s capture and extradition.
Our waters are for dumping garbage.
• Most Of Europe’s Rivers And Lakes Fail Water Quality Tests (G.)
The vast majority of Europe’s rivers, lakes and estuaries have failed to meet minimum ecological standards for habitat degradation and pollution, according to a damning new report. Only 40% of surface water bodies surveyed by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) were found to be in a good ecological state, despite EU laws and biodiversity protocols. England was one of the poorer performers to emerge from the State of Our Waters report, which studied 130,000 waterways. The EU’s environment commissioner, Karmenu Vella, said there had been a slight improvement in freshwater quality since 2010. “But much more needs to be done before all lakes, rivers, coastal waters and groundwater bodies are in good status,” he added. “Tackling pollution from agriculture, industry and households requires joint efforts from all water users throughout Europe.”
Scotland dramatically outperformed England in the clean water stocktake which covers the 2010-15 period, with water standards similar to much of Scandinavia. Precise comparisons are difficult as reporting methodologies vary across Europe but water quality in England was in the bottom half of the European table, and had deteriorated since the last stocktake in 2010. Peter Kristensen, the report’s lead author told the Guardian that higher population densities, more intensive agricultural practices, and better monitoring of waterways had all contributed to the result. “England is comparable to countries in central Europe with a high proportion of water bodies failing to reach good status,” he said. “The situation is much better in Scotland, where only around 45% of sites failed [to meet minimum standards].”
It’s actually getting worse.
• More Than 200 Migrants Drown In Mediterranean In Three Days (G.)
More than 200 migrants have drowned at sea in the Mediterranean in the past three days, taking the death toll for the year to more than 1,000 and prompting fears that human traffickers are taking greater risks because of a crackdown imposed by the Italian government and the Libyan coastguard. The UN refugee agency in Tripoli reported on Monday that 276 refugees and migrants were disembarked in the Libyan capital on Monday, including 16 survivors of a boat carrying 130 people, of whom 114 were still missing at sea. Further shipwrecks were found at the weekend. On Tuesday the Libyan coastguard reported a further seven deaths and a further 123 migrants rescued.
The 1,000 deaths landmark was reached on 1 July. It is the fourth year in succession that more than 1,000 migrants have died trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. Othman Belbeisi, the chief of mission in Libya at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), claimed the “alarming increase” in deaths at sea was out of the ordinary. “Smugglers are exploiting the desperation of migrants to leave before there are further crackdowns on Mediterranean crossings by Europe,” he said. Overall the number of migrants reaching Italy by sea is down on last year’s figures, but the proportion of those trying to reach Italy that are drowning is rising, prompting claims that the stricter Italian government policy is to blame.
Figures prepared by Matteo Villa, a research fellow at the Italian thinktank ISPI, show that so far in 2018 only half of those leaving Libya have made it to Europe, down from 86% last year. The data shows 44% have been brought back by the Libyan coastguard, compared with 12% last year. A total of 4.5% died or had gone missing, compared with 2.3% last year. But in June, almost one in 10 died or went missing upon departure from the Libyan coast – the highest proportion ever.
I can’t watch this.
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