Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 8, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 8, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Why Petulant Oligarchs Rule Our World

Paul Krugman [New York Times, via The Big Picture 1-3-2023]

...the lesson I took from my moment of pettiness was that privilege corrupts, that it very easily breeds a sense of entitlement. And surely, to paraphrase Lord Acton, enormous privilege corrupts enormously, in part because the very privileged are normally surrounded by people who would never dare tell them that they’re behaving badly.

When an immensely rich man, accustomed not just to getting whatever he wants but also to being a much-admired icon, finds himself not just losing his aura but becoming a subject of widespread ridicule, of course he lashes out erratically, and in so doing makes his problems even worse.

The more interesting question is why we’re now ruled by such people. For we’re clearly living in the age of the petulant oligarch….

Musk still has many admirers in the technology world. They see him not as a whiny brat but as someone who understands how the world should be run — an ideology that writer John Ganz calls bossism, a belief that the big people shouldn’t have to answer to, or even face criticism from, the little people. And adherents of that ideology clearly have a lot of power, even if that power doesn’t yet extend to protecting the likes of Musk from getting booed in public….

[TW: Montesquieu wrote (see below)]  

“Though real equality be the very soul of a democracy, it is so difficult to establish, that an extreme exactness in this respect would not be always convenient. Sufficient is it to establish a census, which shall reduce or fix the differences to a certain point: it is afterwards the business of particular laws to level, as it were, the inequalities, by the duties laid upon the rich, and by the ease afforded to the poor. It is moderate riches alone that can give or suffer this sort of compensation; for as to men of overgrown estates, everything which does not contribute to advance their power and honor is considered by them as an injury....” [emphasis by TW]

SBF and the Injustice Democrats: How SBF, AIPAC and pro-Trump billionaires coordinated to crush the left 

Max Berger [via Naked Capitalism 1-4-2023]

When I looked into SBF’s political giving to write a follow up to last week’s piece, I thought I knew what I was looking for. It’s a subject I’ve written about before.

But, when I looked at the end-of-cycle FEC data, the results were truly shocking.

I found more evidence SBF was collaborating with AIPAC and Trump supporting billionaires to stop the growth of the squad and the electoral left.

Five billionaire funded PACs were coordinating closely on a strategy to defeat progressive candidates in Democratic primaries — a kind of Injustice Democrats.

Mark Mellman, a long-time operative and AIPAC ally, appears to be at the center of the effort and likely spearheaded the shared campaign. He was hired by four of the five groups this cycle, who collectively paid his firm $476,016.67… According to FEC data, over 75% of the money SBF contributed to Democrats in 2022 went to groups that spent nearly all their money on competitive primaries in the Democratic Party.

SBF personally contributed $29,250,000 to Protect Our Future and DMI PAC (which later contributed the money to Web3 Forward). Both of these groups spent the vast majority of their money on Democratic primaries. They also worked closely with two AIPAC affiliated SuperPACs called the United Democracy Project (UDP) and the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), and a group called Mainstream Democrats which aimed to defeat the “far-left.”

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 1, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 1, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

The dark side

Dress Rehearsal: Trump’s attempt almost two years ago to undermine the 2020 election reads today like a blueprint drawn for a future autocrat.

Fintan O’Toole, January 19, 2023 issue [The New York Review]

To understand the attempted coup that culminated in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, it is useful to go back to Donald Trump’s immediate response to the election he actually won, in 2016. The head of his transition team, Chris Christie, then governor of New Jersey, presented Trump with a detailed plan for the transfer of power to his incoming administration. It was literally trashed. As Christie recalled in his self-pitying memoir, Let Me Finish, “All thirty binders were tossed in a Trump Tower dumpster, never to be seen again.”  Trump didn’t want an orderly transition to his own presidency, let alone to Joe Biden’s. To a raging narcissist a plan is an impertinence, a Lilliputian restraint on the inspired instincts of a giant….

A coup, in this context, does not mean tanks on the streets, helicopter gunships strafing public buildings, thousands of people rounded up by soldiers, and a junta of generals or colonels addressing the nation on TV. On the contrary, the story that needed to be told by the plotters of 2020–2021 was not the overthrow of democracy, but its defense. Trump, as his chief of staff and co-conspirator Mark Meadows put it in his book The Chief’s Chief, was merely seeking “to uphold the democratic process.”….

To understand what Trump could have done instead, it is necessary to revisit a long meeting at the White House on the evening and night of December 18, 2020. This episode is easy to dismiss because it was described by Hutchinson as “unhinged” and because the proposals aired at it were called “nuts” by one of the saner attendees, the former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. These characterizations are accurate. Yet the meeting matters for two reasons. The first is that it immediately preceded Trump’s fateful decision to summon his followers to Washington on January 6. The other is that one of the ideas put forward at this meeting would be of great interest to any future conspirator.

In spite of all of this idiocy, however, Byrne did have one seriously interesting proposal to put to Trump at the meeting. It was that, having seized control of the voting machines through some kind of military task force, there would then be a live TV event in which all of the paper ballots in the six most contested states would be counted in front of the cameras: “If there are not big discrepancies, Trump concedes. But if there are big discrepancies, we would rerun the election in those six counties, or states, using that federal force.” This was actually quite an intelligent idea. By appearing to commit to conceding defeat if no discrepancies were found, Trump could pose, as he had to do if a coup were to succeed, as the defender of American democracy….

Most importantly, there would be a public drama, an elaborate spectacle of “democracy” in action. It is not hard to imagine how Trump’s enablers in the media would sell this show: Why are the Democrats afraid to see what the paper ballots say? The mechanics of this performance remain obscure. How were “discrepancies” to be created? What would the Supreme Court have done? To have a chance of success, the plan would surely have to have been put into effect much earlier—well before the Electoral College met on December 14 to confirm Biden’s victory. Yet Byrne had the germ of the right idea. The best way to steal a presidential election would indeed be through a staged display of democratic process backed by elaborate precooked “evidence” of foreign conspiracy and amplified by Fox News, social media campaigns, and other media. This is the upside-down shape of a successful American coup. Democracy is destroyed by the enactment of its protection. 

Strategic Political Economy

"The Contest on Corporate Purpose: Why Lynn Stout was Right and Milton Friedman was Wrong

Thomas Clarke [From the journal Accounting, Economics, and Law, via Avedon’s Sideshow 12-15-2022]

It is now 50 years since Milton Friedman set out his doctrine that 'The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.' This paper seeks to add fresh and compelling new evidence of why Lynn Stout was correct in her resolute critique of the thesis of shareholder primacy at the heart of the Friedman doctrine, and how this doctrine remains profoundly damaging to the corporations that continue to uphold this belief."

Global power shift

Preparing for the Final Collapse of the Soviet Union 

[Hudson Institute, via Naked Capitalism 12-25-2022] 

[TW: As Lambert Strether noted, this is a glimpse at what USA ruling elites really believe. ]

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 12-28-2022]

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 25, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 25, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-23-2022]

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Strategic Political Economy

Come to America and Live a Shorter Life!

Harold Meyerson, December 22, 2022 [The American Prospect]

While life expectancy continued its upward climb among our peers—the nations with advanced economies—it fell in 2021 to its lowest level since 1996 in these United States according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics. COVID and fentanyl each took a terrible toll, adding to the well-documented deaths of despair from suicide, alcoholism, and the other plagues statistically associated with the lives of working-class Americans.

An American child born last year had a life expectancy of 76.4 years—down from 77 years in 2020. The earlier year, of course, was the year of COVID with no vaccines, while 2021 was the year of COVID with vaccines, which only highlights the role that vaccine resistance played in dooming some hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who might otherwise still be among us. Lest anyone doubt that the MAGA mishegas about the satanic vaccines was key to the continuation of COVID deaths well beyond the date when the vaccines became widely available, it’s notable that the death rate from COVID among whites surpassed that among Blacks and other racial groups in mid-2021.

Indeed, as a late-October study in The Lancet Regional Health–Americas documented, there was a direct correlation between the conservatism of a congressmember’s voting record and the death rate from COVID of their constituents, across all age groups and taking into account such factors as race, education, and income. Those death rates were 11 percent higher in states with Republican governors. This wasn’t just a function of state policy (like, e.g., Ron DeSantis’s war on vaccines), of course, but also of the beliefs of our MAGA-istic compatriots.

Another late-October study, this one published in the academic journal PLOS One, demonstrated that the perils of living in red-state America aren’t limited to greater COVID mortality rates. 

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 18, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 18, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

We need the return of the state 

[Tax Research UK, via Naked Capitalism 12-14-2022]

Neoliberalism is built on lies. For decades the deceit at its core has been ignored because it appeared to deliver prosperity. It does not any more. That is why everything is unravelling.

The biggest lie that neoliberalism promotes is that all value is created by private sector business, which claim is contrasted with a claim that government destroys value. So, apparently, a teacher working for a private school adds value. The same teacher in front of the same children in a state school would, apparently, not do so. The idea is obviously absurd, and yet is key to understanding neoliberal’s approach to public services, which is built on this lie.

This neoliberal lie has corrupted public services. Based on this claim it has come to be believed that there is no answer to any question that the state can supply. Instead, it is the private sector that must provide the solution to problems because that sector supposedly knows best.

Creating new economic potential - science and technology

Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl’s incurable cancer 

[BBC, via Naked Capitalism 12-15-2022]

Alyssa, who is 13 and from Leicester, was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in May last year.

T-cells are supposed to be the body's guardians - seeking out and destroying threats - but for Alyssa they had become the danger and were growing out of control. Her cancer was aggressive. Chemotherapy, and then a bone-marrow transplant, were unable to rid it from her body….

The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which was invented only six years ago.

Bases are the language of life. The four types of base - adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T) - are the building blocks of our genetic code. Just as letters in the alphabet spell out words that carry meaning, the billions of bases in our DNA spell out the instruction manual for our body.

Base editing allows scientists to zoom to a precise part of the genetic code and then alter the molecular structure of just one base, converting it into another and changing the genetic instructions.

[TW: The development of base editing was funded by a government entity, the US National Institutes of Health, and put into practice by another, Britain’s national health service. It is government that creates economic progress; that’s why We need the return of the state .]

With historic explosion, a long sought fusion breakthrough

Daniel Clery, December 14, 2022 [Science]

Despite the fanfare, fusion power stations are still a distant dream. NIF was never designed to produce power commercially. Its primary function is to create miniature thermonuclear explosions and provide data to ensure the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons is safe and reliable. Many researchers believe furnacelike tokamaks are a better design for commercial power because they can sustain longer fusion “burns.” In a tokamak, microwaves and particle beams heat the fuel and magnetic fields trap it. “The challenge is to make it robust and simple,” White says….

If the compression of the fuel is symmetrical enough, fusion reactions begin in a central hot spot and propagate smoothly outward, with the heat from fusion sparking more burning. That self-sustaining burn is what defines ignition, and after more than a decade of effort NIF scientists declared they had achieved that milestone after a shot in August 2021 produced 70% of the input laser energy. But NIF’s funder, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, set NIF’s goal as an energy gain greater than one—the threshold it passed last week.

Going that extra mile wasn’t easy. After the August 2021 shot, the NIF team found it couldn’t repeat it. Using a smooth diamond capsule turned out to be key: The one from August 2021 had been the most perfectly smooth and spherical they’d made. “We had to learn how to make the capsules better,” Herrmann says. They also made the capsule slightly thicker, which provided more momentum for the implosion but required a longer, more powerful laser pulse. So they tweaked the laser to squeeze out more juice, upping the energy from 1.9 MJ to 2.05 MJ.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 11, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 11, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

“The People Cheering For Humanity’s End”

[The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-8-2022]

“From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. The revolt against humanity is still new enough to appear outlandish, but it has already spread beyond the fringes of the intellectual world, and in the coming years and decades it has the potential to transform politics and society in profound ways…. The first is Anthropocene anti-humanism, inspired by revulsion at humanity’s destruction of the natural environment…. Transhumanism, by contrast, glorifies some of the very things that anti-humanism decries—scientific and technological progress, the supremacy of reason. But it believes that the only way forward for humanity is to create new forms of intelligent life that will no longer be Homo sapiens.” • I don’t use the phrase “death cult” that often, but perhaps I should start. The exact perspective we should expect from The Atlantic: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” –Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Global power shift

Robbing The Global South, Then Scorning Its Poverty: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix 

Caitlin Johnstone [via Naked Capitalism 12-7-2022]

China’s Xi on ‘epoch-making’ visit to Saudi as Riyadh chafes at U.S. censure 

[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 12-8-2022]

The semiconductor industry and the China challenge 

[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 12-10-2022]

“Part 2 at https://asiatimes.com/2022/12/the-chip-industry-and-national-security/”

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 4, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 4, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

Professional Management Class war on workers

Railroading workers

 [Popular Information, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-29-2022]

“The dispute boils down to one issue: paid sick leave. … Railroad companies have adamantly refused to include any short-term paid leave. That means rail workers must report to work, even when they are sick, or forfeit their pay. “It’s an insane and cruel system, and these guys are fed up with it,” Peter Kennedy, chief negotiator for the maintenance workers union, which rejected the deal, said. Rail workers say that some colleagues come to work with COVID because they can’t afford to take time off. The maintenance workers are seeking a deal with at least four paid sick days. The railroad companies, according to the union, are unwilling to negotiate.”

Biden Breaks His Promise, Betrays Rail Workers 

Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Andrew Perez, Rebecca Burns & Julia Rock, November 29, 2022 [The Lever] 

In 2020, Biden called the lack of decent paid sick leave “a national disgrace” — now he’s siding with railroad barons to crush rail workers seeking those benefits….

With Democrats in full control of Congress for just a few more weeks, Biden could be using this moment to push lawmakers to pass the party’s landmark union rights legislation or implement a national paid leave policy. Instead, he is calling on Democrats and Republicans alike to side with highly profitable railroad companies and crush their workers.

Senators Help Donors Derail Paid Sick Days

Matthew Cunningham-Cook & Rebecca Burns & Julia Rock, December 1, 2022 [The Lever]

“In August, a federal report prepared by the Biden administration stated that the railroads contend that their enormous profits do not reflect “any contributions by labor.” The railroads, meanwhile, have waged a full-court press to have Congress implement an agreement negotiated by the Biden administration that only includes one day of paid sick leave, after refusing to agree to any paid sick days in three years of talks with unions. Buffett’s BNSF, a wholly-owned subsidiary of his nearly $700 billion conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, raked in $1.4 billion in the last quarter… Another major rail operation, the Atlanta-based Norfolk Southern, reported $958 million in profits in the quarter ending September 30…. Union Pacific, based in Omaha, Nebraska, brought in $1.9 billion in profits in the quarter, up $200 million from the same period a year ago…. Jacksonville, Florida-headquartered CSX generated $1.1 billion in profits in the quarter ending on September 30, up $143 million from the same period the year before…. Canadian Pacific brought in $664 million in profits in the quarter — double the haul from the same period last year…. Finally, Montreal-based Canadian National brought in more than $1 billion in profits in the quarter, a 44 percent increase over the same period last year…. Railroad workers will return to the bargaining table again in 2025. Railway union sources told The Intercept Thursday that their next step would be to push for sick leave in an anticipated Biden executive order mandating a week of paid sick days for federal contract workers.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 27, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 20, 2022

 Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 20, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

Here's WHY your inbox is a dumpster fire of fundraising spam, and what we can do about it.

Will Easton, November 18, 2022 [DailyKos]

Over the past couple cycles here, certain Democratic consulting firms, candidates & organizations have simply decided that it’s in their best interests to sell, rent, swap & trade your email address around the ecosystem, without bothering to ask you first.  So if you’ve contributed to one campaign … you’re going to be emailed by dozens, perhaps hundreds.

The DCCC condones and encourages this practice; it’s my understanding they REQUIRE their endorsed candidates to share email addresses into the pool.  OTOH, a lot of progressive candidates do NOT engage in these practices -- most notably Senator Sanders, whose refusal to just hand his entire email list over to the party in 2016 was the cause of much handwringing ...but he made the right call.

Global power shift

Ukraine is a ‘Warm Up’ for Fighting China: Why the Head of America’s Nuclear Forces Just Warned of an Imminent ‘Very Long’ War  

[Military Watch Magazine, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2022]

John Mearsheimer on Putin’s Ambitions After Nine Months of War 

Isaac Chotine [The New Yorker, via Naked Capitalism 11-18-2022]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 13, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 13, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

One point of view, does not show the whole picture!

AQEL Tech [YouTube, 2019]

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The Pandemic

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-9-2022]

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How to Hide a Plague: How Elite Capture and Individualism Made Covid Normal

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[YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 11-11-2022]

The US has experienced among the highest cumulative mortality rates from Covid-19 in the Global North. This lecture will argue that the failures of the US pandemic response were mainly driven by economic elites who used their influence to undermine public health protections. The initial phase of the Covid response was collective, including a massive temporary expansion of the welfare state, but this approach threatened the power of the capitalist class. In response, there was an abandonment of economic interventions followed by a wholesale reframing of the virus as an issue of personal responsibility and individual choice. This lecture will explore how the exertion of elite influence went far beyond lobbying politicians, extending to government bureaucracies and civil society institutions such as news media and schools of public health. This process of constructing a new, deadlier normal holds lessons that can be transferred to climate change and other collective crises of the 21st century.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 6, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 6, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

The Pandemic

The Worst Pediatric-Care Crisis in Decades 

[The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism 11-2-2022]

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-2-2022]

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[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-1-2022]

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[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-1-2022]

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How Republicans Claimed COVID as a Winning Campaign Issue 

[New Yorker, via Naked Capitalism 11-1-2022]

The backlash against pandemic restrictions has become a more potent talking point than the public-health crisis itself.

[TW: For me — because I believe we need to revive civic republicanism and especially its principle of civic virtue — the public hostility to adopting individual measures to protect the public health, is very demoralizing. ]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 30, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 30, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

Mike Davis, California’s ‘prophet of doom’, on activism in a dying world: ‘Despair is useless’ 

[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 10-27-2022]

You’ve been organizing for social change your whole life. How do you deal with a future that feels so bleak?

For someone my age who was in the civil rights movement, and in other struggles of the 1960s, I’ve seen miracles happen. I’ve seen ordinary people do the most heroic things. When you’ve had the privilege of knowing so many great fighters and resisters, you can’t lay down the sword, even if things seem objectively hopeless.

I’ve always been influenced by the poems Brecht wrote in the late 30s, during the second world war, after everything had been incinerated, all the dreams and values of an entire generation destroyed, and Brecht said, well, it’s a new dark ages … how do people resist in the dark ages?

What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict, however all-powerful it seems. It’s what ordinary people have to do. You have to love each other. You have to defend each other. You have to fight.

Global power shift

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 10-24-2022]

George Yeo, Singapore Cabinet member for 21 years (!):

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Slouching Towards Reverse Colonialism

Yves Smith, , October 27, 2022 [Naked Capitalism]

...it’s not so hard to see how we got here: our feckless leaders, after decades of believing their own PR about Russia, had convinced themselves that the shock and awe sanctions of late February would prostrate Russia, leading to the rapid ouster of Putin and Zelensky and Victoria Nuland toasting each other in Moscow….

The US and EU, having only mediocre hacks in charge, could not admit error and try to find a sanctions Plan B, which could have attempted face saving by being more surgical (“Oh, we really want to pound those evil Rooskies, but these vulnerable populations are suffering too much, so here’s how we are refining the program.”) No, the answer to failed and self-harming sanctions has been even more failed and self-harming sanctions. And the media has evidently done a great job of covering for the sanctions disaster. Even with the start of some public pushback in America, the noise has been about shoveling ever-more taxpayer dollars into the Ukraine money pit and the risk of nuclear war, and not the sanctions debacle….

How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe 

Derek Thompson [The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism 10-26-2022]

Britain chose finance over industry, austerity over investment, and a closed economy over openness to the world.

UK’s first Anglo-Asian leader grips a poison chalice 

[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-26-2022]

But if Sunak, 42, is a poster boy for overcoming racial barriers, he is also representative of the UK’s other social bugbear: classism.

As one of the UK’s 250 wealthiest people, the Oxford graduate and ex-Goldman Sachs banker is certainly a member of the elite, raising allegations that he is out of touch with the lives of the average Nigel and Ella.

A Former Goldman Sachs/Hedge Fund Guy Is the New U.K. Prime Minister

Pam Martens and Russ Martens, October 25, 2022 [Wall Street on Parade]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 23, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 23, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

What is happening in the West Bank right now: a full breakdown 

[Mondoweiss, via Naked Capitalism 10-19-2022]

The past few weeks have witnessed a noticeable intensification of Israel’s crackdown on Palestinians in the West Bank, targeting both ordinary civilians in their homes and villages, and armed resistance fighters and groups.

Simultaneously, armed settlers have been terrorizing Palestinian communities across the West Bank, often in the presence and protection of the Israeli military.

The current repression, and the resistance to it, are part of a larger, months-long campaign to quell growing Palestinian resistance, particularly armed resistance, which has seen a resurgence in areas of the West Bank.

Global power shift

Biden’s Tech-War Goes Nuclear 

Mike Whitney [Eurasia Review, via Naked Capitalism 10-19-2022] 

“Lots of people don’t know what happened yesterday. To put it simply, Biden has forced all Americans working in China to pick between quitting their jobs and losing American citizenship. Every American executive and engineer working in China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry resigned yesterday, paralyzing Chinese manufacturing overnight. One round of sanctions from Biden did more damage than all four years of performative sanctioning under Trump. Although American semiconductor exporters had to apply for licenses during the Trump years, licenses were approved within a month.

With the new Biden sanctions, all American suppliers of IP blocks, components, and services departed overnight – thus cutting off all service [to China]. Long story short, every advanced node semiconductor company is currently facing comprehensive supply cut-off, resignations from all American staff, and immediate operations paralysis. This is what annihilation looks like: China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry was reduced to zero overnight. Complete collapse. No chance of survival.” — Posted at Jordan Schneider’s Twitter account @jordanschnyc from a translated thread at @lidangzzz

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 16, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 16, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

“How We Create–Then Blame–A Viral Underclass” (interview)

Steven Thrasher [MedScape, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-14-2022]

[TW: Viruses, diseases, public health — are all reality based and have no respect for the ideologies of neoliberals, conservatives, or libertarians.]

...viruses give us this map of understanding that there is no distinct me and distinct you. There’s always this organic material that potentially can be transmitting between us, and our fates are linked to one another. … Viruses are continually telling us that the fates of people on the globe are connected to each other. The risk we always have is not the same, but our fates are connected to one another. As we think about climate change and the changes that are going to happen in the world, there are lots of lessons that we’ve had in the past few years. The most powerful to me is that we’re always going to have a connection to one another, whether we like it or not. And the borders that we imagine to be very strong around gender, race, or nationality are fictions. The viruses can cross between them, and they give us a map for learning how to work with one another in an interconnected way.”

Iran

Khamenei’s Dilemma 

Christopher de Bellaigue, October 13, 2022 [The New York Review]

How far will Iran’s supreme leader go to suppress the protests that have rocked the Islamic Republic since mid-September?

The official response to the unrest bears the signature of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, who more than anyone will determine how this will end. His approach to the most serious threat to the Islamic Republic since the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s is heavily informed by what happened the last time an Iranian regime tottered and fell. As a young cleric, Khamenei was a militant opponent of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, spent time in his jails, and was tortured by his police. The hatred he exudes for the Shah is indivisible from his contempt for the tactical errors that the monarchy committed in its final phase and his determination to avoid them.

….What’s particularly hard to ascertain is the porosity of the line that divides the loyalist diehards—the men who have been taught that the protesters are evil-doers on a commission from Satan—and their adversaries. What would it take for the ideologue to give back his privileges and concessions, his monthly dole and fabricated university degree, his license to beat and rape and revile? In the late 1990s and early 2000s the country had a reformist government that offered to be a bridge between the loyalists and their adversaries. With the suppression of the reformists that bridge was burned….

Not that brutality is something the regime wants to be associated with. Over the past few weeks the authorities have constructed elaborate alibis, through coroners, prosecutors, and the official media, to shield themselves from charges of thuggery. In this parallel world Mahsa Amini died from a heart attack, Nika Shakarami fell to her death, and Sarina Esmailzadeh—another sixteen-year-old who didn’t come back from a protest—committed suicide. Where possible the families are dragged before the cameras to corroborate the state’s version, and if no one’s taken in, that’s not the point: the waters are muddied, seeds of doubt sown. That Shakarami’s body was buried in secret and without her family’s knowledge is a lesson from 1978. Much of the revolution’s momentum came from the funerals of people who had been killed in demonstrations, each funeral an excuse for another demonstration, leading to more deaths and more funerals and on and on.

Russia / Ukraine

How Russia Views America 

Philip Pilkington, American Affairs, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2022]

[Review by former NCer Pilkington of Andrei Martyanov’s Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse. ]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 9, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 9, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

The Expected Financial Crash Is Finally Here 

[Moon of Alabama, via Naked Capitalism 10-4-2022]

Today Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism writes about the now Inevitable Financial Crisis….

The second warning comes from 'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini….

The central banks have misdiagnosed the reason for the currently high inflation rates. They were caused not only by too much stimulus provided by governments and the central banks but to a large part by the lack of supplies which is to the consequence of the pandemic and the 'western' sanctions following the war in Ukraine. By increasing interest rates the central banks fought against the wrong enemy. They made things worse….

New Study: Wall Street Banks Are Doubling Down on Risk by Selling Credit Default Swaps on their Risky Derivatives Counterparties 

Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 6, 2022 [Wall Street on Parade]

Last Thursday, while news outlets focused on videos of the devastating impact of Hurricane Ian on the southwest coast of Florida, two researchers at the Office of Financial Research published a breathtaking and almost surreal analysis of how the mega banks on Wall Street are once again doubling down on unprecedented risk with derivatives and threatening the financial stability of the U.S. The report was ignored by mainstream business media.

The Office of Financial Research was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to make sure that Wall Street mega banks could never again ravage the economy and financial system of the United States — as they did in 2008 – by engaging in reckless derivative trades and toxic bets.... 

All Eyes Are on Credit Suisse; But Media Blacked Out Data from the New York Fed Suggest Contagion from Nomura Is Another Threat 

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, October 7, 2022 [Wall Street on Parade]

Nomura Holdings is tiny compared to the mega banks on Wall Street. According to its website, it had just $384 billion in assets as of March 31, 2021. On the same date, JPMorgan Chase had $3.2 trillion in assets. But for reasons that neither the Federal Reserve nor Congress have yet to explain, a unit of Nomura was allowed to borrow trillions of dollars in emergency repo loans from the Fed beginning on September 17, 2019 – months before there was any COVID crisis anywhere in the world. The chart above shows that in the last three months of 2019, Nomura borrowed $3.7 trillion cumulatively under the Fed’s emergency repo loan program, topping the amount borrowed by JPMorgan Chase by $1.11 trillion.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 2, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 2, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

Global power shift as USA and west commit suicide by neoliberalism

The U.S. Is Winning Its War On Europe’s Industries And People 

[Moon of Alabama, via Naked Capitalism 9-27-2022]

The epidemic

“‘Other Places in the Country Didn’t Do This’: How One California Town Survived Covid Better Than the Rest”

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 9-27-2022]

“Even with its world-class technologies, the university’s labs didn’t have equipment with the kind of capacity to test the whole university, let alone the whole community. The machines that could do that — test up to 40,000 samples of human saliva for Covid each week — cost about $450,000 a pop. And they would need two, for backup. The university administration, desperate for a workable plan, agreed to pay for them. And researchers across UC Davis, from the engineering department to the medical school, began to collaborate, searching for ways to solve the enormous logistical challenges. The plant researchers worked to refine the process, using a papaya enzyme to make human spit less viscous and easier to process. A colleague in the engineering department devised a machine to shake the vials, a necessary and laborious step previously done by hand. These scientific innovations — and an anonymous $40 million donation — allowed this college town to do something that few, if any, other communities were able to do during Covid: Starting in the fall of 2020, the university tested its students and staff every week and made free, walk-in testing available throughout the town.” And: “n the end, Davis and the surrounding area experienced a different kind of pandemic than virtually anywhere else in the country. The university itself escaped a wave of outbreaks that swept other campuses like the University of Georgia, the University of Alabama and Ohio State University after they reopened in 2020. Pollock said the plan made so much sense to him when it came together that he expected other universities to do the same. ‘But it turns out,’ he told county supervisors a few months ago, ‘that the other places in the country didn’t do this.'”

”New Infectious Threats Are Coming. The U.S. Probably Won’t Contain Them”

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 9-30-2022]

“If it wasn’t clear enough during the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become obvious during the monkeypox outbreak: The United States, among the richest, most advanced nations in the world, remains wholly unprepared to combat new pathogens. The coronavirus was a sly, unexpected adversary. Monkeypox was a familiar foe, and tests, vaccines and treatments were already at hand. But the response to both threats sputtered and stumbled at every step. The United States spends between 300 to 500 times more on its military defense than on its health systems, and yet “no war has killed a million Americans,” noted Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who led the C.D.C. under former President Barack Obama.”