Author: Tony Wikrent Page 27 of 48

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Your health is in your hands? US CDC COVID-19 mask guidance reveals the moral foundations of public health 

[The Lancet, via Naked Capitalism 5-8-2022]

TSA Covid Infections Have Jumped 50% Since The Mask Mandate Was Lifted 

[Forbes, via Naked Capitalism 5-9-2022]

Public Health Theory and Practice in the Constitutional Design (pdf)
Lawrence O. Gostin [11 Health Matrix: The Journal of Law—Medicine, 265 (2001)]

This article views public health through the lens of constitutional law by exploring government duty and authority, the division of powers under our federal system, and the limits on government power. Part I examines constitutional duties, if any, imposed on government. It observes that the Supreme Court sees the Constitution in negative, or defensive, terms and argues that this provides a sterile, uninspiring vision of government obligation. Part II examines governmental powers under the Constitution. While the Court sees few affirmative obligations, it does acknowledge a broad governmental authority to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the population. This Part reviews the emergence of “new federalism” in Supreme Court jurisprudence, altering the power between the federal government and the states. In particular, it inquires whether the Rehnquist Court, by restricting the scope of national authority, is seriously thwarting public health policy and practice.

 

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Despite the Despair, It Was Great Seeing You

Mark Blyth, May 7, 2022 [Youtube]

At 28:29: It’s absolutely clear that this is not a monetary phenomenon… There’s a thing called the Milton dictum: inflation is always… a monetary phenomena and it’s this case is proving that it’s really not, it’s simply the fracturing of global supply chains.

That’s what’s driving all this, and you could say the pandemic spending, but then you’ve got to say yeah but the pandemic spending wasn’t actually a stimulus it was income replacement because the economy had shut down… The last of those checks went out 12 months ago and were spent nine months ago…that’s not powering the the price of goods anymore….

It’s not the fact that the Fed’s spending all this money because you don’t spend central bank money, you spend money that you get issued through the commercial banking sector. The banking sector’s making money hand over fist because everybody’s buying a bunch of stuff but as inflation goes up that will slow down. So it’s really not clear to me that, you know, let’s raise interest rates, is going to actually do anything about the fact that you’ve got 500 ships parked off of Shanghai and you can’t get any stuff because the city’s in a lockdown.

These things seem to be totally disconnected but as usual we’ve managed to whip ourselves up into a narrative whereby, well it’s inflation, so it must be about money; the Fed must do something and they probably spent too much — look at all that pandemic money. Just ignore the facts of the supply chain stuff you know or mention it but then immediately you know pivot towards a monetary explanation for no reason….

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WP 01 Pavlina R. Tcherneva Three Lessons from Government Spending and the Post-Pandemic Recovery 

Pavlina R. Tcherneva [EDI Resources Database, via Mike Norman Economics 5-9-2022]

The central lesson of the COVID-19 fiscal response is that money is not scarce. Without delay, governments around the world appropriated budgets that dwarfed any other postwar crisis policy. In 2020, Japan passed a stimulus package equal to 54.8 percent of GDP, while in the U.S., it was equivalent to 26.9 percent and in Canada to 20.1 percent. Italy, France, and Germany spent 10.1, 10.4, and 10.7 percent of GDP, respectively (Dziedzicki et al. 2021).…

 

How There’s More to Economics Than the Science of Scarcity 

Nicholas Gruen [Evonomics, via Mike Norman Economics 5-8-2022]

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by Tony Wikrent

Tactics and techniques

“How the White Overalls Beat the Cops with Tactics of Radical Defense”

[Gentleman Bandit, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 5-5-2022]

From 2020, still germane. “You might have heard about The Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) protesting hard in France for the past few years. There was a comparable movement in the late 90s and early 2000s, which focused on radical group tactics of defense in order to successfully stand up to riot police and other forms of crowd control. That is to say that, unlike the Yellow Vests who actively seek out fistfights and other physical battles with the cops; [the “White Overalls” (Tute Bianche) dreamed up an innovative and highly effective set of tactics to protect themselves from harm so that they could go where they wanted (such as smashing through the outer fence at the G8 Summit in Genoa) and stay there…. Put the whole thing together, and it looks something like this. One or more front lines set up with inner tubes and/or shields, front section backed up by mobile skirmishers, with additional shields and large crowds of people who either perform their own specialized roles or just push.” • With many photographs.

Strategic Political Economy

How London became the dirty money capital of the world | FT Film 

[YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 5-3-2022]

The Dollar System in a Multi-Polar World

James K. Galbraith [Brave New World, via Mike Norman Economics 5-5-2022]

The multipolar financial world is here. The United States can survive it – but only with major political and economic changes at home. It’s time to start thinking about what those need to be.…

But the Marshall-Lerner conditions did not hold, and trade balances did not return to equality of exports and imports. Instead, the US issued Treasury bonds, while Japan and Germany accumulated financial assets. And in the Third World, ex China and India, the balance depended largely on the presence or absence of oil. Demand for oil, it turned out, is notably invariant to price. So as prices went up, for producers it was the best of times. And so long as oil importers wished to grow, they were obliged to cover the bill with borrowings from commercial banks, on terms that the bankers controlled, and at rates governed in the final analysis by the policy of the Federal Reserve.

In this way the abolition of the Bretton Woods system set in motion the final defeat of New Deal banking law and of balanced international financial governance, in the end restoring the financiers to the center of American and world economic power. For forty years that genie had been bottled up, internally by regulation, deposit insurance, and the Glass-Steagall Act, so that in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s banks were largely adjuncts to the large industrial corporations and under the fairly-effective discipline of the state. There were, accordingly, no financial crises from 1934 to 1974, when Franklin National Bank failed, followed in 1975 by the “fiscal crisis” – really a bankers’ crisis – of the City of New York. On the international side, capital controls and the IMF had provided (in principle) a similar damper. After 1971 and especially 1973, the currency casinos were open again.

Roe v. Wade — Liberalism, conservatism and the lack of discussion of civic republicanism

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 5-3-2022]

https://twitter.com/emilylhauser/status/1521298175675576320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1521298175675576320%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2022%2F05%2F200pm-water-cooler-5-03-2022.html

The Irrational, Misguided Discourse Surrounding Supreme Court Controversies Such as Roe v. Wade

Glenn Greenwald [via Naked Capitalism 5-4-2022]

Alito’s decision, if it becomes the Court’s ruling, would not itself ban abortions. It would instead lift the judicial prohibition on the ability of states to enact laws restricting or banning abortions. In other words, it would take this highly controversial question of abortion and remove it from the Court’s purview and restore it to federal and state legislatures to decide it. One cannot defend Roe by invoking the values of democracy or majoritarian will. Roe was the classic case of a Supreme Court ruling that denied the right of majorities to decide what laws should govern their lives and their society.

One can defend Roe only by explicitly defending anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic values: namely, that the abortion question should be decided by a panel of unelected judges, not by the people or their elected representatives.

TW: I’m not very surprised that Greenwald perhaps does more damage than good by not fully understanding and / or explaining the issue. Just reading Greenwald, one can be forgiven to think that the entire USA scheme of government ought be discarded, because ”The Founders wanted to establish a democracy that empowered majorities of citizens to choose their leaders, but also feared that majorities would be inclined to coalesce around unjust laws that would deprive basic rights, and thus sought to impose limits on the power of majorities as well.” And the discomfort becomes especially intense when Greenwald concludes that “If you want to rant about the supremacy and sanctity of democracy and the evils of “unelected judges,” then you will necessarily end up on the side of Justice Alito and the other four justices who appear ready to overrule Roe.”

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

What is propelling the U.S. into increasing international military aggression?
John Ross [MR Online, via The Big Picture 4-24-2022]

Reduced to the most essential facts, the key forces that have driven this escalating U.S. policy of military aggression, which has now lasted over more than two decades, are clear. It is that the U.S. economy has permanently lost its overwhelming weight in world production, but that at the same time the U.S. still retains its preponderance in military power and spending. This, therefore, creates a very dangerous period for humanity during which the U.S. may attempt to compensate for its relative economic failure by use of military force.…

Summarising the trends above, the U.S. lead in productivity, technology and company size means that its economy overall is still stronger than China’s, but the gap between the U.S. and China is far narrower than the gap between the U.S. and the USSR. Furthermore, whatever is the exact judgement on the relative bilateral strengths of the U.S. and Chinese economies, it clear that the U.S. has already lost its global productive economic predominance. By 2021, in PPPs, the U.S. accounted for only 16% of the world economy—that is 84% of the world economy is outside the U.S. Purely economically the global era of multipolarity, instead of unipolar domination by the U.S., is not ahead it has already arrived….

The aim of the U.S. in Ukraine is precisely to attempt to bring about a fundamental change in policy and government in Russia so that a government is installed which no longer defends Russia’s national interests, which is hostile to China, and is subordinate to the U.S. If that were achieved then not only would China faced a greatly increased military threat from the U.S. but China’s enormously long northern border with Russia would become a strategic threat to China. China would be surrounded from the north.

But the conclusion which he U.S. policy derives from this, as will be analysed, is that it must therefore try to use military and political means to prevent this economic multipolarity from expressing itself.

2022 Strategic Investment Conference: Goodbye Normal

[The Big Picture 4-27-2022]

The highest inflation in 40 years, war in Europe, and economic shock waves….

Featuring an exclusive interview with the undead ghoul Henry Kissinger.

Russia / Ukraine

Why Europe cannot understand Russia 

Pepe Escoba [The Cradle, via Mike Norman Economics 4-30-2022]

Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret 

[Foreign Policy in Focus, via Naked Capitalism 4-25-2022]

From 2014, still germane.

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Were The Stimulus Checks A Mistake? 

[FiveThirtyEight, via The Big Picture 4-29-2022]

Lawmakers passed a $2.2-trillion stimulus package in March 2020 (followed by two more in 2020 + 2021). In total, it added up to one of the most generous fiscal responses to the virus globally. As U.S. prices continue to rise by rates not seen in decades, it’s become clear that the stimulus came at a significant, unintended cost: inflation.

Opinion: There’s a big hole in the Fed’s theory of inflation—incomes are falling at a record 10.9% rate 

Rex Nutting [Market Watch, via The Big Picture 4-29-2022]

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

The Godless Empire: Evil Cannot Create Anything New, Only Corrupt What Good Created

[The Reading Junkie, via Mike Norman Economics 4-18-2022]

Analysts in Washington study a culture and find its most primal, barbaric roots, and create a cartoonish caricature of it. With that caricature as a false god, that whole society is turned into a death cult, the perfect, self-destructing weapon against Washington’s rivals. The suicidal nature of Washington’s pawns is deliberate. After Russia is destroyed, there would be no use for a Ukraine anymore, so it is actually better for Ukraine to be destroyed in the process too…. The West loves “blood harvests” and projects that idea onto other cultures like Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine, but it originated on our own shores. Look at modern movies and shows like 300 and Vikings. Why do our filmmakers dream so much of mass killings, rapes, and blood gods? Why do they love depicting barbarians raping and massacring weak and pathetic Christians? It’s weird.

TW: This is why it is a tragedy that contemporary scholars of civic republicanism such as Pettit sand Rawls are misleading people by defining civic republicanism as “freedom from domination.” What makes civic republicanism a superior philosophy of political economy and governance is its insistence on promoting the human capacity to “do good,” by striving toward perfection.

Samuel Scolnicov, “An Image of Perfection: The Good and the Rational in Plato’s Material Universe” (Revue de Philosophie Ancienne, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1992)

Matt J. Rossano, Seeking Perfection: A Dialogue About the Mind, the Soul, and What it Means to be Human (Routledge, 2015)

This idea is, of course, reflected in the Preamble of the USA Constitution (“a more perfect union”) , but the philosophical importance of its inclusion is today all but forgotten. 

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 4-20-2022]

NEW: GOP Rep Mo Brooks says prime committee chairmanships cost a minimum of $1 million and are paid by special interest groups as "a quid pro quo" for favored legislation#ALsen pic.twitter.com/SswSObhpf7

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) April 15, 2022

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The Taliban Were Afghanistan’s Real Modernizers 

[Palladium, via Naked Capitalism 4-22-2022]

Carter Malkasian’s The American War in Afghanistan: A History is the first history to adequately capture this story. Malkasian deployed as a civilian officer in Kunar and Helmand provinces in the aughts, and then returned to Afghanistan as an advisor to General Joseph Dunford in 2013, and stayed at Dunford’s side through his tenure on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Malkasian speaks Pashto fluently, traveled widely across Afghanistan conducting interviews, and participated in the Trump era negotiations with the Taliban.

Malkasian’s account of American error builds on these personal experiences. His catalog of American mistakes and miscalculations is long….

Most accounts of the conflict are one-sided portrayals of the American experience in Afghanistan. Malkasian’s fluency in Pashto allows The American War in Afghanistan to escape the limitations of the genre. Entire chapters are built on Afghan sources that other histories of the war ignore. From their perspective, the U.S. war in Afghanistan was not really American at all. Over the last two decades, it was Afghans, not Americans, who have done the majority of the killing, bleeding, and dying. The war in Afghanistan was first and foremost a civil war. Any account of the Taliban’s victory must start with what each side of this civil war was fighting for.

Mexico nationalises lithium in populist president’s push to extend state control 

[FT, via Naked Capitalism 4-212-2022]

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

“The policy of the USA has always been to prevent Germany and Russia from cooperating more closely” 

[Swiss Standpoint, via Naked Capitalism 4-12-2022]

We forget that Crimea was independent, even before Ukraine became independent. In January 1991, while the Soviet Union still existed, Crimea held a referendum to be managed from Moscow and not from Kiev. It thus became an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Ukraine did not get its own independence referendum until six months later in August 1991. At that point, Crimea did not consider itself a part of Ukraine. But Ukraine did not accept this. Between 1991 and 2014, it was a constant struggle between the two entities. Crimea had its own constitution with its own authorities. In 1995, encouraged by the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine overthrew the Crimean government with special forces and abrogated its constitution. But this is never mentioned, as it would shed a completely different light on the current development.

Liberalism, conservatism and the lack of discussion of civic republicanism

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid It’s not just a phase.

[The Atlantic, via The Big Picture 4-16-2022]

The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past….

Second, the dart guns of social media give more power and voice to the political extremes while reducing the power and voice of the moderate majority. The “Hidden Tribes” study, by the pro-democracy group More in Common, surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018 and identified seven groups that shared beliefs and behaviors. The one furthest to the right, known as the “devoted conservatives,” comprised 6 percent of the U.S. population. The group furthest to the left, the “progressive activists,” comprised 8 percent of the population. The progressive activists were by far the most prolific group on social media: 70 percent had shared political content over the previous year. The devoted conservatives followed, at 56 percent.

These two extreme groups are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the seven groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society….

It was just this kind of twitchy and explosive spread of anger that James Madison had tried to protect us from as he was drafting the U.S. Constitution. The Framers of the Constitution were excellent social psychologists. They knew that democracy had an Achilles’ heel because it depended on the collective judgment of the people, and democratic communities are subject to “the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions.” The key to designing a sustainable republic, therefore, was to build in mechanisms to slow things down, cool passions, require compromise, and give leaders some insulation from the mania of the moment while still holding them accountable to the people periodically, on Election Day.

Russia / Ukraine

The Economics of the Russian Victory
Sergey Glazyev, March 18, 2022 [StalkerZone

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Jerks

Michael Brenner [Consortium News, via Naked Capitalism 4-9-2022].

…it is manifestly obvious that our society is not capable of conducting an honest, logical, reasonably informed discourse on matters of consequence. Instead, we experience fantasy, fabrication, fatuousness and fulmination.  At a more personal level, this impression is reinforced by messages from persons whom I’ve known and respected telling me that I’m in the pay of Russian President Vladimir Putin, “mad,” “too clever by half,”

…Third, it is self-evident that our national leaders, elected or appointed, are equally incapable of sober deliberation, of intellectual honesty (with themselves as well as us), of elementary logic, even of acknowledging factual realities. Consequently, the resulting behavior defies rational analysis.

NATO to target China – Stoltenberg 

[RT, via Naked Capitalism 4-6-2022]

The West is losing its mind:

NATO plans to deepen its cooperation with partners in Asia as a response to a rising “security challenge” coming from China, which refuses to condemn Russia’s ongoing military operation in Ukraine, the US-led bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg revealed during a press conference on Tuesday.

Bill Clinton: “I Tried to Put Russia on Another Path”

Bill Clinton [[The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 4-8-2022]

“I did everything I could to help Russia make the right choice and become a great 21st-century democracy.”

Comments were savagely on target:

Darthbobber April 8, 2022 at 4:11 pm

Clinton makes it all the way through that Russia screed without so much as mentioning the October ’93 Russian constitutional crisis, the shelling of parliament, suppression of the opposition press, end of the independence of the high court. Or of our considerable efforts at reelecting Yeltsin under-err–less than democratic conditions.

Sacrificing the fledgeling democracy of the Gorbachev constitution on the altar of shock therapy was pretty decisive in terms of Russia’s evolution since, also in terms of creating the oligarchs in the first place. Odd how none of this is worth even a passing mention. Priorities, I guess.

40 Years of the Reagan Revolution’s Libertarian Experiment Have Brought Us Crisis & Chaos

[Hartmann Report, via The Big Picture 4-3-2022]

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Nearly 1 in 3 food companies forced to reduce or shutdown production 

[Brussels Times, via Naked Capitalism 4-2-2022]

Yves Smith added: “From IM Doc, independent of above story, by e-mail:”

2 interesting patient conversations this week…The other was the retired CEO of one of our big Ag corps. He told me in no uncertain terms to begin to do everything I could to prepare. All kinds of problems are brewing with the nation’s food supplies and supply chains and the real pain will not start until later this summer or fall – but it is going to be really ugly. He rates the likelihood to be somewhere between “epic and biblical”

Child poverty spiked by 41 percent in January after Biden benefit program expired, study finds 

[Washington Post, via Naked Capitalism 3-29-2022]

‘Their Inflation Strategy Is Working’: Corporate Profits Soared to Record High in 2021

Jake Johnson [Common Dreams, via Naked Capitalism 3-31-2022]

The US Empire’s Ultimate Target Is Not Russia But China 

Caitlin Johnstone [via Mike Norman Economics 3-31-2022]

Ukraine / Russia

Biden Confirms Why the US Needed This War 

[Consortium News, via Naked Capitalism 3-28-2022]

The U.S. got its war in Ukraine. Without it, Washington could not attempt to destroy Russia’s economy, orchestrate worldwide condemnation and lead an insurgency to bleed Russia, all part of an attempt to bring down its government. Joe Biden has now left no doubt that it’s true.

The president of the United States has confirmed what Consortium News and others have been reporting since the beginnings of Russsiagate in 2016, that the ultimate U.S. aim is to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said on Saturday at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The White House and the State Dept. have been scrambling to explain away Biden’s remark.

Just where is Joe Biden going to find gas for the EU?

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 3-28-2022]

A senior U.S. official clarified that the promise of 15 bcm this year is actually a commitment to try and help convince companies in Asia or elsewhere that were expecting cargoes this coming winter to agree to send them to Europe instead. That would be a repeat of what happened this past winter, the official said.”

Global commodity shifts in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine 

[Splash 247, via Naked Capitalism 3-28-2022]

Shifting global commodity patterns in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are proving seismic.
On Friday, the US agreed to attempt to deliver an additional 10m tonnes of LNG to Europe in 2022, equivalent to around 14% of total US LNG exports last yea,r as Europe weans itself off its dependence on Russia, the world’s largest energy producer. In the longer term, the US has agreed to supply a further 35m tonnes of LNG to Europe per year out to 2030, should the additional LNG consumption remain consistent with existing European decarbonisation plans.

Russian Oil Is Too Cheap To Resist For China And India 

[OilPrice, via Naked Capitalism 4-2-2022]

Russia’s Gazprom exits German business amid crisis in energy ties 

Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 4-2-2022]

Follows a raid on Gazprom offices in Germany.

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

In a World on Fire, Stop Burning Things

Bill McKibben [New Yorker, via The Big Picture 3-26-2022]

The truth is new and counterintuitive: we have the technology necessary to rapidly ditch fossil fuels….

…the era of large-scale combustion has to come to a rapid close. If we understand that as the goal, we might be able to keep score, and be able to finally get somewhere. Last Tuesday, President Biden banned the importation of Russian oil. This year, we may need to compensate for that with American hydrocarbons, but, as a senior Administration official put it,“the only way to eliminate Putin’s and every other producing country’s ability to use oil as an economic weapon is to reduce our dependency on oil.” As we are one of the largest oil-and-gas producers in the world, that is a remarkable statement. It’s a call for an end of fire.

“Beauty and wonder of science boosts researchers’ well-being”

[Nature, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 3-21-2022]

“Scientists’ ability to experience wonder, awe and beauty in their work is associated with higher levels of job satisfaction and better mental health, finds an international survey of researchers. Brandon Vaidyanathan, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC, and his colleagues collected responses from more than 3,000 scientists — mainly biologists and physicists — in India, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. They asked participants about their job satisfaction and workplace culture, their experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of aesthetics in science. The answers revealed that, far from the caricature of scientists as exclusively rational and logical beings, “this beauty stuff is really important”, Vaidyanathan says. “It shapes the practice of science and is associated with all kinds of well-being outcomes.’”

Fed headed for crack up?

Mike Norman [Mike Norman Economics 3-26-2022]

Mike doing some projections this week on by how much or perhaps how fast the Fed can increase its policy rates while avoiding insolvency, ie a situation where their current interest income would be exceeded by their current interest payable…

You can see here current UST yields are less than the Fed’s overnight rates (inverted) out to 8 weeks … no bueno…

To be safe they may want to somehow pivot from the current perhaps implied policy of an acceleration in the increase in their policy rates to a policy of acceleration in their rate of asset/liability reduction… keep an eye out for this pivot…

(the not-so-hidden agenda. reassertion of unquestioned American primacy in the world. Not that this is anything new.)

Starving a People, Committing a Genocide: Biden’s Sanctions on Afghanistan

[Counterpunch, via Naked Capitalism 3-20-2022]

Developing Countries Strained by Rich-World Monetary Tightening

[The American Prospect, March 25, 2022]

A new report shows how rising commodity prices, on top of macroeconomic tightening by the Fed, could spark riots in low- and middle-income countries.

The epidemic

Italian study shows ventilation can cut school COVID cases by 82%

[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 3-23-2022]

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