Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Is breathtaking. Brzezinski was Carter’s National Security Adviser. In 1997 he wrote, not long after the fall of USSR, that:
Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition, united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. . . . Averting this contingency . . . will require a display of US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.” — Zbigniew Brzezinski
It’s sort of hard to do commentary on this, because of the jaw dropping, head-banging stupidity of it all.
I don’t like US foreign policy after WWII thru the late 60s, but it wasn’t brain-dead. Evil, often, but not stunningly stupid. Nixon was a terrible person, but his “opening of China” was smart and policy after him thru to Bush the Elder was, while not good, or smart, was at least not always stupid.
But since then American policy has been brain-dead. Making Russia into an enemy. Making Iran into an enemy. Shipping America’s industry to China so that a few oligarchs could get richer for maybe two generations. None of this was necessary, for decades polls in Iran showed that Iranians had positive views of America. Russia was so enamored of the West that Putin, in his early years, begged to be let in.
But the US had greed and grudges. The Russkies were always bad and the Iranians had humiliated America, so there could never truly be cooperation and peace and trade which was designed to benefit both side.
And so America lost its global hegemony, precisely by doing what it was repeatedly warned not to do: unite the greatest Asian powers against it.
American and Western elites in general aren’t suited to run lemonade stand, let alone countries or an Empire.
Imbeciles, specialized only in self-promotion and accumulated money which will be worth one-tenth what it used to be when the Empire collapses.
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From the start of the conflict I have been most concerned, not with the bombing, as bad as it is (6x as much as the US dropped on Iraq during the last war in postage-stamp sized open-air prison) but by the cut-off of food and water. Israeli protesters have been blocking much of what little humanitarian aid is sent, the main aid agency has been defunded by the largest donor countries, most Gazans are starving and most of what little water they have is dirty.
The report finds at least 90 per cent of children under 5 are affected by one or more infectious disease. Seventy per cent had diarrhoea in the past two weeks, a 23-fold increase compared with the 2022 baseline.
We don’t tend to take diarrhoea seriously, because we have medicine and enough water and we aren’t malnourished and underweight to start with, but historically diarrhoea is a mass killer. Without hospital care (and there is almost none left in Gaza), water or medicine, Gazans, and especially children, are going to start dropping like flies.
I am also seeing that due to malnutrition new mothers can’t breast feed, and there isn’t much if any formula meaning death of newborn babies will be astronomical.
Moving on to the military situation: the Israeli military remains unable to destroy Hamas, but destroying Hamas has never been the goal: the goal is ethnic cleansing.
Egypt is building camps in the desert near Gaza. Egypt has, in the past, refused to allow ethnic cleansing into their country, on the grounds it would be destabilizing and they can’t afford it (and a pretense of caring about ethnic cleansing, which is true of the population but not the ruling caste), however it appears a deal between Israel, the US and Egypt may have been cut.
If this is so, Israel will win the war unless Hezbollah and Syria attack before the ethnic cleansing. Remember, the real Israeli goal is, and always has been, to get rid of the original occupants of Palestine by any means possible. Once the Gazans are pushed out, the Palestinians in the West Bank, who don’t even have a Hamas, will be dealt with: indeed settler, police and military violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and seizure and bulldozing of homes is way up.
There are multiple players here, but unless the war expands or I’m wrong about Egypt, which I could be, I don’t see how this doesn’t end in an Israeli “victory”.
They learned well what the Nazis taught.
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Rudy Haverstein noticed this one. It used to be that the top 1% wealth exceeded the wealth of the 50-90th percent (the middle class) about ten years ago. Here’s that old chart:
Then some statistical changes were made:
“The Fed attributes the changes to “Distributional Financial Accounts models updated for the 2023Q3 release.” I’ll note that – as with CPI – I’ve never seen data revisions that made the situation look worse, always better. ”
Now the top 1% only recently surpassed the middle class:
I bring this up because too many people believe that economic stats aren’t fiddled. They’re heavily, heavily fiddled. I consider CPI essentially worthless.
This has turned into a massive debate: most Americans think the economy sucks, but if you look at economic stats Biden is the greatest economic president since FDR. But that’s based on CPI being what the BLS says it is. And the CPI, after decades of manipulation, is garbage.
A Federal Reserve study on household finances found that Americans outside the wealthiest quintile have depleted the extra savings generated early in the pandemic and now have less cash on hand than they did when the pandemic began.
If manipulating a statistic is useful to those in power, it is manipulated. When I first started blogging, I used to cover Bureau of Labour Statistic releases every month. I had spreadsheets full of stats. Now I don’t, because Garbage In, Garbage Out. (GIGO.) In truth, even back in the early 2000s the stats were terrible, but it took me some time to figure out how divorced they were from reality, and that divorce has widened since.
Instead I try and look at real numbers: reported retail prices and wholesale prices and actual rents and so on. There’s some unavoidable use of official statistics, but they’re only really useful comparatively, and even then one has to be careful, due to constant revisions, including backwards revisions.
One recent stat is that Russia has been growing faster than the G7. Is this true? Well, I think so, for a variety of reasons, but it’s only a probability. China definitely is, because I see vastly expanding industries all over the place, enough to make up for the deliberately engineered real-estate collapse.
Don’t believe internal numbers. Cross check your personal experience with the experience of other people and believe that. Even if you get it wrong, in a sense you’ll get it right: are prices much higher for you and those you know than they were pre-pandemic, or not? Has your income and those you know risen faster than those prices?
That’s your personal economy.
I have often thought that if I were suddenly in charge of any major country, practically the first thing I’d do would be to form my own corp of auditors, reporting only to me, and the first thing they’d do is savagely audit the statistical agencies, followed by mass firings and re-formation.
Because if your statistics are bullshit, it means you can’t really know what’s happening. And if you don’t know that, well, you can’t make good decisions.
Under our current regime that isn’t a problem: they don’t want to make good decisions, they just want statistical support for pre-determined neo-liberal decisions.
And that’s why they’ve spent 50 years running the economies off the West into the ground.
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Here’s the thing about third parties: sometimes they get elected. In first-past-the-post duopolies it’s uncommon, but it happens.
Recently I wrote that voting for the lesser evil doesn’t work.
Most of the time, neither does voting for third parties. But sometimes it does. The NDP (Canada’s most left wing party) had never formed a government in Alberta, then suddenly in 2015 they defied all the polling and won. For most of the 19th century Britain alternated between Liberals and Conservatives, then suddenly in 1924, Labour won—and this is back when Labour actually was fairly radical. The Liberal still exist (as the Liberal-Democrats), but they haven’t formed a government since.
There come times when people are upset with the status quo and truly want to change it. FDR is one, Reagan is another. In both those cases, the change was channeled thru an existing party.
If you can get control of an existing party, that’s what you should do. FDR, once elected, sidelines his Democratic enemies and remade the party in his image.
But, often you can’t, and in such times controlling a third party allows you a chance for the lightning strike; the moment everything changes. If the mainstream parties won’t accommodate it, you can.
The key here is to keep the part aligned with your ideology. A third party which changes its ideology too much to “win’ is not a good third part. A third party’s job is to catch the wave of discontent, ride it to power and displace one of the previous major parties. It is up to them to make the case that they are the “real change” and that the big two aren’t (or big however in proportional states.)
The problem with this, for individuals, is that it’s a long game. Your entire life could pass before the lightning strike. But if you manage it, you can change everything, as indeed Labour did, when Atlee came to power at the end of World War II.
The other option is to create and sustain a faction in one of the main parties. If you can do that, great. But right now, every attempt to do so in the Democratic party has failed. On the other hand, it has been done repeatedly in the Republican party, so if you’re right wing, forget third parties: take over the Republicans or form a faction and wait your chance to do so.
If, on the other hand, you’re left wing, do the third party thing. Keep it on the ballots in every state and wait and work and pray for the lightning strike.
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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 18, 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Who will guard the guardians?
Public, via Naked Capitalism 02-15-2024]
“Former CIA Director Gina Haspel blocked the release of ‘binder’ with evidence that may identify her role in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.”
CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag [via Naked Capitalism 02-14-2024]
[TW: I want to put forward the observation that given Trump’s close association with Roy Cohn, and business dealings with the Russian mafia, it would have been malpractice for USA intelligence agencies NOT to make such requests. The real problem with this is that there is no longer any reason to believe the the CIA, FBI, NSA and other intelligence agencies actually serve the General Welfare of the citizens of USA.
Or to put it another way, how would we want an intelligence agency to have dealt with Aaron Burr when Burr was running for president? Or how about dealing with Secretary of War Jefferson Davis in the 1850s as the sectional crisis worsened? What do we want an intelligence agency to do when one such appears headed for the highest office in the land? Or actually wins it?
There are many people who have a knee jerk reaction against intelligence agencies. Are we to abolish any and all intelligence agencies? I have no doubt that there are many people who immediately answer with an emphatic “yes!” I would ask them to take the time to read James Fenimore Cooper’s The Bravo/ It is Cooper’s “novel” of how the secret service of Venice blackmails a poor man into being an assassin. At the very least, read Cooper’s Introduction; there is nothing fictional there at all. Cooper explains that he wrote the novel to explore the process of cultivating evil in the dark recesses of government power, and how that contrasts to the process of acculturation in civic values that is supposed to occur in a real republic.
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
According to SEMI’s market research group, China isn’t slowing down. SEMI is forecasting China’s capacity to keep growing at a significant rate over the next few years. For 300mm, SEMI expects China to have 29% of the worldwide capacity in 2026, increasing from 21% in 2022 (Figure 2). The 200mm capacity is expected to grow from 16% to 24%. And foundry capacity is expected to reach 42% in 2026 up from 27% in 2022, outpacing the Taiwan foundry capacity expansions.
China has its goal set on being more chip-independent and spending less than $300 billion a year on importing semiconductors. To accomplish these goals, they are spending a lot of money on fabs and equipment, and in some cases forming JVs to get the right chips for their industries. So, will the European and US CHIPS Acts help to increase Europe’s and the US’s capacity? A little, but as Peter Wennink recently commented, the EU chip goal is unrealistic. I’ll add in as is the CHIPS Act in the US. China has a significant head start and it will take significant investment by the EU and US to catch up, and it is unlikely politicians and shareholders will continue to fund the exercise to reach the desired goal of 20%. (my bold)
The chart:
The bad news for equipment companies outside of China is that due to sanctions against foreign companies selling certain types of equipment, as well as China trying to create an independent chip market, Chinese semiconductor equipment companies are seeing above-market growth. Naura Technology, AMEC, and ACM Research at mid-year of 2023 are seeing 68%, 27%, and 47% growth respectively over 2022. Most of this is driven by the China market.
The Chinese, pre-sanctions, were not pushing indigenous chip capacity. Chinese companies preferred American, Taiwanese and US chips, seeing them as more reliable than domestic alternatives.
A chip act might have made sense IF the US was genuinely going to re-shore production, far beyond chips or IF it was going to go to war within the next two to three years.
As it is, all it will accomplish in the end is losing the Western absolute advantage in chips and transferring the market leading position to China.
Which brings us to this beautiful, semi-related bit of news:
This is great news. Daleep has already helped this Administration navigate some tough challenges, and there’s no kinder or more capable colleague. https://t.co/6OiywjPuA9
— Bharat Ramamurti (@BharatRamamurti) February 16, 2024
The effect of anti-Russia sanctions was to make Russia into the world’s fifth largest economy while massively ramping up their weapons production and overall growth rate. Germany has slipped to sixth and Russia is now a firm Chinese ally. It is true that America is making more money by supplying Europe with expensive fossil fuels, but by any rational assessment, anti-Russia sanctions strengthened America’s self-declared enemies, and weakened its allies.
In other words, the policy that Daleep was the architect of was a disaster. Yet he is lauded as capable rather than as a complete fuckup. To be fair, I suppose, he was undoubtedly following orders, but he owns the orders he follows unless he objected to them and predicted their failure.
All of this applies, times ten, to anyone involved in the anti-China sanctions, which have backfired catastrophically.
America, land of the highly paid incompetent fuck up.
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