- Macron Heralds The End Of The Union
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
The concept of the EU might have worked, but still only might have, if a neverending economic boom could have been manufactured to guide it on its way. But there was never going to be such a boom. Or perhaps if the spoils that were available in boom times and bust had been spread out among nations rich and poor and citizens rich and poor a little more equally, that concept might still have carried the days.
Then again, its demise was obvious from well before the Union was ever signed into existence, in the philosophies, deliberations and meetings that paved its way in the era after a second world war in two score years fought largely on the European continent.
In hindsight, it is hard to comprehend how it’s possible that those who met and deliberated to found the Union, in and of itself a beneficial task at least on the surface in the wake of the blood of so many millions shed, were not wiser, smarter, less greedy, less driven by sociopath design and methods. It was never the goal that missed its own target or went awry, it was the execution.
Still, no matter how much we may dream, how much some of the well-meaning ‘founding fathers’ of the Union may have dreamt, without that everlasting economic boom it never stood a chance. The Union was only ever going to be tolerated, accepted, embraced by its citizens if they could feel and see tangible benefits in their daily lives of surrendering parts of their own decision making powers, and the sovereignty of their nations.
There are 28 countries in the Union at this point, and one of them is already preparing to leave. There are 28 different cultures too, and almost as many languages. It was always going to be an uphill struggle, a hill far too steep for mere greed to master and conquer. History soaked Europe in far too much diversity through the ages for that. To unify all the thousands of years of beauty and darkness, of creativity and annihilation, of love and hatred, passed on through the generations, a lot more than a naked and bland lust for wealth, power and shiny objects was needed.
And sure, maybe it just happened on the way, in the moments when everyone was making new friends and not watching their backs for a moment. But they all still should have seen it coming, because of those same thousands of years that culminated in where they found themselves. The European Union is like a wedding and marriage without a prenup, where partners are too afraid to offend each other to do what would make them not regret the ceremony later.
Today, there are far too few of the 28 EU countries that have been lifted out of their poverty and other conditions that made them want to join the Union. And within many of the countries, there are way too many people who are, and feel, left behind. While Brussels has become a bastion of power that none of the disadvantaged feel they can properly address with their grievances.
The main fault of the EU is that the biggest party at the table always in the end, when things get serious, gets its way. The 80 million or so people of Germany de facto rule the 500 million of the Union, or you know, the three handfuls that rule Germany. No important decision can or will ever be taken that Berlin does not agree with. Angela Merkel has been the CEO of Europe Inc. since November 22 2005, gathering more power as time went by. That was never going to work unless she made everyone richer. Ask the Greeks about that one.
Merkel was the leader of both Germany and of Europe, and when things got precarious, she chose to let German interests prevail above Italian or Greek ones. That’s the fundamental flaw and failure of the Union in a nutshell. All other things, the Greek crisis, Salvini, Macron, Brexit, are mere consequences of that flaw. In absence of a forever economic boom, there is nothing left to fall back on.
Traditional right/left parties have been destroyed all across Europe in recent national elections. And it’s those traditional parties that still largely hold power in Brussels. As much as anyone except Germany and perhaps the European Commission hold any power at all. The shifts that happened in the political spectrum of many countries is not yet reflected in the European Parliament. But there are European elections in less than 6 months, May 23-26 2019.
About a quarter of the votes in the last such election, in 2014, went to euroskeptic parties. It’s not a terrible stretch of the imagination to presume that they’ll get half of the votes this time. Then we’ll have half or more of representatives speaking for people who don’t have faith in what they represent.
And on the other hand you have the Brussels elite, who continue to propagate the notion that Europe’s problems can best, nay only, be solved with more Europe. Of that elite Emmanuel Macron is the most recent, and arguable most enthusiastic from the get-go, high priest. Which can’t be seen apart from his domestic nose-diving approval rating, and most certainly not from the yellow vest protests and riots.
Macron won his presidency last year solely because he ran against Marine Le Pen in the second round of the elections, and a vast majority on the French will never vote for her; they’ll literally vote for anyone else instead. In the first round, when it wasn’t one on one, Macron got less than 25% of the votes. And now France wants him to leave. That is the essence of the protests. His presidency appears already over.
Among the 28 EU countries, the UK is a very clear euroskeptic example. It’s supposed to leave on March 2019, but that’s by no means a given. Then there’s Italy, where the last election put a strongly euroskeptic government in charge. There are the four Visegrad countries, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia. No love lost for Brussels there. In Belgium yesterday, PM Michel’s government ally New Flemish Alliance voted against the UN Global Compact on Migration.
Spain’s Mariana Rajoy was supported by the EU against Catalonia, and subsequently voted out. The next government is left-wing and pro EU, but given the recent right wing victory in Andalusia it’s clear there’s nothing stable there. Austria has a rightwing anti-immigration PM. Germany’s CDU party today elected a successor for Merkel (in the first such vote since 1971!), but they’ve lost bigly in last year’s elections, and their CSU partner has too, pushing both towards the right wing anti-immigrant AfD.
And with Macron gone or going, France can’t be counted on to support Brussels either. So what is left, quo vadis Europa? Well, there’s the European elections. In which national parties, often as members of a ‘voting alliance’, pick their prospective candidates for the European Parliament, then become part of a larger European alliance, and finally often of an even larger alliance. You guessed right, turnout numbers for European elections are very very low.
Of course Brussels is deaf to all the issues besieging it. The largest alliances of parties, the EPP (people’s party) and the “socialists”, have chosen their crown prince ‘spitzenkandidat’ to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the European Commission, and they expect for things to continue more or less as usual. The two main contenders are Manfred Weber and Frans Timmermans, convinced eurocrats. How that will work out with 50% or more of parliamentarians being euroskeptic, you tell me. How about they form their own alliance?
The Union appears fatally wounded, and that’s even before the next financial crisis has materialized. Speaking of which, the Fed has been hiking rates and can lower them again a little if it wants, but much of Europe ‘works’ on negative rates already. That next crisis could be a doozy.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
First thing on the menu is Macron tomorrow, and the yellow vests in the streets of Paris and many other French cities -and rural areas. He has called for 90,000 policemen on the streets, but they’ll come face to face with their peers who are firemen, ambulance personnel, you name it, lots of folks who also work for the government. Will they open fire?
Can Macron allow for French people to be killed in the streets? Almost certainly not. There’ll be pitchforks and guillotines. The only way out for him, the only way to calm things down, may be to announce his resignation. The French don’t fool around when they protest. And who’s going to be left to drive the reform of Europe then? Not Merkel, she’s gone, even if she wants to be German Chancellor for three more years. But then who? I’m trying to think of someone, honest, but I can’t.
It’ll be quite the day Saturday in Paris.
- How To Be Invisible On The Internet
Everywhere you look, concerns are mounting about internet privacy.
Although giving up your data was once an afterthought when gaining access to the newest internet services such as Facebook and Uber, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, many people have had their perspective altered by various recent scandals, billions of dollars of cybertheft, and a growing discomfort around how their personal data may be used in the future.
More people want to opt out of this data collection, but aside from disconnecting entirely or taking ludicrous measures to safeguard information, there aren’t many great options available to limit what is seen and known about you online.
THE NEXT BEST THING
It may not be realistic to use Tor for all online browsing, so why not instead look at taking more practical steps to reducing your internet footprint?
Today’s infographic comes to us from CashNetUSA, and it gives a step-by-step guide – that anyone can follow – to limit the amount of personal data that gets collected on the internet.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
As you can see, you can take simple steps to limit the amount of personal information you give up online.
To be absolutely clear, these actions will not reduce your footprint to nothing – but they will make many important categories of data invisible for all intents and purposes.
BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS
The simple actions that can be taken fall into three major realms: internet browsers, social networks, and mobile phones.
1. Internet Browsers:
Whether you are using Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer, there are easy things you can do to increase privacy. These include using private browsing, blocking third-party cookies, and tailoring the permissions for websites that you access.2. Social Media Platforms
Major social networks have options built-in for users seeking privacy – it’s just many people don’t know they are there. On Facebook, for example, you can prevent your name being linked to ads – and on Twitter, you can prevent Twitter from tracking you.3. Mobile Phones
We live more and more on our smartphones, but thankfully there are options here as well. You can block ad tracking on Safari, or opt out of ad personalization on Android. There is even a simple setting on Android that allows you to encrypt your phone. - War With Russia?
Authored by Stephen Cohen via The Nation,
The New Cold War is more dangerous than the one the world survived…
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk. — Hegel
War With Russia?, like the biography of a living person, is a book without an end. The title is a warning – akin to what the late Gore Vidal termed “a journalistic alert-system” – not a prediction. Hence the question mark. I cannot foresee the future. The book’s overarching theme is informed by past and current facts, not by any political agenda, ideological commitment, or magical prescience.
This article is adapted from the concluding section of Stephen F. Cohen’s War With Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate, just published, in paperback and e-book, by Skyhorse Publishing.
To restate that theme: The new US-Russian Cold War is more dangerous than was its 40-year predecessor that the world survived. The chances are even greater that this one could result, inadvertently or intentionally, in actual war between the two nuclear superpowers. Herein lies another ominous indication. During the preceding Cold War, the possibility of nuclear catastrophe was in the forefront of American mainstream political and media discussion, and of policy-making. During the new one, it rarely seems to be even a concern.
In the latter months of 2018, the facts and the mounting crises they document grow worse, especially in the US political-media establishment, where, as I have argued, the new Cold War originated and has been repeatedly escalated. Consider a few examples, some of them not unlike political and media developments during the run-up to the US war in Iraq or, historians have told us, how the great powers “sleepwalked” into World War I:
Russiagate’s core allegations—US-Russian collusion, treason—all remain unproven. Yet they have become a central part of the new Cold War. If nothing else, they severely constrain President Donald Trump’s capacity to conduct crisis negotiations with Moscow while they further vilify Russian President Vladimir Putin for having, it is widely asserted, personally ordered “an attack on America” during the 2016 presidential campaign. Some Hollywood liberals had earlier omitted the question mark, declaring, “We are at war.” In October 2018, the would-be titular head of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, added her voice to this reckless allegation, flatly stating that the United States was “attacked by a foreign power” and equating it with “the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
Clinton may have been prompted by another outburst of malpractice by The New York Times and The Washington Post. On September 20 and 23, respectively, those exceptionally influential papers devoted thousands of words, illustrated with sinister prosecutorial graphics, to special retellings of the Russiagate narrative they had assiduously promoted for nearly two years, along with the narrative’s serial fallacies, selective and questionable history, and factual errors.
Again, for example, the now-infamous Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chairman for several months in 2016, was said to have been “pro-Kremlin” during his time as a lobbyist for Ukraine under then-President Viktor Yanukovych, when in fact he was pro–European Union. Again, Trump’s disgraced national-security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, was accused of “troubling” contacts when he did nothing wrong or unprecedented in having conversations with a Kremlin representative on behalf of President-elect Trump. Again, the two papers criminalized the idea, as the Times put it, that “the United States and Russia should look for areas of mutual interest,” once the premise of détente. And again, the Times, while assuring readers that its “Special Report” is “what we now know with certainty,” buried a related acknowledgment deep in its some 10,000 words: “No public evidence has emerged showing that [Trump’s] campaign conspired with Russia.” (The white-collar criminal indictments and guilty pleas cited were so unrelated that they added up to Russiagate without Russia.)
Astonishingly, neither paper gave any credence to an emphatic statement by the Post’s own Bob Woodward—normally considered the most authoritative chronicler of Washington’s political secrets—that, after two years of research, he had found no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia.
Nor were the Times, the Post, and other print media alone in these practices, which continued to slur dissenting opinions. CNN’s leading purveyor of Russiagate allegations tweeted that an American third-party presidential candidate had been “repeating Russian talking points on its interference in the 2016 election and on US foreign policy.” Another prominent CNN figure was, so to speak, more geopolitical, warning, “Only a fool takes Vladimir Putin at his word in Syria,” thereby ruling out US-Russian cooperation in that war-torn country. Much the same continued almost nightly on MSNBC.
For most mainstream-media outlets, Russiagate had become, it seemed, a kind of cult journalism that no counterevidence or analysis could dent and thus itself increasingly a major contributing factor to the new Cold War. Still more, what began two years earlier as complaints about Russian “meddling” in the US presidential election became by October 2018, for The New Yorker and other publications, an accusation that the Kremlin had actually put Donald Trump in the White House. For this seditious charge, there was also no convincing evidence—nor any precedent in American history.
At a higher level, by fall 2018, current and former US officials were making nearly unprecedented threats against Moscow. The ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, threatened to “take out” any Russian missiles she thought violated a 1987 treaty, a step that would certainly risk nuclear war. The secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, threatened a naval “blockade” of Russia. In yet another Russophobic outburst, the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, declared that “lying, cheating and rogue behavior” are a “norm of Russian culture.”
These may have been outlandish statements by untutored political appointees, but they again inescapably raised the question: Who was making Russia policy in Washington—President Trump, with his avowed policy of “cooperation,” or someone else?
But how to explain, other than as unbridled extremism, the comments by Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Moscow, himself a longtime professor of Russian politics and favored mainstream commentator? According to McFaul, Russia had become a “rogue state,” its policies “criminal actions” and the “world’s greatest threat.” It had to be countered by “preemptive sanctions that would go into effect automatically”—“every day,” if deemed necessary. Considering the possibility of “crushing” sanctions proposed recently by a bipartisan group of US senators, this would be nothing less than a declaration of permanent war against Russia: economic war, but war nonetheless.
Meanwhile, other new Cold War fronts were becoming more fraught with hot war, none more so than Syria. On September 17, Syrian missiles accidentally shot down an allied Russian surveillance aircraft, killing all 15 crew members. The cause was combat subterfuge by Israeli warplanes in the area. The reaction in Moscow was indicative—and potentially ominous.
At first, Putin, who had developed good relations with Israel’s political leadership, said the incident was an accident caused by the fog of war. His own Defense Ministry, however, loudly protested that Israel was responsible. Putin quickly retreated to a more hard-line position, and in the end vowed to send to Syria Russia’s highly effective S-300 surface-to-air defense system, a prize long sought by both Syria and Iran.
Clearly, Putin was not the ever-“aggressive Kremlin autocrat” unrelentingly portrayed by US mainstream media. A moderate in the Russian context, he again made a major decision by balancing conflicting groups and interests. In this instance, he accommodated long-standing hard-liners in his own security establishment.
The result is yet another Cold War trip wire. With the S-300s installed in Syria, Putin could in effect impose a “no-fly zone” over large areas of the country, which has been ravaged by war due, in no small part, to the presence of several foreign powers. (Russia and Iran are there legally; the United States and Israel are not.) If so, this means a new “red line” that Washington and its ally Israel will have to decide whether or not to cross. Considering the mania in Washington and in the mainstream media, it is hard to be confident that restraint will prevail. In keeping with his Russia policy, President Trump may reasonably be inclined to join Moscow’s peace process, though it is unlikely the mostly Democrat-inspired Russiagate party would permit him to do so.
Now another Cold War front has also become more fraught, the US-Russian proxy war in Ukraine having acquired a new dimension. In addition to the civil war in Donbass, Moscow and Kiev have been challenging each other’s ships in the Sea of Azov, near the newly built bridge connecting Russia with Crimea. On November 25, this erupted into a small but potentially explosive military conflict at sea. Trump is being pressured to help Kiev escalate the maritime war—yet another potential trip wire. Here, too, the president should instead put his administration’s weight behind the long-stalled Minsk peace accords. But that approach also seems to be ruled out by Russiagate, which by October 6 included yet another Times columnist, Frank Bruni, branding all such initiatives by Trump as “pimping for Putin.”
After five years of extremism, as demonstrated by these recent examples of risking war with Russia, there remained, for the first time in decades of Cold War history, no countervailing forces in Washington—no pro-détente wing of the Democratic or Republican Party, no influential anti–Cold War opposition anywhere, no real public debate. There was only Trump, with all the loathing he inspired, and even he had not reminded the nation or his own party that the presidents who initiated major episodes of détente in the 20th century were also Republicans—Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan. This too seemed to be an inadmissible “alternative fact.”
And so the eternal question, not only for Russians: What is to be done? There is a ray of light, though scarcely more. In August 2018, Gallup asked Americans what kind of policy toward Russia they favored. Even amid the torrent of vilifying Russiagate allegations and Russophobia, 58 percent wanted “to improve relations with Russia,” as opposed to 36 percent who preferred “strong diplomatic and economic steps against Russia.”
This reminds us that the new Cold War, from NATO’s eastward expansion and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Russiagate, has been an elite project. Why US elites, after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, ultimately chose Cold War rather than partnership with Russia is a question beyond my purpose here. As for the special role of US intelligence elites—what I have termed “Intelgate”—efforts are still underway to disclose it fully, and are still being thwarted.
A full explanation of the post-Soviet Cold War choice would include the US political-media establishment’s needs—ideological, foreign-policy, and budgetary, among others—for an “enemy.” Or, with the Cold War having prevailed for more than half of US-Russian relations during the century since 1917, maybe it was habitual. Substantial “meddling” in the 2016 US election by Ukraine and Israel, to illustrate the point, did not become a political scandal. In any event, once this approach to post-Soviet Russia began, promoting it was not hard. The legendary humorist Will Rogers quipped in the 1930s, “Russia is a country that no matter what you say about it, it’s true.” Back then, before the 40-year Cold War and nuclear weapons, the quip was funny, but no longer.
Whatever the full explanation, many of the consequences I have analyzed in War With Russia? continue to unfold, not a few unintended and unfavorable to America’s real national interests. Russia’s turn away from the West, its “pivot to China,” is now widely acknowledged and embraced by leading Moscow policy thinkers. Even European allies occasionally stand with Moscow against Washington. The US-backed Kiev government still covers up who was really behind the 2014 Maidan “snipers’ massacre” that brought it to power. Mindless US sanctions have helped Putin to repatriate oligarchic assets abroad, at least $90 billion already in 2018. The mainstream media persist in distorting Putin’s foreign policies into something “that even the Soviet Union never dared to try.” And when an anonymous White House insider exposed in the Times the “amorality” of President Trump, the only actual policy he or she singled out was on Russia.
I have focused enough on the demonizing of Putin – the Post even managed to characterize popular support for his substantial contribution to improving life in Moscow as “a deal with the devil” – but it is important to note that this derangement is far from worldwide. Even a Postcorrespondent conceded that “the Putin brand has captivated anti-establishment and anti-American politicians all over the world.” A British journalist confirmed that, as a result, “many countries in the world now look for a reinsurance policy with Russia.” And an American journalist living in Moscow reported that the “ceaseless demonization of Putin personally has in fact sanctified him, turned him into the Patron Saint of Russia.”
Again, in light of all this, what can be done? Sentimentally, and with some historical precedents, we of democratic beliefs traditionally look to “the people,” to voters, to bring about change. But foreign policy has long been the special prerogative of elites. In order to change Cold War policy fundamentally, leaders are needed. When the times beckon, they may emerge out of established, even deeply conservative, elites, as did unexpectedly the now-pro-détente Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s. But given the looming danger of war with Russia, is there time? Is any leader visible on the American political landscape who will say to his or her elites and party, as Gorbachev did, “If not now, when? If not us, who?”
We also know that such leaders, though embedded in and insulated by their elites, hear and read other, nonconformist voices, other thinking. The once-venerated American journalist Walter Lippmann observed, “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” This book is my modest attempt to inspire more thinking.
- Murderous Millennials Claim Their Next Victim: Canned Tuna
Any non-millennial will agree that millennials are murderers. They are slaughtering longstanding industries with modern technology and new life habits.
Do not forget these young consumers are going broke by spending all their money on avocado toast and really cannot buy anything else, either – much less a beginner home. We have documented the dozens of industries millennials have been killing over the course of this business cycle.
Millennials are expected to become a majority of the workforce by the mid-2020s. This leaves room for the idea of creative destruction, a term coined by Joseph Schumpeter in “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy” in 1942, describes the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”
Century-old tuna companies like StarKist Co., Bumble Bee Foods and Chicken of the Sea International have been put on the chopping block by millennials.
The Wall Street Journal reports millennials are killing canned tuna, as companies desperately try to reboot demand for tuna by marketing it in new pouches and ultra trendy flavors or labeling it as a healthy snack.
Consumption of canned tuna has collapsed 42% per capita from the last three decades through 2016, according to US Department of Agriculture data.
Industry leaders place even more considerable blame on millennial consumers, who want fresher or more convenient options.
“A lot of millennials don’t even own can openers,” Andy Mecs, vice president of marketing and innovation for Pittsburgh-based StarKist, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Dongwon Group, told the Journal.
Millennials have been accused of killing major American institutions, including marriage and homeownership.
However, one of the most significant changes could be American pantries. Millennials are abandoning canned tuna for the same reasons they have given up on American cheese and cereal – they are fed up with processed food.
Young consumers are also troubled by tuna’s strong fishy smell, said the Journal.
The tuna trouble started in the mid-1980s when it became associated with killing dolphins and unsustainable fishing practices.
Alternative brands, including Wild Planet Foods Inc. and Safe Catch Inc., are trying to disrupt the status quo and cater to millennials. They are attracting young consumers with bold promises of safer, more sustainable and higher-quality fish.
Smaller brands, excluding store brands, as of October controlled 6.3% of the packaged tuna market, compared with 3.7% in 2014, according to the Journal.
“Sales have grown tremendously,” said Bill Carvalho, Wild Planet’s founder and president. “Unlike the larger brands, which cook their tuna twice…Wild Planet cooks it fish once in the can, allowing it to marinate in its natural juices and healthy oils.”
“Annual sales now near $100 million for the 14-year old company, which offers 30 items in supermarkets nationwide,” he said.
In response to the fracturing of the market, thanks to those pesky millennials, the two big tuna makers have launched their premium brands in recent years. Bumble Bee sells Wild Selections and StarKist offers Blue Harbor, marketing the lines as sustainably fished.
Similarly, Chicken of the Sea recently began selling resealable cups of trendy flavored tuna earlier this year.
Timmy Mathew, a 26-year-old tax accountant in Chicago, told the Journal he was not opposed to trying the new tuna products from legacy brands. “There are food trends—quinoa and kale are hot. Canned tuna has never been hot.”
What did social media have to say about this?
Ah yes, Millennials are abandoning canned tuna because we’re lazy and not because uh, it’s gross as hell. https://t.co/EMgyMNy4TT
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) December 3, 2018
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Honored to be the last millennial eating canned tuna
— Holly Genovese (@HollyEvanMarie) December 4, 2018
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“Yes, a lack of can openers may be at the root of this problem. I want to laugh at this assertion, but unfortunately, it rings pretty true for me.” Thanks @caitmunro https://t.co/tdlOjaEpze
— Yael Kohen (@YaelKohen) December 4, 2018
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Day 8,651 as a Millennial: After years of planning, we’ve successfully killed canned tuna. Our thirst for destruction knows no bounds. Do not challenge us.
— Collin Etzel (@SaltyPretz) December 4, 2018
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Add canned tuna to the millennial kill list.
- Is This It? A Trump-Hater's Guide To Mueller Skepticism
Authored by T.A.Frank via VanityFair.com,
Mueller’s comportment suggests a man who’s fallen prey to the same state of mind that warped Ken Starr – namely disgust over the people you’re investigating and a desire to justify the sunk capital. Even if the special counsel presents one hell of a report, Democrats must ask: was it worth it?
In the autumn of 1995, millions of Indians flocked to New Delhi after reports that a statue of Ganesha, the Hindu deity of good luck, was drinking milk from a spoon. It turned out that Ganesha, in the form of carved white stone, was a bit porous, and he wasn’t drinking the milk so much as getting coated in it, as each of the thousands of spoonfuls trickled down his side, but a collective thrill prevailed for a while. I relate this incident because its rhythms – big news, then frenzy, then comedown – bear a strong resemblance to those of Russiagate, with each development setting the Resistance into a frenzy of milk-buying and statue-feeding that fades only after a few days, replaced by an unspoken agreement to wait for further reports on Ganesha’s movements.
For many Robert Mueller watchers, the air these days is electric. People sense the big shoes are about to drop. Donald Trump has submitted his written answers to Mueller’s questions. Paul Manafort has entered a plea agreement, but then continued to lie—at least according to Mueller. Jerome Corsi,fringe-right author and personality, is vowing to go to jail for life rather than sign on to Mueller’s version of events. Roger Stone is expecting to be indicted for something. So is Donald Trump Jr. And, most significant of all to those looking for a big payoff, Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the timeline of a deal he was trying to make to construct a 100-story Trump-branded tower in Moscow. It turns out that the deal exploration continued past the time Trump had secured the Republican nomination, and Cohen and his associate Felix Sater, a real-estate promoter and one-time racketeer, had even discussed giving Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in the building. “This is it,” people are saying. “This is the big one!”
But, with all due reverence to the deity Ganesha, why? We see the familiar cycle of hype, and there’s no use fighting it, but, once heart rates have slowed, the same old question remains: so what? Some of the news, such as a Guardian story that Manafort met three times with Julian Assange, seems to be based on nothing at all. But even the solid news turns out to be generally non-earth-shattering. As the journalist Aaron Maté has been pointing out, we already knew the timeline of Cohen’s Moscow efforts, because BuzzFeed had already detailed them in May, painting a picture of a bumbling duo getting high on their own supply. (As for the latest revelations, did Sater and Cohen really think a president of Russia would move into a free $50 million penthouse provided by a U.S. presidential candidate? You have to wonder if they were hitting each other on the head with bricks.) Those who hope that Mueller reveals a shambolic operation with a lot of rascals engaged in sleazy and embarrassing behavior will be happy with the fruits of his labors. But those who hope for an unveiling of indictments linking Putin and Trump in a grand conspiracy have no more reason to celebrate than they did a week or a month ago.
Certainly, Trump’s ethical standards are low, but if sleaziness were a crime then many more people from our ruling class would be in jail.
It is sleazy, but not criminal, to try to find out in advance what WikiLeaks has on Hillary Clinton. It is sleazy, but not criminal, to take a meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising a dossier of dirt on Clinton. (Just as, it should be mentioned, it is sleazy, but not criminal, to pay a guy to go to Russia to put together a dossier of dirt on Trump. This is one reason why the Clinton campaign lied about its connection to the Steele dossier, albeit without the disadvantage of being under oath.) It is sleazy, but not criminal, to pursue a business deal while you’re running for president. Mueller has nailed people for trying to prevaricate about their sleaze, so we already have a couple of guilty pleas over perjury, with more believed to be on the way. But the purpose of the investigation was to address suspicions of underlying conspiracy—that is, a plan by Trump staffers to get Russian help on a criminal effort. Despite countless man-hours of digging, this conspiracy theory, the one that’s been paying the bills at Maddow for a couple of years now, has come no closer to being borne out. (Or, as the true believers would say, at least not yet.)
Partisanship is hostile to introspection, but at some point maybe we’ll look back and think again about what was unleashed in the panic over Russian influence. Trump’s White House has pursued what is arguably the harshest set of policies toward Russia since the fall of Communism—hardly something to celebrate—yet nearly all the pressure, from the center-left as much as the right, is toward making it even tougher. As for those tapping along to S.N.L. songs in praise of Mueller and his indictments, they might want to remember that Trump won’t always be in office. The weapons you create for your side today will be used by the other side against you tomorrow. Do we really want the special-counsel investigation to become a staple of presidential life? It’s a creation with few boundaries on scope and a setup that encourages the selection of a suspect followed by a search for the crime, rather than the other way around. This caused calamities in the era of Bill Clinton, and it doesn’t get any better just because the partisan dynamics are reversed.
Let’s take a moment to consider Mueller himself. The cut of his jib is likable, and the trad Brooks Brothers vibe of his wardrobe is a perfect complement to his job title. But it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that he’s playing a political game at this point. To be fair, I’m vulnerable to confirmation bias of my own in this assessment, since about a year ago I suggested that Mueller was going to drag out his investigation until 2019, when Democrats were likely to be back in charge of the House, and seeing a prediction play out can lead to unwarranted certitude. But the reports we’re starting to see suggest a man who’s fallen prey to the same state of mind that warped Ken Starr—namely disgust over the people you’re investigating and a desire to justify the sunk capital.
Our justice system gives prosecutors a frightening amount of power as it is, and nothing tempts misuse of it quite like the belief in a narrative in the face of a disappointing witness. George Papadopoulos has told people he pleaded guilty to perjury because Mueller was threatening to prosecute him as an unregistered agent of Israel. Jerome Corsi insists that Mueller was (and is) threatening him with a raft of indictments unless he signed on to an untrue story of how he came to believe (or know) that WikiLeaks had hacked the e-mails of John Podesta.
We don’t know why Mueller feels Manafort is lying to prosecutors, but we do know that Mueller is either asking him about things that have little to do with Manfort’s guilty plea, i.e. acting as an unregistered agent of Ukraine, or else asking him things that have little to do with the original purpose of Mueller’s investigation, i.e. Russian conspiracy. The former would mean Mueller was tempting Manafort, deliberately or not, to make up a story to please federal prosecutors (“not just sing,” but “also compose,” as a judge on the case warned last May). The latter would mean Mueller was getting out on tangents and allowing his investigation, Starr-style, to lapse into a shape-shifting creature with few self-imposed limits. Furthermore, solitary confinement is severe punishment, and Manafort has been in it for months. No one doubts that Manafort is a liar, and everyone knows he’s maneuvering for a presidential pardon. He should go to jail for his financial fraud. But that doesn’t mean Mueller is proceeding with a proper sense of proportion or self-restraint.
If it’s any consolation to Trump haters, we san say this much: the special counsel’s office is going to put together a hell of a report. It will have less sex than Starr’s did, but that’s for the best, and the testimony of Michael Cohen will still guarantee a lot of great scenes, many of them certain to become immortal and embarrassing. Trumpworld won’t fare well under a bright light. Like Starr, Mueller is also likely to include footnotes and selections that will hint at criminality, the things he suspects but couldn’t prove, and the most ardent believers in collusion will claim vindication. But the international conspiracies will be few, and the collateral damage of the Russia scare will be extensive, stretching far beyond Trump or his circle to the country as a whole. It might hurt a president who many Americans hate, but even the president’s most ardent foes should reflect on a question that will linger: Was it worth it?
- Who's Watching Whom? NYPD Will Monitor Americans With Fleet Of Chinese-Made Drones
Several months after the Department of Defense (DoD) banned the purchase of commercial-over-the-shelf Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), including DJI drones from China for most (if not all) departments, The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has just had the bright idea to launch a fleet of Chinese made drones for surveillance operations across the five boroughs.
According to Fox 5 New York, the NYPD announced its UAS program on Tuesday. FAA Part 107 licensed officers of the Technical Assistance Response Unit will pilot the aircraft.
Police officials told Fox 5 the drones would be used in search-and-rescue operations, to survey inaccessible crime scenes, hostage situations, and mass casualty incidents. The department stressed the drones would not be monitoring civilians, but only used for “routine patrols” and will not be equipped with dangerous weapons.
“As the largest municipal police department in the United States, the NYPD must always be willing to leverage the benefits of new and always-improving technology,” Police Commissioner James O’Neill said. “Our new UAS program is part of this evolution – it enables our highly-trained cops to be even more responsive to the people we serve, and to carry out the NYPD’s critical work in ways that are more effective, efficient, and safe for everyone.”
The department will start with a dozen quadcopter drones that can be launched in minutes for tactical operations. There are plans to scale up the drone program into 2020.
However, neither Fox 5 nor the department mentioned where the drones are manufactured. There is ample evidence from the Fox 5’s video that the drones are made in Shenzhen, a southeastern city in China, by SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd., a leading manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Several months ago, sUASnews obtained a US army memo that said the US Navy and the US Army Research Lab claimed that the operational risks of utilizing DJI equipment outweigh their benefits.
The memo makes the orders very clear. “Due to increased awareness of cyber vulnerabilities associated with DJI products, it is directed that the U.S. Army halt use of all DJI products. This guidance applies to all DJI UAS and any system that employs DJI electrical components or software including, but not limited to, flight computers, cameras, radios, batteries, speed controllers, GPS units, handheld control stations, or devices with DJI software applications installed.”
If the US military banned the use of DJI products, then why is the NYPD about to launch a fleet of Chinese drones?
- Pearl Harbor Day: One For Which FDR Shoulders 'Infamy'
Authored by Daniel Oliver, op-ed via The Daily Caller,
On December 7, 1941 the Empire of Japan bombed the U.S. Pacific Fleet which was stationed in Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. In addressing Congress the next day, President Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy.”
But Roosevelt’s reputation should live in infamy too. The line that Roosevelt enthusiasts and left-wing historians have peddled for so many years is that the attack was a complete surprise.
Here’s a sample from The American Pageant, a typical left-wing American history textbook widely used in American high schools:
Officials in Washington, having “cracked” the top-secret code of the Japanese, knew that Tokyo’s decision was for war … Roosevelt, misled by Japanese ship movements in the Far East, evidently expected the blow to fall on British Malaya or on the Philippines. No one in high authority in Washington seems to have believed that the Japanese were either strong enough or foolhardy enough to strike Hawaii.
That’s the left’s version, and it’s in line with the rest of the “fake history” they want American high school students to learn. The Education and Research Institute (ERI — of which I am chairman) has written a critique of The American Pageant, which tells a more accurate story about Pearl Harbor and scores of other events in American history.
The American Pageant gives almost no blame to FDR for the Pearl Harbor disaster — even though the United States had broken the Japanese secret code and knew an attack was imminent. The textbook authors assure us that “no one in high authority in Washington seems to have believed that the Japanese” had the ability to launch such an attack.
But that is simply wrong. Some high-ranking members of the U.S. Navy did believe a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor was possible, but FDR disagreed with them and he removed those contrary voices from positions of power.
The commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor was Admiral J. O. (Joe) Richardson. Unlike Roosevelt, Richardson did not underestimate the Japanese — and he had studied them and the dangerous Pearl Harbor location thoroughly.
Richardson said that a simulated aerial attack that the U.S. had conducted at Pearl Harbor in 1932 proved that torpedo planes could cripple any fleet stationed there.
Even before Roosevelt ordered the Pacific Fleet to stay at Pearl Harbor indefinitely, Richardson had protested that keeping the fleet there posed a danger to every ship. He had been attempting to monitor the military movements of the Japanese to give the United States time to evacuate Pearl Harbor in case of danger.
Richardson, after writing many letters warning of danger at Pearl Harbor, was ordered to Washington to meet with the president. At the meeting, Richardson strongly recommended moving the Pacific Fleet back to San Francisco immediately.
When Roosevelt dismissed his concerns, the frustrated Richardson said,
“Mr. President, I feel that I must tell you that the senior officers of the Navy do not have the trust and confidence in the civilian leadership of this country that is essential for the successful prosecution of a war in the Pacific.”
FDR replied,
“Joe, you just don’t understand that this is an election year [1940] and there are certain things that can’t be done, no matter what, until the election is over and won.”
Then, when the election was over and FDR re-elected to his third term, he fired Richardson from command of the Pacific Fleet and installed a lackey, Admiral Kimmel, to take his place. Kimmel agreed with FDR that Pearl Harbor was safe.
But of course it wasn’t safe, and actions Roosevelt took before and after the election made it even less safe. In January of 1940 Roosevelt had terminated the United States — Japan trade treaty. In July of 1940 he had restricted exports to Japan. In September of 1940 he had sent $25 million to the Chinese resistance against Japanese incursions, and he had also embargoed shipments of scrap iron to Japan. In July of 1941, Roosevelt had frozen all Japanese assets in the United States and expanded the embargo.
The official State Department history concludes:
“Faced with serious shortages as a result of the embargo, unable to retreat, and convinced that the U.S. officials opposed further negotiations, Japan’s leaders came to the conclusion that they had to act swiftly.”
That seems to have been what Roosevelt wanted.
On Monday, November 24, 1941, only 13 days before the Pearl Harbor attack, Henry L. Stimson, Roosevelt’s secretary of War, recorded in his diary a meeting with Roosevelt:
He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday [December 1], for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.
On Nov. 25, Secretary of State Cordell Hull demanded that Japan withdraw from China. The following day Hull wrote this: “The matter is now in the hands of the Army and the Navy.”
Four days later, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked: 2,403 people died, eight battleships were sunk or damaged, and 188 airplanes were destroyed.
The United States took a long time to recover.
But FDR escaped blame. Today we should remember that it’s not just December 7, 1941, that should live in infamy, but Roosevelt’s reputation as well.
- Chinese Firms Dumped $1 Billion Of US Real Estate Last Quarter
After being one of the most steadfast buyers of American real estate for years, large Chinese firms continued dumping high-profile US real estate in the third quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports, selling more than $1 billion of property as Beijing forced insurers, conglomerates, and other big investors into debt-reduction programs.
Chinese investors dumped $1.05 billion worth of prime US real estate in the third quarter while purchasing only $231 million of property, according to data firm Real Capital Analytics. This marks the second consecutive quarter where investors were net sellers of US commercial real estate, and the first time investors sold more US property than they bought since the 2008 crash.
In the last decade, Chinese investors plowed tens of billions of dollars into US real estate, with a concentration in major metro areas like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. The Journal notes that Chinese buyers “never represented more than a fraction of the buying power in any U.S. market,” however they made headlines for paying massive premiums.
Now, the party has unexpectedly ended.
Rising corporate debt levels and concerns over currency stability has forced the Chinese government to tighten capital outflows and clamp down on overseas acquisitions.
As we discussed last month, total Chinese Credit Creation unexpectedly collapsed, resulting in shockwaves of weakness across the domestic and global economy. Amid speculation that Beijing is engineering a “slow landing” through a significant slowdown in credit issuance, investors – hungry for liquidity – are unloading US properties at a rapid clip. In global markets, this will likely create a deflationary chill and lead to a further slowdown in 2019.
Trade tensions between Beijing and the Trump administration have not helped the situation, as more Chinese firms sold properties amid worries the trade war could deepen in the coming quarters, and potentially lead to more aggressive blowback at Chinese investors.
“This has to do more with a change in how capital is permitted to behave rather than Chinese investors saying ‘I don’t like the U.S.’,” said Jim Costello, senior vice president at Real Capital Analytics.
“Ping An Insurance Group Co. of China and partners in August sold a 13-story Boston office building for $450 million, the largest sale by a Chinese investor during the third quarter, Real Capital Analytics said. Its U.S. partner Tishman Speyer said it was the one that drove the decision to sell the building.
China’s retreat showed signs of continuing in the fourth quarter. Dalian Wanda Group sold a glitzy development site in Beverly Hills, Calif., last month for more than $420 million. The Chinese conglomerate purchased the eight-acre parcel in 2014 for $420 million and had planned to develop luxury condominiums and a boutique hotel on the site, but feuds with a local union and contractors stalled progress.
Anbang recently engaged Bank of America Corp. to help it sell a portfolio of luxury hotels that it acquired two years ago for $5.5 billion, though the Waldorf isn’t part of that sale, according to a person familiar with the matter,” said the Journal.
“Anbang is reviewing the company’s U.S. real estate portfolio after seeing price recovering in local property market due to strong recovery of the U.S. economy,” said Shen Gang, a spokesman for Anbang.
Still, some strategists believe that Chinese selling may slow in the months ahead.
“I do not think it will be a tidal wave of sales,” said Jerome Sanzo, managing director and head of U.S. Real Estate Finance for Industrial & Commercial Bank of China. “Some of them are not able to move forward for various reasons and will take gains now while waiting for future changes.”
In a highly leveraged economy such as China’s, growth is a lagged result of changes in the supply of credit. And with credit creation waning in China, it is less of a mystery why local corporations are rushing to “liquify” as fast as possible: the Chinese credit squeeze is well underway. Prepare for a global slowdown in 2019, one which has already hit the US housing market hard.
- Stockman: The Donald Undone – Tilting At The Swamp, Succumbing To The Empire
Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
You can’t build the Empire and drain the Swamp at the same time. That’s because the Swamp is largely the fruit of Empire. And it’s also the reason that the Donald is being rapidly undone.
Indeed, it is the Empire’s $800 billion national security budget which feeds Washington’s vast complex of weapons suppliers, intelligence contractors, national security bureaucrats, NGOs, think tanks, K-street lobbies, so-called “law” firms and all-purpose racketeers. It’s what accounts for the Imperial City’s unseemly and ill-gotten prosperity.
It goes without saying that the number one priority of these denizens of Empire is to keep the gravy train rolling. That is accomplished by inventing and exaggerating threats to America’s homeland security and by formulating far-flung and misbegotten missions designed to extend and reinforce Washington’s global hegemony.
As we demonstrate elsewhere, a true homeland security defense budget would consist of the strategic nuclear triad and modest conventional forces to defend the nation’s shoreline and air space; it would cost about $250 billion per year plus a few $10 billion more for a State Department which minded its own business.
So the $500 billion difference is the fiscal cost of Empire, which is pushing the US toward an immense generational fiscal crisis. But it’s also a measure of the giant larder that fills the Swamp with the projects and busywork of Washington’s global hegemony.
In fact, it is the vast depth of that $500 billion larder which gives rise to the forces that not only thwart the Donald’s desire to drain the Swamp, but actually enlist him the cause of deepening its brackish waters.
Moreover, these missions encompass far more than direct military occupations, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq; or indirect aggressions, such as in Washington’s arming of anti-government terrorists in Syria and facilitating and supplying Saudi Arabia’s genocidal bombing campaign in Yemen; or even the kind of rank provocation implicit in the 29,000 troops Washington still bivouacs on the Korean peninsula 65 years after the war there ended and the thousands of US and NATO forces which conduct virtually constant maneuvers and war games on the very borders of Russia.
OFAC And Washington’s Economic Sanctions Strike Force
Beyond the Empire’s purely military dimension lies a vast stratum of economic and financial warfare. The US currently has sanctions—-trade, financial and proscribed nationals—on more than 30 countries including highly visible alleged malefactors like Russia, Iran and North Korea—but also Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria, to name a few.
These sanctions are enforced by an office in the US Treasury Department, which is aptly named the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). Being openly in the business of controlling the assets of foreign countries, in fact, its name speaks volumes about the daily purposes of the Imperial City.
In addition to enforcement actions against the above named three dozen countries, OFAC’s global reach has been fantastically expanded by the so-called war on terror, and the mechanism of sanctioning “Specially Designated Nationals” or SDNs.
We are here talking about individual citizens and officers of foreign countries, one at a time. It so happens that the OFAC periodically publishes a list of SDNs and the latest one (May 24, 2018) is a staggering 1,132 pages long. By our reckoning it lists in excess of 500,000 foreign evil doers of one type or another.
The fact that it takes 221 pages just to get through the “A’s” in its alphabetical listing—owing to the prevalence of Ali’s, Abdul’s, and Ahmed’s—-is perhaps indicative of the nature and scope of Washington’s SDN dragnet.
Needless to say, sanctioning 500,000 foreigners generates endless make-work for the denizens of the Swamp and the phalanx of national security agencies and private contractors which employ them. But it’s all in a day’s work in the Empire because this list exists only by virtue of Washington’s self-appointed role of global policeman and hegemon of global order.
Moreover, the list now encompasses far more than the Abdul’s and Ahmed’s arising from the Imperial City’s misbegotten “war on terror”. In truth, the latter has actually been a hatchery of terror in the form of blowback and vengeful retaliation for Washington’s military devastation of the Middle East and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, there are also thousands of Russian, Iranian and Chinese names on this list owing to Washington’s putting a hex on certain disapproved behaviors and policies of these nations. And many tens of thousands more names appear for the sin of not compliantly observing Washington’s sanctions on third-parties with which they had wished to do business.
That is, OFAC is now into a higher level of economic warfare: Sanctioning those who fail to sanction the sanctioned.
Here’s the thing. Almost none of this busywork of Empire has anything to do with the safety and security of the American homeland.
It is the fruit of middle eastern interventions and occupations which should never have happened— going all the way back to the first Gulf War and all that followed.
Indeed, it goes back even further in time to Washington’s siding with Saddam Hussein during the 1980s Iran/Iraq War and to the so-called Charlie Wilson’s War during which the CIA recruited and armed the mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets after the latter’s misbegotten invasion of the “graveyard of empires” in 1979.
It is also the fruit of a needless demonization of Russia and Putin, which , as we have seen, comprise no threat to the American homeland whatsoever; and also, increasingly, the designation of alleged Chinese malefactors for failure to enforce Washington’s foreign policy.
Imperial Arrogance: Sanctioning China For Not Enforcing Washington’s Economic War On Iran
The Trump Administration’s recent attempt—-purposeful or not—to destroy China’s second largest telecom supplier (ZTE) is an hideous case in point. Once upon a time that would have been considered an act of war, but under the aegis of Empire the shoe goes on the other foot: It’s China’s fault, apparently, that ZTE failed to comply with Washington’s hex on Iran.
In effect, the Donald is getting sucked into functioning as another handmaid of Empire rather than actually performing the noble work of draining the Swamp. After all, the essence of draining the Swamp boils down to shrinking the state and unleashing the energies of free market capitalism–including generation of more export to the rest of the world.
But in the ZTE case, Trump and his neocon and warhawk advisors were doing just the opposite.They had slapped an edict on US telecom component and software suppliers like Qualcomm, prohibiting them from engaging in acts of trade with China’s #2 telecom equipment manufacturer and the #4 mobile phone provider in the world.
That is, they were about the business of pumping the Swamp full with even more busybody regulation and bloat—and once again bamboozling the Donald with phony threats to national security.
In this case, ZTE apparently violated “sanctions” put upon Iran and North Korea by the Empire in its self-appointed role of global policeman.
That’s right. There have been no charges that ZTE has “stolen” American technology or subsidized exports to the harm of American cell phone factories—-because, well, there are none left.
The Chinese state-owned company’s only alleged offense, in fact, was not functioning as a complaint enforcement arm of Washington’s foreign sanctions strike force.
But threatening to bring daily production at ZTE to a halt because it cannot (in the short-run) make cell phones without those designed-in Qualcomm parts, the Donald was also in danger of putting the kibosh on American production, jobs and leadership in the high technology components end of ZTE’s business.
Since ZTE sits on a giant mountain of debt, however,the Chinese had no choice in the near term except to bend over and request Washington’s bar of soap. To that end, in fact, they are now negotiating the complete housecleaning of the company’s board and top executives and replacing them with names satisfactory to Washington.
Indeed, when this compromise settlement with China was announced a few months ago, we learned that the Donald had told his “friend” President Xi Jinping that in return for letting ZTE off the sanctions hook, Washington would be happy to collect a $1.3 billion fine and take control of company’s board and management!
But here’s the thing. ZTE is not only a state-owned company; it’s also a core national technology champion in the Red Ponzi’s statist scheme of economic management.
So the idea that Washington should control ZTE is flat-out idiotic, yet it stems 100% from the Empire’s hex on Iran and North Korea—-a futile, destructive exercise in the sanctions game which never should have happened in the first place.
As we have frequently explained, Iran should be free to conduct a foreign policy of its own choosing in its own middle eastern neighborhood; and that if we got the machinery of war and empire out of the way, the Koreans—north and south—would readily find a way to denuclearize, demilitarize and economically reunite.
And yet that’s not the half of it. The Donald’s doddering Secretary of Commerce and former crony capitalist thief, Wilbur Ross, explained to bubble vision at the time of the July deal that “compliance” would be assured by placing an entire squadron of Washington operatives inside the company on a permanent basis to makes sure it does not again violate Washington’s sanctions and other edicts.
That’s right. Wilbur proposes to run China’s giant state telecom company from the Commerce Department Building on Constitution Avenue.
That’s draining the swamp?
Well, at least there is some irony—surely not intended—-in proposing to control a communist state industrial behemoth from Constitution Avenue.
Then again, through the largesse of the state and the Fed’s Bubble Finance, Wilbur Ross became a self-proclaimed billionaire, like his boss.
So how would either have a clue about draining the real statist Swamp?
China Trade Deal—Recipe For A Big Washington Trade Nanny
And that gets us to the Donald utterly wrong-headed pursuit of an overall “trade deal” with China—a prospect that has the far-flung agencies and contractors in the Imperial City giddy with anticipation. It would simply mean a whole new regime of economic meddling, trade management, bureaucratic enforcement and sanctions for not measuring up.
It would also have the meters running overtime at Washington’s law firms and consultancies, which would be over-run with demand from Chinese companies and state agencies seeking help with “compliance”.
The fact is, America doesn’t need no stinkin’ trade deal with China.
Yes, as we have seen, we did import $526 billion last year from China compared to just $130 billion of exports. But that $396 billion deficit is due to factors that trade negotiators and enforcement bureaucrats could not fix in a month of Sundays. As we have shown, it’s an artifact of bad money and the machinations of central bankers, starting with the Fed.
So even though China doesn’t import much, it’s not mainly owing to its high tariffs or its labyrinth of non-tariff barriers. Instead, it results from the fact that Beijing has run the People Printing Press overtime for the last 25 years and has thereby buried its economy in $40 trillion of unsustainable and unrepayable debt—-debts that will eventually grind its economy to a halt or trigger the mother of all financial implosions.
In the interim, however, it won’t import much because most foreign suppliers—and most especially the US—cannot compete with a state controlled economy temporarily blessed with spanking new, debt-financed capital equipment, essentially proletarian labor in a red economy and a minimal welfare state burden on businesses owing (temporarily) to favorable demographics and the stingy benefit policies of its allegedly socialist rulers in Beijing.
Thus, even if the Donald should succeed in strong-arming Beijing into tripling its current $15 billionof agricultural imports from the US and doubling its $20 billion of energy imports, the resulting $50 billion uptick in combined exports from these sectors wouldn’t make a dent in the trade deficit.
And even if they do cut their tariffs on auto imports as promised, that’s not going to amount to a hill of beans, either. That because a long time ago all high volume US auto producers—-GM, Ford and Chrysler—recognized that taking coals to Newcastle was the better part of wisdom.
That is, they all moved their assembly plants and their parts suppliers to China where they face capital and labor costs that are only a fraction of those in the US. Accordingly, there is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that US based production—-other than perhaps in the case of tiny volumes of niche or prestige vehicles—can compete in China’s 30 million unit auto market.
In fact, autos and parts exports to China currently amount to less than $5 billion, and there is no reason to believe there is much upside at all—even with a zero tariff.
Even when it comes to the heavy capital equipment made by Caterpillar or the advanced commercial aircraft supplied by Boeing—–these US suppliers are doing a increasing share of their production and valued added in their own or JV plants in China, not Peoria and Seattle.
And as to most consumer goods, fuggetaboutit!
On the other hand, the Donald doesn’t have a clue about the other side of the equation—the $526 billion of annual US imports from China. That baleful fact, however, is the legacy of 30 years of monetary central planning by the Fed, not cheating by the Chinese.
The essence of the Fed’s false prosperity trick was to enable American households to live beyond their means by raising their debts by nearly 6X to $15.6 trillion during the last three decades—- even as wage and salary incomes grew by only 3.7X.
The difference essentially reflected unearned consumption borrowed from the economic future, but also on the margin was supplied by goods emanating from the far lower cost factories of the Red Ponzi.
The 30-Year Borrowing Binge: Household Debt Versus Wage And Salary Income
At the same time, as we have seen, the Fed’s insensible pursuit of 2.00% inflation essentially inflated the cost-price-wage structure of the US economy, and at the very worst time imaginable: That is, after Mr. Deng’s early 1990’s pronouncement that it is “glorious to be rich” and its adoption of mercantilist, credit fueled, state-driven economic development model.
In a word, China was draining its rice paddies of cheap industrial labor, thereby driving the global labor cost curve downward—at the very time that the geniuses in the Eccles Building did their level best to inflate the nominal wage levels of US factories in the opposite direction. The result was that the borrowed consumption of the American household sector got supplied by the peasantry-turned-factory worker in the Red Ponz1.
So, is some kind of Imperial City fostered “trade deal” going to alter these deeply embedded historical legacies?
No, they will not—that is, at least not until sound money policies are once again replanted in the Eccles Building.
The arrival of Janet Yellen in tie and trousers at the helm of the Fed, however, means that the one chance the Donald had to do something meaningful about the China trade gap has been blown.
That’s not only owing to the appointment of Jerome Powell, who is a Keynesian Imperial City lifer, but also due to the constant drumbeat of suggestion from the White House that the Donald is a “low interest man” and would prefer to keep the monetary status quo in place; or more recently, has even demanded that the Fed cut an interest rate target that is still negative in real terms..
So why is the Donald wasting his time and fueling growth of Imperial Washington via his “art of the deal” dueling with President Xi?
In part, of course, that’s because the Donald has been a life-long dyed-in-the-wool protectionist—a virtual paragon of 18th century mercantilism.
Needless to say, protectionism and mercantilism are the health of the Swamp because they rest on government-to-government deals, not the enlightened self-interest and mutual benefits of capitalist commerce.
Accordingly, the central pillar of the Donald’s economic policy—-new bilateral “trade deals”— is inherently designed to fill the Swamp, not drain it.
In the first place, if the Red Suzerains are economically benighted enough to figuratively throw rocks into their own harbors to repel imports and to subsidize exports with cheap credit, repressed wages and other state subventions, guess what?
It’s their wealth being penalized, not America’s. The Red Ponzi is effectively sending foreign aid to America!
Technology Protectionism—-Trojan Horse Of The Warfare State
And it is here where the Imperial City has taken the Donald by the short orange ones. The Warfare State sees trade as just another venue of battle—–and in this case based on the completely spurious notion that China’s alleged theft of US intellectual property is a threat to national security.
That just patent nonsense because nearly every technology in today’s world is dual use. So if you start with the false premise that China has the will and capability to threaten America militarily—either now or in the relevant future—-you are automatically embarking down the road of state control of the economy and an ever deeper Swamp in the Imperial City.
The fact is, the Red Ponzi is a giant house of cards that cannot survive in the long-run, and in the mid-term is completely dependent of US markets to earn the dollar surpluses that it needs to keep its $40 trillion tower of debt from having a crash landing.
So the truth is, it doesn’t matter what technologies the Chinese have—-they are almost definitionally not a threat to the American homeland. Nevertheless, the Donald’s glandular protectionism plays right into the hands of the Washington hegemonists.
They now have him busily attempting to administer a trade spanking to China because purportedly it does not buy enough American soybeans, LNG and Ford Explorers.
But the Deep State has something far bigger in mind. Namely, the complete control of trade in the name of national security in the new age of advanced information technology—and on that front the Donald is turning out to be a battering ram beyond their wildest dreams.
For instance, here is what a true Swamp creature has to say about the matter. Mr. Paul Rosenzweig is apparently a Republican but actually a certified denizen of the Imperial City.
“I knew what was critical in 1958 — tanks, airplanes, avionics. Now, truthfully, everything is information. The world is about information, not about things,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who worked with CFIUS while at the Department of Homeland Security during President George W. Bush’s second term. “And that means everything is critical infrastructure. That, in some sense, means CFIUS really should be managing all global trade.”
Needless to say, the misbegotten China Trade Deal is only one of the many avenues by which the Empire has enlisted the Donald in the business of deepening the Swamp, not draining it.
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