Economic Shenanigans / Market Crisis

[edyzmedieval]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-15/yen-gains-on-virus-worries-kiwi-slides-on-rates-markets-wrap

Well well well... it looks like the goose has been thoroughly cooked, seared and grilled. The past days have been a monster problem for the stock market as the global economy grinds to a halt.

Thoughts?

[rory_20_uk]

I'm waiting for it to reach a nadir in a few months then invest.

It could help remove some of the zombie companies.

~:smoking:

[Montmorency]

https://i.imgur.com/HOTpdaw.jpg

Today was the 2nd largest percentage decline of the Dow in history. The worst was in 1987. Today was the worst absolute drop in history. RIP pensions.

5 of 5 largest point drops ever have been in the past month. 2 of 5 of the largest drops percentage-wise. The worst being 1987, the other two being October 1929. Today it closed 12.94% down. The worst day in 1929 was a decline of 12.82%.

Global recession risk seems high.

Don't compare this to other Panics because this is a crisis in the real economy, not (primarily) in the banking/finance system. Remember, interest rates and Treasury yields keep going lower and lower. Credit is cheaper and more readily available than ever, even now. The problem isn't the money markets per se, it's the collapse of supply and demand in a vulnerable, overextended recovery, on a global scale. Wowee.

If this is a looming recession, after a 2019 of weak global growth, hopefully we get it right this time.

[Crandar]

IMO its long term effects will be minimal. It's a recession originating from a special crisis, which, even if the most pessimistic scenarios are confirmed, will not last for ever. This means that the markets will receive some dramatic hits, but they will gradually recover, regaining their strength in probably less than a year. Not to mention the fact that once such sudden "disasters" are overcome, we usually experience an economic boom of however limited duration. On the contrary, systemic issues, like that of 2008, lie in the structure itself of the economy and are much more difficult to fix. Even impossible, sometimes, without breaking some eggs. I'd argue that Europe and the US even today have not completely recovered from 2008, but that won't be the case for the coronavirus collapse. Just my uneducated two cents.

[Greyblades]

Its the chinese that have most reason to be economically worried; now is not a good time for investors to be worried that thier slaves might end up dying before the end of a 14 hour shift. Lot of strings being pulled to keep people from wondering if the chinese are going to have yet another epidemic in the near future.

It's probably the reason they sat on it for a month and a half, the less charitable interpretation being a "if we're going down everyone else is going with me" move.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

We were, according to many analysts, "due" for a bout of recession as part of the inevitable up and down cycling of the economy. Prior to any concerns with the virus economic impacts, a near-future recession was already presumed likely (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/19/out-economists-predict-us-recession-by-survey-finds/). With the economic curtailment resulting from Covid-19 as a trigger, tipping into recession from where we were was a virtual guarantee. How bad will it get and for how long are, of course, the unanswered salient questions. And, until a vaccine is developed or other significant mitigations in place it may be too early to really answer those questions anyway.

[Pannonian]

Its the chinese that have most reason to be economically worried; now is not a good time for investors to be worried that thier slaves might end up dying before the end of a 14 hour shift. Lot of strings being pulled to keep people from wondering if the chinese are going to have yet another epidemic in the near future.

It's probably the reason they sat on it for a month and a half, the less charitable interpretation being a "if we're going down everyone else is going with me" move.

Or as someone who reads more about them and doesn't have a paranoid streak may think, there is a conflict between local government officials who want to keep a cushy job and a central government that expects local government to be more competent than they frequently turn out to be.

A related question would be, do Brexiteers still think that democracy trumps reality? If experts tell them there will be a mess unless they do things a certain way, does democracy override expert opinion?

[Pannonian]

We were, according to many analysts, "due" for a bout of recession as part of the inevitable up and down cycling of the economy. Prior to any concerns with the virus economic impacts, a near-future recession was already presumed likely (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/19/out-economists-predict-us-recession-by-survey-finds/). With the economic curtailment resulting from Covid-19 as a trigger, tipping into recession from where we were was a virtual guarantee. How bad will it get and for how long are, of course, the unanswered salient questions. And, until a vaccine is developed or other significant mitigations in place it may be too early to really answer those questions anyway.

We should re-gear our economy and society to a greener model, with less waste and greater shaping to suit local conditions. We're looking to wartime conditions for an example of what to do. The most salient lesson should be how we reduced unnecessary resource usage, among them the fuel that drives a globalised economy. Back then it was to save everything for the troops at the front. We should do it again, for the sake of reducing waste and increasing sustainability.

[Montmorency]

IMO its long term effects will be minimal. It's a recession originating from a special crisis, which, even if the most pessimistic scenarios are confirmed, will not last for ever. This means that the markets will receive some dramatic hits, but they will gradually recover, regaining their strength in probably less than a year. Not to mention the fact that once such sudden "disasters" are overcome, we usually experience an economic boom of however limited duration. On the contrary, systemic issues, like that of 2008, lie in the structure itself of the economy and are much more difficult to fix. Even impossible, sometimes, without breaking some eggs. I'd argue that Europe and the US even today have not completely recovered from 2008, but that won't be the case for the coronavirus collapse. Just my uneducated two cents.

That's kind of what I had in mind. Structural issues carried over, like (consumer) weak spending with high debt accumulation, may undermine the economic and political recovery without special correctives.

And let's keep in mind the kind of predictable consequences that are in store for us as we enter any coronavirus contraction. We're talking chronic broad mass unemployment, with service sectors hardest hit. Unknown duration (and some probability of aftershocks).

A lot really does depend on how serious governments get with social programs and direct stimulus during and after the emergency. If the marketists have their way here in the US we will dole out hundreds of billions in industrial subsidies while leaving the public with payroll tax cuts.

[Greyblades]

Or as someone who reads more about them and doesn't have a paranoid streak may think, there is a conflict between local government officials who want to keep a cushy job and a central government that expects local government to be more competent than they frequently turn out to be.

A related question would be, do Brexiteers still think that democracy trumps reality? If experts tell them there will be a mess unless they do things a certain way, does democracy override expert opinion?

And the guardian award for awkwardest brexit shoehorn goes to...

[edyzmedieval]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/26/upshot/coronavirus-millions-unemployment-claims.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

3.3 million jobless claims in a week...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/26/upshot/coronavirus-millions-unemployment-claims.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

3.3 million jobless claims in a week...

An inevitable component of the enforced shutdown. Our governments have been actively encouraging layoffs in order to make persons eligible for unemployment payments.

[Hooahguy]

This is the thing I worry the most about personally. I had two final interviews for new jobs indefinitely postponed and I am scheduled to leave my current job at the end of April (contracted position). So I really hope things calm down by then because while I have savings, I dont have much. Couple that with DC getting completely screwed when it comes to the Senate stimulus bill due to it being classified as a territory and not a state. The average amount that states are getting per resident is a bit over $2,000 while DC is getting about $700, despite paying more in federal taxes than many other states. Really shameful, and I hope that the House can fix this.

[Tuuvi]

I'm worried about the personal effects of this crisis too. After years of working full time and taking night classes I'm finally going to graduate with my Associate's at the end of this semester and I was planning on moving to a new city at the end of this year so I could get my Bachelor's at a school that has an Anthropology major. I think my current job is secure as long as it doesn't completely go out of business, but I don't know how I will be able to make the move if the economy is in recession and I can't find a job in the new city.

[Shaka_Khan]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dumped-milk-smashed-eggs-plowed-160839647.html

Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: Food Waste of the Pandemic

David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery
April 13, 2020, 1:08 AM GMT+9

In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits. An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil.

After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores and mad scrambles to find the last box of pasta or toilet paper roll, many of the nation’s largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pandemic. They are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell.

The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses.

The amount of waste is staggering. The nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week.

Many farmers say they have donated part of the surplus to food banks and Meals on Wheels programs, which have been overwhelmed with demand. But there is only so much perishable food that charities with limited numbers of refrigerators and volunteers can absorb.

And the costs of harvesting, processing and then transporting produce and milk to food banks or other areas of need would put further financial strain on farms that have seen half their paying customers disappear....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J2NHjBkRmI

[edyzmedieval]

A significant economic rethink is required after this period because it's clearly a significant problem when we have a worldwide disruption leading to a complete economic crash.

Furthermore, the amount of money being printed right now is frightening. I really really hope this will not lead to significant inflation.

[Montmorency]

A significant economic rethink is required after this period because it's clearly a significant problem when we have a worldwide disruption leading to a complete economic crash.

Furthermore, the amount of money being printed right now is frightening. I really really hope this will not lead to significant inflation.

Don't both recessions and pandemics typically bring deflationary pressures? When has austerity not been an economically and socially-damaging mistake?

Print away.

[Hooahguy]

I think everyone can expect that the second this is over conservatives will be clamoring for austerity, having learned absolutely nothing from 2008.

[a completely inoffensive name]

A significant economic rethink is required after this period because it's clearly a significant problem when we have a worldwide disruption leading to a complete economic crash.

Furthermore, the amount of money being printed right now is frightening. I really really hope this will not lead to significant inflation.

When was the last time inflation was above 5%? How many times in the past 40 years was it above 5%?


I think everyone can expect that the second this is over conservatives will be clamoring for austerity, having learned absolutely nothing from 2008.

Purpose in pain. Pleasure in profit.

[a completely inoffensive name]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dumped-milk-smashed-eggs-plowed-160839647.html



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J2NHjBkRmI



The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.
- The Grapes of Wrath

[Montmorency]

To be scrupulous, in my post above I had big sovereign currencies especially in mind, polities the likes of the US, UK, Euro-zone, Japan, China... For all I know a country like Kazakhstan still has more practical constraints from conventional wisdom on its monetary policy.

All the more reason for the rich countries to prime the global economy by blowing some - digital - bills (including currency swaps).


When was the last time inflation was above 5%? How many times in the past 40 years was it above 5%?

Purpose in pain. Pleasure in profit.

Fun fact (though to be scrupulous again I'm not verifying it right now): US inflation during WW2, when the majority of GDP was government spending, was lower than in the years immediately after the war.

You're going to like this article, ACIN, on the intersection of the coronavirus relief/stimulus and Modern Monetary Theory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/business/coronavirus-stimulus-money.html


The United States has responded to the economic havoc wrought by the coronavirus with the biggest relief package in its history: $2 trillion. It essentially replaces a few months of American economic activity with a flood of government money — every penny of it borrowed.

And where is all that cash coming from? Mostly out of thin air.

The traditional view of economic theory holds that governments and central banks have distinct responsibilities. A government sets fiscal policy — spending the money it raises through taxes and borrowing — to run a country. And a central bank uses various levers of monetary policy — like buying and selling government securities to change the amount of money in circulation — to ensure the smooth operation of the country’s economy.

But the relief package, called the CARES Act, will require the government to vastly expand its debt at the same time that the Federal Reserve has signaled its willingness to buy an essentially unlimited amount of government debt. With those twin moves, the United States has effectively undone decades of conventional wisdom, embedding into policy ideas that were once relegated to the fringes of economics.

Note re: the $2 trillion figure that the Federal Reserve (https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/17/21220919/fed-federal-reserve-stimulus-main-street-lending-program) is technically injecting trillions more (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-fed-balancesheet/fed-balance-sheet-increases-to-record-6-42-trillion-idUSKBN21Y3JD) than the $450 billion allocated to it in the latest relief bill last month, with a commitment to unlimited quantitative easing, so the numbers in the legislation were there for some obscure technical reasons that I don't understand. But the point is, we have like 20% unemployment and near-unlimited money.

For the Brits: Bank of England to directly finance UK government’s extra spending (https://www.ft.com/content/664c575b-0f54-44e5-ab78-2fd30ef213cb)

[a completely inoffensive name]

To be scrupulous, in my post above I had big sovereign currencies especially in mind, polities the likes of the US, UK, Euro-zone, Japan, China... For all I know a country like Kazakhstan still has more practical constraints from conventional wisdom on its monetary policy.

All the more reason for the rich countries to prime the global economy by blowing some - digital - bills (including currency swaps).



Fun fact (though to be scrupulous again I'm not verifying it right now): US inflation during WW2, when the majority of GDP was government spending, was lower than in the years immediately after the war.

You're going to like this article, ACIN, on the intersection of the coronavirus relief/stimulus and Modern Monetary Theory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/business/coronavirus-stimulus-money.html



Note re: the $2 trillion figure that the Federal Reserve (https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/17/21220919/fed-federal-reserve-stimulus-main-street-lending-program) is technically injecting trillions more (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-fed-balancesheet/fed-balance-sheet-increases-to-record-6-42-trillion-idUSKBN21Y3JD) than the $450 billion allocated to it in the latest relief bill last month, with a commitment to unlimited quantitative easing, so the numbers in the legislation were there for some obscure technical reasons that I don't understand. But the point is, we have like 20% unemployment and near-unlimited money.

For the Brits: Bank of England to directly finance UK government’s extra spending (https://www.ft.com/content/664c575b-0f54-44e5-ab78-2fd30ef213cb)

Problem with MMT is economists don't have a good framework on why we did not see inflation from the 2008 stimulus and QE. There is no guarantee the conditions today are the same and we could be walking into massive inflation in the near future.
MMT says, "it's no problem, keep printing money" but this key premise is neither agreed upon nor does it have a wealth of evidence to back it up.

As a discipline, MMT is still viewed skeptically. Current practices are based on fear and image, not any belief in MMT principles.

[edyzmedieval]

When was the last time inflation was above 5%? How many times in the past 40 years was it above 5%?

It was 3% in the Eurozone in 2011, immediately after they started printing with Quantitative Easing. But because of demand issues, it fell down so now we have it at 1.2%

This is uncharted territory - we don't know. Looking at past tables was a good idea, now nobody knows.

[Montmorency]

MMT says, "it's no problem, keep printing money"

That's not accurate. It's a shallow simplification of the concepts that you'll always hear advocates reject. One of the foundational principles of MMT is that the primary constraint on government spending is inflation, the corollary of which is that inflation matters and requires offsets. There is an assumption of an upper bound of money supply or resource utilization at which inflationary pressures become undesirable, and policymakers should account for this in constructing policy. In practical terms this is coupled with the observation that we are far beneath any ceiling and have fiscal slack. Worrying about inflation in the OECD in the middle of a pandemic and widespread negative real borrowing costs is analogous to the man dying of COVID in the other thread whose last words as he was intubated were "Who's going to pay for it?"

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/congress-needs-to-bail-out-states-and-cities-now.html

I mean, there isn't a great deal of substantive difference between mainstream Keynesianism and MMT to my understanding, other than that many proponents have independently-controversial policy prescriptions such as permanent zero interest rates and a job guarantee as fiscal stabilizer.


Current practices are based on fear and image, not any belief in MMT principles.

Central banks are just following their missions to stabilize prices and employment and financial liquidity. Reality tends to show through action, which is not to say that reality compels action - as we know.

[Pannonian]

Problem with MMT is economists don't have a good framework on why we did not see inflation from the 2008 stimulus and QE. There is no guarantee the conditions today are the same and we could be walking into massive inflation in the near future.
MMT says, "it's no problem, keep printing money" but this key premise is neither agreed upon nor does it have a wealth of evidence to back it up.

As a discipline, MMT is still viewed skeptically. Current practices are based on fear and image, not any belief in MMT principles.

The point of fiat currency is to allow economic exchange to take place regardless of the physical supply of an accepted currency resource, to reflect the ability of an economic area to produce goods and services. Otherwise you have things like England being unable to facilitate an internal economy because its accepted economic resource, silver, had all been paid to China for tea. When the population is willing and able to produce, but there is insufficient confidence to allow the exchanges to take place, then you turn to economic stimulus, to allow at least a baseline economy to function.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Simmering away under all of this is, I believe, the biggest single attitude shift in the USA in favor of European-style Democratic Socialism in our history.

[edyzmedieval]

Simmering away under all of this is, I believe, the biggest single attitude shift in the USA in favor of European-style Democratic Socialism in our history.

You're not wrong about this. With this crisis all of a sudden people realised how important it is to have safety nets to protect those vulnerable.

[edyzmedieval]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-13/u-k-economy-shrank-5-8-in-march-as-lockdown-hit


The U.K. economy shrank almost 6% in March as the nation went into lockdown, plunging into what may be its deepest recession in more than three centuries.

The sharp decline is only a small part of the damage of the restrictions to control the coronavirus, which were in place for all of April and look set to endure in some form for months to come. The measures heaped misery on an already tepid economy, with the Bank of England forecasting a staggering 25% contraction this quarter.

That highlights the monumental task the government faces in restarting the economy as it begins to take small steps toward easing the lockdown. It’s extended an aid program for workers, while the central bank will probably pump even more stimulus into the economy to keep the motor running.

[ReluctantSamurai]

It’s extended an aid program for workers, while the central bank will probably pump even more stimulus into the economy to keep the motor running.

Printing more money in the 2008 crisis worked for just over a decade, but resulted in more countries carrying more and more debt as compared to their GDP. Printing absurd amounts of money now will only result in a worse crash the next time there's a financial crisis. It's also interesting to see which jobs have been considered "essential" throughout all of this. Anyone read any stories of how "essential" a bankers job is? I haven't (although they are essential, albeit of the work-from-home kind). There's going to be fallout over how "essential" workers have been forced to go back to work despite the risk involved, and with many of these "essential" businesses not bothering with even minimal measures to protect said workers, many of whom are migrants/immigrants.

[Beskar]

The people bailed out the banks so perhaps it is time for them to bail out the people.

[Idaho]

You're not wrong about this. With this crisis all of a sudden people realised how important it is to have safety nets to protect those vulnerable.
Especially, now that many Americans have realised that all working people who rely on a steady income are vulnerable.

[rory_20_uk]

I would have thought this is a no brainer - but given massive economic events have happened several times previously (I mean, Detroit not only imploded over a number of decades but then went bankrupt) and within a few years we're back to again discussing the fact the USA has no safety net I'm not convinced that this will be different to another bump in the road.

~:smoking:

[edyzmedieval]

Honestly it should. As an European, and a European who lived in other countries too and has seen almost 30 of them, some things for me related to America are absolutely baffling and incomprehensible.

I genuinely think it's high time that systemic changes are done otherwise it will only spiral worse.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Honestly it should. As an European, and a European who lived in other countries too and has seen almost 30 of them, some things for me related to America are absolutely baffling and incomprehensible.

I genuinely think it's high time that systemic changes are done otherwise it will only spiral worse.

Most of those comparisons in your head are unified states. As in, one national government that wields the large bulk of political power. That does not obtain in the USA (at least yet) despite the efforts of Hamilton, Lincoln, Roosevelt, FDR, and others to shift us away from dispersed (what we label "federalized" power) to that of a stronger Central government. Our national government is our biggest power bloc, but often cannot do X, Y, or Z over the opposition of various state governments.

[Montmorency]

Funny saw about real-life events:
The world is on the cusp of an economic depression.
International relations are an increasingly-violent maelstrom of great-power posturing.
A US Republican lawmaker named Hawley takes the Capitol floor to declaim against free trade and the reds...
What is the year?


Most of those comparisons in your head are unified states. As in, one national government that wields the large bulk of political power. That does not obtain in the USA (at least yet) despite the efforts of Hamilton, Lincoln, Roosevelt, FDR, and others to shift us away from dispersed (what we label "federalized" power) to that of a stronger Central government. Our national government is our biggest power bloc, but often cannot do X, Y, or Z over the opposition of various state governments.

Heretofore the United States was as close to unitary union as any federal state has come. Congress could preempt vast bodies of state law if it chose to (as it often has in the past, e.g. regulatory matters). The states have been desperate for the federal government to take the lead in this crisis. That it hasn't this time, choosing instead to undermine the states, is not an element of our federalism but of our descent toward failed state status a la early-90s Russia or Somalia - pick your poison.

Anyway, on the subject of the thread the bottom line remains that neglecting to borrow trillions at zero interest rates in order to provide relief, sustain government services, prime the economy, or even refinance outstanding debt, during one of the worst downturns
- in the context of an increasingly-brittle world system - of all time is a world-historical level of fiscal irresponsibility, of Hetty-Greenism, that will reverberate for the remainder of recorded time. One more casual theft from future generations.

This has been your correspondent from the Regional Advisory Council.

https://i.imgur.com/tuW8bLk.png

[CrossLOPER]

https://i.imgur.com/tuW8bLk.png

Excuse my departure from my usual aloofness but what in the f*** are you doing over there?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Excuse my departure from my usual aloofness but what in the f*** are you doing over there?

Enacting Patrick Henry's vision for governance.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Excuse my departure from my usual aloofness but what in the f*** are you doing over there?

Pull up a map of states alignment during the ACW. Look familiar? Not much has changed in 160 years....:shame:

[CrossLOPER]

Enacting Patrick Henry's vision for governance.
Looks about a coherent as a map of the HRE during the later years.


Pull up a map of states alignment during the ACW. Look familiar? Not much has changed in 160 years....:shame:

It's the northern protesters with the Confederate flags that I find amusing.

[Montmorency]

Looks about a coherent as a map of the HRE during the later years.

Just so.


Pull up a map of states alignment during the ACW. Look familiar? Not much has changed in 160 years....:shame:

That's part of it, but the truth is it's so much messier. At least there were just two polities in the ACW-era. Remember, first time as tragedy, second time as farce.


EDIT: By the way, the answer to the joke in my previous post is 1930/2020. I hope I don't have to explain it.

[ReluctantSamurai]

It's the northern protesters with the Confederate flags that I find amusing.

It's about rural and non-rural areas. Numbers wise, the urban areas probably sport more guns per capita than the non-urban areas. But it's the intent. In the cities guns are closely related to violent crimes that are primarily race or drug related. In rural areas, it's more like a badge of honor...the proverbial "Don't Tread On Me" mentality. The Michigan Freedom Fund (the group carrying out the protests) is financed primarily through the DeVos family based in Grand Rapids, MI, and the family has very close ties with Trump (Betsy DeVos is Trump's education secretary).


At least there were just two polities in the ACW-era.

And there are just two polities now, as I see it:inquisitive:

Conservative, mostly white, Republicans---and liberal Democrats. Oversimplification, I know, but most conflict can be drawn along those lines. Just look at your chart for those who wear masks in public, and those that don't. Pretty much aligned along party lines:shrug:

[Montmorency]

And there are just two polities now, as I see it:inquisitive:

Conservative, mostly white, Republicans---and liberal Democrats. Oversimplification, I know, but most conflict can be drawn along those lines. Just look at your chart for those who wear masks in public, and those that don't. Pretty much aligned along party lines:shrug:

Geographically it's more fragmented. The mountain states of the inner West aren't teaming up with the Southern states. The Northeast and mid-Atlantic aren't teaming up with the West Coast. It's like a fractal conflict.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The old saw about the HRE was that it wasn't Holy, wasn't Roman, and wasn't much of an Empire.

Some days I fear that the USA is down to only the last letter.

[edyzmedieval]

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depends how you look at it, all empires come to an end sooner or later and while the USA is still a good long way to go (that military is still super dominant), it's not looking good.

[Tuuvi]

I'm of the opinion that the United States is in terminal decline, from coronavirus to hurricanes, wildfires and botched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US government just seems totally incapable of solving the various crises that beset it, and now its on the verge of declaring war on its own citizens. As global warming intensifies things are just going to get worse from here on out.

This is an interesting podcast I listened to the other day that looks at the rise and fall of empires from a Marxist perspective:

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-antifada/e/69906620

[Montmorency]

Apparently the EU has been doing something.
https://www.dw.com/en/european-commission-unveils-750-billion-recovery-plan/a-53584998

---


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI7sBsBHdCk

Well, look, it's funny and well-made, and that's enough.

[edyzmedieval]

As you might know, the market is swinging wildly lately, due to the economic uncertainty, pumping of money by the FED and apparently... Robinhood.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-18/robinhood-stock-trading-blitz-isn-t-fed-s-fault

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/17/robinhood-drives-retail-trading-renaissance-during-markets-wild-ride.html

I'm following markets & econ very closely as usual and I find the whole "blame the Robinhood beginners for the market swings" rather... shortsighted... to put it nicely.

[Montmorency]

Hell of a thing to name a financial services company "Robinhood."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYc6QmaGnYc

[a completely inoffensive name]

I'm of the opinion that the United States is in terminal decline, from coronavirus to hurricanes, wildfires and botched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US government just seems totally incapable of solving the various crises that beset it, and now its on the verge of declaring war on its own citizens. As global warming intensifies things are just going to get worse from here on out.

This is an interesting podcast I listened to the other day that looks at the rise and fall of empires from a Marxist perspective:

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-antifada/e/69906620

There is never a turning point, never a moment of crisis or victory that signals a permanent change in destiny. There are only actors and institutions and at any point they can change; as long as the United States as an entity exists there is the possibility for recovery. Believing otherwise is a trap that accelerationists promote to make you think that nations like phoenixes will only be reborn once they are burned down. But this is real life, not mythology. The only thing that will get burned are poor and colored people.

[Tuuvi]

There is never a turning point, never a moment of crisis or victory that signals a permanent change in destiny. There are only actors and institutions and at any point they can change; as long as the United States as an entity exists there is the possibility for recovery. Believing otherwise is a trap that accelerationists promote to make you think that nations like phoenixes will only be reborn once they are burned down. But this is real life, not mythology. The only thing that will get burned are poor and colored people.

States break down and collapse all the time, from the Roman Empire, to the Qing dynasty, to the Classic period Maya city states, etc. It's a recurring pattern throughout history. I will concede that it is possible for the United States to turn itself around at this point in time, but I'm still not sure it actually will.

I vehemently disagree with the notion that the downfall of the United States would only result in the poor and people of color getting burned. The US was built upon the genocide of the indigenous, the enslavement of Africans, and the exploitation of poor immigrants. The US is currently engaged in imperialist ventures that result in the slaughter of poor brown people all over the world. It's been fighting a pointless 19 year war in Afghanistan for god's sake. The collapse of the United States could be really ugly and lead to something worse taking its place, that is true. But if the US were to be overthrown in a working class, POC led rebellion that would be a net benefit for the poor and people of color.

Either way we have to keep fighting for a better, more just world; I never suggested that the downfall of the United States is guaranteed to be a good thing. It would only be a good thing if people are organized and prepared to build something better to take its place.

[Montmorency]

The collapse of the United States could be really ugly and lead to something worse taking its place, that is true. But if the US were to be overthrown in a working class, POC led rebellion that would be a net benefit for the poor and people of color.

But that's not really a thing, you know, nor does anyone seem to have a good notion of how it would become a thing. And revolutions are pretty much always elite or wannabe-elite projects.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I vehemently disagree with the notion that the downfall of the United States would only result in the poor and people of color getting burned. The US was built upon the genocide of the indigenous, the enslavement of Africans, and the exploitation of poor immigrants. The US is currently engaged in imperialist ventures that result in the slaughter of poor brown people all over the world. It's been fighting a pointless 19 year war in Afghanistan for god's sake.

You are suffering from tunnel vision. The presence of these protests signals the desire and the momentum of the United States to continue a slow, a painfully slow, reformation into something more grand than any empire or country has ever achieved. A truly multicultural liberal democracy whose internal divisions rests on beliefs, values, and ideas and not by ethnicity, sex, or wealth. This country is unique in its public chastising over its original sins and the measures it has taken in 4-6 generations from a WASPy agrarian oligarchy to what it is today.

No country lacks guilt, if you think the US and Europe has a tortured past, read more on Imperial Japan or China for the past 60 years. The downfall of the US as a major entity would allow the Han ethnostate in China to accelerate, leading to the extermination of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Manchu's, and the emerging Taiwanese identity.

To burn it all down is to reset the clock.



The collapse of the United States could be really ugly and lead to something worse taking its place, that is true. But if the US were to be overthrown in a working class, POC led rebellion that would be a net benefit for the poor and people of color.

Either way we have to keep fighting for a better, more just world; I never suggested that the downfall of the United States is guaranteed to be a good thing. It would only be a good thing if people are organized and prepared to build something better to take its place.
I think what you are suggesting in the second half of this quote is already happening, but you are too blinded by your historical narrative to understand that these types of changes are simultaneously difficult to make in the short term and yet happening at a unprecedented rate historically.

Where you should direct your energy is engaging within your community and nurturing opportunities for growth and change instead of feeding a fatalistic idea of death as the only means to rebirth.

[Montmorency]

Singapore GDP declined (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-14/singapore-slumps-into-recession-with-41-2-fall-in-quarterly-gdp) 40+% in the second quarter. What's the appropriate soundtrack?

From the article, Japan's GDP is expected to have declined 20% in Q2. US Q2 not reported yet?


The US economy has proved more resilient than expected, in part due to the unemployment insurance expansion, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Federal programs supported record increases in personal income in April, through hundreds of billions transferred through unemployment insurance (>100% income replacement up to almost median US income), paycheck protection, and even the up-to-$1200 relief checks. Currently (https://www.axios.com/unemployment-continued-claims-coronavirus-fcc4226f-2c2e-47a8-b881-c2e9172b5f40.html) over 32 million Americans are enrolled in UI - 1/5 of the US labor force - though I don't say "collecting," since so many have seen their benefits unaccountably delayed for some period. Half of current enrollees are covered by PUA, which broadens eligibility a great deal and disburses UI enrollees an extra $600 a week, typically more than doubling the usual payout.

As we have seen, permanent job losses have been accelerating even before the recent surge in cases. According to the Fed, between the beginning of June and mid-July there have been about 10 million new unemployment claims around the country. For the first time in 4 months week-on-week new claims increased last week: 1.4 million compared to 1.3 million from the week before.

PUA expires in DAYS. Moreover, the patchwork of state and federal eviction protections are all or almost all set to expire by the end of the summer.

Right now, if we are very lucky the Republicans will acquiesce to renewing PUA at up to 20% of the current level.

Can the country withstand millions suddenly losing all or most of their income, shortly followed by millions losing their homes?

How many licks does it take to get to the ruin of a nation? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY2A7WIOqCA) Let's find out! A-one, a-two, a-three....


Don't have time to do more in depth but some older links of interest.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/politics/coronavirus-poverty.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/upshot/coronavirus-spending-rich-poor.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/realestate/why-rents-havent-dropped-in-new-york-city.html
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/6/17/21293353/coronavirus-covid-19-economy-recession-unemployment-raj-chetty
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/business/economy/europe-us-jobless-coronavirus.html

[a completely inoffensive name]

If the benefits run out under Trump while COVID continues to spike, a 60 Dem Senate becomes possible.

[Pannonian]

If the benefits run out under Trump while COVID continues to spike, a 60 Dem Senate becomes possible.

Lucky you. Over here, we've got Brexit to come, the no deal version rubbished as a possibility by the Brexiteers here when i raised it. And any coming hardship will be blamed on factors others than the Tory government. There will be some palming off on Covid, but it will mostly be blamed on the EU. How does it look for Trump and any potential efforts in blame shifting?

[Montmorency]

If the benefits run out under Trump while COVID continues to spike, a 60 Dem Senate becomes possible.

I hope it's not 60 seats. That would mean winning every seat currently defended by Republicans, and defending every seat ourselves - a legendary achievement to be sure, but it would incentivize the Dem caucus to pursue a bare-minimum agenda within the parameters set by the filibuster. Like what happened 2009-10.

I want them to get 59. There needs to be a break-glass epiphany for more liberals, and being a single vote from overcoming an arbitrary procedural barrier to urgent relief for a cratering society is more conducive to that. A 59-Dem Senate is more prepared in my estimation to pass a transformative, as opposed to briefly stabilizing, agenda - commensurate with the size of the House majority - than a 60-Dem Senate, because of the distortions associated with the threshold effect.

Thankfully, even Joe Manchin has gone on record saying he won't allow Biden's agenda to be stonewalled.


Re: education from the other thread, I won't search for cites to support but I recall determining that a majority of the population born since ~1960 has at least some tertiary education. We shouldn't create a dichotomy, there's going to be some spectral shift between a high school and a 4-year degree. How many tens of millions of dropouts and associate's degree holders (whom I only lump together as an intermediate category to the above, not in a normative way)?


Lucky you. Over here, we've got Brexit to come, the no deal version rubbished as a possibility by the Brexiteers here when i raised it. And any coming hardship will be blamed on factors others than the Tory government. There will be some palming off on Covid, but it will mostly be blamed on the EU. How does it look for Trump and any potential efforts in blame shifting?

Mostly they've been trying (not exhaustive):

1. It doesn't exist/it's a political hoax
2. It's not that bad
3. It'll go away on it's own
4. The Democrats have sabotaged Trump
5. It's been successfully managed by our heroic god-king

6. Socialisms!
7. Riots!

Given that Trump's polling declines among white senior citizens have been higher than those among voters of color, this genuinely inept and navel-gazing raving is having a self-destructing (as well as other-destructive) effect.

[Montmorency]

I hope it's not 60 seats. That would mean winning every seat currently defended by Republicans, and defending every seat ourselves

To correct a major and rather silly error, there are something like 35 Senate seats up for reelection this year (including special elections). I was thinking to the exclusion of the 10 (out of 23) Republican-held seats that 270toWin rates as safe.

[a completely inoffensive name]

To correct a major and rather silly error, there are something like 35 Senate seats up for reelection this year (including special elections). I was thinking to the exclusion of the 10 (out of 23) Republican-held seats that 270toWin rates as safe.


Yeah, I am just saying that the economic and physical distress combo could potentially turn otherwise red states turn light blue for one election cycle.

[edyzmedieval]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-26/europe-s-economy-set-to-outpace-u-s-in-upending-of-past-roles

Europe is on path to outpace economic growth, suggesting a faster rebound in the EU.

[Montmorency]

I was going to make a comment on the article but realized that it isn't 2010 anymore. Don't worry, you don't have to get it.

Anyway, something I had wanted to post earlier.

23898

[edyzmedieval]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-29/almost-30-million-in-u-s-didn-t-have-enough-to-eat-last-week

Unbelievable. It's unreal, honestly, how can the richest nation in the world have 30 million people without food?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Our system was not set up to purchase, prepare, and provide food for all as a basic right. There is no overarching authority guaranteeing that all are fed unless they refuse food.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Our system was not set up to purchase, prepare, and provide food for all as a basic right. There is no overarching authority guaranteeing that all are fed unless they refuse food.

This is not true, the New Deal directly addressed this challenge.

Purchasing (this covers not just food costs but its preparation and distribution costs as well) is done by the CCC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Credit_Corporation
It is then provided through the (at the time) Food Stamp program, now SNAP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program

Conservatives kept the former going to maintain US interests and subsidize big ag. but have successfully stigmatized the latter which has resulted in these people going hungry as we have been led to believe they are all 'welfare queens'.

But make no mistake, we have the structure in place to expand SNAP and end hunger in this country.

[Montmorency]

Just want to make a correction on some sloppiness in my previous post. PUA (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, glad this usage of the acronym overwhelms others in the lexicon) is one of the programs extending eligibility for unemployment insurance - to the part-time, furloughed, independent contractor, gig worker, self-employed, etc. It expires at the end of the year. What expired at the end of July - in relation to UI; federal eviction protections covering a large minority of all residential rental units also expired - was FPUC (Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation). That was the flat $600 enhancement.

[Montmorency]

https://i.imgur.com/lVTdn9x.png

Let's have more big government please.

http://www.oecd.org/sdd/na/Growth-and-economic-well-being-oecd-11-2020.pdf
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5743308460b5e922a25a6dc7/t/5f87c59e4cd0011fabd38973/1602733471158/COVID-Projecting-Poverty-Monthly-CPSP-2020.pdf

[ReluctantSamurai]

Here is a case that's been ongoing quietly under the radar, but has consequences equal to, or even greater than the coming battle over Roe vs Wade or the ACA, IMHO:

https://www.vox.com/22106497/supreme-court-collins-mnuchin-124-billion-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-unitary-executive-housing


Collins v. Mnuchin (https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/collins-v-mnuchin/) (and a companion case called Mnuchin v. Collins) is the stuff that lawyers’ nightmares are made of. It involves a brain-twistingly convoluted array of issues, a complex set of transactions that may have saved the economy from a second Great Depression, and an astonishing amount of money: The plaintiffs argue that the federal government must give up as much as $124 billion (https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-422/154153/20200916135926128_19-422%20Brief%20of%20Patrick%20J.%20Collins%20et%20al..pdf).

Beginning in 2008, the federal government took extraordinary steps to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two semi-private companies that, combined, were tied up in about half of all mortgages in the United States. Had the federal government not spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up Fannie and Freddie, both companies could have collapsed, and that collapse would have rippled throughout the world economy and potentially triggered a global depression.

And yet, the Collins plaintiffs seek to unravel many of the steps — potentially even all of the steps — that the government took to save Fannie and Freddie.

Monumental enough, considering the amount of money involved, but tucked into this case is a fundamental restructuring of the powers of the president, as it involves several semi-independent government agencies. That involves something called the "unitary executive":

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/29/21307083/supreme-court-cfpb-seila-law-chief-justice-john-roberts-unitary-executive


Most federal agencies are under the full control of the president — if the president wants to fire a cabinet secretary, for example, the president may do so for any reason they choose. A handful of agencies, meanwhile, are “independent,” meaning that the president may only fire the heads of those agencies for cause. Under the statute that was struck down in Seila Law, for example, the CFPB director could only be fired for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/12/5491).”

Conservatives have fought a long fight against such limitations on executive authority. In 1988, dissenting in Morrison v. Olson (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17629076715773250697&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr), Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that insulating independent agency heads from presidential control in this way is unconstitutional.

The Constitution provides that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States (https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/article/article-ii).” This provision, according to Scalia, “does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.” Thus, if a federal official has the power to execute a federal law, they must either be fireable by the president or by someone else who is ultimately accountable to the president.

This theory, that all executive branch officials must be responsible to the president, is known as the theory of the “unitary executive.”

Background to the Collins vs Mnuchin lawsuit:


FHFA effectively took control of Fannie and Freddie in 2008 and entered the companies into an agreement with the Treasury Department. Under the original agreement between the Treasury and the two companies, the government agreed to give Fannie and Freddie up to $100 billion each — though the companies weren’t obligated to take all of this money if they did not need it. Two subsequent amendments to the agreement allowed Fannie and Freddie to draw even more money from the federal government.

In return, Fannie and Freddie (which, again, were under FHFA’s effective control) agreed to a significant number of concessions. Most importantly for the Collins case, they agreed to pay a recurring “dividend” to the government that would increase as the companies took more and more money from the Treasury.

But this growing dividend soon created problems of its own. Fannie and Freddie had to draw so much money from the Treasury in order to remain stable that they were soon obligated to pay dividends to the government that exceeded their overall earnings. Before long, they were drawing money from the Treasury just to pay the dividends — which were owed to the Treasury in the first place.

Now comes the contested part of the FHFA agreement which stemmed from the problem noted above:


That led to a third amendment, in 2012, to Fannie and Freddie’s agreement with the Treasury, which the Collins plaintiffs hope to invalidate. Under the terms of this third amendment, Fannie and Freddie would no longer have to pay fixed dividends to the Treasury. Instead, each company would be allowed to maintain a capital reserve of up to $3 billion (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10101#:~:text=The%20third%20PSPA%20amendment%20converted,capital%20buffer%20for%20each%20company. ). Any money earned by either company that exceeded this $3 billion cap would be paid to the Treasury.

Thus, the third amendment eliminated the escalating dividend payments that threatened to overwhelm both Fannie and Freddie. But it also eliminated either company’s ability to earn a profit for as long as they were bound by the third amendment.

Now comes the meat and potatoes:


At least according to the Collins plaintiffs, Fannie and Freddie’s fortunes improved around the same time that this third amendment went into effect. The plaintiffs claim that this third amendment “netted the federal government an astonishing windfall of $124 billion (https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-422/154153/20200916135926128_19-422%20Brief%20of%20Patrick%20J.%20Collins%20et%20al..pdf),” and they insist the third amendment must be invalidated — and that all the money that Fannie and Freddie paid to the government under that amendment must be credited back to the two companies (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txsd.1391317/gov.uscourts.txsd.1391317.1.0.pdf).

So why should anyone give a crap about an internal squabble over $124 billion dollars?:deal: Well:


Most federal agencies are under the full control of the president. If the president wants to fire a Cabinet secretary, for example, they may do so at any time and for any reason. And thus the president can use this ability to remove agency leaders to ensure that those leaders do not implement policies that the president finds objectionable.

The FHFA, however, is unusual in that its director serves a five-year term and can only be removed by the president “for cause (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/12/4512).” Thus, the FHFA director has some job security in the event the president wants to remove them.

At least according to Scalia, such an arrangement violates the Constitution. The Constitution provides that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States (https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/article/article-ii).” This provision, according to Scalia’s dissenting opinion in Morrison v. Olson (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17629076715773250697&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr)(1988), “does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.” Thus, if a federal official has the power to execute a federal law, they must be fireable either by the president or by someone else who is ultimately accountable to the president.

This theory, that all federal officials who execute federal laws must be accountable to the president, is known as the “unitary executive.” When Scalia embraced this theory, he was all alone — Morrison was a 7-1 decision with Scalia in a solitary dissent. But that dissent gained a cult following among conservative lawyers, some of whom now sit on the Supreme Court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in 2016 that he wanted to “put the final nail (https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/18/politics/brett-kavanaugh-independent-counsel-comments/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-07-18T14%3A09%3A23&utm_source=twCNNp&utm_term=image)” in the Morrison majority opinion’s coffin.

For the moment, at least, Scalia’s vision remains a dream deferred. Current law allows for the existence of agencies such as the Federal Reserve or the Federal Communications Commission, which are led by multi-member boards (https://www.vox.com/2020/6/29/21307083/supreme-court-cfpb-seila-law-chief-justice-john-roberts-unitary-executive) made up of individuals who can only be fired for cause. But last June, in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-7_n6io.pdf), the Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional for an agency to have a single director who cannot be fired at will by the president.

The Collins plaintiffs did not bring this case solely so they can get a court order allowing Biden to fire Trump’s FHFA director. To the contrary, they argue that radical consequences flow from the fact that directors of the FHFA have operated under the assumption that they can only be fired for cause. Senior executive branch officials, they claim, must “be appointed in the manner specified by the [Constitution] and subject to oversight by the President.” If these constraints “are not observed, the official’s actions are ultra vires and must be set aside (https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-422/154153/20200916135926128_19-422%20Brief%20of%20Patrick%20J.%20Collins%20et%20al..pdf).”

Taken to its logical extreme, this argument could mean that literally everything the FHFA has ever done in its 12 years of existence is invalid. Because the Court also invalidated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) single-director structure in Seila Law, the Collins plaintiffs’ arguments also suggest that everything that the CFPB did prior to Seila Law may also be invalid.

A foreboding conclusion on what this conservative attempt at gerrymandering the rules governing agency heads, and injecting SCOTUS into government policy:


To be clear on what’s happening here: The plaintiffs’ arguments threaten a dozen years of work by a federal agency that very well may have rescued the US housing market and prevented what one country’s former finance minister described as “Armageddon.” Those plaintiffs offer constitutional arguments that, until fairly recently, were widely viewed as extreme and were rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Court. But then they ask for a carefully tailored remedy: invalidation of the third amendment of the Treasury agreement.

That makes no sense. If the FHFA lacks the power to act while its director cannot be fired at will by the president, then everything the FHFA has done up to this point is invalid. There’s no principled way to carve out the third amendment.

And yet seven of the 16 appeals court judges that heard this case voted to give the Collins plaintiffs exactly what they ask for: a court order invalidating the third amendment and only the third amendment. As Judge Don Willett wrote in a thinly reasoned dissenting opinion (https://casetext.com/case/collins-v-mnuchin-4) that barely explains why such a gerrymandered remedy could be justified, “the Third Amendment is the smallest independent agreement that caused the Shareholders’ injury, so that is what to rescind.”

Collins v. Mnuchin is a monster of a case. It is complicated. The potential consequences are enormous. And the amount of money at stake is more than the gross domestic product of the entire nation of Ecuador (https://tradingeconomics.com/ecuador/gdp).

More than the GDP of a major S. American country.~:eek: To say nothing of eliminating the ability of critical agencies to be somewhat outside the whims of a sitting president to control.

[Montmorency]

EDIT: On the COVID front, I am aware of at least the UK (Pfizer-bioNtech), China, and Russia currently administering vaccine doses to the general population. By the time a round is tolerably-available to me it should be one of the easier-handling formulations we've been hearing about. Two negative antibody tests up to today, fingers crossed I clear the bend. (Come to think of it, I'll probably take a third just before I'm vaccinated, for assurances' sake.)



Here is a case that's been ongoing quietly under the radar, but has consequences equal to, or even greater than the coming battle over [FONT=comic sans ms]Roe vs Wade [FONT=arial][FONT=verdana]or the ACA, IMHO:

https://www.vox.com/22106497/supreme-court-collins-mnuchin-124-billion-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-unitary-executive-housing

The topic of unitary executive regarding executive branch, or independent, agencies/officials was also raised at some point in the election thread. As usual the Republicans won't admit to the heat of the fire they're playing with (the jurisprudence is implausible as usual, to put it kindly, but jurisprudence is beside the point today). If the president has unlimited authority to dispose of federal office(r)s as they please, we will be put on the slippery slope to indulging in that power ourselves in a desperate bid to stay afloat; executive power will increasingly be the only meaningful sort as long as Congress is disabled. (See even Obama with respect to Bush-era executive expansion.)

An example of a damaging side effect of this doctrine would appear to be the invalidation of all federal legal provisions, going back to the famous Pendleton Act of the 19th century, that regularize the civil service on the basis of merit rather than political nepotism. Even Trump has struggled to fire (as opposed to "reassign") career bureaucrats, particularly those with military rank, because as I understand it they have for-cause protections from even a president (I could be wrong and these are just another normative holdover against deleterious top-down micromanagement). Under a unitary executive no position could have any sort of conditional insulation from the whims of the chief. That development would be potentially fatal to the professional ethos of the civil service that we've painstakingly and pridefully built in this country (we do have some accomplishments to our name) and generate even greater bureaucratic dysfunction in its place.

Speaking of which (https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_Executive_Order_13957_(Donald_Trump,_2020)#:~:text=Executive%20Order%2013957%3A%20Creat ing%20Schedule,as%20members%20of%20the%20excepted)...


Executive Order 13957: Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service is a presidential executive order issued by President Donald Trump (R) on October 21, 2020, that directed agencies to reclassify federal civil service employees in the competitive service who serve in policy-related roles as members of the excepted service.[1][2]

Background
The order instructed agencies to reclassify competitive service employees who serve in "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions and that are not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition” as members of the newly created Schedule F within the excepted service.[1][3]

The classification change, according to the order, aimed to give agency heads greater flexibility in the appointment of staff members who serve in policy-related positions. The order also claimed that the change would make it easier for agency management to remove poor-performing employees. Though the change made the qualifying employees ineligible for the adverse action protections of the competitive service, the order directed agencies to develop rules that create similar protections for Schedule F employees. The order also instructed the Federal Labor Relations Authority to determine whether Schedule F positions should be eligible for union membership.[1][4]

Competitive vs. excepted service
See also: Civil service
Members of the competitive service are hired according to a neutral, merit-based selection process and have protections against at-will removal by their supervisors. Members of the excepted service, on the other hand, are hired by agencies to fill certain positions for which candidates cannot be appropriately assessed through the merit-based selection process, and do not share in the competitive service's at-will removal protections.

Sad.


At least according to the Collins plaintiffs, Fannie and Freddie’s fortunes improved around the same time that this third amendment went into effect. The plaintiffs claim that this third amendment “netted the federal government an astonishing windfall of $124 billion,”

Sounds like good government tbh. The feds made a whole lot of money from emergency loans during the recession: bailouts are better than no bailouts.


That makes no sense. If the FHFA lacks the power to act while its director cannot be fired at will by the president, then everything the FHFA has done up to this point is invalid. There’s no principled way to carve out the third amendment.

Republican severability doctrine makes more sense when you recall the secret subclause, "heads I win tails you lose."

Heck it, new constitutional principle: For the Equal Protection (of the laws) clause of the 14th Amendment to be realized, it is prerequisite that all citizens maintain a roughly-similar proportion of national wealth to one another. Let's see where that runs in an expanded court. :shifty:

[ReluctantSamurai]

Sounds like good government tbh. The feds made a whole lot of money from emergency loans during the recession

Fannie & Freddie would have gone under had the Federal Government not intervened, and in the process, the Feds became one of the larger holders of real estate in the country (as I understand it). I don't have a problem with the Feds making back some of the money they pumped into F & F, but I wonder if there are conflicts of interest in the whole arrangement that I don't see...:shrug:

The prospect of expanding "unitary executive" is what caught my eye. And yes, it can be abused by Republican and Democrat alike. It will be interesting to see where SCOTUS goes with this.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Here are some eye-opening numbers:

https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/12/10/new-research-shows-pandemic-profits-of-billionaires-could-fully-fund-3000-stimulus-checks-for-every-person-in-us/


“As tens of millions of Americans suffer from the health and economic ravages of this pandemic, a few hundred billionaires add to their massive fortunes,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said in a statement (https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issue/net-worth-u-s-billionaires-soared-1-trillion-total-4-trillion-since-pandemic-began/). “Their pandemic profits are so immense that America’s billionaires could pay for a major Covid relief bill and still not lose a dime of their pre-virus riches.”

https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issue/net-worth-u-s-billionaires-soared-1-trillion-total-4-trillion-since-pandemic-began/


The collective wealth of America’s 651 billionaires has jumped by over $1 trillion since roughly the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to a total of $4 trillion at market close on Monday, December 7, 2020. Their wealth growth since March is more than the $908 billion in pandemic relief (https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/12/03/what-is-in-congressional-bailout-deal-stimulus-checks/) proposed by a bipartisan group of members of Congress, which is likely to be the package that moves forward for a vote in the next week, but has been stalled over Republican concerns that it is too costly.


The $1 trillion wealth gain by 651 U.S. billionaires since mid-March is:
More than it would cost to send a stimulus check of $3,000 to every one of the roughly 330 million people in America (https://www.census.gov/popclock/embed.php?component=counter). A family of four would receive over $12,000. Republicans have blocked new stimulus checks from being included in the pandemic relief package.

Double the two-year estimated budget gap of all state and local governments, which is forecast to be at least $500 billion (https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-hit-state-budgets-create-a-drag-on-u-s-recovery-11597224600?mod=article_inline). By June, state and local governments had already laid off 1.5 million workers (https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2020/06/16/how-covid-19-is-driving-big-job-losses-in-state-and-local-government) and public services—especially education—faced steep budget cuts (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/states-in-fiscal-crisis-cuts-to-basic-services-loom-due-to-pandemic.html).

Only slightly less than total federal spending on Medicare ($644 billion in 2019 (https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/medicare#footnote1)) and Medicaid ($389 billion in FY2019 (https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/federalstate-share-of-spending/?dataView=1&currentTimeframe=0&selectedDistributions=federal&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)), which together serve 120 million Americans (69 million in Medicaid (https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medicaid-and-chip-enrollment-data/report-highlights/index.html), 63 million in Medicare (https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Dashboard/Medicare-Enrollment/Enrollment%20Dashboard.html), less 12 million enrolled in both (https://www.medicareadvantage.com/resources/dual-eligible-medicare-medicaid-plans)).

Nearly four times the $267 billion total in stimulus payments (https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-stimulus-payments-in-the-time-of-the-covid-19-pandemic.htm#_edn2) made to 159 million people earlier this year.


At $4 trillion the total wealth of all U.S. billionaires today is nearly double the $2.1 trillion in total wealth (https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/) held by the bottom half of the population, or 165 million Americans (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B230RC0Q173SBEA).


:jawdrop:

[Montmorency]

International corporate accountability, financial/environmenal regulation, and tax (even wage) floors. Most countries wouldn't be covered at first, but there isn't much risk of billionaires or megacorps relocating to Ivory Coast, for example.

The US is currently the top tax haven on the planet. That will have to change. But if any of the island or microstates around would prefer to take up the torch, an international Alliance would be well within its rights to outright conquer it and direct a new dispensation.


Also, wow. Early 1900s sure were a rotten time to be sub-wealthy. Glad we're deep into the new Gilded Age:

https://i.imgur.com/NNXbexV.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/0fF9GWl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/iZ7g3Zi.jpg

[edyzmedieval]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-29/fed-s-taper-talk-is-pre-emptive-strike-against-inflation-fears

Next up on our economic plate, the scary I word - Inflation.

While it's true that the stimulus spending packages both in the USA and the EU give a significant worry to those focused on market fundamentals, and seeing the stability of the economic model go awry, we have to consider that there's still a pandemic around us. Still, prices, in Europe at least, of essential goods, are slowly creeping up...

[ReluctantSamurai]

I don't know how much Bloomberg News is the mouthpiece of the man himself, but he is a self-described autocrat who thinks he can solve democracy's problems by simply writing a check....:shrug:

Where was all this concern about inflation back in 2006-07, or when the GOP handed big business huge tax cuts in 2017? He may be right about the current status of inflation problems, but make no mistake, he's a bottom-line businessman with politics more related to the GOP than the Dems....

[edyzmedieval]

I think we're amalgamating a bit the details - Bloomberg News is by far the most used market data / economics news company around the world, because they provide a lot of raw data which is sourced properly, which companies around the world use. I'm a very big fan of the system / company in itself, the data is reliable and accurate. (not always but you get the idea)

Also there's no link between personal and business, editorial line I mean.

As for inflation, this happens when there's too much money on the market which is what happens now.

[Montmorency]

As far as I can find inflation has remained very low in the US and Europe?

[ReluctantSamurai]

As for inflation, this happens when there's too much money on the market which is what happens now.

An oversimplification, I think. Economics has never been a strong suit of mine, but it seems to me the money is becoming more concentrated in the hands of a few, even more than before. Here in the states, that "too much money on the market" is being used by the GOP to strongly push for ending COVID relief (and by market, I assume you're referring to stock markets?). Tell that to the millions who still can't feed their families or pay their mortgages....hence my reference to politics....

[edyzmedieval]

Per the Morning Brew newsletter I received yesterday morning:


Food: A UN food price index soared 40% (https://link.morningbrew.com/click/24047927.1415557/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZnQuY29tL2NvbnRlbnQvOGI1ZjRiNGQtY2JmOC00MjY5LWFmMmMtYzk0MDYzMTk3YmJiP3V0bV9zb3VyY2U9 bW9ybmluZ19icmV3/5ec28a9e0857545187628500B409a6b7f) in May, the largest jump in a decade. Low-income countries will suffer the worst effects of this food inflation.

https://www.ft.com/content/8b5f4b4d-cbf8-4269-af2c-c94063197bbb?utm_source=morning_brew

[Montmorency]

Updated version of "A comparison of worker pay, worker productivity, and CEO Pay from 1950 to 2020 (https://imgur.com/gallery/a99FVFQ)".

Spoilered so as not to break your view.

https://i.imgur.com/U1ubxZz.png

https://i.imgur.com/lvcjtDg.jpg

[spmetla]

An interesting .gov website looking at US revenue and expenses. Enjoying looking at this while contemplating our oncoming debt ceiling dilemma. Certainly easier to navigate than past iterations.

Government Revenue
https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/revenue/

Government Spending
https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/agency

Crazy how little revenue the govt gets from Corporate taxes!

Also crazy how the interest we pay on our national debt is $524 billion all on its own.

[Montmorency]

Tony Blair is a right twat.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/pandora-papers-offshore-finance/)

[edyzmedieval]

Speaking of shenanigans with an economic impact... Facebook / Instagram / WhatsApp have been down right now for almost 4 hours, a major major internet blackout.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/4/22708989/instagram-facebook-outage-messenger-whatsapp-error

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Tony Blair is a right twat.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/pandora-papers-offshore-finance/)

Careful with the sexist references Monty. There are more elegant ways to signal your opinion of the former PM -- and it is not as though you are alone in your less-than-stellar opinion of him.

[Montmorency]

You're right, I should update my Britishisms.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

RS:

By definition, monies coming from other countries fall under the oversight of the Federal government -- that's pretty well established in the Constitution. I have little problem with fed regulation etc. in such an instance. Even if the "shell game" involved only multiple states, the feds could still legitimately step in.

[Montmorency]

Despite an estimated 10 million job openings in the country, August (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/12/jolts-workers-quitting-august-pandemic/) saw a reportedly-high rate of quits among workers, with 3% of the (non-farm) workforce quitting their jobs in September; in fact, there have been similarly-elevated, and increasing, rates of quits throughout the year. This is also despite a steady level, relative to pre-pandemic, of overall separations (e.g. layoffs and other job losses). Here it is also important to note that a quits rate of over 2% per month was typical throughout 2019, reflecting the churn of an economy in the most active phase of expansion, but I suppose the elite expectation going into 2021 was that the economic precarity intensified by the pandemic would subdue the expectations and behavior of labor.

Losses have been particularly massive, on a continuing basis, in food and hospitality, retail, business services, and healthcare. It is thought, and has been reported all year, that there is a rising undercurrent of broad labor dissatisfaction with low wage, low benefit, low security, high stress jobs. The move into, or reclassification into, gig, contract, freelance, and temporary work - now representing a full third of the labor force - is forebodingly-ominous by those standards.

(I'd also like to note that immigration and women's labor force participation are still both way down since at least February 2020...)

So despite the rates of separations and hiring actually being roughly the same as in 2018-19, an unprecedented surge in labor demand has combined with geographical and sectoral concentration or reassessment of supply to produce a so-called "labor shortage." Robert Reich (https://www.newsweek.com/robert-reich-american-workers-strike-low-wage-jobs-employment-1637543)seemingly likes to think of it as a generalized rebellion against the service industry within late capitalism, which is too purposive and focused a read in my mind, though optimists would certainly feel impelled to fit this data as a stage along a rumbling trend (https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/) of popular backlash to exploitation in advanced societies.


"In reality, there's a living wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a health care shortage – and American workers are demanding an end to all these shortages. Or they won't return to work."

Among other aggravating factors, BLS' report highlighted parents struggling to return to the workplace as a result of high childcare fees.

Reich added that since the COVID-19 pandemic, some workers retired, found other income or "simply don't want to return to backbreaking, low-wage s*** jobs."

In September, the unemployment rate slid to 4.8 percent, the lowest rate since the start of the pandemic; however, one factor that contributed to the drop was that 183,000 people weren't counted as jobless because they did not look for work.

The labor force participation rate dropped to 61.6 percent in September, below the 63 percent experienced pre-pandemic.

"In other words," Reich wrote, "many American workers are now engaged in the equivalent of a general strike."

[Montmorency]

US Women Still Less Likely than Men to Be in Work or School; Gap Grows with Age (https://cepr.net/press-release/us-women-still-less-likely-than-men-to-be-in-work-or-school-gap-grows-with-age/)
The pandemic turned many things upside down, but not the education or employment gender gap, according to a new CEPR analysis released today. Young women at all age levels are less likely than young men at all age levels to be in school or working. Furthermore, that gap widens as women enter their late 30s and early 30s.

CEPR researchers Shawn Fremstad, Julie Cai, and Tamara Sokolowsky used the “NEET” rate — an internationally recognized measure of an age group that is Not in Employment, Education, or Training — to find that gender differences in higher education or employment are narrowest at ages 20–24, but they widen at ages 25–29 and 30–34, mostly because “more women than men [take] on greater unpaid care obligations.”

That’s not the case in Sweden, a country with expansive work-family policies. Only about 10 percent of Swedish women ages 30–34 were not in employment or education in 2020 compared to about 29 percent of US women in the same age range.


Young Men Aren’t Falling Behind Young Women (https://cepr.net/young-men-arent-falling-behind-young-women/)
In the figures below, we add to that picture by charting the percentage of young men and young women who are not in school or paid employment, segmented by age levels. Internationally, this is sometimes referred to as the “not in employment, education, or training,” or NEET rate, a term we use here with the caveat that it isn’t clear how well short-term job training is captured in US data.
[...]
While the NEET rate is a useful indicator, it’s also important to note that it underestimates gender gaps when it comes to labor force attachment. This is because people who are “not in education or employment” include unemployed people (people in the labor force and actively looking for work) and people not in the labor force. If the numerator of the NEET rate excluded unemployed people who were looking for work (and not in school), the gender gap would widen somewhat because men are more likely to be unemployed and women are more likely to be out of the labor force.

The widening gender gap in NEET rates as young women enter their late 20s and early 30s is largely, if not exclusively, due to more women than men taking on greater unpaid care obligations. The current NEET gender gap for adults ages 25–34 who live with one or more of their own minor children is roughly 23 percentage points, while among adults in the same age range not caring for children, there is currently no meaningful gap (but there was a small one prior to 2020). One result is the well-documented “motherhood wage penalty” — the fact that mothers earn less than both men and childless women with similar educational levels and other characteristics.

Countries with expansive work-family policies, including paid leave and universal childcare have lower NEET rates for young adults and narrower NEET gender gaps than the United States. In Sweden, for example, there is no meaningful NEET gender gap at ages 20–24, and only a 3 percentage point gap in ages 30–34. Only about 10 percent of Swedish women ages 30–34 were not in employment or education in 2020 compared to about 29 percent of US women in the same age range.

The Build Back Better and infrastructure bills currently moving through Congress would increase the educational attainment, health, well-being, employment, and incomes of the diverse American working class. But for both young men and young women in the working-class to benefit in a roughly equal manner, both the infrastructure legislation and the economic security provisions in the Build Back Better Act, including universal childcare, paid family leave, and child allowances, need to be included.


https://i.imgur.com/B7QIn6o.png
https://i.imgur.com/pRia6qt.png


:thinking::thinking::thinking:

[spmetla]

Anyone heard anything about the debt ceiling? I know it was punted until December but doesn't look like raising it is being including into the BBB plan so are we just going to have another Xmas showdown/crisis?

[ReluctantSamurai]

A couple of weeks old, but it does a pretty good job of explaining the Dems options:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/debt-ceiling-limit-filibuster-latest-2021-10-07/

McConnell is on record stating that there will be no Republican support for anything the Democrats try...despite the fact he was responsible for raising the limit himself along with his colleagues (in 2017, if I'm not mistaken...:shrug:)

[spmetla]

I'm tracking the various options but I'm curious what they're actually going to try and do, like actually do. BBB and infrastructure won't mean squat if the Rs are willing to tank the US economy and standing in the world for the sake of helping them in '22. If a a one time rule change needs to happen then so be it but sort that out first. Waiting for another crisis moment to hope that we can kick the can down the road a few more months is lunacy as it wouldn't secure any stability and therefore the economic recovery and the markets will always lag and the economic slowing/stagnation will ensure Republican success is widespread in the midterms.
I'm sure that of course this is being dealt with behind closed doors at the moment but I wouldn't bank on the Rs flinching again. Patriotism certainly doesn't win out over opportunism with them anymore.

[ReluctantSamurai]

If either party allows for a default, there will be another riot at the US capital, and they won't be wearing MAGA hats this time. Corporate donors for both parties will want heads, as they would lose billions on a default. Not to mention what other countries around the world might have to say, because if the US economy tanks dramatically, that destabilizes the world market.

It's a political game of chicken being played, but both sides realize what's at stake...:shrug:

[edyzmedieval]

Speaking of shenanigans, how are you guys feeling the inflation?

Inflation in the Eastern Europe neck of the woods is up to even 6% in some places. ( https://www.romania-insider.com/index.php/romania-inflation-sept-2021 )

[Montmorency]

Container lines report record profitability in the third quarter (https://container-news.com/container-lines-report-record-profitability-in-the-third-quarter/)

Αll global ocean carriers saw revenues increase substantially as a consequence of the record-high freight rates, with year-on-year revenue growth ranging from 83.9% for Maersk to 274.1% for Wan Hai, αccording to data from Sea-intelligence.

In terms of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), the shipping lines made a whopping US$37.24 billion in operating profit in Q3 of 2021 alone, according to the Danish firm.

"Combine this with the 2021 first half operating profit of 42.10 billion, and the carriers have made nearly US$80 billion in operating profit so far this year[c. November 2021]," noted Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

This does not include MSC, the world's currently second-largest carrier, which as a privately held company is not required to publish its accounts.

"To put this into perspective, the combined 2010-2020 operating profit across all quarters was US$37.86 billion," added Murphy.

Darn shame about that inflation.

:thinking2::thinking2::thinking2:

[Montmorency]

I know the consensus has been for a while that 2023 sees a global recession, but I don't have the background to analyze the meaning of this in particular.

26037

Like, what was wrong with 1865?

[Furunculus]

the end of a 'war economy'?

[drone]

Crash of the Cotton Bonds, I assume. That would have rippled through European economies.

[Montmorency]

Was the US the primary issuer of government bonds in the world at the time? From a quick search the CSA for its part issued bonds only in the hundreds of millions of their dollars.

[spmetla]

Any thoughts on the current banking problems? Seems a smaller problem than 2008 and just centered around banks doing riskier lending instead of the real estate crisis like in the former.

Should the Fed keep interest rates as ease to making lending more predictable at the price of inflation?

[Montmorency]

Unfortunately, I don't know much about international finance, so it would be better to present learned perspectives on the issue for discussion.

Inflation might be higher long-term due to all sorts of structual issues, including the decline of neoliberal trade and labor relations worldwide, aging workforces, and the painstaking transition away from petrochemicals. But for now - in the US at least - inflation is simply not a problem. According to the BLS, since last July the cumulative CPI-U increase has been 2.3%. In other words, it is very likely to be between 3-4% on an annualized basis by mid-2023. I would prefer our long-term inflation target to be 4% instead of 2% anyway.

The Fed is about to announce another rate hike apparently. I don't know enough to judge this policy in its extent and timing, but rising rates in most countries are clearly stressing bank equities. Momentum for the nationalization of retail banking now that the finsec middleman is basically obsolete doesn't seem to be growing in response unfortunately.

https://i.imgur.com/M4dhsx7.jpg

[Montmorency]

It's still hard to believe we (the US at least) managed to avert the pandemic recession. Thank goodness for Big Daddy Government and the nanny state.

26641