Someone killed Epstein: in my mind, there's a 2 percent chance it was a conspiracy, and a 98 percent chance it was someone on suicide watch not getting adequate care in a country that doesn't give people, especially people in jail, adequate care.
— Bhaskar Sunkara (@sunraysunray) August 10, 2019
Lmao the founder of jacobin mag
karphead posted:wow, just wow
dimashq posted:Lmao the founder of jacobin magSomeone killed Epstein: in my mind, there's a 2 percent chance it was a conspiracy, and a 98 percent chance it was someone on suicide watch not getting adequate care in a country that doesn't give people, especially people in jail, adequate care.
— Bhaskar Sunkara (@sunraysunray) August 10, 2019
Well... consider the proportion of rapists he probably has on payroll... he doesn’t want morale to take a hit
cars posted:Some funny Washington Mafia shit happened today when the top U.S. spook, recently fired and on the way out the door, interrupted a meeting held by his second-in-command and demanded that she quit and leave along with him. She was otherwise possibly going to inherit her boss's old job for 69 seconds until Trump installed his own guy. To resign, the second-in-command spook wrote a letter to the president but submitted it to the vice president's office, who weren't expecting to receive it and paid no attention to it, a master troll which successfully confused every single person in government and the media for hours as to who currently held which top-level position in the United States.
I wonder if Coats told Gordon, “Epstein’s gonna rat on Trump, better make Pence aware we know who’s in charge now”
Like, okay, Gordon’s going to resign... why does Coats interrupt a meeting like it’s an emergency, and why does Gordon conclude from that conversation that she needs to drop everything and write and submit her resignation letter now now now, and then she or her people execute her resignation in a bizarre, almost inexplicable way? Even the Washington news press looked at it and said, This is unheard of, we’ve never seen anything like this chain of events before.
So this is all extremely weird-looking, and then the guy who could potentially testify that the President is a child rapist dies by “suicide”, while under “suicide watch” where he’s left alone for thirty minutes at a time, in a cell with video monitoring equipment that supposedly wasn’t being used...
MarxUltor posted:My theory is that bonds are the only place left for the rich to stash all the enormous piles of cash they have after the tax cuts. And when this crash happens it'll make the last one look fun. Trumps tax cut has the government running almost completely on debt, and interest rates are still low historically. So there's really no opportunity for any kind of stimulus once it happens, a few more banks and some big non-weapons companies are probably gonna die, so 10 year bonds are probably not an unreasonable bet. After a point share buybacks are just concentrating risk, so the smart thing to diversify is the investment which cannot, by law, lose any money. By holding bonds now they gain leverage when the only thing the geniuses have to offer is austerity because the US will always value repaying loans to the wealthy over providing for the public in times of extreme crisis.
I think this is probably right.
The usual mode of the Federal Reserve during the last half-century of Republican presidencies is as follows
That's the federal funds rate, with the years a Republican's in the White House in red and the years a Democrat's in office in blue. You'll notice a trend, or really, a couple trends.
But with the way things are going policy-wise, plus the knee-jerk social biases of a lot of big investment house leadership regarding a guy like Trump who's one of them but not one of them, the bourgeoisie are socking away their tax cuts—and likely their savings from a substantial number of new or old, but currently low-risk, tax dodges—into the investment vehicle closest to the caravan's armed guards. That is, they're moving from their previously favored buybacks into the one investment that's always directly, nakedly, guaranteed-and-no-doubt-about-it backed up around the globe by the overwhelming destructive force available to the United States federal government through its gangs, thugs, satraps and janissaries. They wouldn't put it that way, but there it is.
Michael Roberts had a post the other day that monetary and fiscal stimulus isn't going to work after the next crash (and haven't worked) so the "zombie" firms that have been floated with debt since 2008 are going to go bankrupt.
Trump brags about the ‘wall of money’ now flowing into the US from abroad–from Europe, Asia, emerging market economies–as the global economy slides into recession there faster than in the US. He thinks that is great news for the US economy. But it’s quite the opposite.
Trump’s trade war, his provoking of a global currency war, his monetary policy of forcing the Fed to lower rates all exacerbate the Wall of Money inflow to the US which hastens the decline of the global economy.
Behind the Wall of Money inflow is $17 trillion in negative interest rates in Europe and Japan that is driving money out of those economies and into US Treasuries as a ‘safe haven’, causing a rise in the dollar relative to other currencies and causing currencies worldwide outside the US to fall in turn. As other currencies fall, capital flight from their economies (Europe, Latin America, Asia) sends still more dollars to the US–driving the dollar higher still. A vicious cycle ensues: declining currencies leads to more capital flight, to more demand for US$, to rising dollar value, to further decline in other currencies, etc. Investment collapses and recessions deepen further outside the US.
US Multinational corporations doing business in other countries see their profits rapidly eroding in those economies, as the currencies in the countries in which they’re doing business collapse. They then rush to convert their Pesos, Euros, Rupees, etc. into dollars as quickly as possible and repatriate their offshore profits back to the US. The result: the US$ rises still more.
Trump’s trade war has a similar negative compounding effect as negative rates offshore, capital flight, and multinational corporation repatriation: Today’s slowing global economy (already in a manufacturing recession everywhere including the US) is largely driven by business investment contracting in the face of uncertainty due to Trump’s trade war. That uncertainty and declining investment leads to central banks worldwide reducing their interest rates in a desperate effort to stimulate their economies, which is now happening. But lower interest rates in Europe, Emerging markets, etc. has the negative effect of depressing the value of their currencies still further–leading to even more capital flight to the US, buying up more US Treasuries, and driving up the US $ even more. In other words, Trump’s trade war is also driving the Wall of Money to grow further.
But the Wall of Money is a symptom and represents the global economy outside the US sliding deeper into recessions–a global economic decline that is now spilling over to the US economy.
What’s Trump’s solution? Trump browbeats the Federal Reserve to get Powell, its chair, to lower rates, in the hope lower rates will discourage capital inflow to the US (i.e. the Wall) and thus slow the rise of the dollar. But global recession and the ‘wall of money’ now more than offset any Fed rate cuts effect on the US$. Meanwhile, Trump’s monetary policy (lower interest rates) accelerates the wall of money inflow further by forcing the central banks of other economies to lower their rates still further.
Trump policies have also set off a global currency war, which is about to intensify as he targets China’s Yuan-Reminbi. China is already responding by allowing the Yuan to slowly devalue to offset Trump’s tariffs on China exports. Devaluation of the Yuan forces other economies to devalue their currencies further, as their central banks lower their interest rates further, in Europe and Japan that means even deeper negative rates and more capital flight to US Treasuries and an even higher US$.
In short, Trump’s trade war, his provoking of a global currency war, his monetary policy of forcing the Fed to lower rates all exacerbate the Wall of Money inflow to the US and hasten the decline of the global economy.
Trump has not only clearly now lost control of trade negotiations with China. He has lost control of US monetary policy with the Fed that now refuses to be stampeded, he has lost control of any stabilization of the US dollar, and he has accelerated forces that are driving the global economy into recession.
And it’s only a matter of time–a short time–before it’s also clear he’s lost control of the US economy as well.
https://jackrasmus.com/2019/08/24/trumps-other-wall/
RE what we were just discussing
Something something a dialectic of globalization and de-globalization
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at a Nashville elementary school last month asking for student records.
im half expecting to hear the ice fucks involved include this guy
https://itsgoingdown.org/the-disturbing-history-of-bradley-epley-an-ice-agent-involved-in-the-shooting-of-an-undocumented-man-in-tennessee/
of recent fame for opening fire in a grocery store parking lot on an unarmed man in broad daylight, who also has taken to arresting his victims at the offices of reputable immigration lawyers as well as inside courthouses under false pretenses
EXCLUSIVE: I have obtained a copy of @realDonaldTrump’s letter to #Erdogan. @POTUS warns him to not “be a tough guy! Don’t be a fool!” Says he could destroy Turkey’s economy if #Syria is not resolved in a humane way. Details tonight at 8pm #TrishRegan #FoxBusiness pic.twitter.com/9BoSGlbRyt
— Trish Regan (@trish_regan) October 16, 2019
Populares posted:Looking froward to the year 8 thread.
hey lads, i'm over at the amazon-trump fulfillment camp #1488 and snagged a few minutes on the Tweet Terminal since its my turn this shift, good thing the dumb guards dont know what a VPN is
Populares posted:Looking froward to the year 8 thread.
wouldn;t it be year 7. if we're keeping the current naming convention i mean