Chris Williamson tweet
"Despite pulling out all the stops, the EHRC spectacularly failed in their quest to brand me as an anti-Semite. Clearly, the smear-merchants aren't pleased that I managed to defeat their witch-hunt and have now reached an even more pathetic level of desperation.
Oregon could become the first U.S. state to decriminalize possessing hard drugs like heroin, cocaine and LSD in a ballot measure during Tuesday's election.
If voters pass Measure 110, users found in low-level possession of the substances would have the option of paying $100 fines or attending new, free addiction recovery centers instead of being arrested and facing jail time, The Associated Press reported.
The recovery centers would be funded by tax revenue from retail marijuana sales in the state, which was the country's first to decriminalize marijuana possession.
Yes on 110, the organization sponsoring the ballot measure, stresses that the act does not legalize any drugs.
The Hill
Oregon voters to decide on decriminalizing heroin, cocaine and LSD
"It's long past time to open doors for people who have been systematically shut out and provide a better option for those grappling with the costs of simply trying to participate in an economy they have every right to—but has been rigged against them."
That's according to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and a handful of other progressives in Congress introduced legislation on Friday they say "would provide a much-needed financial lifeline to states and municipalities, as well as unbanked and underbanked residents, that have been left in dire straits by the Covid-19 pandemic."
Specifically, as a joint statement from the congresswomen explains, the Public Banking Act (pdf) would enable "the creation of state and locally administered public banks by establishing the Public Bank Grant program administered by the secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board which would provide grants for the formation, chartering, and capitalization of public banks."..
The oil curse: just about every good-for-nothing crook, mercenary, soldier of fortune, gangster, and Western government is after that oil.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Wednesday that a large oil refinery suffered a “terrorist attack” as his government struggles to provide domestic fuel to the nation amid a historic political and economic crisis.
Venezuela was once a wealthy oil nation, but its broken refineries fail to produce enough fuel for drivers to fuel up their cars. Venezuela in recent months has begun importing gasoline from Iran, another nation that has been hit with U.S. sanctions.
****
In the Heath case, the American was arrested while in a car with three Venezuelans — National Guard Sgt. Major Darwin Urdaneta, Marcos Garcés and Daeven Rodríguez. The three Venezuelans have been charged with treason, terrorism, arms trafficking and conspiracy.
FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and SCOTT SMITH - Venezuelan president: Key oil refinery attacked; 2 detained
This is something different, and quite interesting, I thought. Brian Rose is a conspiracist who teamed up with David Icke for a while. He's a con artist, but is Donald Trump something similar?
No expense is spared in China, but the money is well spent as the economy is getting back on steam.
Days after a 17-year-old girl tested positive for COVID-19 in a remote part of western China last week, health authorities said they had tested over 4.7 million people in the region.
China's strict formula of immediate lockdowns and mass testing even at the first signs of infection has been vital to its success in controlling the disease, allowing its economy to quickly recover from the crisis, officials say.
The highly orchestrated strategy - described as "overkill" even by its own proponents - is unique among major economies at a time when Europe and the United States are facing a massive surge of new cases and often chaotic policies..
Organised 'overkill': China shows off rapid lockdown system after latest outbreak
Imagine if China did this to Taiwan.
The United States said Thursday that it had sold Iranian oil seized on its way to Venezuela for more than $40 million.
Washington announced in August that it had confiscated 1.1 million barrels of petroleum from four tankers en route between the two countries, which are both under US sanctions.
"We estimate that in excess of $40 million will be recouped by the United States related to the sale of petroleum from those four vessels," Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters by telephone
Yahoo News
The Narendra Modi government should have debated in Parliament the pros and cons of the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) before finalizing the crucial military pact on sharing geospatial data, former federal minister and Congress MP Manish Tewari told Sputnik on Thursday.
“The implications of getting close to the US are far-reaching and should have been thoroughly debated in Parliament," opines Tewari, adding that “getting closer” to Washington wasn’t necessarily a “wrong thing” against the backdrop of ongoing military standoff with China.
Tewari, however, adds that the Modi government should have followed the Indian parliamentary tradition on holding a proper discussion in the lead up to sealing the satellite data sharing pact.
"There is a distinction between strategic convergence and quasi-military alliances. The latter has far-reaching implications and should have been debated in Parliament," says the Congress lawmaker.
“With the signing of the foundational agreement, India is inexorably drawn into the US' sphere of influence,” underlines the MP....
This was a serious mistake on Modi's part and will come back to bite India and perhaps him. The US will never recognize India as a partner. An empire wants only colonies and vassals. One would think that Indians would have learned from the British experience, as Native American ("Indians") have from the American experience.
Sputnik InternationalAs restaurants across the country adjust for a post-pandemic world, driven mainly by the shift to a contactless environment via the adoption of automation and robotics, fast-food restaurant operator White Castle announced Tuesday morning additional robot deployments were nearing in the pursuit to automate kitchens.
White Castle, who announced a partnership with Miso Robotics' Flippy, a robotic chef, in July, which we've highlighted for years (see here & here), released a statement, announcing ten White Castle locations will soon receive robotic chefs.
In the words of Time, the US chose every step. “We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people. – – – If wealth distribution since 1975 had continued in the same manner as between 1945 and 1975, today’s $35,000 salary would be over $60,000. It’s little wonder that so many Americans are lashing out at the broken system”.…I put an article exposing weaknesses in a potential Biden administration. Here is one that is more on Donald Trump.
France will send radicalised Islamists to re-education centres under a €40 million plan to tackle extremism, which the prime minister says is the biggest threat to the nation since Hitler.
The suspects will be taught their patriotic duties and forced to undergo psychological treatment in an attempt to counter jihadist indoctrination.
The aim is to prevent Muslim youths from following in the footsteps of the six home-grown terrorists who killed a total of 107 people in attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine, on a Jewish supermarket in January last year, and on the Bataclan concert hall in November.
Unveiling the programme, Manuel Valls, the prime minister, said: “We have entered a new epoch — the era of hyper-terrorism.
The Times
The Times - France fights terror with camps for re-education
The answer [to the question why did it take so long] is, as Greenwald himself mentions, the financial security the contract with the Intercept gave to Glenn and his family. But that came with a serious reputational price that is no longer worth to pay.…
Glenn Greenwald is a well known author. He will be able to gain enough readers to support his now again independent writing. Still independence comes at a price. Besides the income there are a lot of perks that come with writing for a larger outlet. As a lonely independent blogger one is at times missing those.
But Greenwald's career path only reinforces my determination to continue Moon of Alabama as an independent entity. It is the only way to report and opine without the interference of other interests. My thanks go to you, the readers, who make this possible.
Amen.
Moon of AlabamaTwo elements had contributed to US hegemonic thinking such as its historically "Protestant evangelical vision" of manifest destiny, where leaders believed in providential right to dominate North America and later, the world, he [Jeffrey Sachs] explained.
Predictions from economic theory are not nearly as accurate as those offered by the natural sciences, and the link between economic theory and practical problems … is tenuous at best. — Ariel Rubenstein.Economics is neither a natural science or like a natural science. It is a social science that is also heavily influenced by life science and psychology. The subject matter of natural science and social science are so different that different methodological approaches need to be applied. Moreover, social science is much more affected by hidden assumptions and implicit presumptions than natural science. In addition, it is difficult to eliminate value judgement and cognitive-affective bias in social science. Social science is therefore much more a mixture of philosophy and science than science, especially macroeconomics, which doubles as a policy science.
I just wanted to comment on my writing status....
Since that research is getting messier than I expected, I might be quiet on the writing front for awhile (unless I see something about fiscal policy that I want to rant about).
China bit the bullet, so now Covid is almost over, where outbreaks are soon brought back under control by taking swift and decisive action, which works to be far cheaper and less disruptive in the long run.
Thus, the answer is European governments must be tougher whether their populations. Like it or not, it will be for their own good. Otherwise, this will never end. Not everything can be the same as China of course, but they should pursue aggressive political mobilization and force a "whole of society" approach to COVID-19, copying China's methods of making testing mandatory for the populations of entire impacted areas, enforcing uncompromising lockdowns on impacted suburbs and relying on preemptive strategies, than waiting until the last moment.
Ultimately, this lenient approach and fixation on classical liberty, believing the public will take adequate precautions themselves, has failed an entire continent, enormously not just once, but twice.
CGTN
Tom Fowdy - It's time for Europe to stop blaming China for COVID-19 and learn
The monthly Green Jobs Report shows that “greener” enterprises align with more resilient jobs, higher pay for workers, fewer job losses, and the potential for better overall company and investor portfolio performance....The Next Economy
In light of months of border tensions with China, public sentiment among Indians towards Beijing has turned sour, with many Indians calling for the boycott of Chinese goods in the country....Sputnik International
Yesterday’s data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (October 28, 2020) – Consumer Price Index, Australia – for the September-quarter 2020, illustrates what a lot of people do not fully grasp. Inflation can be driven by administrative decisions and can be curtailed or restrained by varying those decisions. No tax rises or cuts to government spending are needed. The data also reflect on the reasons that predictions from mainstream (New Keynesian) economic models fail dramatically. Mainstream economists claim that monetary policy (adjusting of interest rates) is an effective way to manage the economic cycle. They claim that central banks can effectively manipulate total spending by adjusting the cost of borrowing to increase output and push up the inflation rate. The empirical experience does not accord with those assertions. Central bankers around the world have been demonstrating how weak monetary policy is in trying to stimulate demand. They have been massively building up their balance sheets through QE to push their inflation rates up without much success. Further, it has been claimed that a sustained period of low interest rates would be inflationary. Well, again the empirical evidence doesn’t support that claim. The Reserve Bank of Australia has now purchased more than $50 billion worth of federal government bonds and a smaller amount of state and territory government debt. And yet inflation is well below the lower bound of the RBA’s inflation targetting range. The most reliable measure of inflationary expectations are flat and below the RBA’s target policy range....
Gallup
- Consumers plan to spend $805 on gifts this year, down sharply from 2019
- More than twice as many say they are spending less, versus more, than last year
- Consumer spending intentions often change over holiday season
One important property of time series is models is whether they are causal or non-causal. A non-causal model has the property that future values of inputs affects the current values of outputs. For time series, the calculation implies the use of a time machine, which is generally not available. One needs to be careful of the issues posed by non-causality in financial model building, since time series libraries treat time series as single units, and contain many non-causal operations....Bond Economics
Like in Bolivia, the strength of public opinion in Chile was so immense that the government, led by Chile’s richest man Sebastian Piñera, immediately conceded.Mint Press NewsIn Stunning Display of Popular Will, Protests in Bolivia to Chile Force Public Reckoning of “Chicago Boy” Economics
“Yesterday Bolivia, today Chile, tomorrow Ecuador”
The reason that the NY Fed as well as many Keynesian and other critics of the Chinese ‘miracle’ are so sceptical is that they are seeped in a different economic model for growth. They are convinced that China can only be ‘successful’ (like the economies of the G7!) if its economy depends on profitable investment by privately-owned companies in a ‘free market’ where consumption rules over investment. And yet the evidence of the last 40 and even 70 years is that a state-led, planning economic model that is China’s has been way more successful than its ‘market economy’ peers such as India, Brazil or Russia....
A few weeks ago, I did a podcast for the group that has organised ‘Politics in the Pub, Newcastle’, which is a monthly event where a speaker(s) address a topic of public interest in a local Newcastle hotel and answer questions from the audience.
It is meant to be an educative engagement with the interested public....
Okay, it's China state media, but Mihrigul Tursun's family say she was lying and that her son is still alive.
In a recent CNN interview, a woman named Mihrigul Tursun claimed one of her three children was killed by the Chinese government. She said she was separated from her triplets at the Urumqi airport in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and held in custody in 2015. Mihrigul said she was told after her release that her son died following an operation. But according to a CGTN investigation, what Mihrigul Tursun said about her child's death is a lie
But vaccines will still work. Phew!
Antibodies against the novel coronavirus declined rapidly in the British population during the summer, a study found on Tuesday, suggesting protection after infection may not be long lasting and raising the prospect of waning immunity in the community.
Reuters
UK study finds evidence of waning antibody immunity to COVID-19 over time
Partisan biases in processing political information contribute to rising divisions in society. How do such biases arise in the brain? We measured the neural activity of participants watching videos related to immigration policy. Despite watching the same videos, conservative and liberal participants exhibited divergent neural responses. This “neural polarization” between groups occurred in a brain area associated with the interpretation of narrative content and intensified in response to language associated with risk, emotion, and morality. Furthermore, polarized neural responses predicted attitude change in response to the videos. These findings suggest that biased processing in the brain drives divergent interpretations of political information and subsequent attitude polarization.PNAS
Trump happy:
We are seeing a continued strengthening of the Chinese RMB vs. the U.S. dollar. The USD/CNY rate is now retesting a double bottom of 6.7 USD/CNY that was reached for the first time 18 months ago. Read more: https://t.co/H17Nrhh1pa #fx #forex pic.twitter.com/VC4OTFQnjd
— FactSet (@FactSet) October 27, 2020
Absolutely stunning, and just look at the gardens! This film isn't made by the Chinese government, or a Chinese media outlet.
You won't believe what the inside of China's new Airport looks like! Worth over $18 Billion Dollars, it's the absolute height of luxury for the first class traveller!
It's 5 years old, so it hasn't been specially made for the present, that makes it even more powerful.
Police officers in Corby, UK were attacked by a man with a knife. They used pepper spray and batons to take him down. But in the U.S., some cops have a very different way of dealing with the problem.
Today, I celebrate – my home town of Melbourne has recorded zero new infections for the second time since June 9, 2020 and zero deaths. A consecutive day of double zero. My Melbourne band Pressure Drop is planning a live streamed gig soon – our first time playing since March. Details will come when we know more about when we can do it. Something to celebrate in a bleak year. Today I am writing about the underside of neoliberalism though. Nothing to celebrate about this at all. Revolving doors, corporatisation of public service and introducing the excesses and corruption that is endemic in that private sector, more on that, and a federal government that is refusing to introduce a federal corruption body despite the evidence of widespread malpractice at that level. Why this matters is because to build a better world we need to reverse the demolition of the traditional public service by the neoliberals over several decades, which has turned a once wonderful bureaucracy (departmental structure) from a public service delivery capacity into a contract brokerage for outsourced and deregulated service delivery units, chasing profits in the private sector and cutting as many corners as they can get away with. With lax oversight these days, they can get away with a lot. And when public agencies start behaving as if they are corporations then things really come unstuck. And then we see the alarming necrosis that exists at the top levels of Australian corporations. No wonder we have just had Royal Commissions into the banking and finance sector and into the (privatised) aged care sector which have delivered such shocking results. Nothing to celebrate at all.…Bill Mitchell – billy blog
How to finance a Green New Deal that is truly global? Fadhel Kaboub has a proposal that builds in colonial and climate reparations.
The view of the US State Department. 77 pages report.
US Department of State
GEC Special Report: Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem
August 2020
"Unfortunately, we have to admit that recently, Washington and a number of EU capitals have redoubled their efforts to contain Russia's development; they are trying to punish us for an independent foreign policy, for consistently upholding our national interests. <…> So we have no other choice but to conclude we cannot count on a mutually respectful consideration of the emerging problems, because the West has made it a rule to talk with Russia based on the presumption of its guilt," Lavrov said.
According to Lavrov, in order to justify their actions, including the introduction of new anti-Russia sanctions, Western states "throw in various accusations and insinuations" without showing any facts or evidence. "This rhetoric is always being kept at the ‘highly likely’ innuendo level; those claims are based on fabricated accusations and run contrary to even elementary logic," the foreign minister explained, noting that all Russia’s proposals to set up a professional dialogue on any concerns remain without any reaction....
Three recent speeches and interviews given by major politicians have sharpened the political debate now raging in the Western media. Ironically, none of the three speeches received significant coverage in the Western media. Ironically, despite the lack of Western media coverage, all three mark a significant development in the world geopolitical dialogue.NEO (publication of the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Oriental Studies)
The Great Depression, WW2, and other shocks triggered governments in the Western world to make a bigger commitments to their citizens, eg, the New Deal in the US, the NHS in the UK, Social Security and Welfare etc. Since Thatcher, Reagan, and neoliberalism, this commitment became loosened, but could the Covid pandemic be another shock that will bring governments back in line to taking more responsibility for the well-being of all their citizens, not just the few?
Governments will have to deal with the economic fallout from the pandemic for decades to come. If they get their response wrong, countries risk economic stagnation and political division.
History of economics.
So where does this leave us? Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon are both said to have claimed that ‘we’re all Keynesians now.’ That sure beat Classicism, as that term was used in the ‘70s. But we can do better – in a way that recovers what’s true, but not false, in both ‘Austrian’ and ‘Post-Keynesian’ economics. What’s true in them all is endogeneity – money’s endogeneity. And this in turn means that, insofar as we’re right and not merely cranks, we’re all Wicksellians now.Forbes
Contrary to widespread belief, post-war Democratic US presidents have been significantly better for the American economy than Republicans have. There is every reason to believe that trend will continue if Joe Biden wins on November 3.Project Syndicate
US President Donald Trump wears his recent experience with COVID-19 infection as some perverse badge of courage, rather than as a warning of what may lie ahead. And the adverse economic consequences of his administration's approach to the pandemic could not contrast more sharply with the robust recovery in China.Project Syndicate
Capitalist production, with the development of the credit system, Marx noted, “constantly strives to overcome this metallic barrier, which is both a material and imaginary barrier to wealth, while time and again breaking its head on it.” Money in the form of precious metal, he insisted, remains the foundation from which the credit system “can never break free.” [Marx, Capital Volume III, p. 708, p. 741]…It is said there is really nothing new under the sun, and MMT, as advanced by Kelton, is very much old wine in new bottles. It is the modern-day version of theories that have been advanced in previous periods of capitalist crisis to divert working people from the real tasks at hand. Not surprisingly, it has been seized on by sections of the pseudo-left such as Democratic Socialists of America member and congressional representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who maintains that MMT must be “a large part of the conversation.”
The way forward is not the false perspective of some reform of the capitalist system via the “tricks of circulation,” but its overthrow by the working class to establish a workers’ government in order to open the way for the establishment of a democratically controlled and organised socialist economy in which the vast productive forces are used to meet human need.
Sputnik InternationalMaduro hopes that the World Health Organisation (WHO) will ratify the results obtained by the IVIC and Venezuela will be able to prepare the mass production of this molecule as a cure for COVID-19 and provide it worldwide with the necessary international collaboration....
Today, I celebrate – my home town of Melbourne has recorded zero new infections for the first time since June 9, 2020 and zero deaths. But things are not so hot elsewhere in the world. As the US labour market started to rebound over the summer, I stopped updating my analysis of the claimants data horror story that had earlier demonstrated how sharp the decline in March and April had been. But I have still been monitoring it on a weekly basis and the information we are now getting from the US Department of Labor’s weekly data releases are indicating that as the virus escalates, seemingly out of control, the labour market recovery has all but stalled and a reasonable prediction would be that it will deteriorate somewhat if the infection rate leads to tighter restrictions (which it should). A relatively short blog post today (tied up with things today) – just some notes as I updated the data to see what was going on. The conclusions are obvious. Much more fiscal support is needed in the US, especially targetted at the bottom end of the labour market. Devastation will follow with the sorts of numbers that appear to be entrenched at present.Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Here is the latest update (as for the week ending October 17, 2020) from the US Department of Labor’s weekly data releases for the unemployment insurance claimants....
Another conspiracist.
Vandana Shiva has made a lucrative business out of spreading conspiracy theories about agricultural technologies, sustainable farming, capitalism and industry. Her popularity has grown as she positions herself as a modern-day Gandhi, a social justice warrior, an ecological feminist and an agroecologist. The problem is that most everything that comes out of her much amplified mouth is complete nonsense: pure fabrications easily and often refuted.
Which leads to the question: How does Vandana consistently get away with such ridiculous falsehoods and oral assaults on intelligent thought? How can she weave the absurd into a web of allegations willingly consumed by her followers? How does she relentlessly fabricate conspiracy theories and package them for consumption among the Western liberal elite? This article will look at one web of lies she is presently spinning as an analysis of the germination of outrage.
RiskMonger - The Germination of Outrage: How Vandana Shiva Fabricates Conspiracy Theories
The Guardian casts doubts over the extent of China's economic recovery from covid, but the Chinese people don't.
Over the weekend, crowds packed a former industrial warehouse in Beijing as the China Fashion Week got underway, with models strutting mask-less on a square runway and guests oblivious to social distancing norms.
Similarly vibrant scenes are being seen elsewhere in China as consumers return to cinemas, live performances and restaurants.
To many, they indicate a late-summer recovery in Chinese household spending is broadening and propelling the next stage of the economic recovery.
Reuters
Alongside the Mate 40, Huawei also announced its enhanced “Petal Search,” part of a new app family that includes the company’s long-awaited Google Maps replacement. This is a stunning strike at Google’s search dominance on Huawei devices—at least those that sell outside China. With Google now under scrutiny given its dominance of web search, it is unsurprising that Huawei—driven by the loss of Google—is getting in on the act. With hundreds of millions on its ecosystem, it’s a compelling opportunity
And in that regard, the other news this week is the latest reported solution to restore Google Mobile Services to ineligible Huawei phones. According to XDA-Developers, “Googlefier” is a new way to use the LZPlay GMS recovery software that appeared last year before being withdrawn. “You’ll then be able to install the Google Play Store and other Google apps on your device and then log into your Google account.”
Huawei Launches Stunning New Strike At Google To Beat Androidalternative/
Googlefier lets you easily install Google apps on Huawei and Honor devices
Craig Murray is in the at-risk group as he is over 60, obese, and has chronic illnesses, but he thinks society needs to return to normal because the risk to most people is small and the economy cannot cope with more restrictions. He doesn't mention long-covid. He says the oligarchs are making a fortune out of the crisis.
At the moment China’s spectacular economic recovery and its very low official coronavirus fatality rates is being questioned by the West.
I am not a covid sceptic. But neither do I approve of fear-mongering. The risk to the large majority of the population is very low indeed, and it is wrong that anybody who states that fact is immediately vilified. The effect of fear on the general population, and the ability of politicians to manipulate that fear to advantage, should not be underestimated as a danger to society.
There has been a substantial increase in human life expectancy over my lifetime and a subsequent distancing from death. That this trend should be permanent, in the face of human over-population, resource exhaustion and climate change, is something we have too readily taken for granted. In the longer term, returning to the familiarity with and acceptance of death that characterised our ancestors, is something to which mankind may need to become re-accustomed.
Craig Murray - Covid-19 and the Political Utility of Fear
The percentage of people who become critically ill with Covid in the UK
On the world stage, profound changes are under way. Obviously, China and Russia have lost the confidence that the West will contribute to the solution of the world’s problems in some constructive manner. China and Russia have now accepted their role as the leading forces with the responsibility of holding the world together. The West held this role for centuries, but this time is over. The West has essentially become destructive. The West has lost the power of solving problems and now use her resources mainly for creating problems. In my eyes, this is the central evolution of the last months and it is an epochal change....The Vineyard of the Saker
According to Challenges, France’s 500 largest fortunes have thus risen from €210 to €730 billion between 2010 and 2020 (from 10% to 30% of GDP). Such a development is socially and politically unsustainable....
The whole history of public debt shows this: money alone cannot offer a peaceful solution to a problem of this magnitude, because it leads in one way or another to uncontrolled distributive consequences. It was by resorting to exceptional levies on the better-off that the large public debts of the post-war period were extinguished and that the social and productive pact of the following decades was rebuilt. Let’s bet that the same will be true in the future.Le Monde — Le Blog de Thomas Piketty
I'm going to have watch this one a few times, I think.
In the West changing the government only makes a minor difference to policy. We have freedom of speech although it does not make a lot of difference.
In China people like their government and are fairly happy with their freedoms. The Chinese people being interviewed in the video below seem to be very happy and relaxed.
Despite a recent report that China is poised to overtake the U.S. economy by 2020, China still remains very much a mystery in the eyes of the Western world and is often portrayed by the Western media as a communist country where its citizens have no freedom. So, we hit the streets of Beijing, China to ask ordinary Chinese people what democracy and freedom mean to them. This is what they had to say.
The opinions expressed in this video are those of individual interviewees alone and do not reflect the views of ASIAN BOSS or the general Chinese population.
In 2016, the last year the survey was conducted, 95.5 percent of respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with Beijing.
Long-term survey reveals Chinese government satisfactio
A great deal of significance has been attached to the fall in r*, which is the current preferred term for what was known as the natural rate of interest. My belief is that this fall is not due to structural factors in the real economy, rather it is an artefact of the means of estimating r*, as well as the reaction function of New Keynesian central bankers....Bond Economics
Popular Mechanics
Some of the defectors’ stories seem downright unbelievable. And perhaps there’s evidence that they are, in fact, fabricated. Here’s what we know.
Carl Jung was said to have had scintillating intelligence, but he found the works of Hegel impenetrable, despite this, Professor Sean Kelly found a great deal of similarly between their works when it came to self-consciousness (ego-consciousness / self-awareness) and individualism, where both believed mankind was further moving towards increased self-awareness, or self-consciousness as Jung and Hegel would described it. The word individual comes from the word indivisible, meaning we cannot be split any further. The collective has been divided into individual identities.
Primitive man projected his soul onto the universe, so the trees, the sky, the Sun, the weather, the stars, ect, all had spirits. Man's primitive consciousness was hardly separated from his surroundings, said Hegel and Jung.
Both Hegel and Jung saw the West as the pinnacle of civilisation, along with it's high level of individual self-consciousness. In Rome, they said, only the emperor was an individual and everyone else would just see themselves as part of the group, and it was the same in China and all other third-world countries, they added. They were more primitive collective societies.
Christianity greatly increased the sense of individualism and self-consciousness, both Jung and Hegel believed. God knew every hair on your body, and there was a banquet in heaven when the lost sheep was found, so every individual person was very important to God.
The Bible eventually became translated into German, and then other languages, like English, so now every person could read the Bible, which led on to the Protestant reformation. People now had a much closer, more personal, individual relationship with God.
Protestant Christianity produced Calvinism, which said that hard work and success signified that God had chosen you to go to heaven. And so the Calvinists - being puritans - did not spend their money on worldly possessions, but instead ploughed all their profits back into their businesses to grow them, and in this way they felt that they had been chosen. Modern capitalism was then born.
At that period in time most people were God-fearing Christians, and so for the first time in history it became possible for people to leave their money in an institution, like putting an investment into a company, and then be able to go back the next day to find their money was still there. This meant that banks and the stock market now became possible, which meant that western civilisation could make spectacular advancements, eventually leading to the industrial Revolution, much of which was funded by shares. This new Western sense of individualism eventually led to democracy where every person got a vote.
But were Carl Jung and Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel both unwittingly intoxicated by Western hubris? They believed that Western civilisations were the most advanced, and that our self-consciousness (as individualism) was more heightened than those of people in the East, but could this belief in the absolute importance of the individual over the collective now be holding us back?
Neoliberalism, the Ayn Rand mentality, the extreme right, the populist alt-left, libertarianism, etc, all seem to be examples of corrosive individualism.
Many people in the West refuse to wear masks, or practice social distancing, despite there being a serious pandemic going on which could kill millions. They say the economy needs to be saved first, which would save more lives in the long run, but they also object to wearing masks which could save the economy as well as lives, and so their concern does not seem to be all that genuine. It appears that they want to carry on the way they have always done, with little regard for anyone else, because they believe that coronavirus is harmless to them.
The East was once considered less advanced than the West, but I'm beginning to believe that academics like Carl Jung and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel may have got it wrong. The East in many ways seems to be more cultured and civilised compared to some Western countries, and despite our emphasis on the value of the individual, the East seems to place far more value on an individual's life.
The libertarians might find this disturbing as it looks like social conditioning to produce a conformist, compliant society. But to me, it's culture, refinement, and civilisation.
Stephanie Kelton needs no introduction.AlphaExchange — The Heisenberg Report
The face of Modern Monetary Theory in a world suddenly awake to the realities of government finance in currency-issuing nations with high levels of monetary sovereignty, Kelton catapulted to near celebrity status in 2020, as the pandemic compelled policymakers to deliver trillions in stimulus virtually overnight to avert a global depression.
Kelton’s The Deficit Myth became a New York Times bestseller over the summer. It’s a quick read, and the straightforward, at times colloquial, cadence makes it highly amenable to everyday people, no small feat for an economics volume.
If The Deficit Myth reads like a prescription for policymakers suffering from a kind of self-inflicted psychosis, that’s probably because it is....
The man who wrote one of environmentalism’s most-cited essays was a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamaphobe—plus his argument was wrong....
The challenge of contemporary inequality is not just to the cohesion of modern society it is also a challenge to economics, because it is economics and its values that sit squarely within the social framework that has allowed inequality to become so pervasive and debilitating. We have built a society resting on only one view of liberty and equality, that of the economic sphere, rather than on a more holistic view that allows the inclusion of other spheres. We persist in believing ourselves as free, but it is a harsh and hollow freedom built upon individuality and isolated action, rather than on solidarity and communal action.
There are economists of a certain type who question whether there is any distortion produced by inequality. They often repeat the claim that inequality is a benign consequence, a side effect of little interest, to the march of economic progress and the accumulation of modern prosperity. It is a profound error to think this. Then again these same people are often oblivious to the existence and importance of society, so they regard themselves as bereft of such an error.…
Challenge or opportunity? From POV of neoliberalism, inequality is the triumph of conventional economics (trickle down, TINA).
Real-World Economics Review BlogAs marriage rates plummet and people postpone reproduction in a virus-plagued world, some nations’ populations will shrink and fall precipitously below “replacement level,” the authors write. These birthrate drops, in turn, can have cascading social and economic consequences, affecting job opportunities, straining the ability of countries to provide a safety net for their aging populations and potentially leading to global economic contraction.…
Economic growth is correlated with population growth.
SciTEchDailyTwo researchers claim that a single number they call the “political stress indicator” can warn when societies are at risk of erupting into violence. It’s spiking in the US, just like it did before the Civil War.
Democrat morons all over the place reifying the figurative language and think they are real coyotes.... Same cognitive error we see the econo-morons do with the figure of speech “money!” all the time....
When you employ figurative language as part of your dialogic method and the recipient does not understand it, the default mode is reification.... ie the recipient is left to think that the figurative is literal...
Dialogic method is manifestly inferior...
This is our public education system at work🤦🏾♂️https://t.co/cOlMOMoi83
— W.E. Dupree (@WayneDupreeShow) October 23, 2020
Oh... and btw... CHECKMATE.... AGAIN... for like the 1,000th time here...
I think Trump may have us somehow short the CNY:
Mnuchin is unlikely to release a FX report that was due in April until after elections, I'm told.@USTreasury has not issued any such reports this year. One was due this month. https://t.co/19c4RX3F4j
— Saleha Mohsin (@SalehaMohsin) October 23, 2020
Remember this one:
China dropped the price of their currency to an almost a historic low. It’s called “currency manipulation.” Are you listening Federal Reserve? This is a major violation which will greatly weaken China over time!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2019
So if China devalues their currency vs USD we “make money!”...
Inspection of trends and changes in inequality gives a strong clue to the sweep of events. There are four trends and three distinct turning points. From 1963-1971, no trend appears, and changes in individual countries are for the most part small. After 1971, while inequality increases in some of the wealthy countries, in much of the world it is declining. After 1980, there is a radical change….Real-World Economics Review Blog
Thomas Palley is one of the more persistent MMT critics. His article “What’s wrong with Modern Money Theory: macro and political economic restraints on deficit-financed fiscal policy” was published just as I was finishing up this manuscript. Although I am not greatly impressed with the quality of the criticism, it covers many of the topics discussed in this chapter. If one wanted a summary critique (and not rely on my summaries) of major points of dispute, this might be the briefest summary.Bond Economics
Yesterday (October 21, 2020), the British Office of National Statistics (ONS) released the latest – Public sector finances, UK: September 2020 – which, predictably tells us that government borrowing was “£28.4 billion more than in September 2019 and the third-highest borrowing in any month since records began in 1993” and that the public debt ratio has risen to “103.5% of … GDP … this was the highest debt to GDP ratio since … 1960.” Shock horror. While I yawn. The financial media went to town on the data. The Financial Times article (October 22, 2020) – UK government borrowing reaches record in first half of fiscal year – claimed the second wave that is now sweeping the northern hemisphere “have dampened hopes” that the stimulus “could be quickly scaled back” which has “fuelled concerns over the US’s mounting public debt”. It didn’t clarify as to who was concerned or why. The old canards seem to die slowly. Meanwhile, the IMF has changed tack somewhat after its tawdry display during the GFC. Overall, we should be relaxed about the records being set (deficits, public debt) and focus on what the net spending is doing to advance our interests. Focusing on the financial parameters will just divert our attention away from what is important....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Viral load seems to make a big difference as to whether you recover quickly, or not.
Thousands of people of all ages are staying sick for weeks -- even months. A study by Denmark's Aarhus University found a third of corona patients suffered long-term side effects. For some, the virus doesn't just come and go. It stays. The disease can damage the lungs, heart and brain, increasing the risk of long-term health problems.
There is a war going on. And no, it’s not the one you think. This is a war against energy efficiency. The attack is on two fronts: a battle against energy efficiency standards on the part of the current United States administration which is generally anti-regulation, and an attack on the part of everyone’s favorite new common enemy, the novel coronavirus. The global pandemic has hurt nearly every economic sector, and it’s certainly not doing energy efficiency any favors, either.…Oilprice
A new report by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) shows that more member nations are increasing their defense budgets to reach the alliance’s spending goals, but Germany, which has attracted US President Donald Trump’s ire, has yet to do so....Sputnik International
