“Say what you will about Trump, he is not stupid. He is a smart man with a deep understanding of what stupid people want.”
Calling half the country uneducated idiots - now there’s a strategy to win an election - you people are unbelievable - clowns for candidates and insulting the general population - good luck with that
Economy is strong
Bond markets valued at $16 trillion now show negative yield. That figure doubles what it was 8 months ago.
Since the mid-70s, finance has increasingly replaced production as the basis of corporate profit. Since then, corporate profits made by financialization rose from 8% to 40%. So when the financial sector turned South in 2008, plunging profits put the whole capitalist system at risk. Did we learn? No.
Trump wants to cut interest rates and restart Obama’s ‘quantitative easing’ [cheap money for the wealthy]. Obama’s emergency measures were never intended to be a permanent policy. Why? They…
– deepen dependence on ultra-cheap money.
– promote fiscal speculation and parasitism.
– undermine money’s role as a store of value.
– lead to crisis in confidence in fiat currencies.
Moreover, easy money does not reverse contraction or decline in production. And markets are so addicted to mountains of cheap cash that any move to cut it off threatens to trigger a new crisis. Think of the Chinese proverb: A man who rides a tiger dare not get off it.
World economies are slowing, or about to enter or have entered recession. Greta Britain, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil – none fair well. What matters is that the countries on the edge of recession are G20 players – the world’s major economies.
It’s understood that a US-China trade war has potential for a very deep downturn. Not so well grasped is that dollar devaluation is an economic attack on foreign currencies with which we are in competition. This anticipates world war.
The next downturn, the one after that or the following one – no one can predict when our profit-based economy sham will collapse. But that collapse hangs over the heads of the world by a hair like Damocles’ Sword. When that happens, the whole ruling class is utterly determined protect its ill-gotten wealth by heaping social misery on the working class
All this happens against the backdrop of universally rising working class consciousness. There is a reason for ubiquitous domestic spying, the militarization of police forces everywhere, and turn to authoritarian forms of rule. The reason for this is that our glorious Capitalist system can produce not one solitary solution for any of these crises.
Regimes can rule two ways. They persuade through propaganda, and they coerce through the gun barrel.
The propaganda isn't working.
And 2020 will change this not one whit.
Calling half the country uneducated idiots - now there’s a strategy to win an election - you people are unbelievable - clowns for candidates and insulting the general population - good luck with that
US, Japan announce preliminary trade deal worth ‘billions’
WASHINGTON – President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Sunday that the two countries had agreed to the framework of a trade deal. “We’ve been working on a deal with Ja…nypost.com