Pages

Sunday, September 29, 2024

2024-09-30

 ***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:

Rosie: Memo To Treasury Market Investors: Chill! (via theBondBeat)

Okay, I am getting inundated enough now regarding the sloppy behavior by the Treasury market since the Fed cut rates -50 basis points last week that it deserves a response. A little bit of history is in order.

When the Fed cut rates -50 basis points at the onset of the easing cycle that commenced on September 18th, 2007 (from 5.25% to 4.75%), the 10-year T-note yield actually popped the next day to 4.55% from 4.47%. That is because investors bought into the view that the rate cut was better for the equity market than it was for the bond market because, like now, there were visions of rate cuts being coupled with a “no landing” economic scenario. By October 12th that year, the 10-year T-note rate had risen to 4.70% for a +20-basis point increase in the 10-year T-note and my phone was ringing off the hook: “WTF is going on?” I preached patience then as I do now. At the lows, the 10-year T-note yield hit 2.08%.

The same thing happened on January 3rd, 2001, when the Greenspan Fed cut -50 basis points in a surprise intermeeting move, and the 10-year T-note yield spiked to 5.14% that very day from 4.92% the day before as fund flows went straight into the stock market, and for the very same reason cited above….

… Go back to the first jumbo cut of -50 basis points on October 11th, 1984 (after a pair of -25 basis point cuts) and the 10-year T-note yield again refused to rally initially — it was 12.31% that day, and days later, it was sitting at 12.32% — and yet, the low was 7% and this did not even require a recession. Just sustained disinflation.

So, stay the course and stop freaking out over daily or weekly gyrations. History shows that equity investors rejoice more than bond investors do to the initial jumbo rate cut. But the early “sell the fact” that engulfs the bond market proves to be a very attractive buying opportunity because in disinflation cycles, when the Fed is easing, with or without a classic recession, the trough in Treasury yields is down the road. And history shows that, on average, the decline in the 10-year T-note yield from the start of the first jumbo cut to the low is closer to -300 basis points. That would put sub-2% in sight for the 10-year T-note






A valuation-aware, dynamic approach to strategic allocation

Asset Allocation Is Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice
In theory, growing a pool of wealth over decades – whether for a family, an endowment, or a pensioner – is a straightforward endeavor. An advisor or allocator needs to do three things: understand the goals of their client, find different ways to receive compensation for taking risks, 1 and then take the right amount of risk to meet those goals. 2 Taking too much risk may expose the client to unacceptable drawdowns, while taking too little risk will likely lead to inadequate returns in the long run.

The de facto “passive” allocation of 60% equities/40% bonds has proven effective at compounding wealth over time by tapping into two key risk premia: the equity risk premium earned by underwriting the risk of an economic growth shock and an inflation risk premium received for bearing the risk of surprise inflation. Since 1979, when the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Index incepted, a 60/40 portfolio made up of U.S. equities and bonds has delivered returns of 10.2% annualized, outpacing inflation by 7.0% and exceeding the return requirements of most investors.

So, we’re done, right? We should all just run 60/40 allocations and call it a day? .......

But this enviable long track record hides the fact that there have been six periods, averaging 11 years each, in which an investor in a 60/40 portfolio would have either broken even relative to inflation or, even worse, lost money in real terms. Those chapters share something in common – they all followed exceptionally strong periods of return for the traditional portfolio and thus began when either or both stocks and bonds were trading at extremely high valuations. .........


...........

Enhancing Traditional Stock/Bond Allocations
Investing in a static 60/40 allocation relies heavily on the herd’s view of valuation, or, more accurately, whatever way the wind of investor sentiment is blowing. The passively allocated 60% to equities buys more of whatever has the largest market cap, while the 40% invested in bonds leads to increased exposure to borrowers that issue more debt than others in the index. Even in an industry where “being different” can be a difficult, doesn’t it make sense to get a second opinion from someone who is prepared to genuinely look at valuations relative to underlying fundamentals?

Risk premia change as valuations change, so an asset allocation strategy should only hold assets that are priced to deliver satisfactory returns at any given time. Valuation-sensitive multi-asset class strategies such as GMO’s Benchmark Free Allocation Strategy (BFAS), which shifts allocations significantly during extreme valuation environments, can help a portfolio both avoid bubbles and capitalize on dislocations. The following examples of dynamically shifting and expanding beyond traditional risk premia are ways BFAS has been able to help diversify risks and enhance returns: ............



... While the S&P 500 has advanced by less than 1% since the preponderance of “overextension” syndromes we observed on July 16, the desperate “fear of missing out” among investors is striking. The narrative on financial television seems completely insensitive to prevailing conditions, as analysts cite average outcomes following Fed pivots, and average bull market gains – completely detached from the present context, where valuations are already at record highs, while market conditions feature lopsided bullish sentiment and continued divergence in our key gauge of market internals (important notes on that below). As I detailed in the July comment, You’re Soaking In It, a rate cut is typically worth a one-day pop even when internals are unfavorable, but on average, market losses have actually been worse when easy money is combined with divergent internals. 

Meanwhile, more often than not, Fed pivots have historically occurred at moderate or depressed levels of market valuation. That feature matters, so one can’t simply quote “average” outcomes apart from that context. The chart below shows the 12-month total return of the S&P 500 and its deepest 30-month loss following Fed pivots across history, based on the level of market valuation at the time of the pivot. ......

I continue to view period since January 2022 as the extended top formation of the third great speculative bubble in U.S. financial history. ........

Even if one accepts analyst estimates of year-ahead S&P 500 operating earnings at face value, current valuations are at rare extremes. Since the price/earnings ratio on forward operating earnings has only been popular since the 1990’s, investors often overestimate what “normal” valuations are. One can get a better sense by comparing the forward P/E with Robert Shiller’s cyclically-adjusted P/E (CAPE), which has a far longer history. The green horizontal line shows the current extreme for comparative purposes. In the available data since the 1980’s, the current price/forward operating P/E is associated with subsequent 10-year average S&P 500 nominal total returns between -2% to 3% annually.


.....


China Fare:


................ The question though is whether the government will succeed in fighting off deflation and restoring economic confidence?

While the authorities have been taking mostly ineffective steps to support the real estate market and sustain economic momentum for a long time, it is worth noting the lengths to which the government now seems to be going.  ...............

These measures were rocket fuel for stock markets, favouring not least the state enterprises and institutions that constitute much of the ownership of shares. Yet, while the measures generally may bring temporary relief,  they will not really boost the economy much. China’s economic problems are not due to interest rates being too high, a shortage of liquidity, or credit supply constraints and China’s property market needs much more than patchy support designed to stop it from adjusting to decades of overbuilding and a bursting bubble. ...........

It is worth bearing in mind that Xi Jinping’s focus on cyclical support for the economy is necessary but by no means sufficient or even relevant to address the country’s systemic flaws. The engines of past economic growth, property, infrastructure and the expansion of the finance sector are all spent forces now, and must adjust to more modest conditions and weaker fundamentals. Ridding China of deflationary, deleveraging,  and unemployment risks will require a major re-think, which may be politically impossible for a Leninist government,  about demand management, distribution, inequality, access to social welfare, and the provision of public goods and services to more people, including almost 300 million migrant workers.

Instead, Xi Jinping’s economic strategy is focused on state-led industrial policy in which the private sector plays a political second fiddle, a mercantilist preoccupation with exports which sits uncomfortably with a rising chorus of nations, and fighting macroeconomic fires instead of re-engineering China’s economic model. A spooked government need look no further than its leader. 


Quotes of the Week:

 Goolsbee: “My view has been for some time, we set the rates extremely high – highest in decades. And the way I think of what the rate is – we set a rate and then subtract off inflation. That tells you the real fed funds rate – that’s the thing that matters. That’s the highest in a very long time, as inflation has come down. Before this cut, we set the rate high and held it there for more than a year as inflation came down. So, we’re tightening in real fed funds terms every single meeting. By not cutting and going along with inflation, we’re tightening. When inflation is coming in at the target and unemployment is where you want it, do you want to be the tightest in decades? If you’re restrictive for too long, you’re not going to be at that sweet spot on the dual mandate for much longer. So that’s why I think the cut of 50 bps to start makes sense. It’s the kind of thing where it is a demarcation that we’re shifting back to a normal dual mandate mode where we’re thinking about unemployment and inflation – and out of what we have been for a year and a half which is singularly and prioritizing the fight against inflation – which we had to. But make no doubt about it, we’re hundreds of basis points above the neutral rate...."


Noland: "Austan Goolsbee has no idea where the so-called “neutral rate” is. Nobody does. It’s a flawed concept in a world where Credit, liquidity, and perceived wealth are dominated by highly speculative financial markets. Anyone today positing that there’s an equilibrium policy rate doesn’t appreciate the precedence held by Bubble Dynamics, and current Credit and market backdrops"


StenoLarsen: Once again, China appears to be bringing chopsticks to a gunfight.




Charts:
0:
1: 
2: 
3: 
4: 
5: 
6: 
7: 
8: 
9: 




(not just) for the ESG crowd:

Radagast: How the Dutch electricity grid is going to fail


Radagast: Hurrican Helene

.......... There’s a 100 billion price tag for Helene and the next one is already forming, as the gulf water still contains record breaking levels of heat. Society is not designed to have a 100 billion dollar in hurricane damage every year, but that’s where we’re at now. Ian in 2022 clocked in at a 110 billion in damage, Ida in 2021 at 75 billion.

The idea for climate change was managed retreat: We were supposed to gradually leave the parts of the world that are most vulnerable, like cities in the Netherlands that are below sea level. Well, you can see what happened to that.

But more importantly, we’re starting to notice that there isn’t really any part of the globe that’s safe. Helene traveled over a gulf that contained record levels of heat, which leads to record amounts of moisture in the air and to record amounts of rain, deep inland, in mountainous areas of the world far from the coast that are not used to receiving hurricanes like this and not properly prepared for them. .......

............ Globally, 2024 is already a record breaking year for disasters, according to the International Red Cross, and we’re only in September. Climate change doesn’t strike everywhere at once, the collapse is unequally distributed. It tends to hit poorer and more rural places first. .........


Electric Vehicles and Renewables: Misleading Solutions to a Deeper Climate Crisis


The case that the elite lack of willingness to address climate change amounts to genocide.

............ A hidden assumption is that elites are blocking climate action. Ih fact, all of us are. Too many buy into Green New Deal hopium that if we shopped better, as in had incentives to convert to cleaner energy source sooner and did some other tinkering like more high speed rail and building more energy efficient houses and offices, worst outcomes could be forestalled.

But as we have regularly inveighted, we are way past that point. .................


From Siberia to Brazil, wildfires are moving underground and burning up massive carbon deposits. The resulting emissions threaten to worsen global warming.



Short Take #03 - Do you want to see what a SUCCESSFUL Carbon Storage and Sequestration (CSS) solution looks like?

......... When the Arctic Ocean becomes ice free during the summer ...  it will absorb about +78% more energy. Arctic warming will accelerate rapidly as this happens. ...........

There is a LOT of organic carbon stored in the Boreal Forests and permafrost.

THERE IS ENOUGH ORGANIC CARBON IN THE PERMAFROST TO INCREASE THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 LEVEL TO ABOUT 1300PPM.

We “underestimated” how big the permafrost actually was from the start of Climate Science. Not by a little, by a LOT.

It wasn’t until the 00’s that we did an actual “on the ground” comprehensive survey of how much permafrost actually exists. ..........

If just 50% of the carbon frozen in the permafrost becomes CO2, that will add about 280ppm to the atmospheric CO2 level. If we put ZERO CO2 into the atmosphere from this point forward, atmospheric CO2 levels could still climb to +700ppm. ........

Our models are WRONG. ........


US taxpayers funded a covert campaign to downplay the risks of pesticides and discredit environmentalists in Africa, Europe, and North America


Ontario’s southernmost herd illustrates how hard it is to bring a species back from the brink — and why we need to recognize tipping points before we reach them



I saw a fascinating tweet by BloomTech CEO Austen Allred the other day that stirred up a lot of thoughts here.
“Of the Silicon Valley founders I know who went on some of the psychedelic self-discovery trips, almost 100% quit their jobs as CEO within a year,” Allred said, adding, “Could be random anecdotes, but be careful with that stuff.”
Allred tweeted this in response to writer Ashlee Vance sharing that he’d been told by a venture capitalist, “We’ve lost several really good founders to ayahuasca. They came back and just didn’t care about much anymore.”

There’s some very useful information in those words. They reveal a lot about the insane mess our species finds itself in in today’s world, and provide insight into how we might find our way out. 

I mean, think about it. How bizarre is it that our entire civilization is structured around values and priorities which are so fake and ridiculous that ingesting an ancient psychedelic potion causes even wealthy CEOs to quit their jobs and change their lives? 

All it takes is a slight shift in consciousness, a little tilt in perspective, and you immediately see that this whole rat race of domination and acquisition and productivity and wealth hoarding that all our political and economic systems have as their foundational premise is completely destructive to happiness and human thriving. .............



Geopolitical Fare:


At the United Nations this past week, the figurehead of the US Joe Biden talked about a “remarkable sweep of history,” which was somehow not referring to a descent into a WWIII hellscape but an optimistic vision of the future world led by the US.

It was a fitting final UN address for Biden who has put an exclamation point on the US’ decades-long run as chief planetary scourge — from NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine and the ongoing encirclement of China to the support of Israel’s genocidal rampage across the Middle East to the endless coups, assassinations, drone attacks, and the never ending global war on terror.

Is there any hope for change? Aurelien has an engrossing piece asking what lessons might be learned in the West from the impending loss in Ukraine. In the US at least, where learning lessons that don’t involve more conflict is mostly verboten, it’s hard to see it.

Think tanks, those buzzing plutocrat-funded shadow government hives, are week after week pumping out content on how to tinker with the lumbering leviathan. Most of these tweaks to existing strategy involve the recycling of old ideas, e.g., Ukraine is the new Afghanistan for Russia/USSR, revive the Kennan containment strategy, etc.

But what would some lessons be that the US could learn from Ukraine and the neverending wars from the past few decades if it were so inclined? How should the US adapt to the multipolar world in a way that doesn’t involve the crazies doing their best to hurtle us towards global catastrophe in a quest for hegemony?

With none of the think tanks paid to do any real thinking, it felt like a good time to look at some potential solutions — no matter how romantic they may seem at a moment when the US seems dead set on igniting WWIII. As literary critic Fredric Jameson wrote: “Utopias are non-fictional, even though they are also non-existent. Utopias in fact come to us as barely audible messages from a future that may never come into being.” ..............



On Tuesday the dementia-addled meat puppet who is still officially the President of the United States told the UN that he is working to bring a “greater measure of peace and stability to the middle east,” even as the US government pumps weapons into Israel so that it can continue its bloody massacres in Lebanon and Gaza.

On Wednesday Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told the press that “we don’t want to see this escalate” in Lebanon and that the US is working to “avoid a regional war”.

Only an idiot would believe these claims. They are self-evidently false.  .........

................................ Our world is on fire, and the US-centralized empire is the flame. We ordinary people must find some way to extinguish it, before it torches us all.


Mate: In Lebanon carnage, Biden deepens US ‘obligation’ to Israeli aggression
Israel has killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, emboldening a US-backed war for hegemony in which Arab civilians are an open Israeli target.

............ During this period, the Biden administration has adopted a strategy of pretending to pressure Israel all while offering it the weaponry and diplomatic cover to kill tens of thousands of people in Gaza and make it unlivable for survivors; expand its long-running terror and land theft in the West Bank; regularly bomb Syria; and now pursue its longstanding intent to destroy Hezbollah, the main force in the region that can significantly fight back.

As in Gaza, Israel is pursuing its goals by terrorizing Lebanon’s civilian population, and not for the first time. It was in Lebanon where Israel formalized a policy of deliberately targeting civilians ................



Last weeks pagers exploded all over Lebanon. They were pagers bought by Hezbolah, but most of them were not used by military personnel or even by Hezbollah members, though many were.

The attacks were set up to be particularly nasty. Small ball bearings were embedded in the pagers. First the pager would buzz. The person would grab it, bring it up to their face so they could look at the screen, where they would see an error message.

Then the pager would explode. The most common injuries were maiming (the hand), terrible facial wounds, and eye-injuries. I don’t know what percentage caused permanent vision loss but I saw one interview with a surgeon who said he’d removed more eyes in the last day than he had in a career of over twenty years.

Civilians, women and children were hurt. ...............

(To state the obvious, if the pager attacks weren’t terrorism, nothing is.) ..........

It is noticeable that the US and most European countries refused to condemn the attacks. If they won’t even say that this sort of thing is off the table, who will trust that they wouldn’t do this themselves? ..........

In a lot of secure areas I would expect that people won’t be allowed to bring in their own phones. This is already the case in some very secure areas, but I expect it to spread. It may also change policies about phones and other small electric devices on planes.

This is another case of Israel and the West screwing themselves. It’s going to hurt economically and it’s going to lead to copycat attacks by others, including on the West.

And, of course, it was a monstrous action. Very on-brand for Israel and very normal for the US to fail to condemn it.

Even more than before I just don’t want to hear American officials condemning terrorism. Ever. If the word still means anything, they don’t what it is.



Israel killed some 500 people in a massive new onslaught in Lebanon on Monday which saw the IDF launch more than a thousand airstrikes. 

The US is once again sending additional troops to the middle east as things escalate, on the orders of god knows who because the president’s brain has completely stopped functioning.

It’s been a few minutes since Israel last began a new project of mass military violence, so perhaps it’s time for a refresher on the official rules on how we’re meant think and talk about such matters.

Rule 1: Recorded history began on October 7 2023. Maybe some things happened before that date, but nobody can remember.

Rule 2: Anything bad that Israel does is justified by Rule 1. This is true even if it does things that would be considered completely unjustifiable if it were done by a nation like Russia or Iran.

Rule 3: Israel has a right to defend itself, but nobody else does.

Rule 4: Israel never bombs civilians, it bombs terrorists. If shocking numbers of civilians die it’s because they were actually terrorists, or because terrorists killed them, or because a terrorist stood too close to them. If none of those reasons apply then it’s for some other mysterious reason we are still waiting for the IDF to investigate.

Rule 5: Criticizing anything Israel does means you hate Jewish people. There is no other reason anyone could possibly oppose military explosives being dropped on areas packed full of children besides a seething, obsessive hatred for a small Abrahamic faith.

Rule 6: Nothing Israel does is ever as bad as the hateful criticisms described in Rule 5. Criticism of Israel’s actions is always worse than Israel’s actions themselves, because those critics hate Jews and wish to commit another Holocaust. Preventing this must consume 100 percent of our political energy and attention.



Good westerners don’t start off hating Israel. When our hearts are in the right place we start off giving Israel the benefit of the doubt and assuming the situation must be more complicated than it appears, because we’re not just going to reflexively assume the Jewish state is evil like some kind of neo-Nazi. We grew up learning about the persecution of the Jewish people, watching movies and reading books about it and vowing “never again” like everyone else. 

So for entirely sensible and good-natured reasons we tend to start off viewing anything to do with Jews and Judaism in a sympathetic light.

It’s not until we start learning and paying attention to Israel’s actions that this view begins to change. We come to understand that Israel is in fact profoundly evil, not because it is full of Jews but because it’s a western settler-colonialist project that’s inflicting the same kinds of genocide, ethnic cleansing, theft and abuse on the indigenous population of the land that other western settler-colonialist projects like Australia, the US and Canada inflicted in earlier centuries.

And we learn that this evil doesn’t just pervade the Israeli government but all of Israeli society — not because of Judaism or Jewishness, but for the same reason hatred and racism pervaded the societies of the Jim Crow south and apartheid South Africa. .......................

A sincere dedication to truth, justice and kindness can only lead one to view the Zionist project with complete revulsion after learning the facts about what it really is, what it really does, and why our western governments really support it.



To kill Hassan Nasrallah, one of the most popular leaders of the resistance (and not just among Shias), the IDF had to destroy several buildings, launch terrorist attacks via messaging devices and once again kill hundreds of innocents, dropping at least fifteen 2,000lb US-made bombs. Netanyahu gave the order to immolate the buildings in southern Beirut while he was in the States to address the UN General Assembly. Just to rub it in. The real ‘special relationship’ is sacred and eternal. Nasrallah will not rest in peace.

As we now know, neither Genocide Joe and his gang leaders in the West nor the pointmen in the Arab world who support him care a damn about how many Arabs are killed or in which country. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen: the US and its proxies have irrigated them with blood. The attitude was summed up by the then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton after Gaddafi was lynched and the nation was de facto handed over to jihadi factions: ‘We came, we saw, he died’. The post-9/11 wars acclimatized many Western citizens and the politicians they elected to such routine torture and killings. The Israeli genocide in Gaza did the rest. ..........

That Nasrallah was an extremely shrewd tactician and strategist is acknowledged by both his supporters and his enemies. Speaking with Noam Chomsky once in Santa Fe, he confessed that the two most intelligent political leaders he had ever met were Hugo Chavez and Hassan Nasrallah but he couldn’t say it in public. Both are now dead, so I can say it for him. ..........



.......... As for the assassination, it’s much less important than people make out: decapitation strategies don’t significantly degrade strong ideological organizations like Hezbollah. The real question is how much knowledge Israel has of the actual military infrastructure. Nasrallah was a well loved leader, but he was a very cautious man and much less interested in fighting Israel than many make out. The new leadership, and given Israel’s success at assassination, it is almost all new, will be far more willing to fight. ..........



........ We’ve been seeing articles like this for a year now. It’s become a whole new genre of news reporting in the mainstream press to transcribe statements fed to the media by anonymous White House officials saying the president’s feelings are feeling upset feelings toward the Israeli government in order to frame the Biden administration as some kind of reluctant passive witness to all this butchery and genocide instead of the willing participant that it so obviously is. ............

I told him, “You’re asking me if I prefer someone who murders kids while saying nice words or someone who murders kids while not saying nice words. I don’t care. They are exactly the same to me.”

But that’s what Democrats have to offer. Nice feelings and words. Vibes. Bombing middle eastern kids to shreds while saying they support human rights ............



❖

There’s a lot of speculation as to if and when Iran will involve itself more materially in the current conflict, but whatever happens any amount of involvement Iran does have in middle eastern conflicts would have infinitely more legitimacy than US involvement there.

❖

It has long been obvious that western liberals are lying about who they are and what they stand for, but it took a Democrat overseeing genocidal atrocities during an election season to fully drive the point home. 




The odds of Ukraine recapturing all its lost territories are vanishingly small

............ This could, at least in theory, put political pressure on the Russian authorities to end the war, even as the Ukrainian position on the frontline continues to deteriorate.

This explains the attack on Russia’s Kursk province as well as Zelensky’s repeated demands for permission to use NATO weapons to strike deep into Russian territory and his continued requests that NATO grant Ukraine immediate membership.

The exact details of Zelensky’s victory plan are a closely guarded secret, but press reports suggest that the core of it lies exactly in this—NATO membership and long-range weapons along with permission to use them deep in Russia.

As plans go, it’s not a very good one .............



My news today will be brief due to reduced internet access. But I believe the essence is of highest importance since it concerns a very detailed restatement of Russian thinking about deterrance that followed from U.S. and British plans to give Kiev unlimited use of their long range missiles to strike theRussian heartland

A little more than a week ago, just before British Prime Minister Starmer arrived in Washington for what was expected to be an announcement of joint approval of such use of the Storm Shadow, Vladimir Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubîn on the sidelînes of the St Petersburg Cultural Forum that Russia will consider use of British., American or other long range missiles against its territiory as changing the nature of the present proxy war into a direct Russia NATO war and will respond appropriately. .........




How von der Leyen's über-hawkish European Commission hijacked the bloc's military and security policy — and why this represents an existential threat to the continent


#123: A brief introduction to the defense industry.



Eisenstein: More Naivete, Please

Those who call for peace when the fires of war burn hot are always accused of being naive. It is said they underestimate the ruthlessness of an enemy, who will accept nothing less than our total destruction. To negotiate with an implacable foe is the height of folly. Thus, the peace advocate is not only naive, but a traitor—sapping the zeal that comes from the life-or-death necessity of all-out battle, rendering comfort to the enemy.

To do as Gandhi urged, “Speak to their reason and conscience,” is foolish when the opponent is devoid of those qualities.

OK, but in this case, the opponent really is implacable and irredeemable. Which case am I speaking of? Whichever the war du jour is. For those purveying war, today’s war is always the exception. A litany of atrocity stories is always available to demonstrate that this enemy, this person, this group, this nation is beyond redemption. Force is the only language they understand.

I most recently encountered this mindset in my efforts to persuade RFK Jr. and other fervent Zionists to advocate a negotiated settlement, cease fire, and peaceful resolution to the conflict in Palestine. They thought me naive indeed. “Don’t you know that radical Islam forbids its adherents to ever negotiate with a Jew, except as a ruse?” “Don’t you know that they won’t be satisfied until they have exterminated every Jew from the face of the earth?” Here are some statements that prove it. Here, look at the Hamas charter. A cease-fire will just give them time to rearm. They are hell-bent on destruction.

It is hard to persuade anyone with those views to change their mind, especially if they are highly intelligent. Present any evidence, and they will always be able to find counter-evidence. They will select points that fit their narrative, and dismiss—on seemingly reasonable grounds—whatever contradicts it. If that narrative concerns controversial issues and people, they will have a lot of support in maintaining their narrative. In the case of (what I see as) the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, they can look to an entire propaganda ecosystem, as well as a community of opinion comprising lots of other smart people to assure them that they are right. The same is true for any other establishment belief. ..............



Several people recently have chastised me for discouraging Americans from voting, or, alternatively, encouraging them to vote for Jill Stein. I am sure that as the Canadian provincial and federal elections gets closer, I will get the same response when I tell people I’m voting Green in the provincial election and NDP in the federal election (neither candidate has a chance of winning), instead of voting for Trudeau’s (misnamed) Liberal party’s candidates to keep out the foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic Conservative party. As in the US, both ‘leading’ parties avidly support the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Palestine, and the beating of the drums for America’s planned wars against China and Iran. .........

So when I talk to American voters this fall, and when I vote in the coming Canadian provincial and federal elections, I recognize that my vote will count for nothing, as will the votes of those who vote for ‘third parties’ and independents in the US elections.

But I will proudly ‘waste’ my vote, because voting for someone who has pledged to end our countries’ participation in wars, coups and genocides, and to redirect our tax dollars and our energies to address the collapse of our domestic economies, the corruption and perversion of our political systems, and the absolute certainty of near-term climate and ecological collapse, just feels right to me.

And I say that with the full knowledge that the struggle to address the polycrisis — the collapse of all the interrelated systems that underlie our civilization — is most likely a hopeless struggle, probably doomed to failure, no matter who is in office.




Sci Fare:




Other Fare:

Prop 6 would amend the state constitution to ban “involuntary servitude” and prohibit state prisons from punishing incarcerated people for refusing a work assignment.




Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, September 22, 2024

2024-09-22

 ***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:

The neutral real rate of interest is back in focus as the shocks from the pandemic and 2008 are finally being worked out of the financial system.

Demographics on their own have ensured a decline in R*, as has disappointing productivity growth. The Global Financial Crisis administered a massive further blow downward. A number of estimates are out there. Vanguard Group’s chief economist Joe Davis shows how two models from the New York Fed have measured the neutral rate going back to 1960:




"The Fed (did not) do it"

The big story on Wednesday, September 18, was that the Federal Reserve’s open market committee finally got around to “cutting rates”, and doing so by more than expected. This action, much debated and discussed during all of 2024, was greeted as "big" news, and market prognosticators argued that it was a harbinger of market moves, both in interest rates and stock prices. The market seemed to initially be disappointed in the action, dropping after the Fed’s announcement on Wednesday, but it did climb on Thursday. Overall, though, and this is my view, this was about as anticlimactic as a climactic event gets, akin to watching an elephant in labor deliver a mouse.  As a long-time skeptic about the Fed’s (or any Central Bank’s) capacity to alter much in markets or the economy, I decided now would be as good a time as any to confront some widely held beliefs about central banking powers, and counter them with data. In particular, I want to start with the myth that central banks set interest rates, or at least the interest rates that you and I may face in our day-to-day lives, move on to the slightly lesser myth that the Fed's move lead market interest rates, then examine the signals that emanate supposedly from Fed actions, and finish off by evaluating how the Fed's actions affect stock prices. .........

.......................
Conclusion

 I know that this post cuts against the grain, since the notion that the Fed has superpowers has only become stronger over the last two decades. Pushed to explain why interest rates were at historic lows for much of the last decade, the response you often heard was "the Fed did it". Active investors, when asked why active investing had its worst decade in history, losing out to index funds and to passive investors, pointed fingers the Fed. Market timers, who had built their reputations around using metrics like the Shiller PE, defended their failure to call market moves in the last fifteen years, by pointing to the Fed. Economists who argued that inverted yield curves were a surefire predictor of recessions blamed the Fed for the absence of a recession, after years of two years plus of the phenomena. 

 I believe that it is time for us to put the Fed delusion to rest. It has distracted us from talking about things that truly matter, which include growing government debt, inflation, growth and how globalization may be feeding into risk, and allowed us to believe that central bankers have the power to rescue us from whatever mistakes we may be making. I am a realist, though, and I am afraid that the Fed Delusion has destroyed enough investing brain cells, that those who holding on to the delusion cannot let go. I am already hearing talk among this group about what the FOMC may or may not do at its next meeting (and the meeting after that), and what this may mean for markets, restarting the Fed Watch. The insanity of it all! 


If stocks already were due for a tumble and the economy for a recession, the Fed’s rate cut probably didn’t avert it

Wall Street commentary around this week’s Fed rate cut could have filled a very long and boring book, but much of what you need to know about its effect on the stock market can be found in a movie rarely linked with monetary policy: “The Wizard of Oz.”

The great and powerful man behind the central bank curtain, Jerome Powell, really can’t do as much as people think to keep their portfolios from shriveling if the wheels are already starting to come off the economy.  Stocks’ initial reaction to Wednesday’s cut was exuberant. That often proves to be a head fake, though—we still don’t know how this movie ends.

Take the start of the rate-cutting cycle in 2007—one that coincidentally began on the same day of the year, the same starting federal-funds rate, and was for an identical amount, half a percent (50 basis points)—as Wednesday’s move. The effect was electric: The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its largest gain in more than four years .........

Yet there have been 22 bear markets in the past century for all sorts of reasons. Economists who dismiss the possibility of a tumble just because specific excesses such as toxic subprime loans as in the mid-aughts or ludicrous dot-com valuations akin to the late ’90s don’t exist today could wind up with egg on their faces. Like generals fighting the last war, they rely too much on their lived experience.

In a classic of the genre, then Bear Stearns chief economist David Malpass wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Don’t Panic About the Credit Market,” in August 2007 after a two-month retreat in stock prices............

Claims that the U.S. economy could soon contract aren’t very convincing at the moment, and a sharp pullback of a third or more in stocks would be unusual unless the economy stalls. That helps explain why stocks are near record highs and the usual signs of market caution so subdued. But so does the misguided belief that Fed cuts are themselves a reason to remain calm and keep buying.

There are smart people on the fringes—they usually are at this stage—warning about excesses in private credit and commercial real estate or the effect of China’s alarming slowdown on the world economy. U.S. stocks have rarely been so expensive, concentrated or dependent on a single theme—the promise of AI. And government indebtedness around the world has never been as high, making the response to the next recession trickier.

We’re not in Kansas any more.


Balanced risks to inflation and employment indicate it’s time for the Fed to normalize interest rates, enhancing a positive backdrop for bonds.







.............................. Brett makes a very important point about momentum investing.

Researchers say investing in so-called “momentum” stocks, is the best documented and most durable “edge” in the market.

Critically, that applies to owning individual equities in a portfolio. Not passively holding an ETF.

There is a difference.

Yes, on a passive basis since 2014, momentum has outperformed the benchmark and value indices. However, passively holding an ETF negates the value of momentum investing.

“And there is an inbuilt cautious bias to this portfolio as well, because it only holds stocks that have positive trailing returns. In a bear market you may be invested in nothing whatsoever. As Meb Faber and others have pointed out, momentum strategies can help you avoid the worst market turmoil.” – Brett Arends

Read that again.

As a strategy, momentum investing raises cash when the momentum of holdings turns negative. Such is not the case for an ETF that must always remain invested. If we break the comparative performance down into specific periods, the value of the momentum strategy gets lost. ............


..... The realization that nothing lasts forever is crucial to long-term investing. To “buy low,” one must first “sell high.” Understanding that all things are cyclical suggests that investment strategies must also change.

The rotation from “momentum” to “value” is inevitable. It will occur against a backdrop of economic weakness and price discovery for investors quietly lulled into complacency following years of monetary interventions.
“Relative valuations are in the far tail of the historical distribution. If, as history suggests, there is any tendency for mean reversion, the expected future returns for value are elevated by almost any definition.” – Research Affiliates


Berman: The End of Growth: Why Oil Prices are Falling

Paradigms hold on until they can no longer offer believable explanations for what’s happening. Oil markets and the global economy are now in the middle of such a shift.

................................... The reality is that weak oil demand has been the main force pushing prices down in recent years, but geopolitical factors—including OPEC production cuts—have repeatedly stepped in to prop them up. 

..................... Analysts and economists continue to force today’s realities into obsolete models. Oil isn’t just a commodity; it’s the foundation of the global economy. It signals where the future is heading. Right now, oil markets are flashing a clear message: the era of growth is over—not just for oil but for the global economy.



China Fare:

The Chief Economist of Bank of China International urges Beijing to emerge from Friedrich Hayek’s shadow and listen to John Maynard Keynes.





Quotes of the Week:

someone on BNNTV: "What we are seeing is the belief that the Fed has everything under control and they are going to engineer a soft landing and therefore risk assets are moving ahead strongly,”



Charts:
1: 
2: 
3: 
4: 
5: 
6: 

...
....
...

MMT Fare:


Yves here. We were comparatively early to discuss Modern Monetary Theory, back in the days when a small group of scholars and economic writers like Randy Wray Stephanie Kelton, Scott Fulweiler and Warren Mosler were trying to get it out of an academic backwater into the mainstream. The fact that some libertarians mention it with a lot of choler and not much understanding says that this group of advocates has raised its profile.

But why the intense reactions? The response are often visceral, as if Modern Monetary Theory, which says that a sovereign currency issuer is not constrained by its ability to tax but the productive capacity of its economy (and the government can spend to marshal that to the extent the private sector is failing) is fiscal immorality. In fact, as Richard Murphy explains below, a more basic reason is Modern Monetary Theory upsets power dynamics via showing how currency issuing governments don’t rely on bond investors to spend. That means financial markets and banks wield much less power that the press and officials lead us to believe. ..............



(not just) for the ESG crowd:



Let’s be CLEAR about what “Mainstream” Climate Science actually says. (Part One of Two)

..........................
“The gap between wishful thinking and reality is vast.” — Vaclav Smil


....................
Our current Climate Sensitivity estimates date back to the 70’s. We bet the FUTURE of humanity on a 1970’s understanding of the Climate System.

The essential problem with “climate sensitivity”. Is that after 130 years we still don’t know what value to assign to it. ..................

MEANING

The Moderate Faction of Climate Science would rather crash our civilization and see half the world’s population die before they will admit that MAYBE they’re wrong about how the Climate System works.

In 1979 we should have listened to the Alarmists.

I close with a thought from Mr. McGuire, Climate Scientist and Alarmist.

As a climate scientist, it is my duty to tell you about what is happening to our world, whether it engenders fear or not.

A failure to do this will mean that the public is left ignorant of the true extent of the climate emergency, which in turn can only hinder engagement and action. ........

Billions of human beings are going to die over the next 10 years.

The risk of civilizational collapse is GROWING. How does one “prepare” for that?

Dust Bowl 2.0, here we come. 2025 -2028 is probably going to see the collapse of the Great Plains agricultural zone.

This is not THEORETICAL anymore. This is our NOW.

If you waited this long to start prepping. Well, you waited till the VERY LAST minute.

THE LIFE YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO HAVE IS GONE.


The Energy Collapse | Louis Arnoux
System failure by 2030

What happens when economics takes precedence over thermodynamics?
Eventually, the system collapses—because being incompatible with thermodynamics is impossible. That’s the stark message of this week’s guest, Louis Arnoux, a scientist, engineer and managing director of Fourth Transition, who has been working on this problem for decades. Louis and his team’s research point to our energy systems collapsing by 2030 because we’re having to spend more energy than ever before to extract fuel. Soon, the energy cost of extraction will equal the energy benefit. Such an equilibrium is, in his words, a dead state.

In the episode, Louis gives a phenomenal overview of the three thermodynamic traps human civilisation is caught in, including how decarbonising to renewables is exacerbating the thermodynamic problem .............



PLEASE stop using the word, "problem," to describe ecological overshoot and all its symptom predicaments such as climate change. 

There is literally a huge difference between a problem with a solution and a predicament with an outcome, and there are mountains of empirical evidence pointing to the fact that overshoot, climate change, energy and resource decline, biodiversity loss, pollution loading, extinction, etc. are all predicaments for which there are no solutions. 

Nonacceptance of these facts is understandable but unacceptable, as it fosters a cultural conditioning of ordinary people to believe that some sort of "solution" is right around the corner when in reality this could not be further from the truth. Technology use and innovation are precisely what have brought us to this point in time. These are behaviors of ours, and they cause ecological overshoot. Continuing to promote the idea that there is some sort of solution which will "fix" any and/or all of these predicaments only makes the existing predicaments worse as businesses and individuals promote technological ideas that only increase overshoot, not reduce it.  
By utilizing the words, "predicament" and/or "dilemma" to describe these predicaments, you are honoring facts rather than falsehoods. We are addicted to technology use, plain and simple. Certain kinds of technology will probably always be with us as long as we inhabit this planet - things like fire, the wheel, and basic hand tools. Other types of technology will disappear as a result of energy and resource decline, a key symptom predicament of ecological overshoot, producing the outcome of collapse and die-off. 

You don't have to accept these facts. Addicts often deny their addiction for years. They try bargaining with it, but it doesn't change or go away. They try stopping for awhile, but go back to the exact same behaviors as soon as they pick it back up again. The only way anything changes for the better is when they finally accept the actual reality - the truth. Only then does their life begin to change for the better. 

The same is true for those who deny that overshoot is a predicament with an outcome, not a problem with a solution. They try to bargain with the predicament, but nature does not negotiate. So all these attempts to "solve" what is seen as a "problem" go absolutely nowhere. Meanwhile, efforts to try to "solve" the predicament only end up increasing overshoot instead of reducing it. Increasing overshoot tends to increase all the symptom predicaments which are produced as a result of overshoot, which is why emissions continue rising. Pollution loading continues increasing. Ocean acidification increases. Biodiversity loss increases. Extinction increases. Global temperatures increase. Tree decline increases. Cryosphere loss increases - and on and on and on. For those who are new to this, this is where we're going. .............


A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature

CONCLUSION
PhanDA provides a statistically robust estimate of GMST through the Phanerozoic. We find that Earth’s temperature has varied more dynamically than previously thought and that greenhouse climates were very warm. CO2 is the dominant driver of Phanerozoic climate, emphasizing the importance of this greenhouse gas in shaping Earth history. The consistency of apparent Earth system sensitivity (∼8°C) is surprising and deserves further investigation. More broadly, PhanDA provides critical context for the evolution of life on Earth, as well as present and future climate changes.



There are several interlinked Crises , extant today: climate change, societal 
atrophy, threat of global war , and nuclear catastrophe.

Interestingly, it is the societal atrophy underlying it all that rarely gets any
deep scrutiny

It is my Argument, made for some 3 decades now, that All of these Crises , in
their current form, stem from the same set of systemic causes that I collate
under the rubric of European Modernism or EM .

EM is the specific variant of Modernism imposed on the world, and on itself, by
Europe, in the 17-18th century.

In sum, what we view around us today is the cumulative ‘butterfly effect’ of
bad idea (l)s.



U.S. B.S.


.................... This is not democracy. This is plutocracy. This is oligarchy. We’re just indoctrinated into calling it democracy, by the very same mass-scale psychological manipulations they use to keep it from being a democracy.

All US elections these days come with allegations of election interference, especially from the losing side. But it’s important to keep in mind that even in the unlikely event that those allegations were 100 percent true, they’d still be a tiny drop in the ocean compared to the election interference that’s already happening right out in the open.



I don’t care who Americans vote for in November, or if they vote at all. In order to care I’d have to believe US presidential elections matter. 

But they don’t matter. No matter who wins, the empire wins. No matter who loses, the world loses. 

No matter how things turn out this particular time around, Democrats and Republicans will continue to win roughly 50 percent of the time each, and the US-centralized empire will continue to trudge on unaffected by the results.

I don’t care how you vote. Vote for Harris or for Trump if that’s what you feel like doing. But I do think if you vote for either of those monsters, you should at least have the decency to feel gross about it. Like you did something very dirty and shameful in order to get by.

I just think that would be the mark of someone with a well-developed moral character, who’s entering into this thing without dissociation or compartmentalization. It would indicate that you live your life with your eyes wide open, being real about what’s real and not hiding from unpleasant truths to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings. ............



Geopolitical Fare:

Radagast: Oh, boy

you all realize how horrifying this is, right?

The EU parliament just voted to deliver Taurus missiles to Ukraine and for Ukraine to be allowed to use those missiles deep inside Russian territory, on strategic Russian targets.

Putin has already warned that would basically put the EU at war with Russia.

We’ve never seen a situation like this. Remember the hissy fit the Americans threw when the Soviets were putting missiles on Cuba? We call that the Cuban missile crisis. Now we’re expecting the Russians to just keep fighting with one hand tied behind their back, as Ukraine gets its missiles to hit Russian targets deep inside Russia.

What’s the exit strategy here exactly? Expecting Russia to say “ok Ukraine, you won, we withdraw from your country”? You know that’s not going to happen right? ...........

................................. 
Really, none of these idiots were able to just work out some alternative, where Ukraine is a kind of neutral country not part of NATO or Russia’s sphere?

Twenty-five years ago, the idea was that Russia might someday become a part of the EU. Well you all screwed that one up. ...............

I don’t care what they taught you at political science, the council on foreign relations or some think tank or party member congress you attended. Power is power, but in the west, we pretend that our power is not just power. The whole world recognizes that when we speak of “democracy”, we speak of developed service economies within the American empire. And that’s all fine, but it becomes a problem when we start believing our own rhetoric.

Democracy is a joke, it’s a lubricant that oils the machine. These “civil liberties” mean entirely nothing to you, when a new virus breaks out you prohibit the proles from leaving their home. It’s all entirely conditional on working efficiently. Americans don’t even get an actual election, they just have Harris appointed for all practical purposes, unless they really insist on the village idiot.

All I know is that if there are history books, they’re going to call you a bunch of dogmatic ideologues who began to believe in their own bullshit, if you end up triggering a nuclear war over this. You’re going to have Russia end up looking like the reasonable party in the history books, if they launch nuclear missiles at us in response to these Ukrainian attacks inside their territory with our missiles. If Cuba was launching Russian long range missiles at your nuclear launch silos, you would shoot the big bombs too.



Person watching October 7: Why would Hamas do such a thing?? 

Person watching Israel’s actions for the past year: Oh that’s why.

❖

Everything Israel has done since October 7 are things it was doing before October 7. Raping. Torturing. Stealing. Siege warfare. Killing kids with snipers. Murdering journalists and healthcare workers. Israel’s actions before and since October 7 show you why October 7 happened.

❖

I saw a quote by Chris Hedges from 2002, “Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered, but never before have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport.”

I think huge amount of Israeli depravity hides behind westerners giving Israel the benefit of the doubt, thinking “No, no nation that my government supports could possibly be THAT evil, and if they were I would have heard about it in the news.” 

But Israel is that evil. Always has been.

❖❖❖

Trump and Harris both deserve hate, but they don’t deserve any special amount of hate more than all the other managers of the US-centralized empire. If it wasn’t them running it would be two equally evil monsters of the same politics. Don’t personalize the evils of the empire.

The most remarkable thing about Trump and Harris is how unremarkable they are. The thing that matters most about them is how little they matter. They’re just mindless empire goons who can be swapped out and replaced with an ideological clone at the drop of a hat; we just watched this happen in real time with Joe Biden.

If you find yourself harboring any kind of special, seething personal hatred toward Trump or Harris as individuals, you’re falling into the delusion that the evils you are seeing the empire inflict upon the world are caused by wicked individuals. This leads to the delusion that it’s the individuals who are the problem rather than the empire itself and the systems which prop it up, which then leads to the delusion that all you need to do to fix the problems is change out the individuals.

It doesn’t work that way. The candidates aren’t the problem. The presidents aren’t the problem. The empire itself is the problem. The giant globe-spanning power structure centralized around Washington comprised of allies, assets and agreements which fights every day for complete planetary domination, and the oligarchs and government agencies who run it. That’s the problem.

Don’t suffer the indignity of letting them trick you into spending your political energy barking and snarling at the two puppets in the puppet show while the real people in charge construct a cage around the entire world. The only reason to talk about this election is to highlight the fact that it doesn’t matter and that its candidates are fake. Start talking about them like they matter and you reify the illusion.

❖ .....



.......
Hezbollah are vastly morally superior to the IDF. The one and only reason you see the former called “terrorists” and the latter framed as legitimate defense forces is because one works against the strategic interests of the Pentagon while the other aligns with those interests.



............. It goes without saying that if a government like Russia, China or Iran were even suspected of being responsible for similar attacks, Kirby and his fellow podium people would be not just naming the suspected aggressor but fervently denouncing the attack as an act of terrorism. 

And it is here worth reminding readers that in 2017, a leaked State Department memo explained in plain language that it is standing US policy to overlook the abuses of US allies while denouncing the abuses of US enemies in order to undermine enemies and show other countries the perks of being aligned with the United States.

....................... By pointing out the glaring discrepancies between the way the western political-media class responds to things like Israel turning electronic devices into thousands of bombs placed throughout civilian populations and the way they respond when other groups detonate explosives among civilians, you’re helping to punch holes in the veil of indoctrination they have cast over our collective understanding of the world. The more you recognize that you only see your society as good and others as bad because of the way world events are framed by western news media and politicians, the closer you get to having your “Are we the baddies?” epiphany. .............

And the same is true of the mainstream western press. You’ll see them completely ignore the abuses of US-aligned governments while showing immense interest in alleged abuses by empire-targeted groups, often on very flimsy evidence. Mock them and dismiss them when they act like they care about human rights abuses. They don’t care. They just want to make sure the abusive power structure they conduct propaganda for is the one in charge.







........ One reason for such extreme secrecy is that the US and UK are intensely conscious of the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s explicit warning on Thursday that any use of western long-range missiles to strike Russia “will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically.” 

Putin added in measured words: “This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries –- are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.” 

Admittedly, Putin has given similar warnings before also, but did not follow through even when western weaponry was used by Ukraine with impunity to invade Russia recently. So much so that Biden was plainly dismissive about the latest Kremlin warning, saying, “I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.”  ...............




Antony Blinken's foreign policy conduct has been a textbook recipe for a mutiny in the military ranks.

........................ It appears that the U.S. military leadership took Vladimir Putin's warning about this escalation seriously. His words are worth pondering carefully: ..................

Whatever the case may be, if there was indeed a mutiny at the Pentagon and a palace coup in the White House, the escalation to World War III might have been averted, and this would be the best news you'll read all day today.  ........





Multiple empire managers have made separate public statements around the same time which, taken together, serve as a disturbing reminder of the dark things our rulers have planned for our future. 

The US Navy chief has unveiled a plan to be ready for hot war with China by 2027 while the US deputy secretary of state calls China the “most significant challenge” the US has ever faced in its entire history, at the same time the EU’s defense chief says Europe must prepare to fight a hot war with Russia in the next few years. ...........

No one is more dangerous than warmongers who believe they can win an unwinnable war.

Perhaps the strongest evidence that the US empire is not run by rational actors is the way all facts show that a war with China could not be won and would destroy the economy and the ecosystem — and yet all facts also show they’re preparing to wage this war anyway.

As we discussed recently, Russia has already stated that it is prepared to join with China in a fight against western aggressions. The western power structure that is centralized around the United States is preparing to wage a global war against multiple nuclear-armed states. Revolution is becoming a matter of existential urgency for our entire species.


***** Lawrence: Defending Humanity
In the face of the dangerous U.S. determination to prolong its global primacy, a reform movement to reconstruct our long-abused global institutions merits serious attention.

Anyone taking up the question of our shared humanity in the late summer of 2024 must begin with mention of the Gaza crisis, or — with the escalating violence in the West Bank — the wider Palestine crisis.

These events are of world-historical magnitude. They challenge any idea of humanity we may have until now held as truths held to be self-evident, as we Americans would say.

That seems to be over now. It is as if an era in the human story has ended, and we enter upon one that requires us to think again, maybe for the first time since the 1945 victories, when those who came before us looked back upon the wreckage of the 1930s and 1940s and asked, “Where is our humanity?”

The events that lead us to this point are diabolic, something close to sheer evil. And how strange it is that the nation that leads us to this point represents the first half, the older half, of what we commonly call “Judeo–Christian civilization.” 

Our shared task, in light of terrorist Israel’s war on the Palestinian people, is to begin the work — to wage another war, I would also say — in the cause of restoring our common humanity. This is a war against the indifference various forms of power incessantly encourage us to cultivate. To wage this war against power means learning from the crisis that defines our time — that makes this a world-historical moment — and then proceeding in a new direction. ...........

As I have mentioned in various commentaries, the Palestine crisis confronts us with a very bitter reality. This is the reality that, our democracies having devolved into “post-democracies,” none of the institutions through which we thought we could speak any longer functions in this way.

The institutions that are supposed to represent our will and aspirations are more or less broken. We have no way of expressing our objections to U.S. support for Zionist Israel’s genocide — no way that makes any difference, I mean to say.  ............

The U.S. is now generally recognized, according to various surveys, as the primary cause of global disorder. We should see the Palestine crisis in this context. It is without question among the most egregious manifestations of American power in all of history. And it is in response to this, direct response, that we find new and very important efforts to reconstruct the “global commons” that the founding of the United Nations represented. 

Just a few years ago a number of nations, all of them non–Western, formed a group advocating a return to the U.N. Charter as the basis of international law and the conduct of U.N. member states. This was not a very large group, and so far as I know it has not made a significant mark in and of itself. 

It is the intent I wish to draw to your attention. The members of this group included, among others, Russia, China, India, Brazil, and I think South Africa. We know from things stated at the time that these nations acted in response to the wild disorder occurring as the U.S. advanced its now-infamous “international rules-based order.” The world had become too dangerous for these nations not to act.  ...........





Sci Fare:

Neurologists are just beginning to understand Alice in Wonderland syndrome.



Other Fare:

The Truth About Matthew Perry

Matthew Perry’s 2022 autobiography Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing was billed as two things: an addiction memoir and a behind-the-scenes glimpse at one of the most popular TV sitcoms of all time. I didn’t read it when it was released (I’ve never read a single ‘celebrity memoir’) but picked it up at a thrift store recently as Perry once again dominates the headlines due to the ongoing trials of those who supplied the ketamine that killed him last October. I don’t recommend it—it is profane and not particularly well written, although it does effectively convey something of the profound despair addicts of Perry’s calibre experience. 

What struck me, however, was not the sparse celebrity anecdotes or Perry’s interminable rehab stays. One of the least remarked on revelations of Perry’s memoir is the fact that he lived the lifestyle promoted by Friends to the hilt, and it was one of his greatest regrets. He was rich and famous and leveraged that—as most celebrities do—to live a wildly promiscuous lifestyle. Yet Perry doesn’t really boast about his sexual antics. Instead, he writes time and again that if he could go back and do it all over, he would have gotten married and had children instead. .............

Considering his regrets, it is a sad irony that Perry catapulted to fame starring in a show that did more to mainstream the Sexual Revolution than any other. Friends deliberately pushed the envelope on a host of social issues, normalizing same-sex ‘marriage,’ surrogacy, pornography addiction, and cross-dressing, wrapped carefully in comedy and showcased by brilliant, attractive actors. But it was casual hookups and predatory sexual behavior that made up the core of the show. Over the ten-season run, NBC’s flagship sitcom portrayed the six friends having a total of 85 sexual partners without ever contracting an STD or getting an abortion—and it was all portrayed as innocent, normal fun.  ............



Fun Fare:




Pics of the Week:





Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)