***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)
Economic and Market Fare:
While it’s too soon to tell if growth is in trouble, ‘soft’ survey data and markets show growing concern
The U.S. economy has proved pessimists wrong so many times, it’s tempting to think nothing can stop it. President Trump’s first-month policy blitz is putting that resilience to the test. ........
The highest-earning 10% of Americans have increased their spending far beyond inflation. Everyone else hasn’t.
Charts:
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(not just) for the ESG crowd:
Yergin et al: The Troubled Energy Transition
How to Find a Pragmatic Path Forward
In 2024 global production of wind and solar energy reached record levels—levels that would have seemed unthinkable not long before. Over the past 15 years, wind and solar have grown from virtually zero to 15 percent of the world’s electricity generation, and solar panel prices have fallen by as much as 90 percent. Such developments represent a notable advance in what is called the energy transition—the shift from the current hydrocarbon-dominated energy mix to a low-carbon one dominated by renewable sources.
Yet 2024 was a record year in another regard, as well: the amount of energy derived from oil and coal also hit all-time highs. Over a longer period, the share of hydrocarbons in the global primary energy mix has hardly budged, from 85 percent in 1990 to about 80 percent today.
In other words, what has been unfolding is not so much an “energy transition” as an “energy addition.” Rather than replacing conventional energy sources, the growth of renewables is coming on top of that of conventional sources. And with Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency, priorities will focus again on conventional energy production and what his administration calls “energy dominance.” ............
"To know what is happening … the answer is in the ocean."
U.S. B.S.:
Trump’s second attempt at dismantling the bureaucracy
Five months after Donald Trump moved into the White House in 2017, a reporter asked Vladimir Putin about the allegations that Russia had interfered in U.S. elections. After all, Trump had proclaimed that it would “be nice if we got along with Russia” during his campaign, and members of the Duma had greeted his victory with champagne toasts. But Putin quickly brushed the notion aside. There would be no point. Though American presidents come and go, he said, nothing ever really changes: “Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark-blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.”
Putin’s cold-eyed assessment is a minority view now that Trump is back in the White House. Trump himself boasts that he can revolutionize the way America is governed. Announcing the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by his henchman Elon Musk, Trump claimed that he would “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy.” At other times Trump promised to “shatter the deep state.” Critics take him at his word; the Financial Times columnist Edward Luce summed up prevailing fears under the headline trump’s demolition of the u.s. state, and compared Trump to Caligula, who “killed what was left of the republic and centralised authority in himself.” The Atlantic, an ever-reliable bellwether of elite opinion, forecast “a constitutional crisis greater than Watergate.” Trump’s choice of appointees, derided by the New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie as a “set of cranks, charlatans and apparatchiks,” confirmed the widespread belief that Trump poses an existential threat to the Republic. And Project 2025, the more-than-nine-hundred-page wish list of right-wing policy proposals assembled by the Heritage Foundation, was invoked by the Democrats in the 2024 election as a terrible warning of what a Trump victory would entail. ........................
One particularly striking example of Trump’s inability to get his way was related to me by the retired Army colonel Douglas Macgregor, a senior adviser to the acting secretary of defense at the end of Trump’s first term. In the immediate wake of the 2020 election, he said, he advised Trump on issuing an order to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. On receipt of the directive, the Pentagon high command erupted in a storm of outrage. Senior generals reportedly labeled the plan catastrophic and rushed to the White House to tell Trump the order was unfeasible. Unwilling, as he often was, to push back against powerful opposition, Trump beat a speedy retreat and rescinded the order. “There was a Trump presidency,” Macgregor told me. “There never was a Trump Administration.”
Having had four years to brood on his inability to impose his will and whims on the bureaucrats, Trump has returned to office more determined than ever to implement his pledge to “dismantle bureaucracy,” or at least bring it under his control. Rather than stocking his Cabinet with figures acceptable to the Washington establishment and the mainstream media—such as the former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, the retired Marine Corps general James Mattis, the investment banker Steve Mnuchin, or the corporate lawyer Christopher Wray, four appointments he later regretted—Trump has reached for less conventional figures whose loyalty he deems dependable. The big question is therefore whether he can really demolish the state, or at least confirm widespread fears that he will discard democratic guardrails. ...........................
Despite Trump’s alarming proposals and appointments, many people with experience in the vast apparatus of the federal government are skeptical that he will be more effective than he was the first time around. At the heart of his problem is the inability of anyone outside the bureaucracy to understand its inner workings at the operational level. The manuals of government departments provide intricate guidelines and procedures, totaling an intimidating morass of rules—guidebooks that the bureaucracy can use to justify its actions, or lack thereof. It is certainly difficult to see how outsiders, however ideologically fervent, can navigate these subterranean pathways. .................................
Guidance on cutting costs and bringing the bureaucracy to heel will supposedly be furnished by DOGE, the advisory body that Trump called “potentially ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.” DOGE is dedicated, according to a manifesto published in the Wall Street Journal by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who was involved in the effort before the inauguration, to sweeping away the “entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy” they see as “an existential threat to our republic,” which will be tamed by discarding thickets of regulations along with the unelected officials who devise and enforce them. .................................
The most tangible result of Trump’s depredations will likely be the further enrichment of his ultra-wealthy supporters; consider the postelection boom in private-prison company stocks in anticipation of mass incarceration for migrants, or the hype around SpaceX’s multibillion-dollar government contracts. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans will grow ever more enraged by the system’s ongoing failures, creating bountiful opportunities for someone who caters to their rage—someone like Donald Trump.
Geopolitical Fare:
His “warrior ethos” babble is just a license for abusing detainees and killing civilians.
I was talking with a friend the other day and he said the problem with democracies is that policy can swing 180 degrees with each election.
And in some ways that’s true: Trump’s switch on Ukraine is a good example.
But it’s not true when it comes to the core goals of western government since 1979 or so.
The ur-rule of neoliberalism is that the rich must always get richer. ............
This isn’t to say there are never exceptions, but they are exceptions.
This is quite different, by the way, from China.
China used to be willing to mint billionaires, but they figured out it was harming the majority of the population, so they are dealing with it. This is one of the reasons why China has won, and the US has lost. (Another part is that China doesn’t talk about free markets, but actually has them, while the West talks about them but makes sure they never happen.)
Neoliberalism is in the process of ending, but until the ur-rule of always making the rich richer by screwing everyone else ends, the most important part of the oligarchical state will continue. What’s really happening under Trump is the tech-oligarchs taking lead trace away from the banking oligarchs. It’s an internal shuffle of power, while the looting continues. .............
Long rewarded by Washington and NATO for undermining diplomacy with Russia, Zelensky grew confrontational -- and told outright falsehoods -- when Donald Trump and JD Vance told him to make peace.
Simplicius: BLOODBATH IN THE OVAL OFFICE
A presidential dressing down for the ages.
We just witnessed the most extraordinary unclothing in the history of American ‘diplomacy’. Zelensky’s life and career as a cheap television gigolo flashed before his eyes, as he stumped in the Oval Office today, while Trump and Vance took turns flagellating him like the mewling fraud that he is. ...........
Bibas family threatens to sue Israeli govt as official propaganda on hostage killings unravels
The Bibas family demands the Israeli government cease exploiting the deaths of their family members for propaganda purposes as layers of evidence support claims an Israeli airstrike killed them
QsOTW:
Mate: While Trump has indeed spread many falsehoods, Zelensky’s misfortune is that the US president is also known for blurting out inconvenient truths. And now that Trump has decided to wind down the Ukraine war, Zelensky’s chief sponsor is abandoning the “disinformation space” of proxy war apologia that the NATO state political and media establishment has used to fuel conflict with Moscow.
Sci Fare:
If we could stop bickering about which creatures do or don’t deserve to be called smart, an emerging movement of scientists and philosophers argue that we might discover fundamental elements of intelligence that are common to all life.
Chasing happiness may drain your mental energy, making you less happy in the long run
Other Fare:
First they stole your data. Now, they’re stealing your future
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All the Dystopias at Once
George Orwell and Aldous Huxley both saw the future—they just split the nightmare into two books. Orwell feared a boot stamping on a human face forever. Huxley warned we’d drown in pleasure, pacified by pills and propaganda.
But the 21st century gave us both at the same damn time—surveillance fascism!
The screen—hovering 6 inches from your face, forever—is the ultimate weapon. It’s the confessional where you whisper secrets to Mark Zuckerberg, the slot machine that pays out in dopamine, the panopticon that never blinks. You scroll to numb the doom, but only ever get more doom.
This isn’t an accident. ................
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