Sweep Risk
Generally speaking, Americans don't understand the extent to which democracy's imperiled.
When people hear "democracy itself's on the ballot," they tend to roll their eyes and write it off as hyperbole.
If that's you, you'll be forgiven. The quality of public discourse in America has never been stupider. And the tenor's unbearably shrill. If you tune it out, or dismiss it out of hand, congratulations: You're concerned with preserving your own sanity.
That said, America's facing a kind of reck
I’m pretty baffled by that dollar forecast which appears to assume that dollar strength in 2018-19 should be attributed to higher tariffs.
+1. It doesn’t make much sense to me either.
Ok, we had 2 events happening in parallel. But “correlation isn’t causation” as they keep saying.
It has occurred to me that in this present moment western civilization may be experiencing the limits of the realization or expression of the very notion of “Democracy “
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We haven’t even tried more direct forms of democracy yet? I honestly think the Swiss model (or maybe a bit of a variant for faster evolution) would be hard to beat…
+1. We need to simultaneously add back “civics” class to the US curriculum- so we have voters with a baseline knowledge of how the US is governed and how its budget is financed.
I know I’m never going to convince you on this, but it’s a demonstrable fact: The government spends first and “pays for” it later, and that’s if they “pay for it” at all. The budget’s never “financed.” Not like you and I have to “finance” our budget. Money isn’t real.
I do understand….or at least I think I do.
I guess I am using the word “finance” in the larger context of how the US pays for all of its expenditures. Choices are primarily from these categories:
1. taxes
2 interest bearing USDs held by anyone other than the Federal Reserve
3. Interest bearing USD’s held by the Federal Reserve( commonly referred to as “printing money”).
4. Other revenues such as tariffs.
In real estate, we would say, “how will that project be financed”? Meaning what combination of debt (and what type) and equity (and what type).
Am I still failing on this?
Yes. You’re still failing. Here’s how it works, generally speaking. “Hello, arms manufacturer? This is the Pentagon. We found some terrorists in Kabul.” “Great!” “We need to kill them.” “Rock on! Are you sure they’re terrorists?” “Not really. It’s possible that ISIS-K operations center is a water distribution point and that those bombs in Amal’s trunk are bottled water. It’s also possible those donkeys in his yard are his children. You’d think donkeys would be clearly distinguishable from eight-year-olds, but the drone camera has this fish bowl effect that makes it hard to–” “It’s fine. We don’t care. But the missiles aren’t free.” “Right, so we printed George Washington’s picture on 146 million shreds of the finest linen-cotton blend available, does that work?” “Sure!” “Pleasure doing business with you.” “Good luck with Amal! And the donkeys!” “What donkeys? Those are eight-year-olds.”
And when AI decision makers (who aren’t real) take over the monetary system and get their electronic hands on money that isn’t real we (that’s all of us) will be in a world of hurt. Most of the guys developing this AI call themselves economists. Very scary. My economics robe is locked up in a very dark closet. It can’t be allowed out.
and how do you think this ends? or perpetual (and exponential) “inflate aways”
… but, as we saw, inflation is a thing so budgets do have to be managed within supply and demand parameters.
FWIW, I am not even sure what people are so mad at. They said it’s economic anxiety. OK, but everyone with a pulse can get a job (in the US at least). They said it’s about racial resentment. OK, but there’s plenty of Obama Trump voters out there. They said it’s about cultural backlash. OK, but since when do normal people care about elite tastes? Like, Hollywood doesn’t pump out enough white guy saves the day movies? Gimme a break. They say, it’s social media driving us insane. OK, but there are no studies backing that up (though, they are plenty demonstrating the vile impact of Fox News so I can’t wait for Murdoch to finally die).
It’s just hard to understand people these days.
A few decades ago the Swedes tried direct democracy. Citizens not only had candidates to vote for but also a long list of budget items. They went crazy having to make all these choices. It turns out the average citizen is not very good at making choices. Surprised? Direct democracy didn’t take long to be canceled.
America’s the only presidential democracy where the candidate who loses the popular vote is allowed to win the presidency.
So why does it work in Switzerland?
And we could make it simple enough. If you’ve played strategy games, you know we could make things with sliders to let people tell us how they’d allocate things between military – education – health care – retirement – other safety net programs – R&D… and getting a sense of what the population wants…
I disagree with the term Republican. Remnants of the former Republican party have formed a new party within a party which now has fealty to one man. In effect it is Trump’s party and anyone in it is a RINO.
Otherwise I believe you are spot on.
Is it fair to say that enthusiasm for Mr Biden is waning ? So how likely is he to be replaced by the Dem convention ? who then will be on the Dem ticket?? I also noticed that despite crude oil going up next week, oil equities were fairly lackluster consistent with Repub favored to win.
Denial is a powerful psychological state: The country is sleep walking into a disaster.
Trump is getting $ from us oligarchs but he has no polling momentum right now. Admittedly its a much closer election than it should be but I am curious the source for the speculation that a republican sweep is the most likely outcome. Right now there does not appear to be any likely outcome.
From the outside in, that source would be political media who profit from tight election and excitement of both extreme of the spectrum. If I don’t see the same size and enthusiasm in the trump rally crowd’s as in 2016, I will not believe the polls (which are adjusted as we know and have become unreliable eg brexit polls and results)
A tariff is a consumption tax, which isn’t terrible, and we have an election every two years for the house and for 1/3 of the senate, so a sweep isn’t endless. The media and protesters will slow down and gum up the works like in the past, so I think our republic will survive. But I want it over as bad as anybody.
Also, at the risk of sounding like an optimist, I’ll point out that internally, the Republicans can’t agree on what they want to do and what they stand for. They can’t even reliably choose a speaker of the House. So even if there is a republican sweep, it could be difficult for them to actually craft policy. Of course, this does assume that normal constitutional procedures continue to be followed.
Lee – you’re right, a takeover of Congress might (probably likely would) be temporary. A lot of damage can be done in a couple of years, but not (democracy) life-threatening IMO. But in combination with the combined powers of an illegitimate and corrupt Trump-supplicant judiciary, MAGA-ruled states and another 4 years of Agent Orange in the WH – it could be lethal.
I might well join those protestors, perhaps even reconsider my pacifist inclinations…though more likely spend some time and money looking at options for property and 2nd citizenship in a few real banana republics – the kinds with trade winds, palm trees, clear warm water and coral reefs (even though the water may be getting too warm and the reefs dying on account of it).
But for the markets, the ongoing bull market makes me already close to thinking enough-is-enough, time to sell all the exceptionally well-persforming equities (that make up a portfolio generally appraised to be more suitable to someone a couple decades younger, in any case) and put it all into money market and low-beta / high yielding securities and a few offshore banks or more creative structures. A looming likelyhood of a sweep, will make this much more probable come the already typically perilous months of Sept-Oct….though the possible opportunity presented by the right-tail risk of a MAGA sweep in Nov juicing things temporarily to the upside….shouldn’t be ignored.
The GOP (or should I say, the religious fascists who now inhabit it) has made a Faustian over-reach in overturning Roe. Women, even Christian women, when alone in the voting booth will not give their daughters’ bodies away to a bunch of old white misogynists.
Women will save Amerka.
If the Republicans do sweep, it would be nice if Democrats thanked McConnell, Manchin, and Sinema for saving the filibuster. They will appreciate it in 2025-26.
I would have thought that the Dems learned the lesson after Reid abandoned it for judges. At the time, now Leader Schumer stated that Reid made a mistake. Mr. Schumer is lucky that he was not successful in abandoning that minority tool. It will be fun to watch all of the Democratic Senators who urged it be abandoned talk about what an important tool it is. Obviously, consistency is neither party’s strong suit.