Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, your finances, and your prosperity.
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Crackdown on homeschooling coming across Great Britain
Now, in addition to that, regional governments across Great Britain are launching an assault against homeschooling.
Despite the fact that public education is lacking, the government thinks it is the parents who should have to prove themselves if they want to homeschool their own children.
In Wales and the Isle of Man, authorities are attempting to pass measures that will allow them to interview each homeschooled child. The children will have to pass subjective tests, with government officials deciding the criteria.
Parents will be fined or jailed for failing to comply with government orders if their child fails the subjective evaluations.
Scotland recently tried to introduce rules assigning a state “guardian” to each homeschool child, who would be allowed to intervene in home life including what kids watch on TV, eat, and how they decorate their bedrooms.
Luckily that measure was defeated, but it shows how desperate governments are to get into your home and dictate family life.
Back in the 70s, the government said that SWAT teams would only be used in extreme cases, like hostage situations. That slowly morphed into using them today for tiny drug busts which often turn up nothing.
So forgive me for being skeptical when Boston Police claim the new robot police-dog they are testing will not be weaponized.
California wants to punish a company that orders Ubers for the blind and elderly
“GoGo Grandparent” is a service that allows people who don’t have or can’t use smartphones to order ride services by calling a toll free number.
This is really convenient for visually impaired people, and the elderly.
But the People’s Republic of California thinks that GoGo Grandparent is a transportation company. So authorities fined GoGo $10,000 for not having a license.
California also said the company needs $1 million of insurance for their cars (which don’t exist, they call Uber) and to hand over a list of their drivers to the state (again, they don’t have drivers, they call Uber).
A judge sided with GoGo to dismiss the fine, but that decision still has to be ratified by regulators, who are dragging their feet on a vote.
30% of average Americans think the dollar is backed by gold
A recent survey of 1,000 English-speaking Americans showed that 29.3% of respondents still think the dollar is backed by gold, and another 23.6% have no idea if or what it’s backed by.
Almost a quarter of respondents thought the Federal Reserve’s job was to secure America’s gold reserves.
30% stated the US government backs the US dollar, and 7% responded that “nothing” backs the US dollar. That last one is probably the most accurate response.
It got even worse when respondents were asked about their money in the bank.
27% thought the bank had to hold all their deposits.
And of the people who knew banks are only required to hold a portion of your money in reserve, only 9% realized they hold as little as 2% of your deposits.
Clearly people have no idea how money and banking actually work.
Caption Contest: Hong Kongers Discover Unlikely New Hero In Fight For Democracy
As the mainstream media so quickly explained, an image tweeted by President Trump (of his head on Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky character’s body) was “altered.”
But, this epic troll out of nowhere has been embraced by the young men and women of Hong Kong following President Trump’s decision to sign Washington’s Hong Kong Democracy Bill backing the protesters against “his great friend” President Xi’s China threats.
In another torrid night of violence, protesters stood briefly facing off with police holding up images of the Trump/Rocky hybrid image.
“It ain’t about how may times you get knocked down by wooden bullets or tear gas canisters, it’s how may times you get back up that counts…”
“…he’s not the messiah, he’s a very naught boy!”
The pictures ‘The West’ receive from Hong Kong are just as ‘managed’ as the images that are allowed through China’s firewall. As Jeff Brown recently explained, there’s a lot more bubbling under the surface in Hong Kong…
Hong Kong’s GDP and other official data are not included in Mainland China’s statistics, so Baba Beijing doesn’t really give a rat’s ass whether the economy craters or not, which it is. HK has 7.44 million inhabitants, ranking it as a second-tier city on the Mainland, with Chengdu, Dongguan and Wuhan. HK is falling into recession, down 3.2% in third quarter 2019 alone. In August, there were 850,000 fewer tourists than the year before. People are leaving in droves: students, businesspersons and service workers. I have a good friend who is a doctor. He just shut down his clinic in HK and moved his practice to Beijing. Another friend teaching there contacted me about working in Shenzhen, because HK has become such a Western color revolution disaster. There are thousands like them. Billions of dollars are being drained out of people’s lives.
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The CIA and FBI have well known offices in Hong Kong. Including the American consulate, there are more than 1,000 US government agents in the territory, and they are not there to just eat dim sum and enjoy a ride on the Star Ferry, as enjoyable as all that is. This does not include thousands of so-called NGOs, many that are CIA-FBI-NED-MI6-Soros-Omidyar color revolution chop shops. Baba Beijing doesn’t mind, as they are vacuuming petaflops of signal and human intelligence on all their sabotage and chaos, providing valuable planning and vaccination to prevent another color revolution in China, like 1989’s Tiananmen demonstration. For every color revolution saboteur and spy, there’s probably 1-2 Mainland agents watching their every move, recording every second of signal communication. It’s like an entomologist having a test tube full of maggot-filled dog shit to study up close. Priceless. Somebody call MasterCard to film a trendy, new ad.
There are more than 800 Christian churches and another 800 Christian schools in HK. There is open evidence that many in both groups are working hand-in-hand with the rioting saboteurs, to provide cover and logistics, with the CIA gangsters providing the millions to pay for all of it. Many of these property wrecking gangsters are members of these Christian outfits, all because of their hatred of communist-socialist China.
Always remember that yes, Hong Kong returned to the Mainland, under the 1997 Basic Law Treaty negotiated between Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping, but under the One Country-Two Systems agreement, to last until 2047. On the left is communist-socialist China, getting richer, more advanced and more powerful by the day. On the right is jungle capitalist, neoliberal Hong Kong, owned lock, stock and barrel by ten multibillionaire families, who exploit it like a metropolitan Honduras.
They are merely inconvenienced by the West’s color revolution, but will still be gazillionaires, even if the territory implodes. This, while Hong Kong has some of the most unaffordable housing in the world, with more and more of the ever-poorer middle and lower classes being driven into homelessness, sardine packed shoebox apartments, or wire cages to stay off the streets.
Poverty has been increasing for years in HK and now accounts for 20% of the people and growing. One-third of these impoverished are elderly. It’s the capitalist American Dream. Tent cities can’t be far behind in HK’s still grossly underdeveloped and neglected New Territories…
…The West’s color revolution chaos in HK is a wonderful poster child for Baba Beijing to show the world why Eurangloland’s fake democracy is a disaster for humanity and Planet Earth, while communist-socialist China just keeps on trucking like a highspeed train into the 22nd century. If you are living behind the Great Western Firewall, you may not be noticing this contrast, but billions of citizens in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania are. Hong Kong’s destruction is one of Baba Beijing’s best public relations coups ever. Thank you, Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi!
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Meanwhile, over in Beijing…
Sign of the times: roughed up in Beijing street tonight for walking with Caucasian European. Neither of us said we were American but their parting shot was “操你美国使馆” pic.twitter.com/ekPLNsLBnj
Each party will continue to extract whatever benefits they can from the other, but the leaving is already well underway.
Beneath the euphoric hoopla of a trade deal with China is the cold reality that the divorce has already happened and any trade deal just signs the decree. The divorce of China and the U.S. was mutual; each had used up whatever benefits the tense marriage had offered, and each is looking forward to no longer being dependent on the other.
Any trade deal is like closing the barn door months after the horses left. Corporate America’s supply chains are already leaving China for lower cost, friendlier countries, and for its part China has already made its intentions to escape the grip of the U.S. dollar abundantly clear.
Indeed, China has clearly stated its plan to move up the value chain globally and rely more on its domestic consumers to fuel growth rather than exports, which have been weakening for some time (see chart below).
As for supply chains leaving China for good–have you examined the labels of consumer goods recently? What once invariably read “made in China” increasingly reads “made in…” The reasons are numerous:
1. China’s labor costs are soaring. Many other countries have lower-cost labor forces.
2. The welcome mat for foreigners has been pulled away. If you need evidence, look at the swelling flood of ex-pats leaving China for good, an exodus that began years ago.
3. China’s workforce is shrinking as the populace ages. The demographics of the one-child policy are remorseless.
4. China’s repression of Muslim minorities doesn’t seem to bother Islamic governments but it presents a serious issue to global Corporate America.
Imagine what would happen to (say) Apple’s reputation if even the tiniest part of an iPhone was traced to China’s slave-labor force of Muslim minorities. Whatever Apple might save by keeping its supply chain in China would be more than offset by the global PR damage.
For Corporate America, the lowest-risk strategy is to move the supply chain out of China, the sooner the better: lower costs and lower exposure to IP theft and bad PR.
The tide of Chinese students studying in the U.S. on their government’s tab is ebbing. China’s authorities are playing the trade war as a patriotic battle, and so why pay for students to study abroad?
Chinese corporations are increasingly reluctant to invest in American assets as skepticism about China’s agenda rises.
Signing the trade deal is signing the divorce decree, not a signal of a return to the good old days of wine and romance. Each party will continue to extract whatever benefits they can from the other, but the leaving is already well underway.
Flashback: Mike Bloomberg Says Taxing Poor People Will Help Them Live Longer
For a taste of the nanny state which would unfold if left-wing billionaire Michael Bloomberg becomes president, look no further than comments he made in April, 2018 while speaking to the IMF’s then-president Christine Lagarde – when he said we need to tax poor people so they’ll live longer.
Watch:
Speaking with then-IMF President Christine Lagarde, Bloomberg said (via Americans for Tax Reform):
Michael Bloomberg: “Some people say, well, taxes are regressive. But in this case, yes they are. That’s the good thing about them becausethe problem is in people that don’t have a lot of money. And so, higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves. So, I listen to people saying ‘oh we don’t want to tax the poor.’ Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life. And that’s why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don’t want to do.
The question is do you want to pander to those people? Or do you want to get them to live longer? There’s just no question. If you raise taxes on full sugary drinks, for example, they will drink less and there’s just no question that full sugar drinks are one of the major contributors to obesity and obesity is one of the major contributors to heart disease and cancer and a variety of other things.
So, it’s like saying, ‘I don’t want to stop using coal because coal miners will go out of work, will lose their jobs.’ We have a lot of soldiers in the United States in the US Army, but we don’t want to go start a war just to give them something to do and that’s exactly what you’re saying when you say ‘well, let’s keep coal killing people because we don’t want coal miners to lose their jobs.’ The truth of the matter is that there aren’t very many coal miners left anyways and we can find other things for them to do. But the comparison is: a life or a job. Or, taxes or life? Which do you want to do?Take your poison.”
Christine Lagarde: “So its regressive, it is good. There are lots of tax experts in the room. And fiscal experts, and I’m very pleased that they hear you say that. And they all say that two things in life which are absolutely certain. One is death, the other one is tax. So you use one to defer the other one.”
Bloomberg: “That’s correct. That is exactly right. Well said.” [Applause]
Bloomberg explains here why higher taxes on poor are a good thing. He is cheered on by IMF’s Christine Lagarde, who, in Feb 2016, was accomplice to Joe Biden’s quid-pro-quo demand that Ukraine prosecutor Shokin be fired to get IMF $1 billion https://t.co/rbiVA8Bxcb
At yesterday’s Thanksgiving table, fifteen adults present, there was not one word uttered about impeachment, Russia, Ukraine, and, most notably, a certain Golden Golem of Greatness, whose arrival at the center of American life three years ago kicked off a political hysteria not witnessed across this land since southern “fire eaters” lay siege to Fort Sumter.
I wonder if some great fatigue of the mind has set in among the class of people who follow the news and especially the tortured antics of Rep. Adam Schiff’s goat rodeo in the House intel Committee the past month. I wonder what the rest of congress is detecting among its constituents back home during this holiday hiatus. I suspect it is that same eerie absence of chatter I noticed, and what it may portend about the nation’s disposition toward reality.
The dead white man Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) famously observed that “all truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
America has been stuck in stage two lo these thirty-six months since Mr. Trump shocked the system with his electoral victory over She-Whose-Turn-Was-Undoubted, inciting a paroxysm of rage, disbelief, and retribution that has made the Left side of the political transect ridiculous, and repeatedly, ignominiously so, as their fantasies about Russian “collusion” and sequential chimeras dissolve in official proceedings.
The astounding failure of Mr. Mueller’s report did nothing to dampen the violent derangement. There was no rethinking whatsoever about the terms-of-engagement in the Left’s war against the populist hobgoblin. The solidarity of delusion remained locked in place, leading to Mr. Schiff’s recent antics over his false “whistleblower” and the enfilade of diplomatic flak-catchers tasked to ward off any truthful inquiry into events in Ukraine.
But then, with the Thanksgiving shut-down, something began to turn. It was signaled especially in the Left’s chief disinformation organ, The New York Times, with a week-long salvo of lame stories aimed at defusing the Horowitz report, forthcoming on December 9. The Times stories were surely based on leaks from individuals cited in the IG’s report, who were given the opportunity to “review” the briefs against them prior to the coming release. The stories gave off an odor of panic and desperation that signaled a crumbling loss of conviction in the three-year narrative assault on the truth — namely, that the US Intel Community organized a coup to overthrow the improbable President Trump.
From this point forward, the facts of the actual story — many of them already in the public record, one way or another, and sedulously ignored by the news media — will be officially detailed by federal authorities outside the orbit of the coupsters, and finally beyond the coupsters’ control. The facts may include the uncomfortable truth that Mr. Mueller and his helpers were major players in the bad-faith exercises of the Intel Community against the occupant of the White House.
I’m not so sure that the Resistance can keep up the fight, since their enemy is reality as much as reality’s mere personification in Mr. Trump. The violent opposition Schopenhauer spoke of in his three-stage model was just procedural in this case, moving through the courts and committees and other organs of the state. I don’t think the Left can bring the fight to the streets. They don’t have it in them, not even the ANTIFA corps. The hard truths of perfidy and treachery in the upper ranks of government will rain down in the weeks ahead, and when they do, there’s an excellent chance that they will be greeted as self-evident. The Times, the WashPo and the cable news networks will have no choice but to report it all. My guess is that they will display a kind of breathlessly naïve wonder that such things are so. Most remarkably, they might just assert that they knew it all along — a final twitch of bad faith as the new paradigm locks into place.
I expect that we will see something else happen along with that: a loud repudiation of the Democratic Party itself, a recognition that it betrayed the mental health of the nation in its lawless and demented inquisitions. I expect that sentiment will extend to the party’s current crop of candidates for the White House, to the delusional proposals they push, and perhaps even to the larger ethos of the Wokester religion that has programmatically tried to destroy the common culture of this country — especially the idea that we have a duty to be on the side of truth.
Ex-BOJ Chief Regrets Not Hiking, Hated QE, Says Sub-1% Interest Rates Don’t Work
Things are going from bad to worse in Japan: 7 years after BOJ chief Kuroda launched QQE (subsequently with yield curve control) while monetizing tens of billions in ETFs, the central banks has failed to boost either Japan’s economy or its inflation, both a dismal byproduct of Japan’s record debt load. So now that the BOJ has failed to remedy what was the consequence of massive debt loads, Japan has a cunning plan: unleash another tsunami of debt.
According to the Japan Times, Japan is set to “re-embrace the power of public spending” – because apparently the country with the world record setting 250% debt/GDP somehow did not embrace public spending before – with one of its biggest ever stimulus packages. Pointing to slowing global growth, a higher sales tax and a string of natural disasters, policymakers in Tokyo are the latest to join the worldwide shift toward a double-barreled approach of supporting the economy through fiscal measures and ultraloose monetary policy, which as we have noted before is a preamble to MMT and full-blown debt monetization by the government.
That’s good news for the Bank of Japan, which has “appeared” (but only appeared, because it now owns so many of Japan’s ETFs it has to start lending them out to prevent a market freeze) reluctant to ramp up its own massive stimulus program, as it strains at the limits of effectiveness.
As a result, in less than a month, expectations in Japan for a “modest” stimulus package with a face value of ¥5 trillion ($46 billion) have quadrupled to ¥20 trillion, despite having the developed world’s largest public debt load. And there is much more to come. Putting this in context, even a “modest” ¥10 trillion in fresh fiscal stimulus would still make it Japan’s biggest package since extra budgets were drafted to deal with the widespread destruction from the 2011 mega-quake and tsunami, and the emergency spending that followed the 2008 global financial crisis.
The biggest irony of all – the recent sales tax hike, which was meant to put Japan’s debt on a more credible footing – is just that scapegoat the Abe administration needs to launch a fresh stimulus ensuring a surge in Japan’s debt. Then there is the recent typhoon and a weakening world economy, both of which were cited by Abe as rising risks for a recession that would tarnish the legacy of his “three arrows” Abenomics project to restore stable growth.
Shinzo Abe
For Japan it may be too late even with additional stimulus: the country’s economy is expected to shrink 2.7% this quarter as exports continue to slump and consumption is whiplashed by the tax increase to 10%. Data out earlier this week already showed sharper-than-expected drops in retail sales and factory output, suggesting the economic contraction may be stronger than expected and will add to calls for a substantial package.
Of course, by now nobody believes that massive debt injections can help Japan – if that was the case, its 250% debt/GDP would have long ago made Japan the world’s best performing economy. Instead, the new funding merely reflect a need to shore up Abe’s political support after recent scandals, with a possible view to seek another term as prime minister or call an early election — a favorite tactic of Japan’s longest-running prime minister.
“We don’t really need this huge level of stimulus now,” Shinichiro Kobayashi, an economist at Mitsubishi UFJ told the Japan Times. “Somewhere around ¥5 trillion should be more than enough. This is not about the economy but motivated mainly by political reasons with popularity and a possible election in mind.”
Meanwhile, some economists – but certainly not the majority – wonder if extra spending equivalent to 1.8% of Japan’s GDP would actually be cost-effective. Given a labor shortage in the construction sector, extra public works spending would simply reduce the availability of scarce workers for the private sector, crimping output there. Meanwhile, the latest Japanese employment data reports of a perplexing picture: Japan’s labor force is soaring as increasingly more elderly women enter the workforce. As Japan reported last night, the number of female workers rose by 150,000, marking the third straight monthly uptick, driven by increases for females aged 55-64 (+140,000) and 65 and over (+30,000). The total number of female workers reached another record-high of 30.18 million.
Of course, no spending bill could be possible with a central bank to monetize it, and on Thursday, BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda called on the government to spend wisely with its spending package, even though there is now little doubt now that a hefty package is now in the works. As for the BOJ, we are long past the point where anything matters: in addition to holding nearly 90% of all Japanese ETFs, the central bank owned 104% of the country’s GDP in bonds.
“Japan is the easiest place in the developed world to increase spending,” said Masamichi Adachi, chief Japan economist at UBS Securities Co. “Politicians love it and they’ve probably gotten tired of all the warnings of a debt crisis that hasn’t actually happened over the last decade.”
Yet even though both the IMF and ECB are now urging everyone to rush into the warm, terminal embrace of MMT – i.e., helicopter money, i.e., direct debt monetization – not everyone has lost their minds. Former deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada, now a member of the opposition, says that the loosening fiscal stance of politicians among both the ruling and opposition camps is alarming.
“I’m very concerned about this emerging mood that there’s no need to address our spending and revenue,” Okada said. “There’s no doubt that Modern Monetary Theory has given some politicians the feeling of a sort of endorsement for more spending. But a frog in lukewarm water will end up boiled if the temperature keeps rising.”
And speaking of warnings about boiling frogs, nobody is better suited to give on than former BOJ governor, Toshihiko Fukui, who presided over the Bank of Japan from 2003 to 2008, and who according to newly released documents resisted engaging in more QE at the time, and also regretted raising interest rates faster.
ex-Bank of Japan governor Toshihiko Fukui
Fukui – who left office in March 2008 when the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was rippling through the American economy – felt a need “to avoid the risk that the threshold to fiscal policy became too low” if the Bank of Japan held too much long-term government debt, he told BOJ researchers during interviews held in 2016 to 2017. Of course, with the BOJ now holding over 100% of total debt, no politician can credibly make the case for fiscal caution, especially since the BOJ can just keep on monetizing the debt until eventually the yen disintegrates.
But perhaps more importantly, Fukui sounded an urgent note of doubt on ultralow policy interest rates, saying 1% is the lowest level at which rates can function. While he is probably right – with Bank of America recently finding that in a world of ZIRP and NIRP, currency moves are no longer impacted by rates – bankers now find themselves in a world of negative borrowing rates.
Records of the interviews, published recently following a disclosure request under Japan’s freedom-of-information law, show how Fukui wrestled with a problem that has ballooned since his tenure.
As the Nikkei reports, under current current BOJ head Kuroda, the bank’s purchases of government bonds peaked at 80 trillion yen ($730 billion) a year. They have since fallen to around 20 trillion yen a year but remain far higher than the level that prompted Fukui’s misgivings.
current Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda
Yet it may come as a surprise to some, but the BOJ began quantitative easing under Fukui’s immediate predecessor, Masaru Hayami. By the time Fukui took over, the pace of bond buying had jumped to 1.2 trillion yen a month.
“After taking office, I quietly decided to myself that I would not increase buying of long-term debt,” Fukui said in the interviews. “I also felt conflicted about quantitative easing. … I understood that that killing the function of interest rates would weaken the mechanism for economic regeneration,” he said, explaining precisely how in their pursuit of all market time highs, central banks killed the underlying economies.
If only more economists knew now what Fukui knew then, the world economy would be so much stronger…
There is another notable parallel between now and then: the Fukui-era BOJ policy also offers possible parallels for an eventual exit strategy from the central bank’s current phase of quantitative easing. As it is now well-known, central banks tried and failed miserably to normalize monetary policy in the 2016-2018 period. Under Fukui, the BOJ also ended quantitative easing and its zero-interest policy in 2006. But he described its subsequent interest rate hikes, which took its benchmark short-term rate to just 0.5%, as “incomplete.”
“If we had reached about 1%, I would have felt a little at ease when handing over the reins,” Fukui said, according to the records. Another reason for this is that it would have given the bank more latitude to cut interest rates later, he explained.
There is of course a simple reason why Japan couldn’t raise rates more than 0.5% – Japan has too much debt. And now it has much, much more debt, making any attempts at monetary tightening impossible.
Of course, critics say the timidity of past easing measures is one reason Kuroda’s BOJ was forced to resort to drastic action, such as greatly stepped-up bond buying and purchases of exchange-traded funds. That’s wrong: Kuroda merely did what every central banker now does – blow an ever bigger bubble in hopes of reversing the devastation unleashed when the prior bubble burst. As for what happens in the future, how deep the depression will be once the current bubble bursts, and how such a bubble-bust cycle could ever have a happy ending … well, that is someone else’s problem.
So much for the Federal Reserve being an independent institution free of politics. Wait. That’s what it is, right? That’s what the occupants inside the Eccles Building, the Fourth Estate propagandists, and central banking champions regurgitate to the public. We have been led to believe the myth that the creature from Jekyll Island’s only mandates are to maximize employment, stabilize prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.
But Fed Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari, who keeps parroting the fallacy that the central bank is a politics-free zone, believes now is the time that the monetary leviathan adds another objective to its policy manual: Redistribute the wealth, baby. Isn’t this the work of those esteemed representatives on Capitol Hill and not the Federal Open Market Committee?
OK, boomer.
Kash Me Ousside
For the last century, the Fed has ensured that Swamp monsters are given first dibs on freshly printed dollars before anyone else. From the flappers of the 1920s to the cool cats of the 1960s to the soccer moms of the 2000s, the peasants eventually receive crumbs as these Federal Reserve Notes travel their way through the economic system. The addicts on Wall Street get their easy money fix, while Main Street residents are left with vestiges of sound money.
Neel Kashkari
Is it time to reverse this policy tradition? Kashkari, an outspoken dove, contends that monetary policy can be an instrumental redistributive force. This is still a minority view inside the central bank, but as Bloomberg notes: “Kashkari has helped lay the groundwork for a shift in Fed communication this year.”
“We had historically said: distributional outcomes, monetary policy has no role to play. That was kind of the standard view at the Fed, and I came in assuming that. I now think that’s wrong,” he told the business news network last month.
Put simply, instead of directing monetary policy to benefit the affluent, Kashkari proposes churning out fresh batches of U.S. dollars to help the impecunious. The suggestion is like what former European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi stated prior to leaving the Frankfurt-based institution. Although he conceded that it is under the purview of lawmakers, the ex-ECB chief recommended “putting money directly in the hands of public and private sector spenders.”
What this really means and how it would look in reality is difficult to ascertain. In an attempt to appear relevant in an age when progressive politicians argue in favor of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) –turning the printing press over to Congress – the Fed might be the latest participant in the Woke Olympics. Since fighting income inequality is a vague ambition, the central bank could tailor monetary policy to the objectives of the Green New Deal (GND), facilitate the introduction of a universal basic income, or provide cover for any other cause du jour emanating from the minds of the Squad.
Unfortunately, we know the Fed could ignite an official merger of monetary and fiscal policy that directly monetizes the national debt and federal deficits. This would be one of the most dangerous fusions in United States history because it extends an unelected, omnipotent, and secretive entity that is accountable to no one the ability to issue unlimited amounts of debt to politicians – left and right.
Of course, the Fed may not call it MMT, just like it will not call its relaunch of quantitative easing … quantitative easing. Interestingly enough, instituting such a system would contradict a recent Fed Bank of New York paper that warned adopting the not-so-modern MMT would lead to “economic ruin” for the country. It often seems like the left hand has not seen its right hand in years over there.
I Am Big …
“There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn’t good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!”
That piece of dialogue from Sunset Boulevard could have emanated from the mouths of anyone in the central banking system – the Fed, the ECB, the People’s Bank of China, or the Bank of England. In a desperate maneuver to stay relevant, these institutions are clamoring for the attentions of leftist Bobby-soxers by spouting vacuous platitudes. Former Fed President Bill Dudley wants the institution to harm President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, Fed President in NY John Williams says the Fed should do more for the LGBTQ community, and now Kashkari posits the need for wealth redistribution.
Perhaps one day, a Fed chair will say, “I am big. It’s the printing presses that got small.”
“We Are Not Robots”: Thousands Protest Amazon As Workers Stage Black Friday Walkout
Thousands of Amazon workers across Europe have walked out as part of a coordinated Black Friday strike against working conditions at the world’s largest online retailer.
Both employees and non-employee union members in the UK, Germany, France and Spain came out in droves, displaying banners in various languages – such as the GMB union’s “WE ARE NOT ROBOTS” signs seen at various locations.
“The conditions our members work under at various Amazon sites across the UK are appalling,” GMB national officer Mick Rix told Business Insider. “Workers are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious and being taken away in ambulances.”
“Amazon workers want Jeff Bezos to know they are people – not robots. It’s about time Mr Bezos showed empathy with the very people that have helped build his vast empire and make sure it is not a Black Friday for Amazon workers,” Rix added.
A freezing dawn on #BlackFriday outside the Rugeley @amazon depot with the @GMB standing up for the rights of @amazon workers. One young man with his child nearly in tears just sacked. A 21st century company! More like a 19th century millowner. Shame on you, @JeffBezospic.twitter.com/751vK7YFNY
On Wednesdaywe highlighted a recent report which concluded that Amazon warehouse workers are seriously injured on the job at twice the rate of other warehouse workers – likely a factor of the company’s demanding conditions.
Injury records were compared from 23 of Amazon’s 110 fulfillment centers nationwide, which revealed that the rate of injuries at Amazon’s centers was 9.6 per 100 full-time workers in 2018, compared with an industry average of four, according to the Atlantic.
Cyber Monday
More protests are planned for Cyber Monday, while demonstrations outside of three German warehouses are planned to last until Tuesday at the soonest.
A tweet from a regional arm of Germany’s ver.di worker’s union said: “Stick to your guns!”
A spokesman for ver.di said there were more than 2,200 strikers across six locations in Germany. –Business Insider
In Spain, Amazon worker Julian Marval said “There’s no signs of Amazon wanting to engage in negotiations,” regarding working conditions. Marval has worked for the company seven years and says that things have dramatically worsened since April of last year.
Black Friday kicks off Amazon’s busiest sales period, known internally as “peak.” According to one UK Amazon worker, things get “hectic.”
“You’re all over the place from the amount of orders that come in… on average you can cover eight to 20 miles a day.”
Amazon responded to the protests by claiming they offer “industry-leading pay” along with benefits and a ‘safe work environment.’
I managed to catch a glimpse of Arif Virani’s campaign headquarters when I was driving down Jane St. in Toronto the other day. Virani is the Liberal MP for Parkdale / High-Park, whom I went up against in 2015 when I ran for the Libertarian Party of Canada.
At one of the town hall debates I met him, he’s a nice enough guy. A couple of his campaign staffers even signed by nomination form so I could get the requisite 100 signatures to get onto the ballot. I remember during that debate, Virani was talking about a recession and he was emphatically lambasting the economy along the lines of:
“Canada needs a Keynesian economic intervention. Larry Summers endorsed our economic plan!”
At which point I leaned over to Peggy Nash, the NDP incumbent who was about to lose her seat to him, and muttered, “If Larry Summers endorsed my economic policy I’d keep my mouth shut about it”.
He won, and was re-elected in this past election, helping the Liberals hang onto a minority government. For now anyway.
When I saw the HQ storefront I couldn’t help but notice something, and in that instant I realized what I was looking at was a microcosm of the entire political process.
This would have gone up before the election:
It’s custom printed. Looks good, tight, crisp. It’s professional. It took some effort and planning and a bit of money to create a banner to earnestly implore the citizenry of this riding to re-elect their dutiful MP. In the run-up to an election, everything must be on message and look good.
And it all worked. Or at least helped. Arif wins his riding and keeps his seat. Of course, now it’s after the election. What is the messaging now?
This looks like somebody’s kid did it with a crayon. And why not? It doesn’t matter now.The populace has already fulfilled their role. They pulled the lever they were supposed to pull and they don’t even get a piece of cheese. They get this crappy “thank you” that looks like it was pulled out of a pre-schooler’s hamper.
That is politics.
One of the reasons I feel less anxiety about all the crazy, increasingly Marxist promises a lot of politicians are making in order to get elected these days is the realization that they are all probably lying anyway. Ironically, that makes me feel better.
It is all just veneer, designed to get the rabble to pull the correct lever. Don’t pay attention to what they’re being told in order to induce them to do it. Let’s say for example, that AOC were to actually become president in 2024, running on a 10 trillion dollar New Green Deal platform. What the rabble who voted for it will probably get in exchange is a nationwide ban on plastic straws and not much else. Then in the fine print of some future debt ceiling showdown, maybe coal gets reclassified as a renewable energy and all involved declare victory. Politics as usual.
A marketing guru friend of mine once told me “Don’t think like a fisherman. Think like a fish”. George A. Akerlof and Nobel Laureate Robert J. Shiller wrote an entire book about exactly this called Phishing for Phools. In the chapter on the political process it is specifically observed that:
The winning electoral strategy with phishable voters is threefold:
Publicly, proclaim policies that will appeal to the typical voter on issues that are salient to her, and where she will be well informed.
But on other issues, where the typical voter is ill informed, but where potential campaign donors are well informed, take the stance that appeals to donors. Publicize this stance to would-be contributors, without broadcasting it widely to the general public.
Use the contributions from these “special-interest groups” for campaigning that increases popularity among the regular run of voters, who are more likely to vote for someone who “mows their lawn on TV.”
With such rational strategies for winning elections, we do not get the median voting theorem as describing political outcomes. Instead we have a political phishing equilibrium.
(emphasis added).
In other words, tell them what they want to hear. Put on a good show. Get them to pull the correct lever. Then you can safely forget about them. Keep the people who contributed to your campaign happy, and next time out you’ll have plenty of money to print up nice, professional looking “Re-elect me!” banners.
