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Trump wants to boost exports, bring back American jobs from overseas and reduce the trade deficit. To achieve this he needs a weaker dollar. Trump also wants a strong dollar and will not brook any challenges to its near monopoly of international payments. Can he possibly have both? Trump’s Problem No.1: His announced tariffs will […]

The post Trump, the Dollar and China: What to watch for in 2025 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

I think we’ll all be talking about Jimmy Carter over the next few days and rightly so. The man led a fascinating and impactful life and there’s a lot to say about his accomplishments, his values and his contributions to America. I thought today that I would just remind everyone of this episode which informs us of the corrupt nature of so much of the GOP’s history, even before Trump. People’s lives were at stake and they did this: It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent. His mentor was John B.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Josh Marshall has been closely following the recent South Korean coup and subsequent fallout and has uncovered something (via this article) that I’ve not heard anyone else report. He notes that while S. Korea may be a more recent democracy by American standards it’s actually very well entrenched. But it also has a social media ecosystem that resembles our own with right wing extremists dominating the scene. The country’s reaction to the attempt can best be described as a widespread “What the fuck?” Like not even, “this won’t stand!” or “we’ll defend our democracy!”, though those were there too. The immediate reaction to Yoon’s move was as much bafflement as fear or anger. The whole thing was so crazy and out of left field that people struggled to understand what Yoon had even been thinking. That’s why the attempted coup played out as it did and why Yoon is currently out of power and looking at likely treason charges. So back to our far-right YouTubers.

Is like watching a cage match between the two worst people in the world.

In this corner, the screw the peons billionaires.

In the other corner, the racist anti-immigrant nativists!

Personally I’m cheering for the racist anti-immigrants.

Vivek Ramaswany delightfully opinined that the problem is that American culture doesn’t produce people willing to work hard enough and celebrates prom queens and jocks over math olympiads. (American engineers aren’t keen on 12 hour work days.)

So what did I get through in a year’s worth of "novel" reading on the commute to work, in the evenings after work, and while travelling outside of my “normal” academic reading? My use of the term “novel” reading is loosely adopted, as you will see from the list below.

The post Novel Reading in 2024 appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

When I was young and travelling around the world I’d tell people I was from Alaska and they’d occasionally tell me that we should become part of Canada because America was such a terrible place. I’d feel a little uncomfortable about that, being an American and having some affection for my own country. But now I don’t know that I’d react the same way. Trump and his cult are making it very easy to look to Canada. Robert Reich discusses Trump’s new obsession with territorial expansion and has a modest proposal: But as long as we’re considering changing national borders, why not do it in a more sensible way? How about the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California becoming the 11th province of Canada? After all, the politics of these blue states would fit much better with Canada’s than with Trump’s America. Meanwhile, the New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and New York could become the 12th Canadian province, for much the same reason.

I’ve avoided post-mortems on the US election disaster for two reasons. First, they are useless as a guide to the future. The next US election, if there is one [1], will be a referendum on the Trump regime. Campaign strategies that might have gained the Democrats a few percentage points in November 2024 won’t be […]

Axios reports on a new PRRI survey: President-elect Trump has suggested that he’ll use the military in immigration raids and turn to a 1798 law to put immigrants in camps. His base appears to support those plans despite the likely fierce opposition from most Americans. 46% of Republicans endorse using the military in mass deportation raids and placing immigrants in camps, according to a nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) post-election survey.That’s more than double that of independent voters (19%) who agree with the idea.And that’s more than five times as Democratic voters (8%) who supported this policy.  “There have been questions in the Trump era where I’ve thought…I can’t believe that we need to know the answer to this question,” Robert P.

How we feel about life as we age is not as universal as we thought.

The post Does Life’s Happiness Have a Shape? appeared first on Nautilus.

Her most important qualification is being a longtime Trump loyalist — and she’ll carry out his vision to gut the Department of Education.

The post Linda McMahon Has No Education Experience Except Wanting to Defund Public Schools appeared first on The Intercept.

. Gabriel Fauré’s masterpiece. Hauntingly beautiful. Timeless and profoundly moving.