Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 10, 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Global power shift
Biden ‘rushing’ billions in aid to Ukraine as Trump win fuels uncertainty
[Al Jazeera, via Naked Capitalism 11-07-2024]
India
Through Their Strike, the Samsung Workers Brought the Question of Industrial Democracy to the Fore
[The Wire, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2024]
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
We are witnessing the final stage of genocide in Gaza
[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 11-07-2024]
Israel, Blackmail & the Presidents
[Consortium News, via Naked Capitalism 11-07-2024]
From Iron Dome to F-15s: US provides 70% of Israel’s war costs
[CTech, via Naked Capitalism 10-29-2024]
The World According To Trump (by Col. Wilkerson)
Chris Hedges
[TW: At 34:40 Wilkerson begins an explanation that, because of modern battlefield surgery, killed in action is no longer as important a metric of combat as is wounded in action, and by the metric of wounded, the IDF is clearly losing against Hezbollah in Lebanon.]
Oligarchy
Trump Win Fulfills Oligarchy’s 50-Year Plan for Right-Wing Takeover
Thom Hartmann, November 06, 2024 [Common Dreams]
The billionaires have won. They have successfully killed the American Dream. And now we have to fight back.
Two Plutocrats Shifted Harris’ Earned Media Message. It Didn’t End Well.
The Revolving Door Project, November 07 2024 [Common Dreams]
“In October, billionaire Mark Cuban bragged about his role in exiling a Harris surrogate and former Elizabeth Warren staffer for the sin of supporting a wealth tax during a television appearance. This claim was bolstered this month by reporting in The Atlantic that suggests that Uber General Counsel (and VP Harris’ brother-in-law) Tony West convinced Vice President Harris to ratchet down her populist messaging lest it upset the Silicon Valley and Wall Street elites he was courting on her behalf.
Fiona Hill on America’s Emerging Oligarchy
[Politico, via The Big Picture 11-03-2024]
The longtime Russia expert explains why Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are all talking to each other.
[The Atlantic, via The Big Picture 09-27-2024]
The Tesla and X mogul has long dreamed of redesigning the world in his own extreme image. Trump may be his Trojan horse.
[Sludge, via Naked Capitalism 10-29-2024]
Monopoly Round-Up: Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post Teach Democrats About Billionaires
Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 10-28-2024]
What It’s Like Being a Billionaire’s Personal Assistant
[The Cut, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-30-2024]
“Another reason these people get stingy is that there’s some kind of psychological distortion that happens when everyone fawns over you all the time. The VIP’s mentality is, “Hey, this person should be paying me, because they get to be around greatness.” They’re used to having people want a piece of them. So they think that the job is such an amazing opportunity that they shouldn’t have to pay the person what they’re actually worth. They live in a bubble and their reality is warped.” And: “You have to have thick skin. You’re like a rhinoceros or an armadillo. And you have to have incredible patience. The way you word things is so important. Your intonation and speed of delivery — I mean, it’s an art. You’re working for people who are not used to hearing no.” And: “The Hollywood publicity machine creates a certain image, and it’s very rare to meet a celebrity who is genuinely an amazing, brilliant, kind, humane person to everyone all the time. Once you’ve been around it enough, those butterflies start to go away.”
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2024]
Economic insecurity + total absence of analysis of current system + total lack of radical comprehensive counter program = far right victories. Everywhere, not just US.
How Intel Got Left Behind in the A.I. Chip Boom
[New York Times, via The Big Picture 09-27-2024]
Intel was for decades Silicon Valley’s dominant chip company. But missed opportunities and poor execution left it on the sidelines in tech’s latest gold rush.
[Tom’s Hardware, via Naked Capitalism 11-05-2024]
Boeing’s Breakup Is Not If, But How And When
[Aviation Week Network, via The Big Picture 09-27-2024]
The latest announcement—taken in line with other developments such as a 10% workforce cut and management changes—underpin how the next Boeing probably will not be an aerospace and defense conglomerate.
Boeing, which has booked net losses every year from 2019 on, totaling nearly $32 billion, and which has borrowed huge amounts of money over those years, bringing its short and long-term debt to $58 billion while gutting its stockholder equity, now a negative $23.6 billion, has been in dire need of lots of cash to burn, after it wasted and incinerated $64 billion in cash on share buybacks to pump up its shares.
The company’s infamous pivot from aircraft engineering to financial engineering to please Wall Street has turned into a devastating mess, including for shareholders. Wall Street loved it at the time, and the shares soared by 500% between 2013 and the peak in early 2019. But since then, shares plunged and have given up most of the gain, and are back where they’d first been 11 years ago.
[Bud’s Offshore Energy, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-08-2024]
“Yesterday, the vice-president of global operations at GE Vernova reportedly addressed all employees at the Gaspé plant to provide an update on the situation. The investigation, led by GE Vernova’s lawyers, reportedly revealed that employees were asked by senior company executives to falsify quality control data. Data associated with a well-made blade was then associated with poorly made blades. Our sources indicate that this is a widespread practice in the industry. The senior management of the Gaspé plant also allegedly implemented a points system that encouraged employees to skip verification steps, thus prioritizing production quantity over quality. Our sources say the points system allegedly involved tight management oversight that bordered on intimidation of employees. The oversized 107m blades that were produced in Gaspé for the construction of marine parks are said to be affected. The integrity of the entire production of the longest blades in America is currently being called into question.”
Restoring balance to the economy
L.A. County Sues Pepsi and Coca-Cola Over Their Role in the Plastic Pollution Crisis
[Los Angeles Times, via Naked Capitalism 11-05-2024]
‘We took on Google and they were forced to pay out £2bn’
[BBC, via Naked Capitalism 10-27-2024]
Health care crisis
Senate report: How private equity ‘gutted’ dozens of U.S. hospitals
[Washington Post, via The Big Picture 09-27-2024]
Thanks to modern tricks of financial engineering, investors can prosper even when the underlying business is failing.
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
[WCCF Tech, via Naked Capitalism 10-28-2024]
The EU Throws a Hand Grenade on Software Liability
[Lawfarevia Naked Capitalism 10-30-2024]
The EU and U.S. are taking very different approaches to the introduction of liability for software products. While the U.S. kicks the can down the road, the EU is rolling a hand grenade down it to see what happens.
Under the status quo, the software industry is extensively protected from liability for defects or issues, and this results in systemic underinvestment in product security. Authorities believe that by making software companies liable for damages when they peddle crapware, those companies will be motivated to improve product security.
Introducing software liability is a big idea of the Biden administration’s 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy.…
Writing for The Record this week, Eric Geller has a good article covering “the struggle for software liability” in the United States. Geller covers some of the reasons why there has not yet been significant progress. These include lack of political will, extensive lobbying, and debate about how to implement liability. The Biden strategy suggested that new legislation should define standards for secure development as well as prevent companies from fully absolving themselves of liability.
By contrast, the EU has chosen to set very stringent standards for product liability, apply them to people rather than companies, and let lawyers sort it all out.
Democrats’ political malpractice
This Time We Have to Hold the Democratic Party Elite Responsible for This Catastrophe
Jeet Heer [The Nation, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-07-2024]
“The key to understanding the Trump era is that the real divide in America is not between left and right but between pro-system and anti-system politics. Pro-system politics is the bipartisan consensus of establishment Democrats and Republicans: It’s the politics of NATO and other military alliances, of trade agreements, and of deference to economists (as when they say that price gouging isn’t the cause of inflation). Trump stands for no fixed ideology but rather a general thumbing of the nose at this consensus. The main fact of American politics in the post-Obama era is that an ever larger majority of Americans are angry at the status quo and open to anti-system politics.” And: “Democrats will need to radically reform themselves if they want to ever defeat the radical right. They have to realize that non-college-educated voters, who make up two-thirds of the electorate, need to be won over. They need to realize that, for anti-system Americans, a promised return to bipartisan comity is just ancien régime restoration. They need to become the party that aspires to be more than caretakers of a broken system but rather is willing to embrace radical policies to change that status quo. This is the only path for the party to rebuild itself and for Trumpism—which without such effective opposition is likely to long outlive its standard-bearer—to actually be defeated.”
[TW: I like the schema of pro-system versus anti-system politics because an obvious element in Trump’s electoral victory is that his supporters ignored the lawfare and convictions by a national government they clearly do not trust nor believe. This is the result after over half a century of coverups and government lying, including but not limited to the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, assassinations of foreign leaders and coups, the lies of Vietnam, the lies about Iraq and then “Mission Accomplished” in Afghanistan. Then there is the Democrats’ insistence that the economy was doing so very well under Biden, in complete opposition to the daily experience of working class Americans, who watched the factories they had worked in be dismantled and shipped off to Mexico, China and other countries, and have experience the wrenching loss of employment following a “restructuring” by corporate management. Workers know first-hand the devastation caused by private equity, but the national government and both parties — “the system” — have steadfastly ignored this reality. ]
Jessica Corbett, November 06, 2024 [CommonDreams]
…on Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders forcefully called out Democratic Party leadership for losing the White House and at least one chamber of Congress to Republicans.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,” said the senator, who decisively won reelection on Tuesday as Republicans reclaimed the upper chamber. “And they’re right.”
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison Calls Sanders Critique of Election Loss ‘Straight Up BS’
Julia Conley, November 07, 2024 [CommonDreams]
After U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders offered his perspective on why Vice President Kamala Harris lost both the popular vote and Electoral College to President-elect Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election—repeating his consistent warning that the Democratic Party must center economic justice—top official Jaime Harrison signaled once again that the party is unlikely to hear Sanders’ call.
Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee and a former lobbyist for clients including Bank of America and BP, called Sanders’ statement “straight up BS” and touted pro-worker policies embraced by the Biden-Harris administration, suggesting that the party has sufficiently worked for economic justice—and appearing to ignore all evidence that working-class voters gravitated toward Trump and the Republican Party.
“[President Joe] Biden was the most-pro worker president of my lifetime—saved union pensions, created millions of good-paying jobs, and even marched in a picket line,” said Harrison.
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2024]
Democrats spent 4 years desperately trying to get “moderate” Republicans to break from Trump.The result? 94% of Republicans voted Trump – exactly the same as in 2020, while Democrat vote dropped.
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-08-2024]
Undersold part of the bro exit from the Dem party is the way that his male supporters were aggressively smeared as toxic sexist Bernie bros.
Why Democrats won’t build their own Joe Rogan
Taylor Lorenz [User Mag, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-08-2024]
“While the right has spent years fostering a symbiotic relationship with alternative media, the left has failed replicate anything like it…. “Leftist channels do not receive widespread financial backing from billionaires or large institutional donors, primarily because leftist content creators support policies that are completely at odds with what billionaires want. Left leaning influencers argue for things like higher taxes on the rich, regulations on corporations, and policies that curb the power of elites. Wealthy mega donors aren’t going to start pouring money into a media ecosystem that directly contradicts their own financial interests. And so, progressive creators are left to rely on meager crowdfunding efforts to make a living. ”
I Study Guys Like Trump. There’s a Reason They Keep Winning
[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-08-2024]
“Yet now Mr. Trump has decisively won back the presidency. I would never claim to have all the answers about what went wrong, but I do worry that Democrats walked into the trap of defending the very institutions — the “establishment” — that most Americans distrust…. As a party committed to American leadership of a “rules-based international order,” we defended a national security enterprise that has failed repeatedly in the 21st century, and made ourselves hypocrites through unconditional military support for Israel’s bombardment of civilians in Gaza.” And: ” Many voters have come to associate democracy with globalization, corruption, financial capitalism, migration, forever wars and elites (like me) who talk about it as an end in itself rather than a means to redressing inequality, reining in capitalist systems that are rigged, responding to global conflict and fostering a sense of shared national identity.”
A couple charts to explain a Harris loss
[Polygraph, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2024]
US elections 2024: After not endorsing Harris, Rashida Tlaib secures win in Michigan
[Middle East Eye, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2024]
Trump versus Biden: The Macroeconomics of the Second Coming (pdf)
Thomas Ferguson and Servaas Storm, May 14th, 2024 [Working Paper No. 221, Institute for New Economic Thinking
ABSTRACT …, this paper looks first at inflation’s overall effect on real wages and salaries. It then considers claims advanced by Autor, Dube and McGrew (2023) and others about wages of the lowest paid workers. Real wages for most American workers have declined substantially under inflation. We observe no sign of a radical transformation of the U.S. labor market in favor of the lowest-paid workers… The paper then analyzes inflation’s persistence in the face of substantial increases in interest rates. We document the wealth gains made by the richest 10% of U.S. households during 2020-2023. These wealth gains, which have no peacetime precedents, enabled the richest American households to step up consumption, even when their real incomes were falling. Empirically plausible estimations of the wealth effect on the consumption of the super-rich show that the wealth effect can account for all of the increase in aggregate consumption spending above its longer-term trend during 2021Q1-2023Q4….
Revenge of the Silent Male Voter
Claire Lehmann [X, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-08-2024]
Claire Lehmann
@clairlemon
What I learned about Trump’s landslide victory from one night in New York City….
When I arrived at my final stop of the evening—a private underground bar in the Lower East side of the city—a celebratory atmosphere had begun to explode. The betting markets tipped a Trump win, and online supporters of Harris started to express acceptance of defeat. The beer here had already run dry. It was so bustling that it was hard to move, with young men in their twenties and early thirties outnumbering women by 2:1. These men were diverse: white, black, Hispanic, Asian. A few wore Trump caps, but the aesthetic was more like a university dorm than a MAGA rally. “This is the counter-culture” one party goer told me. “This isn’t just about Trump,” another said. “It’s about Vance and Musk. It’s about American dynamism.”….
Nothing about the young men I spoke to appeared particularly conservative or “right-wing”. Yet it was easy for them to explain why they voted for Trump. And if we zoom out and look at broader cultural trends, it should be easy for us to understand too.If we take a macro perspective, we see that such young men have never known a culture in which males are not routinely described as “problematic,” “toxic,” or “oppressive”. Going to university, and working at modern companies, they live in a world of Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies—many of which promote an insidious and pervasive form of anti-male discrimination. Yet to talk about it in public invites social ostracism. To criticise DEI is to risk being called a Nazi.
These young male voters know about theories of patriarchy and white supremacy, but they have never known a culture which celebrates the Great Man Theory of history. Thomas Carlyle’s nineteenth century framework for understanding the past is seen as an anachronism, not worthy of serious thought. Today we acknowledge historical figures not for their feats, but for their crimes. Whether it is due to slavery, colonisation, racism, or sexism, we tear down the monuments of our past, while building no new heroes for our future.
The problem with this way of viewing the world is that it is alienating and self-defeating. It is also wrong. By any objective standards Elon Musk is a great man of history, who is influencing the course of human civilisation for generations to come. As one party-goer told me “he caught a fucking rocket with mechanical chopsticks.” Yet despite his achievements, Musk is more likely to be scorned than celebrated by the Democratic establishment.
This tension between achievement and resentment explains much about our current moment. The young men I met that night in Manhattan weren’t just voting for policies. They were voting for a different view of history and human nature. In their world, individual greatness matters. Male ambition serves a purpose. Risk-taking and defiance create progress.This is why the Trump victory transcends conventional political analysis. It represents more than a rebuke of border policies or inflation rates. It signals a resurrection of old truths: that civilisation advances through the actions of remarkable individuals, that male traits can build rather than destroy, and that greatness—despite our modern discomfort with the concept—remains a force in human affairs….
[TW: regarding “male traits can build rather than destroy,”: the key principles of civic republicanism: government should not just punish bad behavior, but also must encourage doing good; and the measure of doing good is the Promotion of the General Welfare, and the establishment and maintenance of justice for all.]
What Lesson Should the Dems Take From the 2024 Election? Return to the Working Class
Robert Reich, November 09, 2024 [CommonDreams]
The party should use this inflection point to shift ground—from being the party of well-off college graduates, big corporations, and vacuous “centrism”—to an anti-establishment party ready to shake up the system on behalf of the vast majority of Americans.
A political disaster such as what occurred Tuesday gains significance not simply by virtue of who won or lost, but through how the election is interpreted.
This is known as The Lesson of the election.
The Lesson explains what happened and why. It deciphers the public’s mood, values, and thoughts. It attributes credit and blame.
And therein lies its power. When The Lesson of the election becomes accepted wisdom—when most of the politicians, pundits, and politicians come to believe it—it shapes the future. It determines how parties, candidates, political operatives, and journalists approach future elections.
[TW: Reich provides an excellent summary and examination of the six major “lessons” about the election that have emerged thus far. ]
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2024]
General Strike (Terrence Daniels)
Kamala lost almost all the university towns in Michigan… I wonder if tear-gassing all your student voters effected the election
US elections 2024: After not endorsing Harris, Rashida Tlaib secures win in Michigan
[Middle East Eye, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2024]
Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War
Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics
[404 Media, via Naked Capitalism 10-27-2024]
Inside the Movement Behind the Election Lies
[New York Times, via The Big Picture 11-03-2024]
For years, Republican activists have huddled in video meetings to talk about remaking democracy and plan for the election. The New York Times has obtained the recordings.
The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution
How John Roberts Brought Back Donald Trump
Pema Levy, November 09, 2024 [Mother Jones]
The Supreme Court empowered billionaires, blocked voters, and ran interference…. Why Americans chose a demagogue to helm their democracy may be partially explained by the fact that, in many ways, the United States isn’t a democracy any longer—and in many ways, that’s thanks to the Roberts court….
Citizens United….
Shelby County
Just three years after Citizens United, Roberts did something he’d been wanting to do since his days as a fresh-faced Reagan administration attorney: Gut the Voting Rights Act. The 1965 law had become the lynchpin of America’s multiracial democracy, but Roberts’ opinion in Shelby County v. Holder excising a powerful provision set the country back…. Unshackled, states rushed to implement restrictions on voting. Last year, on the 10-year anniversary of the decision, the Brennan Center for Justice counted at least 94 voter suppression laws across 29 states. It ushered in our current era of discriminatory voter ID laws, polling place changes, restrictions on mail-in ballots, and more. In Alabama, one of several states with new voter suppression laws, the Brennan Center found that the turnout gap between Black and White voters tripled after the court’s decision, from 3 percent in 2012 to 9 percent in 2022, a difference of tens of thousands of voters….
Rucho v. Common Cause
…Roberts blessed partisan gerrymandering….
Biden v. Nebraska
…In Biden v. Nebraska, Roberts blocked Biden’s loan forgiveness plan. To do this, he used a new doctrine the conservative justices had recently begun deploying to justify stepping in to stop executive policies they dislike. If voters are mad Biden didn’t deliver more on student loan forgiveness, they should be mad at Roberts and his colleagues. ….
Trump v. United States….
The Billionaire-ification of the U.S. Election
[Atmos, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2024]
This moment reflects a trend set in motion over a decade ago. In January 2010, the Supreme Court changed the landscape of political campaigning by removing finance restrictions on U.S. elections. This decision enabled corporations to spend unlimited cash on ads, as long as they weren’t formally “co-ordinating” with parties.
Retrospectively, this landmark was the first step towards today’s billionaire-ification of U.S. politics. For the 2024 election, a staggering $15.9 billion was spent on ads and campaigning by both Democrats and Republicans, making it the most expensive election in history; in just one week, nearly $1 billion was poured into political ads.
“A new Supreme Court case could change the result of the presidential election” [Vox].
[Vox, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-29-2024]
Genser v. Butler County Board of Elections. “On October 23, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that many voters who cast a mailed-in ballot improperly, thus rendering their vote “void,” should be allowed to cast a ballot on Election Day that will actually be counted. Though it’s hard to pin down exactly how many voters will be impacted by this decision, it’s likely that thousands of Pennsylvanians will regain their ability to vote in the November election if the state supreme court’s decision remains in effect… On Monday, the Republican Party asked the US Supreme Court to intervene and effectively disenfranchise the thousands of voters who will be allowed to vote if the state court’s Genser decision stands.” • Important and worth reading in full, both for the math (17,000 votes might get tossed out) and the explanation of the Independent State Legislature Doctrine.
Lambert Strether [Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-06-2024]
One party’s candidate was chosen in primaries; the other’s was selected by a small cabal. One party’s base hated its leadership, and used the primary mechanism to get rid of it. The other party wouldn’t even consider such a thing, and operates strictly by seniority. Which party is more democratic?