Nobody knows how the company is doing right now It appears that Trump is getting shady financing from some rich guy in San Diego who owns an online bank. I’m sure he won’t need anything in return should Trump become president again so this is all perfectly fine. The Trump Organization says it ended a tumultuous 2022 without telling anyone outside the company how business is doing—a claim that, if believed, could be an indication of its looming financial difficulties in the face of a tsunami of legal trouble. In practical terms, however, the claim also keeps New York state investigators from getting a clear picture of whether the real estate firm has continued lying to banks about its property values, even as investigators barrel toward a trial that could kill off the Trump Organization. The disclosure about how the Trumps haven’t made any financial statements to banks or accounting firms was made in a Feb. 3 letter written by a retired judge tasked with babysitting the Trumps’ real estate empire, in a document that was made public in court filings last week.
Reading
From an email friend: Those of us of a certain age will remember the attached photo depicting the summary execution of a Viet Cong officer, Nguyen Van Lem, by Saigon’s chief of police. Eddie Adams, the photographer who took the photo (for which he won a Pulitzer), subsequently investigated the story behind it. It seems that Lem had killed an ARVN colonel along with his wife and six children. But it turns out that there was a seventh child, a nine-year old son, who escaped the massacre and lay clinging to his mother’s body for two hours until he was found. This son, named Huan Nguyen, fled to the US after the fall of Saigon, joined the Navy, and was yesterday promoted to the rank of admiral. https://www.corriere.it/esteri/23_marzo_09/foto-saigon-execution-55-anni-fa-bambino-vietnamita-superstite-strage-diventato-ammiraglio-marina-americana-1302baca-be71-11ed-b743-21e74a13bd9b.shtml?intcmp=emailNLcor_americacina_9marzo2023 Wow…
Meanwhile, catcalls from the super-rich over superannuation tax hikes... read now...Confirms that demand and not rate of interest affects firms' investment decisions. However, interest rates do affect the economy through mortgage rate and banks' loan policy, that is, through the housing channel (which is accounted for as investment).
Raising the interest rate increases the interest rate on mortgages, which decreases the demand for housing over time, i.e., there is lag estimated at about two years. A lot of other demand is also connected to demand for housing, making housing demand a potent economic factor albeit a lagging one.
On the other hand, raising the interest rate also increases the payout on government securities and also interest payments on reserves, which adds to government spending. This happens immediately.
Brave New World
Do Interest Rates Really Drive the Economy?
Brave New World
Do Interest Rates Really Drive the Economy?
JW Mason | Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York and a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute
Hookay…. Will his homophobic constituents buy this? Probably. They all voted for Trump didn’t they? Shamelessness is their superpower. This is yet another data point among millions, that many these anti-LGBTQ zealots have secret lives that they are hiding. In the larger sense it’s incredibly sad that so many people can’t find the courage to live their lives honestly, even in this more tolerant world. But the fact that they actually use their power to degrade and discriminate against the people who are doing that is unforgiveable.
As Nine newspapers attempt to spread panic about a Chinese invasion, Professor John Quiggin explains why the logistics of such an event happening are unrealistic. read now...Nearly every evolutionary question can find an answer in mucus.
The post The Importance of Slime appeared first on Nautilus.
Labour right-winger’s hypocrisy laid bare – there are always receipts Earlier today, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper sided with the Tories against football pundit Gary Lineker – and against desperate refugees – condemning Lineker for comparing the Tories’ inflammatory race-hate language about asylum-seeker boats to the fascist rhetoric of the 1930s, saying ‘I just don’t […]
The White House is requesting $886.4 billion in discretionary funding for national security in fiscal 2024, with $842 billion from that pot bound for Department of Defense coffers — a 3.2 percent increase over the FY23 enacted level.
The administration unveiled its budgetary roadmap today just hours before President Joe Biden was scheduled to touchdown in Philadelphia, Pa., to discuss plans to cut the deficit and fund the federal government next year.…
Breaking Defense
also at Breaking Defense
For now This is a very interesting finding in a new USA Today/Ipsos poll about Americans’ view of “woke”, the epithet being hurled by Ron Desantis with virtually every breath he takes: Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on “woke,” but a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word as a positive attribute, not a negative one. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed say the term means “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.” That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats but also more than a third of Republicans. Overall, 39% say instead that the word reflects what has become the GOP political definition, “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.” That’s the view of 56% of Republicans.
~ Today's Water Cooler ~
The Lever’s new video reveals how our coverage shifted the national dialogue around rail safety.
I’ve been wanting to shout this from the rooftops, and now I can. I’ve just signed a contract for my next book, which is called King Capital, with Random House, where I’ll be working with Molly Turpin, who edited one of my favorite books of the last decade. After floundering around for a few years, with one false start after another, I’m thrilled to be writing this book and working with Molly. I feel more than lucky that Sarah Chalfant (The Wylie Agency), who did so much for this shidduch, is my agent. Now to write the book. In the meantime here’s a brief article on the sale, which was reported in yesterday’s Publishers Marketplace.
The contrasting ideologies at play in this tech sector mirror the conflicting ideologies in economics
Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter paralleled, in some sense, the 2016 earthquake when Donald Trump unexpectedly took over the Oval Office. In both cases, a populist billionaire put an existing entity with millions of members under radically new management. Unsurprisingly, whereas alarmed Americans had signaled a desire to escape to Canada in 2016, alarmed tweeters in the fall of 2022 signaled their trepidation by announcing their intention to move as well. But the most commonly threatened exit was to a structure of which few had ever heard: Mastodon.
Mastodon is but one of many new social media sites, alongside Post, Steemit, Planetary, or the Dorsey-funded Nostr, that are drawing attention in the face of Musk’s inscrutable decision-making with respect to the banning of journalists, the firing of personnel, and algorithmic changes. Many of these new sites focus specifically on shifting away from the centralized architecture of today’s tech behemoths like Twitter and Facebook.
In other words, it’s the Trumpers who have Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s prominent series of provocations, urging Australia into a war with China, concluded its third instalment today. At Item 20 of its presentation, apart from its advocacy of the reintroduction of compulsory national service, it wantonly urges that Australia should further consider ‘basing US long-range missiles armed with nuclear weapons on Australian Continue reading »
Where does Albanese stand when it comes to the latest attempts by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald to manufacture a new wave of anti-China hysteria in Australia? Is he amenable to the beating of the drums of war? Or does he have the intelligence to resist this dangerous nonsense? The omens are not Continue reading »
As the American Empire is attempting to open up another war front with China and dragging us into it, the Doomsday clock is now 10 seconds to midnight. Can we resist? The war in Ukraine is not going well for Zelensky. US involvement continues by pouring billions of dollars and armaments into Ukraine and encouraging Continue reading »
This editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald suggests an independent body should determine which occupations are in shortage for employer sponsored visas rather than using labour market testing. That would be a mistake. It is entirely appropriate labour market testing should be abolished. It has always been a charade. It was why my former colleagues Continue reading »
There are echoes of Kevin Rudd’s 2009 essay in Jim Chalmers recent tome. Themes of social justice, equity and fairness still resonate. But this time around, Labor needs to think beyond the lofty ideas to confront what it all means for Australia’s schools. Both essays followed crises that exposed and exacerbated inequalities on a domestic Continue reading »