Category Archives: Economy

UPDATED (7/31): Tucker & Stephen Cohen On The Anti-Russia Porn Parading As News Analysis

America, Donald Trump, Economy, Foreign Policy, Russia, Socialism

Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at New York University and Princeton University, to Tucker Carlson:

“I want my president to do what every other president has done. Meet with the head of the Kremlin to avoid an existential crisis—war—between the two nuclear superpowers. Sit with the other side and walk back the conflict. The Trump hunters, however, prefer trying to impeach Trump to averting nuclear disaster.

AND:

“Why the hostility to Russia AFTER the collapse of the Soviet Union?”

Why do Deep Staters dislike Putin, “president of post-Communist Russia, more than they disliked the leaders of communist Russia?”

I can partially answer that, Prof. Cohen: These people are so stupid and ignorant that they prefer to think of Russia as a socialist state, when it is politically nationalist and economically mixed. (See the Russian Journal of Economics, Volume 3, Issue 2, June 2017, Pages 109-128: “Lessons in stabilization and prospects for growth: Russia’s economic policy in 2016.”)

The rest of the answer owed—why the establishment hates Russia today, while it loved Russia of yesteryear—that’s more complicated.

MORE: “Summitgate and the Campaign vs. ‘Peace’”

UPDATE (7/31):

Wrong title. Corrected: Brilliant Russia scholar, Stephen Cohen, makes Mad Max Boot Cry. Boot is the warmonger con who said he’d sooner vote for Stalin than Trump.”

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Thanks To Private Enterprise Ingenuity, Not Government Frugality, The US Is Not Venezuela

America, Business, Debt, Economy, Government

Venezuela’s inflation is 46,000 percent a year, “which in turn is largely caused by the printing of money to finance the government’s deficit of 30 percent of GDP.” (“Venezuelan cash is almost worthless, but also scarce,” Economist, July 12th, 2018.)

“In FY 2017, the federal deficit was 3.4 percent of GDP. This year, FY 2018, the federal government in its latest budget has estimated that the deficit will be 4.2 percent of GDP.” (https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/federal_deficit_percent_gdp.)

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the United States was worth about 19 trillion US dollars.

Thanks to private enterprise ingenuity, not government frugality (see US Debt Clock), the US is not Venezuela.

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Harley-Davidson Had Been Looking To Move Production Off Shore For A While

Capitalism, Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Free Markets, Trade

Conservatism once had the genius of James Burnham, Russell Kirk, Frank Chodorov, and Felix Morley; now the brand boasts Rich Lowry, Meghan McCain and S. E. Cupp.

The last has learned nothing from the 2016 election. S. E. Cupp, a Never Trumper who hosts a CNN show, is betting against Donald Trump. She says, “Trump Supporters Soon Will Learn That No One Wins A Trade War.”

Where’s the learning curve? I would not bet on Trump losing a trade war.

This is not to advocate tariffs. I am for free trade. But here’s the clincher. We don’t have free-market capitalism. Never have; at least not in recent memory.

Thus, “trade deficits must be seen in the context of state-managed trade and systemic debt.” That’s what Trump is negotiating; he’s not messing with the divine order in which we true free-marketers believe. For it doesn’t exist.

As for Harley-Davidson’s decision to move some of its production outside of the U.S.: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Kennedy of Fox Business disclosed that the company had been looking to move production off shore for a while and were searching for an excuse to do so.

 

UPDATED (7/9/018): Non-‘Shithole’ Countries Seem To Recover Quickly From Disasters, Natural Or Man-Made

Business, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION, Intelligence, Technology

In 2008, Iceland collapsed under the weight of its banking industry’s federal-reserve like excesses.

In 2018, Iceland’s is a red hot economy. The highly able population has shifted from finance to technology and tourism. No bailout—allowing the banks to collapse and a natural recovery take place—has a lot to do with it.

“… rather than stepping in with taxpayers’ money like the British and Americans did, the Icelandic government let its banks go bust.”

Likewise did Chile cope reasonably well with what was “one of the most powerful earthquakes in history.” We hear nothing of Chile’s struggles to recover.

Not so Haiti, the Africa of the Western Hemisphere.

Haiti is forever convulsed by political and natural disasters. It remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where four out of five people live in poverty and more than half in abject poverty (NYT).

It’s nearly two decades since a pair of earthquakes struck El Salvador in 2001. The US government granted Salvadorians a generous grant of privilege in the late 1990s, in the form of a temporary protected status (TPS) for nearly 200,000.

Ditto the “Haitians who were stranded after an earthquake in 2010.”

To the din of protest, “the United States’ Department of Homeland Security had only recently revoked the so-called temporary protection (it lasted nearly 2 decades).

“Shithole countries,” a Trump coinage, don’t seem to recover very well from disasters, natural or man-made, do they?

SEE RELATED READING:

“Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Controversy Deconstructed (Part 1)”
“Why Trump Pooh-Poohed ‘S-ithole’ Countries (Part 2)”

UPDATE (7/9/018):

Meanwhile in Haiti ...

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