The Trump Presidency, Season 2

[Free]

Holy shite. David "huge bar bill w/burger at Newark Airport" Brooks is saying this. On the New York fucking Times opinion pages.

What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal. (archive.today)

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Free]

When you're *just* a rabbit, they don't escort you to a plane destined for El Salvador...

 

[Innula Zenovka]

When you're *just* a rabbit, they don't escort you to a plane destined for El Salvador...

Unless law enforcement mistake your being a rabbit for a sign you're a member of a criminal organisation.

 

[Free]

Unless law enforcement mistake your being a rabbit for a sign you're a member of a criminal organisation.

I guess if they were deep into the toxic buck movement, they might find an out.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I guess if they were deep into the toxic buck movement, they might find an out.

A rise in misogyny and racism is flooding UK schools as pupils ape the behaviour of figures such as Donald Trump and Andrew Tate after exposure through social media and online gaming, teachers have warned.

Barking at female staff and blocking doorways: Teachers warn of rise in misogyny and racism in UK schools

 

[Noodles]

Unless law enforcement mistake your being a rabbit for a sign you're a member of a criminal organisation.

Everyone in El Salvador knows that being a rabbit means you are part of a gang.

-- Average Fox News Host

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Evernote Link

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Have you ever heared of the Mar-a-Lago Accord by Stephen Miran? It's a paper published by Hudson Bay Capital, and officially named "A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System." Miran is now leading the Council of Economic Advisors, so pretty close to Trump.

Link: https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf

Some newspapers here in Europe are argumenting it is the bigger picture of what Trump might want to achieve with his tariffs. The overall goal is remodeling global trade at large in a way that benefits America the most.

One pillar of what Miran is proposing are raised tariffs.

Second pillar is going to be a national fund, which is going to amass foreign major currencies as Euro, Yen and Renminbi.

Both pillars aim at decreasing the value of the US dollar.

Third pillar is that American debitors like Germany, China, Canada or Japan should replace their treasury bonds with 100 year running bonds with no interest rates. These bonds would be solds with a rebate on their nominal value, and only debitors who are holding them for 100 years will get paid the nominal value in the end.

Problem with this approach is if the dollar is loosing value over time, the holders of such bonds would only amass losses. The result would be that the whole world would finance the America's Federal debt for free.

It could also be used within NATO, so that America only delivers protection if allies are signing for these bonds.

The tariffs are used as a negotiation enabler for the bigger blocks like EU or China in this paper, thinking that such trading partners are more willing for new currency deals when afterwards the tariffs are being lowered. Well at least with China it seems that this strategy will lead to nowhere, because China is in "fuck off" mode right now.

The name Accord is also a reminiscense to the Plaza Accord of Ronald Reagon in the 80s, where the dollar was devalued on purpose.

So, have you ever heared about it? What are your opinions about it?

https://www.ft.com/content/c5b1c6b3-85a7-4e99-bcac-3d331f03640b

 

[Khamon]

Time to break out the Sharpie.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/dAVVOUYwZI

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Both pillars aim at decreasing the value of the US dollar.

Isn't this the playbook that lead up to WWII? Germany devalued it's currency faster than an astroid falling into a black hole in order to repay their massive WWI restitution debts. The German people were so outraged and devastated by it that they embraced scapegoatism/fascism/genocide. We're just getting some of the steps mixed up.

Instead of Axis powers of Germany, Italy & Japan, now we have the US, Russia and North Korea?!

Just imagine what a conventional WWIII might end up looking like. China, India and Africa banding together, aligned with Canada and Mexico to move in -massive- numbers of knife wielding troops who then surge across the entire length of our northern/southern borders 'Liberating' us as the go, knowing we're not gonna drop nukes on ourselves. And if we do? Well, so they lose some foot soldiers. Meh.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Time to break out the Sharpie.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/dAVVOUYwZI

Come on... I feel like they could have used modern tools to come up with a much more convincing fake.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Come on... I feel like they could have used modern tools to come up with a much more convincing fake.

We're talking about an administration with at least one cabinet member who thinks that new computer thingie is "A1" ... like the steak sauce.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Evernote Link

One of Britain's top military strategy experts on just how bad Trump's tariff strategy really is.

We rarely have had such a clear-cut example of bad strategy. This is not about objectives, for someone with terrible intent can be strategically adept, but about deciding on a course of action that will not only fail to achieve its stated intent but will have negative consequences that far exceed the positive. In this respect Trump’s tariffs policy is on the extreme end of the scale of badness, exemplary in its awfulness. It has features that are common to most bad strategies but in key respects it was unique. This was a bad strategic decision that only Donald Trump could have made, not just because he had to be president to make it but also because it was necessary to believe things about international trade that only he and a few close advisers believed

[Trump] fits the model of a flawed military commander. He follows a worldview that reflects his prejudices, and he is surrounded by staff prized for their loyalty more than independent judgment. He lacks intellectual curiosity and rejects complicating evidence. His starting assumption is that he has the strength to impose his will.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Evernote Link

One of Britain's top military strategy experts on just how bad Trump's tariff strategy really is.

Good article, thanks for posting it. His strategy is obviously awful in all ways except for one. What will appease the strange whims of his base? I've thought a lot about the vast gap between what is realistic pragmatically versus what is realistic politically. Because if Trump voters all think his strategy is brilliant, this won't hurt him nearly as much as it really should.

A lot of Trump supporters make me think of Tzeentch, the scheming chaos god from Warhammer. A key feature of this god in the lore is that his schemes can appear contradictory and even against his own interests but will eventually work out in his favor in the long run for complicated reasons. Some people have sarcastically referred to Tzeentch as "The divine manifestation of 'I meant to do that!'". I could write a lot more about how much Warhammer lore seems to influence his younger followers, but will leave that for now.

Likewise, a lot of Trump's propaganda and support involves carefully cherry picking and sometimes even just making up excuses to say his plans worked out, often in the teeth of real evidence. This strategy has often been successful for him. USA faired worse under COVID than many other developed nations, but that didn't stop them from redirecting all the blame onto Biden while Trump's reputation for being good on the economy stayed mostly untarnished to most uninformed voters.

My big worry with this tariff nonsense is that we'll eventually "negotiate" back to where we were, and then the market will recover... and then the right wing propaganda machine will spin that as a GREAT VICTORY even though any sane onlooker would know he just fixed a problem he caused for no reason. If our GDP is slightly higher by the end of his term, that can be spun as a victory even though it obviously would have been better if he just put his feet up on his desk and did nothing.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

It doesn't hurt until it hurts them. Some parts of Trump's supporters are starting to see impacts, but for most it will be later this year. But it will eventually catch up to them.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

My big worry with this tariff nonsense is that we'll eventually "negotiate" back to where we were, and then the market will recover... and then the right wing propaganda machine will spin that as a GREAT VICTORY even though any sane onlooker would know he just fixed a problem he caused for no reason. If our GDP is slightly higher by the end of his term, that can be spun as a victory even though it obviously would have been better if he just put his feet up on his desk and did nothing.

The stock market maybe, because that's mostly bets based on short-term vibes, but the currency and bonds markets are rather different. Once they start to lose confidence it takes a long time for a government to regain it, as we in the UK have learnt the hard way.

We're still playing the "moron premium" on interest rates because of Liz Truss' disasterous budget, even though she had to unwind it all within days and was replaced as Prime Minister a week or so later, and there's now a different party in power. It's like your credit rating -- miss a couple of payments on your credit cards and it can take years to repair the damage.

Keir Starmer's government has found itself hugely constrained, despite its massive majority, and forced into taking deeply unpopular decisions, because it's worried about the consequences of upsetting bonds and currency markets that fear a repetition of the Truss debacle.

 

[Beebo Brink]

The economic damage is intertwined in the general reputational damage to the U.S. We elected a lunatic to run the country. Twice. Whether or not we ever have another national election, we've proven that we are not to be trusted in our collective judgment. At some point it is irrelevant why this happened. Even if Trump were to drop dead tomorrow from one too many cheeseburgers and fries, the dry rot that led to his presidency has been revealed.

We are no longer the country that can provide stability to the rest of the world, either financially or militarily. We are aligning with Putin and every other fascist nation, with White Christian nationalists just waiting in the wings until they can come out on stage and take credit for the coup. We're in a constitutional crisis as the Trump Administration appears to ignore the dictates of the Supreme Court that Trump himself created.

Wavering faith in U.S. treasury bonds is a perfectly rational response to that knowledge.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The economic damage is intertwined in the general reputational damage to the U.S. We elected a lunatic to run the country. Twice. Whether or not we ever have another national election, we've proven that we are not to be trusted in our collective judgment. At some point it is irrelevant why this happened. Even if Trump were to drop dead tomorrow from one too many cheeseburgers and fries, the dry rot that led to his presidency has been revealed.

We are no longer the country that can provide stability to the rest of the world, either financially or militarily. We are aligning with Putin and every other fascist nation, with White Christian nationalists just waiting in the wings until they can come out on stage and take credit for the coup. We're in a constitutional crisis as the Trump Administration appears to ignore the dictates of the Supreme Court that Trump himself created.

Wavering faith in U.S. treasury bonds is a perfectly rational response to that knowledge.

It's like with Brexit. If and when the UK sees sense and tries to rejoin, EU won't waste much time on negotiating Britain's re-entry unless it's satisfied that opposition to EU membership has been firmly rejected by the main political parties and is once again confined to the very fringes of UK politics. So long as there's a realistic chance the Conservatives and Reform might join forces to pull us out again, the EU would be stupid to let us back in.

Similarly, sadly, the US has demonstrated over the last 3 months that it's no longer either a reliable trading partner or ally, and that it's no longer committed to free trade. The damage to trust and relationships is now done, and we all of us have to live in this changed world.

 

[Casey Pelous]

...Wavering faith in U.S. treasury bonds is a perfectly rational response to that knowledge.

I suspect that two flimsy things are saving our sorry butts for the moment. 1) Cashing in treasuries gets you paid in USD, and the USD is on a downslide. 2) A big sell-off would cause even more sell-off, which would cause .... well, you see the hole this is headed down.