Trumped

[Donald Trump] is now fully at war with the mainstream media and the national security apparatchiks of the Deep State — and nothing could be more conducive to exposing the folly of Washington's imperial adventures abroad and its fiscal bankruptcy at home.... [T]he "Trump is soft on Russia" meme is nothing more than the desperate attempt of the Deep State to protect its dirty secret that America has no real enemies that can militarily threaten the homeland.... The ruling elites are determined to take the Donald down, and whether they succeed or not, it is extremely probable that Washington will grind to a halt — Watergate era style — by early spring....

[E]conomic recovery and the restoration of honest democracy in America depend upon a plunge in the wildly inflated stock market. It is that event which would finally discredit the monetary central planners at the Fed, destroy the insidious regime of Bubble Finance they have created, [and expose] the financial fraud which has permitted the Imperial City to fund the nation's bloated Warfare State and Welfare State with reckless abandon. Fiscal rectitude will only return when a thundering financial trauma demonstrates to the American public that a money printing central bank is its mortal enemy and that the Fed's charter to buy government debt and rig interest rates and stock prices must be forever revoked.

-- David Stockman (The Daily Reckoning) Feb. 21, 2017

Russian Distraction

[T]he demonization of Russia [is] a way more idiotic exercise than the McCarthyite Cold War hysteria of the early 1950s since there is no longer any ideological conflict between us, and all the evidence indicates that the current state of bad relations is America’s fault -- in particular, our sponsorship of the state failure in Ukraine and our avid deployment of NATO forces in war games on Russia’s border....

Rather, the Evil Russia meme seems a projection of our country’s own insecurities and contradictions. For instance, we seem to think that keeping Syria viciously destabilized is preferable to allowing its legitimate government to restore some kind of order there. Russia has been on the scene attempting to prop up the Assad government, while we are on the scene there doing everything possible to keep a variety of contestants in a state of incessant war. U.S. policy in Syria has been both incoherent and tragically damaging to the Syrians.

Russians stood aside while the U.S. smashed up Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. We demonstrated adequately that shoving sovereign nations into civic failure is not the best way to resolve geopolitical tensions. Why would it be such a bad thing for the U.S. to stand aside in Syria and see if the Russians can rescue that country from failure? Because they might keep a naval base there on the Mediterranean? We have scores of military bases around the region.

It’s actually pretty easy to understand why the Russians might be paranoid about America’s intentions. We use NATO to run threatening military maneuvers near Russia’s borders. We provoked Ukraine — formerly a province of the Soviet state — to become a nearly failed state, and then we complained foolishly about the Russian annexation of Crimea — also a former territory of the Soviet state and of imperial Russia going back centuries. We slapped sanctions on Russia, making it difficult for them to participate in international banking and commerce.

What’s really comical is the idea that Russia is using the Internet to mess with our affairs — as if the USA has no cyber-warfare ambitions or ongoing operations against them (and others, such as hacking Angela Merkel’s personal phone). News flash: every country with access to the Internet is in full hacking mode around the clock against every other country so engaged. Everybody’s doing it.

-- James Howard Kunstler (The Daily Reckoning ) Oct. 29, 2016

Not Me

Who's gonna fight?  Not Me!
Who thinks it right?  Not Me!
"The threat of war is a passing phase."
Try telling that to a waiting grave.
They say the bunkers will be safe.
They're not big enough for the human race.

Who's having fun?  Not Me!
Gonna carry a gun?  Not Me!
I've got to fight; I got no choice.
They'll never hear my fucking voice.
Deafened in the deathly noise
Created by their brand new toys.

Who's gonna die?  Not Me!
I'll tell you why....
I won't do whatever they say
Even if it means getting put away.
That's what I think -- OK?
You've got to react -- it's the only way.

Subhumans, 1983

American Corporatocracy

One little-remarked consequence of central banks' policies of near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing is the unrivaled dominance of mobile global capital.  The source of corporate political power is the ability to borrow essentially unlimited sums for next to nothing: what I have long termed free money for financiers.  Armed with central-bank supplied unlimited credit, global capital can outbid local residents and businesses. Over time, profitable enterprises and assets end up in corporate hands....

The same dynamic — the unparalleled power of cheap credit — then funds corporate dominance of the political process.  As corporations buy up productive assets, they consolidate these assets into cartels and quasi-monopolies that can be protected from competition by lobbying and campaign contributions.  Governments come and go, candidates come and go, and political movements come and go, but the Corporatocracy remains in charge. 

-- Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds blog (edited)

Goodhart's Law

"Once a social or economic indicator is made a target for the purpose of conducting social or economic policy, then it will lose the information content that would qualify it to play such a role.  When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
-- Charles Goodhart, 1975



Humans naturally optimize what is being measured and identified as important.  This is the result of humanity’s highly refined skill in assessing risk and return. The problem with choosing what to measure is that the selection can generate counterproductive or even destructive incentives.  The process of selecting which data is measured and recorded carries implicit assumptions with far-reaching consequences. 

If we accept that growth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) is the measure of prosperity, politicians will pursue the goal of GDP expansion.  If rising consumption is the key component of GDP, we will be encouraged to go buy a new truck when the economy weakens, whether we need a new truck or not.  If profits are identified as the key driver of managers’ bonuses, managers will endeavor to increase net profits by whatever means are available.

There is a growing dissatisfaction in the economics field with the current measures of economic activity: GDP, unemployment, and so on. This dissatisfaction reflects a growing awareness that these legacy metrics do a poor job of capturing what is actually important in fostering sustainable, broad-based prosperity, what many call well-being.  If we choose counterproductive metrics, we build perverse incentives into the system, incentives that guide the goals, strategies and behaviors of participants.

Rather than measure consumption and metrics that incentivize debt, what if we measure well-being and opportunities offered in our communities? What if we measured doing more with less rather than consuming more? What if our primary measure of economic well-being was the reduction of inputs (resources, labor, capital, etc.) that resulted in higher output (increased well-being)?  Systemic success or failure arises from our choices of what to measure and what thresholds we set as meaningful.

-- Charles Hugh Smith (The Daily Reckoning)

I Wanna Stay Home

When you need someone, and there's no one there
There is always the 9:00 train to take you out somewhere

I take the train in town, like I did for years
There is only seven more blocks; I could walk from here

It's only six o'clock when my day begins
There is always my alarm clock to wake me up again

When I realize the weight that's firmly on my shoulders
I just try and find the place I can take a walk on my blind side 

When these memories fade in my ripe old age
Please remember, my dear...

I wanna stay home
I wanna stay home right here
I wanna stay home today

I wanna stay.... 

-- Andy Sturmer (Jellyfish) 1990

The King is Half Undressed

Blue Autumns
Sunshine Kisses
Hearts and Flowers
Broken Wishes

-- Roger Manning / Andy Sturmer (Jellyfish) 1990