Assassination in Turkey

I've been so busy I missed blogging two days in a row.  I continue to be very swamped.  I hope that changes soon.

So all I have for now is breaking news: the Russian ambassador to Turkey has been assassinated.

There's a lot to be said here, but for now I leave you simply with that.

If you're bored or disappointed by the lack of insight found in today's post, well, I can't blame you.  Read Dean Baker's contrarian take on the Great Recession instead! It's great food for thought:

In any case, the argument that we would have faced a decade of double-digit unemployment had we not rescued Wall Street rested on a political assessment, not an economic one. There was no economic reason that large amounts of spending following a financial collapse would not have boosted the economy back towards full employment and without the albatross of an incredibly bloated financial sector.

Sounds like socialism to me!

Short Econ Talk

I sure let today slip away from me! I'm just gonna hit you up with some links I think you should read.

First of all, eat your veggies, and read your Dean Baker.  He tells us that everyone is suffering, but whites not especially so, employment-wise, contrary to a NY Times column.  He also knocks the WaPo down a peg by pointing out that neither job openings nor wage growth in manufacturing currently are all that impressive.  Always good to double-check the narrative.

I'd like to know what he has to say about this little wrap-up of the Obama economy by the NY Times.  It's a brief and interesting read that contains one glaring, possibly inaccurate, piece of speculation:

Income inequality is the second weak spot the White House economists identify, arguing that the Obama administration has made progress in spreading the gains from a growing economy more widely but not enough.

...

If Hillary Clinton had won the election, this approach to thinking about inequality would most likely have formed a central role in her economic agenda.

Maaaaaaaybe it would have.  A lot of folks didn't turn out to vote for Clinton precisely because they didn't trust her to emphasize issues such as inequality, the high, seemingly permanent, drop-out rate in the labor force, and so forth.  It's likely that for political reasons she would have had to at least rhetorically address the issue.  Who knows: maybe she would in fact have been a devoted progressive.  We'll never know.  What we do know  is that we've got an incoming GOP administration, and it would be jaw-dropping if it dedicated one iota of effort to income inequality.

The above said, the NY Times article is still worth your time.  Here are the points it makes, summed up:

• Productivity growth has been weak.  This could be caused by a slowing rate of technological advancement, insufficient demand (and subsequently, investment), or what conservatives are always bitching about, excessive regulation, which seems pretty ridiculous when you look at this survey of small business concerns conducted by the NY Fed ("cash flow," "cost of running business" and "credit availability" all outweighing "government regulations").
• Income inequality is getting worse.  This points bears little elaboration here; most of you, conservative or liberal, know that the rich are far richer than they've ever been and that the middle class and (heaven forfend we discuss them) the lower classes and poor are being left behind.
• Labor force participation is down.  Basically, huge swaths of people are so discouraged by the job market that they're not even bothering to look for work.  Kudos in advance to Donald Trump if he can actually solve this problem.
• Economic sustainability still remains a looming threat.  Can our economy cope with spiraling health care costs? Global climate change? The next big market correction (i.e., recession)? Regarding that last point: the Fed normally fights recessions by cutting interest rates, thereby giving people more of an incentive to invest/spend, thus generating economic activity and alleviating the recession.  But rates are pretty close to zero currently.  Should another recession hit, it's on the public sector to step in and spend money.  And will a Republican government do such a thing?  It certain goes against their stated ideology.  Let's not even get started on global climate change.  Who knows, maybe the Trump admin will rise to meet these challenges.  We will see, we will see.

Anyways all three links above are good, short reads.  Read them and then be on your merry way into the weekend.  Sláinte!

Water, The West and Cabinet Appointments

Trump has tapped a Montanan, Ryan Zinke, for Secretary of the Interior.  Of course he has.  Who better to run the agency which regulates our public lands than someone from a region that has chronically abused natural water supplies since it was settled by the white man, all the while suckling from the teat of the federal govenrment?

The best book I read in 2016, and I one I want to recommend to you without any reservations, especially if you grew up or live west of the Mississippi (as I did), is Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.  It makes abundantly clear that the way we chose to settle the West over the past century and a half is the worst possible way we could.  Californians in particular, but also Arizonans, Coloradans, Montanans, Idahoans, you name it, all have benefited from unnaturally cheap water - water that is guaranteed to run out sooner or later.

It's an incredibly rich book, but I'll attempt to sum it up in a few bullet points:

• California is the prime culprit of water theft in the West.  There should not be a major metropolis where Los Angeles is, and don't let the greenery of the Embarcadero fool you - San Francisco is, naturally, a wind-swept and rather barren place.  It is thanks to diverting the rivers of the West that these cities have flourished.
• But don't get too mad at your average Los Angelo or San Franciscan - the prime benefactors of water schemes in California have long been farmers, and not the struggling, small-time Ma and Pa farmers of myth, but huge landowners, including several oil companies who own massive farms principally for tax write-off purposes.
• When you hear of the involvement of the Bureau of Reclamation or especially the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in any given project, your hackles should immediately go up.  Under the benevolent-sounding guise of "flood control," the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have engineered countless projects solely for the benefit of large landowners, railroading all who stand in their way, especially Native Americans.  Lest you think I am a bleeding-heart liberal who cares more about Native Americans than "real Americans," rest assured that I take a rather cold-hearted view of infrastructure projects in general: if there's to be a net benefit from a given infrastructure project, and some innocent people - Native Americans or otherwise - are going to be injured in the process, I mean I feel bad, but I'm all for it.  Now, when those projects are total bullshit who benefit only the affluent few, then the moral calculus is a little different, isn't it?  Thus has it been with various projects built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

(Before I continue, let me make it clear that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers does some fine work overseas, building bridges, sanitation projects, etc.  Its use to enrich large landowners, to my knowledge, it strictly a domestic phenomenon.  Nor do I wish to discredit those individual members of the Corps who signed up to do good work.  It is the use of the Corps at a high level in the United States which should earn our opprobrium.)

• Dams, by and large, are bullshit.  I didn't use to think dams were bullshit.  This book changed my view.  Not only are they ecologically crippling, the use of "cash-register" dams feed the beast of water projects throughout the West.
• The economic benefits of most major water projects in the West are negligible at best.  Agriculture is being cultivated in regions where agriculture was never intended to be.  Better to have wide-spread cattle grazing on public lands and obviate agriculture entirely.  Surely we can get our almonds from somewhere else.  I single almonds out here, but they're far from the worst waste of water in the West: here's looking at you, Central Arizona Project and San Jaoquin Valley generally.
• Generally speaking, people cannot afford to farm in the West without considerable largess from the federal government in particular, because water is hard to come by in the West and the government helps keep water artificially cheap to benefit this strange segment of American political life.

I could go on at great length about this book, but we don't have all day.  Needless to say the West writ large cannot afford any more goddamn dams, nor likely anything constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the Bureau of Reclamation, agriculture should not be practiced the way it is in the West and cannot possibly last, and when you hear Western farmers whining about welfare you should be aware that those people have no perspective and/or no shame.

Read Cadillac Desert.  And don't get swindled by "life is hard for the farmer" whining (especially when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers actually does the right thing, such as help enforce the Clean Water Act).

Anyways, back to Zinke.  He appears to be less psychotic in his denial of man-made climate change than Scott Pruitt (who hates not only clean air, but also clean water, evidently), but he remains friendly to oil and coal.  Zinke seems to want to have it both ways - publicly defending public lands and accepting the logic of man-made climate change, while also denouncing Washingtonian "red tape" and accepting the "drill, baby, drill" rhetoric of recent years.

Who knows for sure which way he will go?  Let's just consider the stakes for now:

The Department of Interior controls 500 million acres of land ― or roughly 20 percent of the U.S. landmass. It oversees a lot of oil, gas and coal development, both onshore and offshore. The agency also manages the outer continental shelf, a point of tension between the fishing and tourism industries and offshore energy developers, particularly after the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama paused oil drilling off the Atlantic Coast and halted new coal leases on public lands ― moves Trump seems likely to overturn.

(emphases added mine)

Before I sign off for the day, let's see how the swamp-draining is going!

Hey, what's this?  Is Donald Trump considering John Bolton for Deputy Secretary of State?  Why, yes he is!

A comparison of Donald Trump's words, contrasted with Donald Trump's actions:

Though Mr. Bolton, 68, is admired by conservatives like Mr. Kristol who agreed with the Bush administration that American military intervention was a necessary force for promoting stability throughout the world, there are also many Republicans who want to leave the Bush years in the past.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump professed to be one of them. He called the war in Iraq “a big fat mistake” and accused the Bush administration of lying to the American people about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Trump brought up those faulty intelligence assessments again last week when he said “the same people” in the American intelligence agencies who were wrong about the war in Iraq believed that Russia had intervened to tip the presidential election to him.

That was especially puzzling, said Greg Thielmann, a State Department veteran and Bolton critic, because “Bolton is, of course, one of these ‘same people.’”

It's so refreshing to see that Trump is truly a unique figure in history, his own man all the way, for sure not just another Republican.

More on Rex Tillerson

Happy holidays everyone! Does everyone else have that cold that's going around? I sure do! That's why my blog today is going to be just baaaaarely cogent.

One of our readers pointed me in the direction of this Democracy Now excerpt discussing Tillerson, his involvement in Russia, and what ExxonMobil gets out of his appointment as Secretary of State (assuming it comes to pass).  Joe Romm says the following (emphases added mine):

Sure. Well, Rosneft is the state oil company for Russia, and, under Putin, it has been acquiring more and more power and control over the oil industry. And it is now, you know, I believe, the world’s largest oil entity in the world. ExxonMobil is the world’s largest, you know, privately held oil company in the world. And, you know, we’re entering a period where it’s harder and harder to find oil. And as I write in Climate Progress, you know, ExxonMobil’s prospects for finding easy-to-find oil in this market were pretty dim, until this deal was struck between Tillerson and Putin, basically. And this deal would have created a $500 billion joint effort, you know, the biggest oil deal ever. It’s, you know, $500 billion. We’re talking half a trillion dollars. It’s a staggering amount of money. It was a deal that was perhaps going to ensure the future of a stream of oil for Exxon for decades to come, even, of course, as the world needs to get off of oil. For Putin, you know, this is critical revenue and critical outside investment, because, particularly now, in this era of low oil prices, that seriously hurts Putin. So this was considered to be a game changer. Rachel Maddow said, you know, this was a deal that was considered it might change the historical trajectory of Russia. Now, you know, Putin then invaded Crimea and interfered with Ukraine. As a result, the United States and most other civilized countries put in place sanctions. Those sanctions, in 2014, killed this deal.

And, you know, as I write in the piece, the question of—the intelligence community now says that Russia interfered in the election on behalf of Putin, that through leaks, through hacking private email accounts and releasing them—drip, drip, drip—and also we have reason to believe they’re one of the major promoters, disseminators of fake news. So, you know, one can understand the motivation. You know, some people said, "Hey, Putin has enough motivation just to, you know, cast doubt on the U.S. election." But $500 billion, that is a very big motivation to mess up the U.S. election. So, this—

The NY Times has a piece more or less corroborating the Democracy Now piece above, as well as another nice piece on Tillerson, understandably, putting ExxonMobil's interests ahead of the interests of the United States.  Look, I know it's multiple paragraphs, but just read this:

Western sanctions were first enacted on Russia in March 2014 in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea. Then the United States and its allies, including the Netherlands, implicated Russia in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine that July. All on board were killed, including 193 Dutch people heading to Asia for vacations and work, flying for a just few moments over a war zone.

That prompted tighter sanctions. A month later, Russian tanks entered eastern Ukraine, turning the tide against the forces of the American-backed Ukrainian central government. Today, about 300 American soldiers rotate through Ukraine as trainers.

After the Russian incursion in 2014, the United States prohibited the transfer of advanced offshore and shale oil technology to Russia. The American government announced on Sept. 12 that year that Exxon was to halt all offshore drilling assistance to Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, by Sept. 26.

But Exxon Mobil’s high-tech rig was already drilling in the Kara Sea, in an unfinished $700 million project that had yet to find oil. It would be worthless if not completed.

Russian executives then told Exxon Mobil that Russia’s security services would fly in a Russian crew — in essence seize the rig — if Exxon Mobil complied with the American law and left without completing the well, according to an oil company executive who had visited the rig in the Arctic.

Exxon relayed the threat to the American government, and the Treasury Department capitulated, granting an extension that stretched the window to work until Oct. 10. In a statement in 2014, the Russian state oil company denied conveying such a threat to Mr. Tillerson’s company.

With the extension in hand, Exxon Mobil discovered a major field with about 750 million barrels of new oil for Russia a few weeks later. Igor I. Sechin, the chief executive of the Russian state oil company, called the newly discovered oil field Pobeda — Russian for victory.

It is one of the Arctic developments that Exxon Mobil has rights to work on should the sanctions be lifted.

Who knows what Tillerson will do as Secretary of State.  No man is wholly slave to their past.  Still, we should all have valid concerns that the Trump administration will team up with a decaying oil state (Russia) to appease the interests of ExxonMobil rather than the strategic interests of the United States of America, and this at a time when the world is awash in oil.

Tillerson has received endorsements from such Republican luminaries as former Secretaries of State James Baker III and Condoleeza Rica and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates under both W. Bush and Obama.  All three have financial ties to ExxonMobil.  Fancy that!

Anyways... if you'd like to read more about the world of oil, I can't recommend the highly entertaining Oil by Tom Bower enough, which sadly only goes up to 2010.  (I am perplexed by those three star reviews - I give this book two thumbs up.  It's brisk reading, highly informative, and gossipy as hell).  And, of course, if you're serious about learning about the oil industry, you must at some point read the large-but-worth-it The Prize by Daniel Yergin.  Yergin is an industry insider, but rest assured, fellow enemies of "the man," the book is still worth your time.  It is an excellent read, taking you from the the discovery of oil at Titusville, PA in 1859 up through the first Gulf War.  It's an indispensable book, although at 900+ pp. it might be a bit long for some folks.  (Honestly you'll likely walk away from reading The Prize a bit more sympathetic than you used to be to the oil industry - but not sympathetic enough to necessarily want Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, or Russia as America's new Best Bud.)

I have another book I want to review for all of you, but it deserves a post of its own, so I'll save it for tomorrow.  For now, be well, and if anyone is imposing sanctions on you this holiday season, I hope they are lifted so that you can complete a half-trillion dollar oil deal of your own.

Kisses,

James.

Cabinet Nominees and Pollution Tariffs

I thought it might be fun to do a run-down on Trump's cabinet nominees to date.  But before we get to that, I want to touch on an interesting and infrequently discussed topic: pollution tariffs.

A Trump-supporting friend of mine the other day floated an interesting policy idea: a steep tariff (he quoted 30%) on goods produced in countries with lower environmental standards than our own.  The result would be to shift manufacturing back to the USA while likely reducing carbon emissions and other environmental sins worldwide.

It's such a great idea, I had to see if anyone "serious" had thought of it first.  It seems that in fact this very idea was floated by none other than Nicolas "oh, NOW he thinks climate change is a hoax" Sarkozy of France way back in 2009. 

The question is: would the tariffs work?  Some economists have poo-pooed the idea (see the link above), saying in essence that demand for Chinese manufactured goods is too great and that a tariff would make no difference, but to my mind, the concept is certainly worth a shot.  If we're going to have a trade war with China, it might as well be over something worth fighting for, no?

It is also possible, of course - and again, here, Nicolas Sarkozy is the one doing the proposing - that other countries might place their own environmental tariffs on the Trump-led United States:

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is already thinking ahead. Earlier this week, Sarkozy said that Europe ought to consider placing carbon tariffs on U.S. imports if Trump refuses to put a domestic price on carbon pollution. Talk of tariffs is only going to increase as more regions and nations price carbon - while Trump calls for more protectionist trade policies and for tearing up trade deals like NAFTA.

I doubt this idea is likely to come into vogue in a big way globally, but I'd love it if it would, honestly.

And now! Let's take a look at Trump's cabinet nominees to date.  They're all distinguished in their various ways!  The WaPo has a good rundown, and here's my commentary:

• Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State: well, it's an energy company CEO as head of state, so a pretty clear indication, one would think, that oil projects abroad are going to be a focus of the Trump administration, even though the world is currently drowning in oil.  But hey, if Trump really gets the economy going again, there might not be enough oil to go around!  ExxonMobil tends to produce CEOs with the mentality "I'll be around in 40 years, you might not be," which is great for a CEO, and we'll see how it works out for the nation's top diplomat.
• James Mattis, Secretary of Defense: by all accounts a thoughtful and erudite man, with a big grudge with Iran.  The last time a country invaded Iran, they lost 250,000 fighting men and didn't win. 
• John F. Kelly, Department of Homeland Security: not a bad choice, really. A bit of a hardliner on the topic of our border, but hey, it's the DHS.
• Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of Treasury: former Goldman Sachs executive with no government experience.  Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!
• Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce: more swamp draining, anyone? A man who made his living in private equity - buying bankrupt companies and "flipping" them.  This is a great appointment for rust belt workers who are hoping to keep manufacturing jobs in America, or, rather, the complete opposite.
• Jeff Sessions, Attorney General: this fellow once called a black attorney "boy" and alleged that the NAACP was essentially a communist organization, so, a great pick if you hate black people.
• Andrew Pudzer, Secretary of Labor: a guy who loves automation and hates the minimum wage and unions to lead Labor. Uh...
• Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services: a guy who thinks doctors, not patients, are getting screwed in our current medical system, and wants to change that. Um...
• Scott Pruitt, EPA administrator: a dude who believes man-made climate change is a hoax to head the EPA. Er...
• Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education: a woman who would like to erect God's Kingdom in the United States. Uh...?
• Ben Caron, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: hey, throw a black guy in here, right? Housing and Urban Development, that's the ghetto, right?  Bonus points if you can find someone who sounds like he is going to fall asleep at all times.
• Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy: hell, why not at this point?  Why not appoint a man who once said he would abolish the Department of Energy, that is, if he could remember its name.

Then there's Trump's advisors who will not need Senate confirmation:

• Steve Bannon, Chief Strategist: buddy to neo-nazis.
• Reince Preibus, Chief of Staff: your basic default political guy, nothing too provocative about him per se.
• Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor: a fine general, but "unbelievably arrogant".
• Donald McGahn, White House Counsel: a sharp-elbowed lawyer, you know the type.

It's going to be good fun to follow these people for the next few years!  Why, I can see the swamp being drained already!  And what's going to happen in the Middle East?  Who knows!

Stay tuned!

Russia and Treason

The rhetorical battle over whether or not Russia overly influenced or even "stole" the election for Donald Trump is heating up.  Even leading Republicans seem to be concerned that Russia may have tampered unduly with our election.

Plenty of Clinton supporters have been quick to blame Russia's tampering for the loss.  They've also blamed millennials, third-party voters, misogyny and Bernie Sanders, more or less everyone but themselves.

There's been a corresponding reaction to these anti-Russian accusations, which, in my opinion, constitute an over-correction: that any criticism of Russia's tampering in the election is itself 100% off-base, purely a red herring, that such thinking is strictly Russophobic, etc.  In fact there's been a strange impulse amongst the Left over the past few years to accuse any critic of Russia of being a pawn of, perhaps, Ukrainian neo-nazis - claims that are not without truth but perhaps miss the point.

(To the point above: I wish I had better written documentation of this phenomenon.  I'm sure someone smart has written an article on this subject, no?  Right now, I'm basing this off my Facebook feed, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one I'm afraid.  If you've got a great piece of writing addressing this subject that I should read, please sock it to me.)

There's been a lot of heated talk about Trump and Hitler.  We'll see how the Trump administration goes; Hitler talk is often quite overblown and let's hope that turns out to be the case under President Trump, eh?

Russia under Putin, however really has lifted a few pages from Hitler's playbook, specifically with regard to the tactic of inciting trouble in ethnic enclaves as a prelude to annexing them.

There's really no reason one has to rush to Russia's defense simply because one thinks that Russian tampering was a less instrumental reason for Clinton's loss than the flawed candidate herself and her over-hyped ground game.  Russia is ruled by an intense homophobe who relies on assassination as a instrument of politics and jails musicians.  Why, Vladimir Putin is such a strong leader than he's afraid of fucking musicians!

I love Russian literature and music, but I wonder what in God's name most liberals find in modern Russia that makes it worth defending?  Liberals have not had a problem taking issue with Saudi Arabia in the past, yet Saudi Arabia provides Americans with a steady supply of cheap oil.  That oil shows up in our cars, our computers, our tennis shoes and so forth.  By contrast: what the fuck does Russia do for us?  Anything?  It's unclear that Russia provides the United States of America with anything other than chagrin.

It appears that America under Trump is in fact going to pivot to Russia - that the pro-Putin talk of Trump and his allies runs deeper than mere rhetoric.  The decision to name Rex Tillerson Secretary of State is strongly indicative of such a pivot.  Appointing the Chairman of ExxonMobil as Sec'y of State isn't an especially crazy move.  In the private sector, you don't get much more well-versed in international affairs than you do the CEO of ExxonMobil.  Still, what he brings to the table mostly appears to be a close relationship with Russia.  I hope Tillerson works out in general, but closer relations with Russia appears to be the main rationale behind nominating him in the first place.

Given that the world is already awash in cheap oil, and that America continues to be on good terms with Saudi Arabia - and, under the Trump administration, is likely to take a harder line against Saudi Arabia's traditional enemy, Iran - what do we need Russia for?  We certainly don't need Russian oil.  From the perspective of oil companies, there is likely too much oil floating around.

Russia's population is in absolute decline.  Think about that!  A nation that is getting smaller population-wise.  That's not easy to find on this here planet Earth.  Russia's economy, roughly the size of Spain's, is a goddamn disaster.  Look at this!

Russians aren’t nearly as productive as they could be. For each hour worked, the average Russian worker contributes $25.90 to Russia’s GDP. The average Greek worker adds $36.20 per hour of work. And Greece is not a country you want to trail in productivity. The average for U.S. workers? $67.40.

In addition, endemic corruption costs the Russian economy between $300 and $500 billion each year, or roughly the cost of three Greek bailout packages combined. This year, Freedom House gave the country a 6.75 on its corruption scale; 7 is “most corrupt.”

It’s no surprise then that well-educated Russians are leaving their country in droves. Between 2012 and 2013, more than 300,000 people left Russia in search of greener economic pastures, and experts believe that number has only risen since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea last year.

(emphases added mine)

Does this sound like a country the United States of America should be in a rush to team up with, or that we should throw out like an old couch?

The nationalist in me is offended.  Of all the empires in the world to be building bridges with, Russia?  Meanwhile, we're getting ready to surrender a shitload of political capital vis-a-vis the actual other superpower in the world, China.  China, the enemy, and Russia, the friend!  Wow.  I really hope that works out for all involved.

I want to close with a Facebook quote from my friend Andrew Sydor, who gave me the OK to quote him.  IMPORTANT CAVEAT:  he did not read my blog in advance! I have no idea if he'd endorse anything I've written here other than his own quote below.  Here it is.  I think it hits the nail square on the head:

Nixon worked with Hanoi to get himself elected. It was treason, but we gave it a pass. Reagan worked with Iran to get elected. It was treason, but we gave it a pass. Are we going to give a Trump a pass too?

Look, you can still hate on Hillary all you want. She was an awful candidate, she blew this election. She sucks. Amen.

But don't give Trump a pass on treason. When we did that with Nixon and Reagan, they fucked up this country in ways we're still suffering from. Don't give Trump a pass.

Whiny Nazis

There's a lot to say on any given day these days, but it's been a long week of moving furniture around and working OT, so for now I'm just going to point out that neo-nazis are whiny little crybabies, and we can call them "alt right", which sounds like a pop music subgenre, or we can call them what they are: Nazi scum, and not even scary like the Nazis of yore, but real honest to goodness dweebs.  Speaking personally, I hope their "movement" ends up winning as big as classic Nazism did.