Market politics

[Intl Professor]

There's a simple test. Every time I see a beggar on the streets, I give them some cash and the admonition: 'stop voting Republican." But of course there are complicit Dems too.

I'm not an Americanist. My professional experience is elsewhere. I do remember reading a long time ago a reference to voting behavior correlation with money. To that date few Americanists actually wrote about money in politics. There's much more money now, but the crowd sourcing of Bernie was astounding and I think there's much more there. I wouldn't put my money on a PAC for us. If you have a lot of money talk to your congressman/woman if you like them and ask them for advice about additional contributions to others up for election. I probably will not make a direct contribution until later, and less than a $1,000 total. The Democratic campaign committees for the House and Senate will be likely recipients.

If I win the lottery I shall contact our local congress woman as suggested above. She doesn't need the money but could help and I trust her.

I did a quick Google search which might help if your idea has legs.

The Impact of Campaign Contributions on Congressional Behavior - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies

http://stanford.edu/~jgrimmer/money.pdf

https://digital.library.txstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10877/3588/fulltext.pdf

There's lots more.

 

[gene]

Do we know which congressmen were kissing his butt? Can we start a PAC to remove those who obviously have no interest in representing their voters (we already know they're representing their lobbyists)?

You can watch the video. It is quite engaging and you will clearly know who to support and who to rail against.

 

[Intl Professor]

I reiterate my sincere hope the upcoming meeting between Trump and Kim leads to a peace treaty ending the war with stipulations about mutual non-aggression and steps toward dismantling weapons, etc. If it occurs one can surely expect a Nobel Pease Prize nomination or at least a four way shared nomination with President Xi and the two Korean leaders.

Nonetheless, with the appointment of John Bolton the possibility U.S. scuttling the Iranian nuclear deal looks more probable. We may be in another wag the dog possibility hinting of Israel once again trying to shut the deal down by Mr. Netanyahu's recent non-revelations about Iranian perfidy. Yes, they did have a secret nuclear bomb project, just has Israel which was completed (perhaps with a joint above ground explosion conducted with South Africa). Yes the recent Iranian deal does avoid Iran having to admit, publicly, that it had the program. However, the diplomatic finesse of the issue in the executive agreement also protected Israel from the embarrassment of leaving itself open to discovery similar to its own duplicity for what Netanyahu has shamed Iran.

For a fairly balanced interpretation of Netanyahu's presentation, plus the remarks about Israel face-saving above, see:

https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/INT_1641.html?nlid=6469

"But it is hard to know what saying these magic words would have accomplished. During the negotiations, demands that Iran be made to confess were rejected as a poison pill that would kill any prospect of a deal. Now, Mr. Netanyahu can present it as proof of the deal’s folly.

"The effort may have worked. Hours after his speech, the White House released a statement on its website that called Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation 'consistent with what the United States has long known: Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people.'

"In fact, the international nuclear agency, Israeli intelligence and American intelligence have all repeatedly concluded that Iran’s program ended years ago and that the country appears to be fully complying with the terms of the nuclear agreement. The statement was later amended to read 'Iran had' — past tense — such a program, but it is unclear whether that nuance has made it to President Trump, who pledged to decide soon on whether to exit the deal."

FWIW, IMO the best venue for the talks after these would be at Hiroshima, getting rid of all nukes. The weapons industry might be opposed. Just saying.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

I'll save the mods the trouble and say this here.

The tone of this Elon 1Q call is strikingly similar to the orange haired fellow's straightforward talk that resonated so well a couple November's ago.

Some good things will come from this trainwreck. No more pussy grabbing and calling a douchebag a douchebag is now ok.

Trump fans need to appreciate the antiestablishment nature of Elon and Tesla rather than regurgitate what they hear on Fox news.

 

[neroden]

Arms makers' profits.

To pile on: Keep track of the flow of campaign contributions from Lockheed Martin et al to Congress, and the backflow of kickbacks in the form of contracts (often for useless equipment, and invariably costing far more than the equipment is worth), and you'll agree.

 

[neroden]

Also,

The Americans are actually among the most influential pioneers of modern guerrilla warfare, from Rogers’ Rangers using Native American tracking, hunting and war-fighting tactics in the Seven Years War, to the irregular militias of the Revolutionary War, to the Bushwhackers of the Civil War and beyond, the US knows how to fight a guerrilla war.

The US does; if the US were invaded, the people would rally and win.

The US *military* does not. The traditional US system was to whip up a new military for each war, custom-made, and demobilize it afterwards; and we won almost every war back then. But we never demobilized after WWII, and now we have a military which is designed for... WWII. Or maybe the Cold War. Or maybe simply to provide profits for Lockheed Martin. But certainly not designed to win wars of the 21st century. It's a paper tiger.

Thomas Ricks has a Nimitz lecture and a book about this. Watch it; read it.

The reason why the US hasn’t done so well in recent conflicts is due more than anything to the modern media.

Bullshit. It's because
-- we have a WWII/Cold War military
-- we have a military optimized for military contractor profits
-- we are routinely fighting on the wrong side. Sun Tzu explained the critical importance of having the moral law on your side right up front in The Art of War, and our government has been picking the wrong side. More on this later.

Ever wonder how empires like the Romans, Mongols or British managed to get so large?

It was because of s*** like this:

Nope. You clearly haven't studied the British empire in particular.

The British empire was largely built on the co-opting of local, pre-existing powerbases: establishing suzerainity. The basis of the empire was mercantile -- everyone wanted access to British trade -- and the technique was divide-and-conquer. It involved British military officers learning all the local languages and local cultures, cutting deals with local potentates, and "going local" to a much larger extent than the US ever has.

The most important element was picking the right local leaders to ally with, something the US has almost uniformly gotten wrong throughout its disgraceful history of incompetent overseas entanglements. (If the US had backed Ho Chi Minh *when he asked us to*, before he turned to the USSR as an alternative, we would remember the Vietnam War very differently. The British Empire repeatedly got this sort of stuff right. The only one I can think of where the US got it right was Costa Rica, and I can think of dozens and dozens where we picked the wrong side.)

To a larger extent than you realize, the Roman empire was built the same way too, particularly in the East where there were pre-existing kingdoms and powerbases (the underdeveloped barbarians of Western Europe were not treated the same way).

(The Mongols are another matter, because they shared the hostility to farming of all nomadic peoples; that was part of one of the oldest and longest running conflicts in the history of the world. The farmers won, of course, and most of the Mongol conquerors "went native".)

 

[neroden]

We spend about 30% of GDP on health care and 5% in defense. We tax ourselves for healthcare about 100% higher than Europe. We pay insurance companies and the government, but it’s basically a tax and it’s much bigger a burden then defense and defense does provide some dividends in trade and diplomacy. Our biggest problem with defense is confusing having it and needing to use it (in my opinion anyhow).

Well, the healthcare mess... oh my God. For the amount we spend in tax money on health care, we *could* pay for a universal system which covers everyone. But instead we pay for:
-- onerous paperwork and lots of paper-pushers. Canadian hospitals basically have zero employees handling billing, as opposed to the dozens in US hospitals. And of course nobody pushing paper for insurance companies either, in the Canadian single-payer system.
-- pharmaceutical company profits (Congressional ban on government regulating drug prices, something every other government does)
-- profits for medical conglomerate chains like UHS, Guthrie, Kaiser, and so on; or CEO pay for the so-called "non profits"
-- profits for insurance companies.

So, basically, useless grifters are taking our money in the health care arena. The problem is that they feed that money back to Congress, and to advertising and propaganda, to make sure that we don't get single-payer health care; they want to maintain the grift.

 

[bambam4171]

I'll save the mods the trouble and say this here.

The tone of this Elon 1Q call is strikingly similar to the orange haired fellow's straightforward talk that resonated so well a couple November's ago.

Some good things will come from this trainwreck. No more pussy grabbing and calling a douchebag a douchebag is now ok.

Trump fans need to appreciate the antiestablishment nature of Elon and Tesla rather than regurgitate what they hear on Fox news.

One is gambling with a whole nation, the other one is gambling with the company he founded. Also, what Elon did was in no way dishonest or disgusting. So you can't really compare the two, they are completely different breeds.

 

[ggr]

One is gambling with a whole nation, the other one is gambling with the company he founded. Also, what Elon did was in no way dishonest or disgusting. So you can't really compare the two, they are completely different breeds.

The tone is similar, but the truthiness is different.

 

[Intl Professor]

The word is that Trump is about to reimpose sanctions on Iran - how will this affect the markets? Maybe push the price of oil higher??

It is a done deal. Here is confirmation with analysis of some of the political implications.

Trump Withdraws U.S. From ‘One-Sided’ Iran Nuclear Deal

I can't comment on market effect except to say an unstable macro environment will push stocks down and thus TSLA price for no objective reason except anxiety of investors. On IR (International Relations) 101 grounds here are some of the missing elements.

US press, in general, does not give China sufficient credit for the change in North Korea's potential agreement to all which would be good for the Korean Peninsula and thus world peace. The really bad aspect of Trump's decision is the general trust world leaders and the people can have in the confidence they should have we will keep our word. Given what happened to Gaddafi and now what will happen to the crowning achievement of the Obama administration in the Iranian agreement, imagine the risks both China and North Korea are taking in trusting the United States. The process rule here is what scientists use well for discovery: the principle of symmetry. As one negotiator of the Iran executive agreement warned last night the only known violation of the arrangement is the United States by withdrawing, not Iran, nor the Eu principals, nor Russia, nor China. An accomplice in pouring incendiary evidence on the conflict in the Middle East is Netanyahu whose slim hold on power is due to a shaky alliance with the most right wing religious zealots in Israeli politics one can imagine while under legal fire with claims of corruption, just as happened to a previous prime minister.*

Another principle of power politics among nations which is being violated is the US role as balancer. Great Britain was often called, "perfidious Albion," for its role as balancer as it shifted from support of one side in disputes to another, and back again. That leverages the great power's effect on outcomes and is also used by weaker powers like the United States before the Spanish American War. It is called the "let's you and him fight, syndrome." See Washington's farewell address about avoiding "entangling alliances." It would have been far better not to side so strongly as has this administration with Saudi Arabia in the dispute among varieties of Sunni versus Shia Islam. Leaving aside, for example, the Salafi ideology so effectively deployed by the Saudis. Why pick sides in a religious dispute?

Do we really want to alienate the Eu, Russia, and China all at once? From the European perspective the Iraq War had enormous secondary effects on immigration; If Bolton has his way and another war is in the offing, what will be the effect on European immigration problems?

Finally, in my initial exposure to Hans Morgenthau at the Harvard graduate seminar "Theories of International Relations" he said there is always a moral element to international politics based on the study of power: policies should be prudent, muted always by considerations of expediency. The deployment of power should always be effective. As Bertrand Russel has reminded us, "power is the capacity to produce intended effects." That requires intelligence. If policy is rooted in feelings overcoming thought, it is childish, immature, and at best the worst aspect of adolescence. Compare what we know of Trump and his supporters, both in Congress and the general populace, with the best evidence of adolescence in the Parkland students.

As a Harvard Business School specialist in negotiation has noted, what was different about the Trump campaign was its focus not just on anger, but hate. Now hate is channeling our foreign policy. It feels good for some to blow things up. We have elected and opened the way for real arsonists at the topmost positions of power. As the Buddha has said bad thoughts lead to bad consequences; good thoughts lead to good consequences. (My good buddy the "distinguished economist" says I'm learning what Jesuits teach.)

Politically this is the time for Republicans in Congress to save themselves. An advice.

*Israel has one of the most democratic electoral systems in the world. Comparative government 101 suggests the multiple member system with proportional representation gives all an opportunity for representation. Its weakness is instability. Historically Italy's system has led to successions of failing governments. In Israel's case, Likud or its successors must ally with the extreme right in order to govern. Bear in mind there is much more debate in Israel than the U.S. about the merits of Israel's foreign policy and attitudes toward the Palestine question. Cf the 180 plus retired generals, including past directors of Mossad who are worried about the inexpediency of Netanyahu's position. A sample.

Retired Israeli Generals Denounce Planned Netanyahu Speech

 

[Intl Professor]

I should ad to the above,

Why pick sides in a religious dispute?

The same might be said of Netanyahu and the religious zealots in his coalition. The 180 dissident Israeli Generals, like "The Shadow," know.*

*Reference to a famous radio program in the 40s of the last century. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men....The Shadow does."

 

[Intl Professor]

This is the first opening in a crack of secrecy including not only political connections between Trump and technologists but the role of AI and intelligence. For those with super analytic skills, enjoy and extrapolate.

Peter Thiel and Palantir Are at the Heart of the Iran Nuclear Deal

 

[DragonWatch]

Still waiting for any update on production numbers.

Till then ... we wait in anguish.

Cheers to the longs.

BTW: Note to WS ... cars get into accidents. Believe it or not everyday Toyotas and BMWs along with Fords and Chryslers get into accidents. Get over it.

This obsession with Tesla and accidents is unhealthy .... it obscures the reality that self driving cars are MUCH safer than ones driven by the human that's texting or adjusting the radio or simply high or drunk right next to you. Elon was right to be pissed about this.

Life is so damned different from my memory of history; some sixty eight of those years.

Elon could have used, in my military mind, a comparison of Vietnam and the Iraq war. We lost 750K soldiers in Vietnam while so far approximately only 4,486 in Iraq if I have my numbers correct. I lost a high school track team member friend in Vietnam and know of no one personally to date in the Iraq war. Though during the first gulf war, I had to notify a family of the loss of their son because our ROTC detachment NCO could not handle the situation. Both wars were/are ten or more years long in duration. Aside from jeeps going the way of the dodo bird and having been replaced with HUMMVs, technology has jumped light years since the end of Vietnam and the beginning of the Iraq war. On the softer side, we do not rely on humans via the draft. Robotics have really improved weapon delivery with drones, and the ability to sniff out bombs with remotely guided robots. Satellites? Did I mention satellites? The fact that an on the ground event can be monitored in night-vision technicolor with stereo sound is amazing. Leaders providing input from the rear during WWII would have been viewed as cowards. I will spare you what we called the rear echelon leaders. Now days they are considered a part of the team.
A couple of years ago, my wife and I went into the clothing sales store as I was looking for a new black army web belt. Not finding them, I asked a sergeant, and he told me that he had never seen a belt such as mine ~ hell I had only retired in 1994. My wife later said, "I almost told the kid that your belt was older than he was. . ." I told her it was a good thing that she did not, because the belts only lasted about three to five years. The new web belts, still black, are made of nylon and the buckle is a hard durable plastic, which means I no longer have to take it off while going through the airport security.
Nothing is the same, just like an ocean wave washing over our foot prints as walk along the beach in Maui.
Going back to cars for a moment, I had a hard time convincing my wife to wear seat belts until the law required it.
I have said this before, I only wish my son had been in a Tesla back in 1996, instead of a fossil fuel car.
Technology has out paced our psychological ability to grasp a meaningful understanding of where we are today compared to ten, twenty, thirty, forty and so on years ago. Even the side arm has changed from my old .45 cal pistol, which then became a 9 mm just before I retired has changed yet at least once if not twice.
Quite frankly, we are not mature enough as a society for the technology. And, Elon was right on the money with his treatment of the analysis's.
I used to tell my students that there were no stupid questions, but I knew there were, I just wanted them to ask in a safe learning environment. I also told my students that they could earn an A or B in my class as the only completion was themselves. I could care less how many A's or B's I gave out; because it was what they did with the A or B that mattered, not the grade itself. There have been way too many times in my life when I have required a student or subordinate to recite back to me what I just said as opposed to just parroting back the answer yet again. I still smile today thinking of my wife nearing the completion of her masters degree frantic that she might earn a B, tarnishing her straight A record. I told her it really did not matter, since I had never been asked what my masters GPA was; nor had I ever heard anyone ask a potential employee what their master's GPA was ~ might have been sort of important going on for a doctoral, but even that was negotiable.
As for the wars, well they will get longer and longer as long as most of us do not have no dog in the fight. Technology is at or on the cusp of not requiring humans, at least on our side, to fight in wars.
@gtrplyr1 ~ I totally agree with you that the obsession with Tesla and accidents is unhealthy! But that is who we are as a society, sadly:-(

Edit: Please excuse my dry humor, or perspective of life from a lesser level. My bloodline was considered tier III (1675), but credited with starting the King Philips War. I may be incorrect; but then again, I might be correct

 

[ggr]

We lost 750K soldiers in Vietnam

Total In-Theatre: 58,220 (Vietnam War Fast Facts - CNN , about the same number reported in a number of other places). What bugs me about statistics like this (even when correct) is that they largely ignore the massive losses of life on the "other side". Estimates of lives lost in the Iraq invasion, especially if you include deaths from lack of available medical care, are two orders of magnitude greater than US lives lost.

 

[DragonWatch]

Total In-Theatre: 58,220 (Vietnam War Fast Facts - CNN , about the same number reported in a number of other places). What bugs me about statistics like this (even when correct) is that they largely ignore the massive losses of life on the "other side". Estimates of lives lost in the Iraq invasion, especially if you include deaths from lack of available medical care, are two orders of magnitude greater than US lives lost.

@ggr you are correct and preaching to the choir with me about numbers outside our own soldiers, if you care to believe me. I stand corrected on my original count in Vietnam as bogus ~ it’s damned embarrassing.

 

[Intl Professor]

Traditional Democratic foreign policy analysts raise skepticism about Trump's enthusiasm for direct talks with North Korea, thus demonstrating once again the conservatism of foreign policy experts. But balancing that is the notion, "follow the money." A ray of hope for successful talks includes:

South Korea Hands Kim Jong-un a Path to Prosperity on a USB Drive

 

[Intl Professor]

Another Three-card Monte by a Republican Administration

In the lead up to the Shrub’s Gulf War I alienated a group of conservative friends in countering Cheney’s merely by mirroring reports in our local press by Knight-Ridder investigations. The lowly Sacramento Bee had the temerity to break with the old grey lady and other mainstream media who swallowed the Administration’s fabrications. Again confirmation of scholarly research that the main media follow any administration’s lead up to and including war until at the last moment when it is clear disaster has occurred. (Cf. Walter Cronkite and the Vietnam War.)

On his death bed my favorite conservative friend continued to be angry because I was right to condemn the road to war. Fortunately I had long earlier refused to respond to such bait and even, in an uncharacteristic example of diplomacy failed to mention my regret not seeing the obvious objection that our Iraq intervention strengthened the hand of Iran in the region.

For a very long time our interventions in the Middle East have been misguided and we should know better now than to try to understand local politics in a way that might advantage us or Israel. All politics is local Tip O’Neill reminds us. To give just a whiff of the dangers of our continuing clumsy hand, take a quick look at the recent elections in Iraq.

Iran Was the Big Winner in Iraq’s Elections—And Trump Helped

The header says it all. Read the rest for a glimpse of the weeds in which real vipers lay.

The best anti-toxin for the Middle East may be abstinence.

Mind you, we now have an administration which has gutted State’s real talent of experts on Korea and probably the Middle East as well, since the major thrust there is guided by the President’s son in law who seems equally inept as a developer unless his use of Saudi Arabia to squeeze Qatar proves successful as the news suggests today.

I haven’t read POTUS’ Art of the Deal, but I am underwhelmed by his successes until he achieved funding from Deutsche Bank and other sources for his franchise approach. I don’t know what he was trying to do before he ran out of casinos to milk. It is perhaps true that at best he was able to do was cheat banks in a three-card monte. But what happens in a multi-card monte in the Middle East? Is Trump up to the task? Or will logic and facts prevail once the deal for Jared is consummated?

Inquiring minds want to know. I fear we shall probably have an answer soon and not much fun.

Obviously this intelligence has little bearing on today's market, but later?

 

[neroden]

US Middle East policy, for decades, has:
1. Eroded US power.
2. Hurt US credibility.
3. Damaged US interests.
4. Helped Iran gain power.
5. Promoted Islamic fundamentalism.
6. Hurt the long- term future of Israel.
7. Attacked human rights and suppressed democracy.

I do not expect this to change. I do wonder whether Israel will escape the trap it has fallen into; I doubt it. Netenyahu is following essentially Hitlerian policies, with no sense of restraint, and there is only one outcome if the course is not changed: Israel will invade someone too big for it, and the world will obliterate it. The extremist fundamentalist Christian end-times groups actually want to make this happen.. It gets harder to stop this as sane Israelis see the handwriting on the wall and emigrate. The US government has tied itself to an international pariah (since civilized countries oppose apartheid, racism, and ghettoization).

If things drag on long enough, Israel's self-destruction might be avoided because the collapse of Saudi Arabia will distract everyone in the neighborhood. That is also inevitable but the aftermath is very unclear to me. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is so brittle with so many weak points that I don't know what order they'll break in, and I expect a bit of a free-for-all, with results being determined by random, contingent events and individual personalities. In this case the US has, as the saying goes, "shackled itself to a corpse".


Many think that the demented US policies in the Middle East are driven by oil addiction. While they are right, the policies will probably outlive their cause. Others point to colonialism and racism... And the same is true, the policies persist after their reasons are discredited and abandoned. If we had one clear thinker as President, the US would have cut ties with apartheid Israel and misogynist South Africa immediately and allied with the natural power center, Iran. But we have not had a clear thinking foreign policy in the US since FDR died.

 

[Intl Professor]

From the microeconomic perspective of Tesla only, we expect news that will be positive for SP. say, in July. That micro news may also be negatively affected by any macro events, say in July, concerning the special counsel's actions. The following estimate for timing is fraught with uncertainty, especially whether one is talking about Elon time, physics first principles time, or Mueller time. But the source is credible, certainly much more credible than Giuliani. See:

3 Predictions for What Mueller Will Do Next

 

[Unpilot]

If one counts on anything the current POTUS says coming true....well they are foolish.