Tag Archives: Current Affairs

Backgrounder on empire. Dmitry Orlov is able to recount the story of a civilizational tragedy unfolding in the course of history in a a (darkly) humorous way, replicating many similar stories of a wave rising, cresting and breaking on the beach as the next wave rises behind it. Orloff doesn't make any predictions about the dénouement, but it looks like it gets ugly, especially as the vise jaws of climate change tighten. The Unz ReviewThe Saker Interviews Dmitry Orlov

It is essential to understand the pathologies of the uber-rich. They have seized total political power.… The uber-rich live in an artificial bubble, a land called Richistan, a place of Frankenmansions and private jets, cut off from our reality....  Political theorists, from Aristotle and Karl Marx to Sheldon Wolin, have warned against the rule of the uber-rich. Once the uber-rich take over, Aristotle writes, the only options are tyranny and revolution.… Corporate capitalism, which has...

Via Reuters: U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that she does not believe that there will be another financial crisis for at least as long as she lives, thanks largely to reforms of the banking system since the 2007-09 crash. “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis?” Yellen said at a question-and-answer event in London. “You know probably that would be going too far but I do think we’re much safer and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes...

This is a really important fact that people don’t talk about enough: McK & IMF: #immigrants (living not where born) account for 3.4% of world pop but produce 9.4% of world output/$6.7tn https://t.co/tcFELcPYid — Linda Yueh (@lindayueh) December 1, 2016 That is a huge gap. Immigrants’ economic output is almost three times their weight as a proportion of the population, a difference that adds up to $3 trillion annually. Why would this be the case? Well, immigrants are typically pretty...

To all who argued the financial world would’ve collapsed without the bailouts: The political world is collapsing now because of the bailouts — Emanuel Derman (@EmanuelDerman) June 25, 2016 The bigger picture of the early 21st century follows: Western nations experienced a massive blowout bubble of leverage, irrational exuberance, and Hayekian pseudo-money creation. Yet this money was not going to overwhelmingly productive causes. The real output of the Western world did not follow...

Photo by: Matt Clark. First things first: the U.S. already has a border wall with Mexico. This is a widely-documented fact, illustrated in detail by National Geographic. If Trump supporters had bothered to do so much as a Google search, they would realize that — whatever one might think of illegal immigration — it isn’t going to be stopped by a border wall. A border wall already exists, and illegal immigration continues. But what about replacing the current border wall with a bigger one?...

I have no doubt that the vast majority of British people will support David Cameron’s decision to blow to smithereens two British jihadis fighting with the self-proclaimed Islamic State who were allegedly involved in planning and directing terrorist attacks on the UK, just as the vast majority of Americans support Obama doing similar things. I don’t think the Conservative government will harm its popularity in assassinating these people. The opposite, in fact, or as The Sun put it “Wham!...

After almost seven years of relative calm and stability, a stock market crash is finally upon us. This is a very predictable crash stemming from a very widely known cause. Hundreds of analysts including myself — following the trail illuminated by Michael Pettis — have for a long time been banging on about a Chinese slowdown gathering an uncontrollable momentum, sending China into a panic, and infecting global markets. What’s less clear yet is whether this is a correction or a crisis. My...

Labour’s defeat in the 2015 election may have been as much of a function of demographics as anything much else. As I wrote earlier this week: “Britain is greying, and older people tend to be more conservative.” If that’s the case, then the deck will be stacked against Labour in 2020, and even more so after constituency boundary changes that will help the Tories and hurt Labour. Still, the question that Labour members and supporters should be asking themselves is: which one of the candidates...

It is wrong to suggest that people should be held accountable for the actions of their ancestors. Blaming each other for the deeds of our ancestors is the cause of vast tracts of human suffering and conflict. Tribes and nations have fought each others for centuries — and, in some places, continue to do so — based on the actions of that tribe or nation’s forefathers. This is irrational. We cannot change the actions of our ancestors. That is perhaps one reason why John Cleese’s portrayal of...