Month: July 2015

Liberal media watch

by digby

This was a headline at National Review’s Corner a while back:

I just find that hilarious in light of the Trump campaign.

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So Trump is excellent news for Jeb!?

by digby

According to this article, GOP strategist say it’s all good. Or not:

They say getting into a “food fight” with Trump would diminish Bush, the two-time Florida governor who is a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.

But Bush also can’t sit back and let Trump’s barbs go unchallenged, Republican operatives say, so he will have to pick his battles as the 2016 races unfolds.
[…]
Having established a foothold at the head of the field, Trump’s presence in the race — and his ability to dominate media coverage — could prove beneficial to Bush.

“It’s taking the oxygen out of the field from the other 15 [candidates], because the only two with name ID are Bush and Trump,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist who worked on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.
[…]
“His 24-7 media click bait is basically making it so the only other name being mentioned is Bush, which is actually helping Bush. Turn on the TV, turn on the radio, there is not another name being mentioned other than Scott Walker’s in Iowa,” O’Connell added.

“The advantage that Bush gains from Trump is it makes clear that Bush ain’t Trump,” said Rich Galen, a GOP strategist. “I think Trump’s helping Bush because he’s establishing him as a legitimate contender.”
[…]
Radio host Michael Smerconish has called on Bush to condemn Trump’s remarks, arguing on Twitter “there are not enough white voters left to solve @GOP math problem created by alienating non-whites.”

Instead, Bush has taken a milder approach.

“I don’t think he represents the Republican Party, and his views are way out of the mainstream of what Republicans think,” he told reporters in New Hampshire.

A post on Trump’s Twitter account — which was promptly deleted — said Bush “has to like Mexican illegals because of his wife,” Columba, who was born in Mexico. Trump later denied he had anything to do with the message.

Bush responded to Trump, but it wasn’t much of a slapdown.

“You can love the Mexican culture, you can love your Mexican-American wife, and also believe that we need to control the border. This is a bizarre kind of idea that somehow you can have an affection for people in a different country and not think that the rule of law should apply. This is ludicrous,” Bush said.

Strategists say Bush is smart not to exchange haymakers with Trump, who has a reputation for escalating fights and not backing down.

“The best way is for Bush to continue to put Trump in his place by saying his comments are only intended to generate headlines, they’re not based in real facts,” said Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and former congressional GOP leadership aide.

“What Bush is obviously trying to do is not get into a food fight with Donald Trump but at the same time push back. It’s a careful line to tread. You don’t want to create a sideshow spectacle by taking Trump’s bait,” he added.

While Bush has appeared presidential by responding calmly to Trump’s barbs, he has expressed some irritation at the media whirlwind they generate.

Bush said in a Fox News interview Wednesday he was not interested in getting into a rhetorical battle with the billionaire candidate.

“I’m done. I’m through. I gave my views. I just think that we need to be much more hopeful and optimistic about our ideology,” he said.

“We should focus on that and not get into a food fight that only brings energy to someone who I doubt will be president and is not a constructive force for our party,” he added.

So, he’s doing the right thing then by moving on. Unless he doesn’t:

Trump isn’t letting up, having panned Bush’s support for Common Core education standards as “pathetic” and his approach to immigration reform “baby stuff” during a recent Fox News interview.

“The question is whether Bush can keep the car between the two white lines, because chances are Trump’s comments are going to get more incendiary,” O’Connell said.

I don’t know what to think from reading that except that whatever Bush does, as long as it’s the right thing, will be good for Bush. And Trump is a problem except for the fact that he helps Bush. Either way, all these GOP strategists think Bush is pretty darned terrific and that whatever happens it’s good for him.

What an illuminating article.

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QOTD: Yanis Varoufakis

by digby

Via Ryan Cooper at The Week, former Greek finance minister (and economist) Varoufakis on dealing with the Eurozone finance ministers:

It’s not that it didn’t go down well — it’s that there was point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments. Point blank… You put forward an argument that you’ve really worked on — to make sure it’s logically coherent — and you’re just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem — you’d have got the same reply. [New Statesman]

These are austerity cultists, so indoctrinated into their morality tale that economics no longer has anything to do with it.

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Christian minority

by digby

More evidence of the global oppression of Christianity:

You can certainly understand why conservative Christians feel under siege.

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Wingnut welfare through the ages

by digby

I wrote about Ted Cruz being bounced from the New York Times best-seller’s list for Salon today:

Click over for a little historical run-down of the wingnut welfare racket, particularly as it applies to books. They’ve been at this for a very long time.

We want substance! Substance is so boring!


by digby

Remember how upset the press was about Clinton not offering any substance in her campaign? Recall how she roped them off in a parade so they couldn’t even come up and ask her any policy questions?

Well:

Hillary Clinton gave an address on economic policy at Gotham’s New School Monday morning. You would think this would entail a fair amount of cable news coverage, as it was not that long ago the political press was decrying Clinton for running an insubstantial campaign void of policy specifics.

You’d be wrong. CNN and Fox News skipped* the speech entirely, while MSNBC ran only her introductory remarks before cutting away to commentary on it. CNN even found time to replay David Letterman’s Trump Top 10 bit, a clip several days old at this point, instead of Clinton’s speech on the likely central issue of the 2016 campaign.

I know what you’re thinking: did these networks at least wonder what was in the speech while not covering it?

They did! Fox’s Ed Henry appeared stymied as to how Clinton would argue for improving wage stagnation given her own personal wealth. (That the two are incompatible was an unspoken premise.) But instead of then turning to Clinton’s remarks, Fox switched to analyst Brit Hume’s commentary on Donald Trump — which, in fairness, he hadn’t aired since yesterday. (Later story: baby gets glasses.)

Meanwhile on MSNBC, former RNC chair Michael Steele asked: “I’m curious as to which definition of investment she’s going to use,” then wondered aloud about how Clinton would prioritize various hypothetical economic trade offs. If only there were a way to find out.

There were reporters tweeting their impressions of the speech however, so that’s good:

the best cure for insomnia is hillary clinton’s voice

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) July 13, 2015

Lighten up everyone

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) July 13, 2015

I’m sorry for suggesting Hillary is boring. That was bad and sexist of me and I’ll be quitting my job as a reporter to repent full time.

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) July 13, 2015

In fairness, there were plenty of reporters tweeting little sound bites of the speech, including Nuzzi. Her comment about how incredibly boring Clinton is was also echoed by many, most especially conservative commentators.

Lucky we have Trump around to keep it exciting for us, eh?

Update:  Just to be clear, when the press says it wants access to Hillary Clinton, what it means is it wants to incessantly inquire as to why she is such a dishonest, untrustworthy horror who won’t let them see every email she’s ever sent to anyone in order to prove otherwise.

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And now for the good news

by digby

It’s going to be a tough week, I’m afraid. The story in Europe is depressing. Scott Walker is officially joining the presidential fray, exciting the Villagers to no end for some reason, which is also depressing. We may have a deal with Iran which is likely to result in wingnut heads revolving around on their shoulders as they spew green pea soup all over each other.

So, in the interest of keeping our sanity, I thought I’d start this week off with a nice story from Vox to help you keep things in perspective:

The world is getting better all the time, in 11 maps and charts. I’ll just share a couple of them with you:

Also way fewer wars, more reduction in disease, growth of democracy etc.

It feels like the world is going to hell in a handbasket but from a historical perspective it’s a very good time to be alive.

Ok, now back to our regularly scheduled anger and despair …

Piketty: “Germany Has Never Repaid Its Debts; It Has No Standing To Lecture Other Nations”

by Gaius Publius

Note: I know Hullabaloo readers have seen this before, but I wanted to add my comments. This is especially insightful in light of this — #ThisIsACoup.

#ThisIsACoup: Germany faces backlash over tough Greece bailout demands
The draconian list of demands
eurozone leaders handed to the Greek government in return for a
European bailout has inspired a social media backlash against Germany
and its hawkish finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

ž#ThisIsACoup was the second top trending hashtag on Twitter
worldwide – and top in Germany and Greece – as eurozone leaders argued
through the night to convince the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras,
to take the deal or face bankruptcy and his country’s expulsion from the
euro. The hashtag also featured strongly in Finland, whose government
is open to the idea of a Grexit. …

Among other elements of the EU proposals to cause outrage was a
suggestion that some €50bn ($56bn) of Greek public assets be placed in
an independent trust based in Luxembourg, out of reach of Greek
politicians, the proceeds of which from privatisations would go directly
to pay debts.

This is indeed a betrayal of the European ideal; it always was. Now that betrayal is becoming obvious to everyone. Tom Sullivan has all the latest here.

Piketty speaks to Germany

This is yet another piece about Greece, much shorter, but long on irony served cold. Thomas Piketty is the author of the ground-breaking study of wealth inequality that came out last year, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He’s also French, and François Hollande, who ran as a critic of austerity, has been off and on in agreement with Merkel’s hard stance against Greece, as the interview reveals. (For what it’s worth, French banks are involved along with German ones as investors the EU elites have been trying to protect.)

Piketty was interviewed about Greece in a German magazine, Die Zeit, and I suspect the Zeit reporter didn’t do his homework. It appears he thought, first, that he was talking with a mainstream economist, perhaps because the book was a number one best seller; and second, that because Piketty is French he’d side with Holland and with the Germans. Wrong on both counts. Piketty is deeply critical of wealth inequality (criticism of that is anathema to European elites), and he thinks Hollande is making a serious mistake. He also thinks Greece and Europe are being destroyed, though there are ways to pull back.

The interview is notable not just because of Piketty’s analysis, but because of the (professional) conflict between himself and the interviewer. Note that this is for a German publication, and Piketty wants none of what the Germans are smugly doing to Greece.

Here’s Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge with an introduction, followed by some of the interview. Durden (my emphasis throughout):

One year after Tomas [sic] Piketty sold a record number of economic textbook paperweights which virtually nobody read past page 26,
once again showing the power of constant media hype, the French
economist and wealth redistributor is out and about, this time pouring
more gasoline on the fire started by the IMF last week when it released
the Greek debt sustainability analysis showing Greece needs a 30%
haircut, only to be met with stern resistance by, who else, Germany who
know very well that should Greece get a debt haircut it will unleash the
European dominoes which not even all the bluster and rhetoric of the
ECB can halt.

As magazine interviews with economists go, this turns into a bit of a cage match, catching the Zeit reporter by surprise. The following is from an English translation of the interview. It doesn’t even start well:

Since his successful book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the Frenchman Thomas Piketty has been considered one of the most influential economists in the world. His argument for the redistribution of income and wealth launched a worldwide discussion. In a[n] interview with Georg Blume of Die Zeit, he gives his clear opinions on the European debt debate.

DIE ZEIT: Should we Germans be happy that even the French government is aligned with the German dogma of austerity? [Note that the French are implicated here.]

Thomas Piketty: Absolutely not. This is neither a reason for France, nor Germany, and especially not for Europe, to be happy. I am much more afraid that the conservatives, especially in Germany, are about to destroy Europe and the European idea, all because of their shocking ignorance of history.

ZEIT: But we Germans have already reckoned with our own history. [I think he means they’ve confronted their Nazi past.]

Piketty: But not when it comes to repaying debts! Germany’s past, in this respect, should be of great significance to today’s Germans. Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted. The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem. There have been many ways to repay debts, and not just one, which is what Berlin and Paris would have the Greeks believe.

ZEIT: But shouldn’t they repay their debts?

Piketty: My book recounts the history of income and wealth, including that of nations. What struck me while I was writing is that Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.

ZEIT: But surely we can’t draw the conclusion that we can do no better today?

Piketty: When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: what a huge joke! Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations.

Then the reporter digs in, and gets even more of a history lesson:

ZEIT: Are you trying to depict states that don’t pay back their debts as winners?

Piketty: Germany is just such a state. But wait: history shows us two ways for an indebted state to leave delinquency. One was demonstrated by the British Empire in the 19th century after its expensive wars with Napoleon. It is the slow method that is now being recommended to Greece. The Empire repaid its debts through strict budgetary discipline. This worked, but it took an extremely long time. For over 100 years, the British gave up two to three percent of their economy to repay its debts, which was more than they spent on schools and education. That didn’t have to happen, and it shouldn’t happen today. The second method is much faster. Germany proved it in the 20th century. Essentially, it consists of three components: inflation, a special tax on private wealth, and debt relief.

ZEIT: So you’re telling us that the German Wirtschaftswunder [“economic miracle”] was based on the same kind of debt relief that we deny Greece today?

Piketty: Exactly. After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP. Around the same time, France managed a similarly artful turnaround. We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead, both of our states employed the second method with the three components that I mentioned, including debt relief. Think about the London Debt Agreement of 1953, where 60% of German foreign debt was cancelled and its internal debts were restructured.

There’s an interesting back-and-forth I won’t quote (but which you can read). After that, the reporter puts on his reporter hat and asks two good questions to close:

ZEIT: What sort of national egoism do you see in Germany?

Piketty: I think that Germany was greatly shaped by its reunification. It was long feared that it would lead to economic stagnation. But then reunification turned out to be a great success thanks to a functioning social safety net and an intact industrial sector. Meanwhile, Germany has become so proud of its success that it dispenses lectures to all other countries. This is a little infantile. Of course, I understand how important the successful reunification was to the personal history of Chancellor Angela Merkel. But now Germany has to rethink things. Otherwise, its position on the debt crisis will be a grave danger to Europe.

ZEIT: What advice do you have for the Chancellor?

Piketty: Those who want to chase Greece out of the Eurozone today will end up on the trash heap of history. If the Chancellor wants to secure her place in the history books, just like [Helmut] Kohl did during reunification, then she must forge a solution to the Greek question, including a debt conference where we can start with a clean slate. But with renewed, much stronger fiscal discipline.

In the unquoted part, Piketty expands on the idea of a Europe-wide debt conference. He also expands on the idea of democracy, something Joseph Stiglitz also discussed. All in all, fascinating, and brutally honest on Piketty’s part.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP

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All your democracy are belong to us
by Tom Sullivan

This is breaking about 4 a.m. EDT.

Greece reaches a deal with creditors after all-night summit:

Euro zone leaders clinched a deal with Greece on Monday to negotiate a third bailout to keep the near-bankrupt country in the euro zone after a whole night of haggling at an emergency summit.

“Euro summit has unanimously reached agreement. All ready to go for ESM programme for Greece with serious reforms and financial support,” European Council President Donald Tusk announced on Twitter, referring to the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund.

However the tough conditions imposed by international lenders led by Germany could bring down Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ leftist government and cause an outcry in Greece. Even before the final terms were known, his labour minister went on state television to denounce the terms.

The deal would create a fund for repaying Greek debt from privatizing unspecified state assets.

Details now trickling out (via the Guardian, 5:34 a.m. EDT):

Here are the key points:

* carry out ambitious pension reforms and specify policies to fully compensate for the fiscal impact of the Constitutional Court ruling on the 2012 pension reform and to implement the zero deficit clause or mutually agreeable alternative measures by October 2015;
* adopt more ambitious product market reforms with a clear timetable for implementation of all OECD toolkit I recommendations, including Sunday trade, sales periods, pharmacy ownership, milk and bakeries, except over-the-counter pharmaceutical products, which will be implemented in a next step, as well as for the opening of macro-critical closed professions (e.g. ferry transportation). On the follow-up of the OECD toolkit-II, manufacturing needs to be included in the prior action;
*on energy markets, proceed with the privatisation of the electricity transmission network operator (ADMIE), unless replacement measures can be found that have equivalent effect on competition, as agreed by the Institutions;
*on labour markets, undertake rigorous reviews and modernisation of collective bargaining, industrial action and, in line with the relevant EU directive and best practice, collective dismissals, along the timetable and the approach agreed with the Institutions. On the basis of these reviews, labour market policies should be aligned with international and European best practices, and should not involve a return to past policy settings which are not compatible with the goals of promoting sustainable and inclusive growth;
*adopt the necessary steps to strengthen the financial sector, including decisive action on non-performing loans and measures to strengthen governance of the HFSF and the banks, in particular by eliminating any possibility for political interference especially in appointment processes.
And on top of that, Greece will also establish a new fund to sell off valuable assets to help repay its new bailout, and refinance its banks.

Or as the statement put it:

*develop a significantly scaled up privatisation programme with improved governance; valuable Greek assets will be transferred to an independent fund that will monetize the assets through privatisations and other means. The monetization of the assets will be one source to make the scheduled repayment of the new loan of ESM and generate over the life of the new loan a targeted total of €50bn of which €25bn will be used for the repayment of recapitalization of banks and other assets and 50% of every remaining euro (i.e. 50% of €25bn) will be used for decreasing the debt to GDP ratio and the remaining 50% will be used for investments.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
writes:

The cost of Greece avoiding a Grexit is submitting to becoming an economic serf of the Eurozone, subject to even more draconian austerity than was ever on the table before.

The announced agreement is only the first step. Greek Prime minister Alexis Tsipras still has to sell the deal to parliament members who already voted against a less onerous proposal.

The Greek people themselves are left wondering what happened to their ‘No’ vote.

As details slipped out last night that Greece would be required to “surrender fiscal sovereignty” to avoid fiscal collapse, the twitter hashtag #ThisIsACoup exploded globally in a sign of protest and solidarity with Greece:

The draconian list of demands eurozone leaders handed to the Greek government in return for a European bailout has inspired a social media backlash against Germany and its hawkish finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

Just a couple:

"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt." – John Adams (1735-1826) #ThisIsACoup— Erin Gibson (@gibblertron) July 13, 2015

#ThisIsACoup. Stripping a country of its assets to sell them to financial industry = modern colonialism.— Hendrik Wagenaar (@spiritofwilson) July 13, 2015

From the London Telegraph:

Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party and, lest it be forgot, a member of the European parliament, has urged Greeks to take to the streets in protest at the deal.

He said:

Quote If I were a Greek politician I would vote against this deal. If I were a Greek ‘no’ voter I would be protesting in the streets. Mr Tsipras’s position is now at stake. This conditional deal shows that national democracy and membership of the eurozone are incompatible.”

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis plans to publish an article Thursday in Die Zeit, reports Business Insider, that gives his view of the negotiations’ backstory:

“Five months of intense negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup never had a chance of success,” Varoufakis writes.

“Condemned to lead to impasse, their purpose was to pave the ground for what [German finance minister] Dr [Wolfgang] Schäuble had decided was ‘optimal’ well before our government was even elected: That Greece should be eased out of the Eurozone in order to discipline member-states resisting his very specific plan for re-structuring the Eurozone.”

Varoufakis adds that, “This is no theory” because he says Schäuble told him this was the plan.

Varoufakis wrote in the Guardian on Friday that the Schäuble’s plan all along was “to put the fear of God into the French.”

In the Eurozone, people are pawns. Democracy is a sham. Here endeth the lesson.

by digby

Krugman:

Suppose you consider Tsipras an incompetent twerp. Suppose you dearly want to see Syriza out of power. Suppose, even, that you welcome the prospect of pushing those annoying Greeks out of the euro. 

Even if all of that is true, this Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for. 

Can anything pull Europe back from the brink? Word is that Mario Draghi is trying to reintroduce some sanity, that Hollande is finally showing a bit of the pushback against German morality-play economics that he so signally failed to supply in the past. But much of the damage has already been done. Who will ever trust Germany’s good intentions after this? 

In a way, the economics have almost become secondary. But still, let’s be clear: what we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity. It’s as true as ever that imposing harsh austerity without debt relief is a doomed policy no matter how willing the country is to accept suffering. And this in turn means that even a complete Greek capitulation would be a dead end. 

Can Greece pull off a successful exit? Will Germany try to block a recovery? (Sorry, but that’s the kind of thing we must now ask.) 

The European project — a project I have always praised and supported — has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks who did it.

It appears that Europe (especially the Germans and the Dutch) will accept nothing but Greeks immolating themselves and them jumping off a cliff en masse to atone for the temerity of failing to be proper working drones. Hopefully this will also prepare all unions and left leaning political parties to follow suit.  They have been very bad, especially the public employees who will be required to flagellate themselves prior to the immolation as lesson to anyone who thinks government employees deserve to live like other human beings. (If you want to live like a human being get rich or STFU.)

Margaret Thatcher is laughing in hell. Along with some other memorable historical figures.

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