StephenKMackSD's Blog

American Observer comments.

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Aug 31, 2025

Mr. Freedland is a notorious political opportunist, so the predations of Trump and his political minions, are the perfect opportunity to draw attention away form the Gaza Genocide, and the arrest of British Citizens for vocal dissents against the Zionist Faschist States crimes!

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Headline: Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode

Sub-headline: Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. But now it’s time to call it what it is

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/29/us-authoritarian-donald-trump-national-guard

Editor: Freedland wallows in the crimes of Trump, as British Dissenters are put in jail cells without legal recourse!

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Of course, the greatest check on Trump would come from the opposition winning power in a democratic election, specifically Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives in November 2026. Trump is working hard to make that impossible: witness this month’s unabashed gerrymander in Texas, where at Trump’s command, Republicans redrew congressional boundaries to give themselves five more safe seats in the House. Trump wants more states to follow Texas’s lead, because a Democratic-controlled House would have powers of scrutiny that he rightly fears.

Meanwhile, apparently prompted by his meeting with Vladimir Putin, he is once again at war against postal voting, baselessly decrying it as fraudulent, while also demanding a new census that would exclude undocumented migrants – moves that will either help Republicans win in 2026 or else enable him to argue that a Democratic victory was illegitimate and should be overturned.

In that same spirit, the Trump White House now argues that, in effect, only one party should be allowed to exercise power in the US. How else to read the words of key Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who this week told Fox News that “The Democrat party is not a political party; it is a domestic extremist organisation.”

It’s the same picture on every front, whether it’s plans for a new military parade in Trump’s honour or the firing of health officials who insist on putting science ahead of political loyalty. He is bent on amassing power to himself and being seen to amass power to himself, even if that means departing from economic conservative orthodoxy to have the federal government take a stake in hitherto private companies. He wants to rule over every aspect of US life. As Trump himself said this week, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says, “We have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.”

The trouble is, people still don’t talk about it the way they talk about Hungary, not inside the US and not outside it. That’s partly the It Can’t Happen Here mindset, partly a reluctance to accept a reality that would require, of foreign governments especially, a rethink of almost everything. If the US is on its way to autocracy, in a condition scholars might call “unconsolidated authoritarianism”, then that changes Britain’s entire strategic position, its place in the world, which for 80 years has been predicated on the notion of a west led by a stable, democratic US. The same goes for the EU. Far easier to carry on, either pretending that the transformation of the US is not, in fact, as severe as it is, or that normal service will resume shortly. But the world’s leaders, like US citizens, cannot ignore the evidence indefinitely. To adapt the title of that long-ago novel, it can happen here – and it is.

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Editor: Recall Freedland’s from Fri 18 Mar 2016 16.09 EDT?

Headline: Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem.

Sub-headline: Under Jeremy Corbyn the party has attracted many activists with views hostile to Jews. Its leaders must see why this matters

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/labour-antisemitism-jews-jeremy-corbyn

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Editor: the final paragraphs of Freedland’s diatribe:

But Zionism, as commonly used in angry left rhetoric, is rarely that historically precise. It has blended with another meaning, used as a codeword that bridges from Israel to the wider Jewish world, hinting at the age-old, antisemitic notion of a shadowy, global power, operating behind the scenes. For clarity’s sake, if you want to attack the Israeli government, the 50-year occupation or hawkish ultra-nationalism, then use those terms: they carry much less baggage.

To state the obvious, criticism of Israel and Zionism is not necessarily anti-Jewish: that’s why there are so many Jewish critics of Israel, inside and outside the country. But it doesn’t take a professor of logic to know that just because x is not always y, it does not follow that x can never be y. Of course opposition to Israel is not always antisemitic. But that does not mean that it is never and can never be antisemitic. As Downing and Kirby have helpfully illustrated.

I hope that, as a result, many on the left will pause next time Jews raise the alarm about antisemitism. I hope they’ll remember that, while most anti-Israel activists are acting in good faith, some are motivated more darkly, while others carelessly express their opposition to Israel in language or imagery that has a melancholy history.

There’s a deeper reason to pause. Many good people on the left want to make things neat and simple by saying that Israel and Zionism have nothing to do with Jews or Judaism. That they can deplore the former even while they protect and show solidarity with the latter. But it’s not quite as easy as that.

While many Jews – especially in conversations with each other – condemn Israeli government policy going back many years, they do identify strongly with Israel and its people. A recent survey found that 93% of British Jews said Israel formed some part of their identity. Through ties of family or history, they are bound up with it. When Jews pray they face east – towards Jerusalem. And they have done that for 2,000 years.

It’s inconvenient, I know, but that needs to be remembered by those who insist that there’s no connection between Israel and Jews, that it’s perfectly possible to loathe everything about Israel – the world’s only Jewish country – without showing any hostility to Jews.

Jews themselves usually don’t see it, or experience it, that way. That doesn’t mean no one should ever criticise Israel, for fear of treading on Jewish sensitivities. Of course it doesn’t. But it does mean that many Jews worry when they see a part of the left whose hatred of Israel is so intense, unmatched by the animus directed at any other state.

They wonder why the same degree of passion – the same willingness to take to the streets, to tweet night and day – is not stirred by, say, Russia, whose bombing of Syria killed at least 1,700 civilians; or the Assad regime itself, which has taken hundreds of thousands of Arab lives. They ask themselves, what exactly is it about the world’s only Jewish country that convinces its loudest opponents it represents a malignancy greater than any other on the planet?

Which brings us to Jeremy Corbyn. No one accuses him of being an antisemite. But many Jews do worry that his past instinct, when faced with potential allies whom he deemed sound on Palestine, was to overlook whatever nastiness they might have uttered about Jews, even when that extended to Holocaust denial or the blood libel – the medieval calumny that Jews baked bread using the blood of gentile children. (To be specific: Corbyn was a long-time backer of a pro-Palestinian group founded by Paul Eisen, attending its 2013 event even after Eisen had outed himself as a Holocaust denier years earlier. Similarly, Corbyn praised Islamist leader Sheikh Raed Salah even though, as a British court confirmed, Salah had deployed the blood libel.)

Thanks to Corbyn, the Labour party is expanding, attracting many leftists who would previously have rejected it or been rejected by it. Among those are people with hostile views of Jews. Two of them have been kicked out, but only after they had first been readmitted and once their cases attracted unwelcome external scrutiny.

The question for Labour now is whether any of this matters. To those at the top, maybe it doesn’t. But it feels like a painful loss to a small community that once looked to Labour as its natural home – and which is fast reaching the glum conclusion that Labour has become a cold house for Jews.

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Mr. Freedland and his cadre of Zionist Shills defamed Corbyn, and his maufactured crimes- the whole respectable British Class were united in the defamation of Corbyn. Even such Literary Luminaries, such as the foremost T.S. Eliot critic Anthony Julius whose ‘T.S. Eliot, and-Antisemitism ,and literary form’ were the fellow travelers of Freedland!

American Observer.

Queer Atheist on Financial Times SHIT!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 30, 2025

American Reader wonders at the political elasticity of ‘The Character of Bagehot’? Over time.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 30, 2025

Editor: ‘The Bagehot’ of August 20, 2025:

https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/08/20/what-it-means-when-britain-talks-about-bosh

The Reader might wonder about the books he published:

Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market by Walter Bagehot

The English Constitution by Walter Bagehot

“Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of ‘Natural Selection’ and ‘Inheritance’ to Political Society”

Editor: Walter Bagehot could never be considered a satirist, yet in the hands of the present day Economist writer, Duncan Robinson mocks the Great Man!

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https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/08/27/the-polycrisis-theory-of-brexit

Editor : Duncan Robinson in a ‘serious mood’, postulates ‘the polycrisis theory of brexit!’ in two short paragraphs

Parliament has lost interest, but Britons still devour books about Brexit. Those books tend to belong to one of two schools. One is the Great Man—or rather, inadequate boys—theory of history, exemplified by “All Out War”, by Tim Shipman. It argues that the divorce was propelled by the betrayals, blunders and petty feuds at the court of David Cameron, whose campaign was hopelessly focused on warning of economic disaster.

A second school takes the long view. In “Between The Waves”, a rich and incisive new history of British Euroscepticism to be published next month, Tom McTague begins the journey with Enoch Powell, a Tory imperialist, driving through the Algerian desert in 1943. From the very birth of the European project, he argues, the British dilemma between sovereignty outside the club or influence within it was acute. The break of 2016, if not inevitable, was foretold many times.

Editor: Duncan Robinson:

Duncan Robinson

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Robinson in the guise of Walter Bagehot, in his first two paragraphs fails to mention Bernard Connolly’s ‘The Rotten Heart of Europe’ in its 2012 edition:

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571301744-the-rotten-heart-of-europe/?srsltid=AfmBOor7Ky2kMd4_npHslQ_BkHgQ78JhbBp_pNYl7QFbpwlGtwxkadxe

Bernard Connolly’s 400 page History is indictive of the inability of the Eurocratic clique, to let go of the tattered remaines of the legacy of Jean Monnet, and the Coal and Steel Cartel that metatisised into the Bankrupt E.U. of the current political moment! With Ukraine about to topple, and Ursula von der Leyen with her loyalists Macron, Starmer, Merz promising weapons not yet in production. What is the reader to think of Robinson as Bagehot, that offers the reader a maladroit, or just an imagined cordon sanitaire of a kind?

Editor: Just a sample of this collection of strung together Political Actors? Or just call it by another name, once favored by that long forgotten master of free association Sigmund Freud?

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Revisit the continent that Lord Cameron, fresh from an election victory, toured in the summer of 2015 as he hawked his renegotiation plan.

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Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, called a referendum to defy the austere terms of a bail-out by his bankrupt country’s creditors. As cash machines ran dry, Grexit loomed—until, in an all-night summit,…

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Parliament has lost interest, but Britons still devour books about Brexit. Those books tend to belong to one of two schools. One is the Great Man—or rather, inadequate boys—theory of history, exemplified by “All Out War”, by Tim Shipman. It argues that the divorce was propelled by the betrayals, blunders and petty feuds at the court of David Cameron, whose campaign was hopelessly focused on warning of economic disaster.

A second school takes the long view. In “Between The Waves”, a rich and incisive new history of British Euroscepticism to be published next month, Tom McTague begins the journey with Enoch Powell, a Tory imperialist, driving through the Algerian desert in 1943. From the very birth of the European project, he argues, the British dilemma between sovereignty outside the club or influence within it was acute. The break of 2016, if not inevitable, was foretold many times.

Both schools have merit, but Bagehot finds a third view compelling: Brexit was a matter of inept timing. Mr (now Lord) Cameron made the risky gambit of a referendum near-suicidal by asking Britons to pass judgment on the European Union after its most perilous year. Jean-Claude Juncker, then the European Commission’s president, called it the polycrisis: an era in which the prospect of Brexit combined with a euro-zone debt crisis, a migrant crisis and Islamist terrorism to threaten the foundations of Europe. With such a context, perhaps the only surprise is that Leave’s victory, with 52% of the vote, was so narrow. That crisis forms the backdrop to the last quarter of Mr McTague’s account. In the public debate, it has been largely forgotten.

Revisit the continent that Lord Cameron, fresh from an election victory, toured in the summer of 2015 as he hawked his renegotiation plan. In Brussels, the mood was leaden—like the eve of the first world war, as Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister and an EU bigwig, later put it.

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Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, called a referendum to defy the austere terms of a bail-out by his bankrupt country’s creditors. As cash machines ran dry, Grexit loomed—until, in an all-night summit, Mr Tsipras cracked, “waterboarded” by his fellow leaders, as one diplomat put it. For the British left, the breaking of his Syriza party left a foul taste. “It’s time to reclaim the Eurosceptic cause,” wrote Owen Jones, a Guardian columnist.

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Greece was also the entry point for many of the 1m migrants who arrived in Europe in 2015, often in dinghies over the Aegean. The largest group were Syrians displaced by war. “Wir schaffen das!” said Angela Merkel in August, declaring Germany up for the challenge.

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The migrant crisis fused with another fear. In the 18 months before the British referendum, European citizens, some trained in Syria, inflicted atrocities at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French newspaper, in the Bataclan nightclub in Paris and on the Brussels metro.

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But European leaders resented being asked to sort out the Conservative Party’s neuroses as they battled to save their project. At summit after summit, the British question fell to the bottom of the agenda, after the coffee and petits fours.

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Brexit, it claimed, was the last lifeboat to preserve the status quo; staying in a crisis-riven bloc was the real danger. That was the meaning of “Take back control”. Or as the campaign’s less-well-remembered slogan put it: “Vote Leave is the safer option.”

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The reality, that running against the EU as the euro burned was playing politics on easy mode, is awkward for everyone. The Great Man theory is more flattering than dumb luck.

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The polycrisis marked the end of this innocent age. It put iron in the blood: the harshness meted out to Mr Tsipras would be visited on British ministers in the Brexit years. Brussels became a lot less about farm regulations and more about flexing geopolitical muscle: a Europe of events, not rules, as Luuk van Middelaar, a Dutch historian, puts it. New crises as a result of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine meant new forms of integration, far beyond the comfort zone of British governments.

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Any attempt to reverse Brexit would need to embrace this new reality. Europe’s annus horribilis made Brexit unstoppable; the changes it brought may make rejoining unthinkable.

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American Reader.

Posted on February 3, 2021 by stephenkmacksd

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 29, 2025

Title this ‘The Enlightenment of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’ ? Mr. Ganesh doesn’t need to dust off his Madame Arcati shtick, he uses C-Span to demonstrate that Bill Clinton’s utter betrayal of the New Deal Tradition, in America, might just work in Britain: thus was born, the post WWII Labour Party and its Welfare State morphed into ‘Thatcherism Light’? Political opportunism, wedded to what would evolve into the myth of ‘The Third Way’ (Edward L. Bernays wrote the manuel.)that led to the economic/political catastrophe of 2008!

The archive of the US broadcaster C-Span is among the internet’s little wonders. In January 1993, an “Anthony Blair” toured Washington with another British MP named Gordon Brown. Their brief: to divine how president-elect Bill Clinton had won office and what their four-times defeated Labour party might learn. Their interview with a C-Span anchor of the just-the-facts school (“How many MPs in the House of Commons?”) is immortalised.

That ‘C-Span anchor‘ is Brian Lamb. He conducts a polite, and informative interview, aimed at an American audience. Not much more to be said. Except, of course, from Mr. Ganesh’s lofty perch.

Then the reader confronts more Ganesh mis-readings, misapprehensions, or just ideologically inflected chatter e.g. :

President Joe Biden’s centre-left peers are out of power and often out of sorts in the UK, France, Australia and the Netherlands.

A vexing question arises: how can a Neo-Liberal be ‘Center-Left’? The ‘Center’ in Western political life is now defined by the alliance between the Neo-Liberals and the Neo-Conservatives. Such is the toxicity of a collapsed Neo-Liberalism, that an actual rational political Center cannot exist. Except as a pose, a self -created mirage, a simulacrum.

If the Democrats stand out from a centre-left malaise, it is for reasons that are not much imitable outside the US.

I’ve run out of patience with Mr. Ganesh! How telling that Right-Wing Populism is the watershed of a failed Neo-Liberal Swindle? After the Crash of 2008, the fate of the Working and Middle Classes left to a rapacious Capitalism, and a politics controlled by sycophants to that Capital, and their Media allies.

On that ‘Center-Left Malaise’ in Europe see Phillip Ther’s ‘Europe since 1989: A History’ Chapters 4 & 5 that describes the toxic effects, that a fully embraced Neo-Liberalism, that left the Mitteleuropean states ripe for the Populists. That might just be first step toward an understanding of the ‘center-left malise’? Mr. Ganesh’s ‘center -left’ could be a stand-in for ‘Liberal’ or even ‘Left-Wing Social Democrats’?

With his political parameters in place, Mr. Ganesh is at full political gallop, the ‘Left’ in all its political iterations, is the enemy of choice. But the garnish is all important, the catalogue of reasons, a political symptomology is offered.

What can the reader make of the continuing rebellion, in France, against the Neo-Liberal Macron, which the Corporate Media ignores, although twitter is its life blood. And Corbyn’s ‘Project for Peace and Justice’ are the signs that the ‘Rebellion Against the Elites’ has simply reached a new stage of political development, maturation?

Mr. Ganesh final paragraph, the highfalutin notion of ‘the social contract’ dresses up his intervention with a quandry, or is it a conundrum?

What is distinctively American is the gap between the two parties on the social contract. And the subsequent indispensability of the Democratic voice. That the Biden and Republican plans for pandemic relief are $1.3tn apart could not be more eloquent of the stakes. To look at their electoral record, then the lot of the US poor, it is hard to tell if the Democrats are the most successful progressives in the rich world or the most consistently disappointing.

Political Cynic

https://www.ft.com/content/7f9e8797-a6a0-4ff8-a25d-ea2bad3e2d3c

Political Cynic on the end of ‘reading’ replaced by ‘Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics’ !

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 29, 2025

Political Cynic.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 29, 2025

https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-trump-can-control-fed

How Trump Can Control the Fed

Could President-elect Donald Trump end Fed independence on monetary policy? A legislative anomaly gives him a way.

Post by Benn Steil and Elisabeth Harding

November 18, 2024 12:10 pm (EST)

In Barron’s last Thursday, I (Benn) argued that a dusty legal anomaly could help president-elect Donald Trump—who has questioned the logic and legal basis of Fed independence—to wrest control of monetary policy away from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).

The FOMC, composed of the seven Board of Governors members and five Reserve Bank presidents, has sole legal authority to conduct monetary policy. But legislation gives the power to control interest on bank reserves—the primary tool by which the Fed implements monetary policy—solely to the Board of Governors. As shown in the graphic above, all of the Board’s seven members are presidential appointments, whereas five of the twelve FOMC members are Reserve Bank presidents—not chosen by the White House. In theory, as explained in the column, the FOMC could decide to raise rates while the Board, perhaps in deference to the president, could order them cut.

More on:

Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies

U.S. Economy

Federal Reserve

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Though Trump cannot fire Jay Powell as chair of the FOMC, it is an open legal question as to whether he could fire him as chair of the Board. Law scholars generally say “no,” but Powell would likely have to fight a firing on his own—as the Fed lacks standing to contest it. If Trump were successfully to replace Powell as Board chair, we would effectively have two antagonist monetary “popes”—one chairing the FOMC, and the other chairing the Board.

Still, chairs are firsts-among-equals, and do not have any greater say, legally at least, than other Board or Committee members. And Trump could not, in any case, fire Powell as a Board governor, except with “cause.”

Could Trump find valid “cause” to fire Powell—or indeed other Board members? It is certainly possible. In the case of Democratic Board appointee Adriana Kugler, her term expires, in any case, at the end of January 2026, after which she will certainly be replaced by a Trump loyalist. Two other board members, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, were appointed by Trump in his first term, and might, one could speculate, be induced thereby to do his bidding. We think that unlikely, particularly in the case of the academically reared Waller, but we take note of the recent praise heaped on Bowman’s speech, connecting immigration with rising housing unaffordability, by vice-president elect JD Vance. Other Board members, all Biden appointees—Michael Barr, Philip Jefferson, and Lisa Cook—could well be induced to pursue other opportunities before their terms expire, thus creating openings for Trump without the need for dismissals.

We have heard a wide range of views on the plausibility of a Trump takeover of monetary policy by way of the Board, as laid out in the Barron’s piece. These range from “it’s terrifying” to “nah.” But in any case, draft legislation (in the form of Richard Shelby’s 2015 Financial Regulatory Improvement Act) already exists to eliminate the anomaly of Board control over interest-on-reserves. We would urge Congressfolk who believe in the importance of central-bank independence to act on it.

https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-trump-can-control-fed

Political Observer !

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 28, 2025

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https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/this-weeks-new-titles?utm_source=klaviyo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=new_titles_30&_kx=B0r_2u1tAQYvQGEhqe9JK1cxX8zqaZgfLm7MpsT5Suc.SNgHad

Political Observer.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/this-weeks-new-titles?utm_source=klaviyo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=new_titles_30&_kx=B0r_2u1tAQYvQGEhqe9JK1cxX8zqaZgfLm7MpsT5Suc.SNgHad

Stephen K. Mack : I have read Daniel Larison since he was writing for The American Conservative, and was eventually fired! This writer/thinker deserves your attention!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 28, 2025

SKM: Here is his latest essay:

The Colossal ‘Snapback’ Error

The three European governments risk driving Iran to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Daniel Larison

Aug 28

France, Britain, and Germany are about to make a colossal error:

The UK, France and Germany were preparing on Thursday to trigger a UN process to reimpose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, European officials have said, in a move that would heighten tensions between the west and Tehran.

The three European governments risk driving Iran to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Even if Iran doesn’t quit the treaty entirely, it is practically guaranteed that their government would no longer cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As an Iranian diplomat said this week, it will make “no sense” for Iran to cooperate with inspectors if the sanctions are put back on. It is likely that Iran would then rebuild and expand their program even more. Using the snapback mechanism is insane, and it makes a new crisis over the nuclear issue more likely rather than less.

Iranian withdrawal from the treaty is a real possibility. Iranian officials have repeatedly warned that Iran would leave the NPT if UN sanctions were reimposed. The Iranian government may conclude that it may as well quit the treaty if it is not going to be permitted to develop its nuclear program in peace as the treaty allows. If Iran is going to be put under such massive sanctions anyway, they have few incentives to remain in the treaty when they aren’t allowed to benefit from it. The Iranian leadership may also decide that withdrawing from the treaty is the only action they can take that will be significant enough to make Western governments rethink their position.

Withdrawal from the treaty doesn’t necessarily mean that Iran will pursue nuclear weapons. As Mark Fitzpatrick and Mark Goodman say in this article, “It is conceivable that Iran could withdraw from the treaty and maintain a policy of nuclear hedging, even as it reconstituted its enrichment program in secret.” Unfortunately, it is a certainty that warmongers in Israel and the U.S. will not see it that way and will likely use Iranian withdrawal as a new pretext for aggression.

Iran would be fully within its rights to withdraw from the treaty if it believes that it is necessary for its national security. The treaty states that a party to the treaty has the right to withdraw “if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” The Iranian government could point to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on their nuclear facilities and the possibility of more attacks in the future as their reasons for withdrawing. Fitzpatrick and Goodman note that Iran’s claim won’t be questioned in the same way that North Korea’s was: “In Iran’s case, such questions are unlikely to be raised, since the “extraordinary events” are obvious.”

It would be ideal if the European governments did not trigger the snapback mechanism and Iran remained in the treaty. There is no good reason to reimpose UN sanctions now, and it will just create more problems for all parties. The British, French, and German governments seem determined to make the situation worse. It was better when these governments were useless spectators. Now they suddenly want to do something on the nuclear issue, and they have landed on the stupidest possible thing to do short of war.

The Iranian government has been open to finding a diplomatic solution, and its reward has been relentless hostility, economic warfare, and bombing. Reimposing UN sanctions could very well be the last straw. The Iranian government might conclude that if it is going to be treated like North Korea no matter what it does it might as well build a deterrent to stop future attacks on their country. If that happens, the moronic hawks that brought us to this point will own the results.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzQcpTMQhtwDMpwfDwJXwBqXDGbd

StephenKMackSD

Reader dare to take apart this political chatter, and realize that it is’s Stephens attempt at Sturm und Drang?

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 26, 2025

Editor: This first paragraph: Is an American Conservative consonant with a Neo-Conservative?

Ask an American conservative what makes America great, and at least until about a week ago, he might have said that, among other virtues, it’s a country in which the government stays out of the business of getting in business.

Editor: the cast of characters in Stephen’s Economic Melodrama:

Fannie Mae and Amtrak, but their record of mismanagement and mediocrit, like the Airbus consortium in Europe, But American conservatism under President Trump is changing into something unrecognizable, Trump called for the resignation of Lip-Bu Tan, Intel’s new chief executive, based on vague allegations, Trump also decided to convert nearly $9 billion in government funding promised to Intel under the 2022 CHIPS Act, “You know what? I think the United States should be given 10 percent of Intel,” Trump says he told Tan in a White House meeting on Friday. Tan speedily agreed. Intel, which had a $500 billion market cap at the turn of the century, is now at $107 billion. What’s to keep it from going lower and taking taxpayers down with it? …that it’s systemically important to the U.S. economy (as the banks were in the 2008 financial crisis), that it’s vital for national security (as the critical minerals industry is today)…The ecosystem of American chip makers, from Nvidia to Micron to Qualcomm, is thriving….it would simply join the long gray line of America’s corporate has-beens, from Sears to Chrysler to IBM to General Electric….Intel will now join the stable of other cowed and compliant corporations, universities and law firms living in fear of the next Truth Social post, funding revocation or regulatory obstruction….Republicans now cheering Trump for his daily Big Dog performance should at least wonder what the consequences for America’s economic freedom and competitiveness will be once he makes America statist again….A current of neosocialism now runs through parts of MAGA land, particularly among those who confuse Catholic social teachings with economic reality. This crew should remember that in democratic politics, two can play the game….And what Trump is doing with Intel could soon become a template for dozens, if not hundreds, of U.S. companies in which Uncle Sam demands a golden share….

Old Socialist.

Political Observer celebrates Amartya Sen: ‘Western leaders continue to use energy as a foreign policy tool — but are not ready to face the true consequences of sanctions tightening.’

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 26, 2025

Opinion Markets Insight

US tariff threat over Indian imports of Russian oil could backfire

If New Delhi reduced its purchases to zero, oil prices and inflation would jump.

https://www.ft.com/content/7dc2c278-dcf2-4141-8913-068d6ba75859

The writer is co-founder and director of market intelligence at Energy Aspects.

If Donald Trump really wanted to drive India’s oil imports from Russia down to zero, the consequences might not be what the US president intended. Trump has threatened to impose an additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods from Wednesday over the country’s purchases of Russian oil. That would increase total tariffs to 50 per cent.

Indian imports of Russian crude average anywhere between 1.5-2mn barrels a day, based on OilX data. If this were stopped overnight and India had to buy elsewhere, oil prices would jump massively and inflation would be pushed up in the US and elsewhere. For the oil market, the question is: does Trump have the stomach to raise prices on US consumers?

The pressure might be partly eased if some of the oil was redirected to China, which would reduce its buying elsewhere. However, the country is already close to taking the maximum volume of Russian oil it can absorb, and recent experience shows the risks.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the EU and US threatened some of the biggest sanctions in history. Oil prices surged above $100 in the aftermath before these sanctions started to be watered down. The US government was even led to pre-emptively releasing a historic 180mn barrels of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve from May 2022.

The G7, led by the US, agreed to amend its sanctions policy to introduce a price cap in September 2022. This allowed Russian oil still to be bought as long as the price was below $60 a barrel. The logic? It would hurt Russian oil revenues but keep Russian oil flowing globally to prevent an oil price surge.

The EU also banned imports of Russian oil in late 2022 and petroleum products in early 2023, barring a few exceptions, but even as the US encouraged Russian oil flows elsewhere.

Janet Yellen, as Treasury secretary, told Reuters in November 2022 that the US was happy for India to continue buying as much Russian oil as it wanted. It just had to steer clear of western insurance, finance and maritime services bound by the cap, which would give countries leverage on price negotiations with Moscow. Russian oil “is going to be selling at bargain prices and we’re happy to have India get that bargain, or Africa or China. It’s fine,” she said.

Analysis of Chinese data by Energy Aspects estimates that China’s buying of Russian oil via various means increased from 1.5 mb/d before the war to above 2 mb/d, with several grades of oil bought above the price cap. China does not have the refining capacity to absorb significantly higher volumes of Russian oil than they used to buy. Thus, geographically India became the logical clearing country for the Russian barrels.

Now the US is singling out India for profiteering from Russian oil. It is not clear what concessions the US may want from New Delhi regarding volumes or timing in any compromise, putting the onus on India to act if it wants to avert additional tariffs. Unlike China, India does not have a shadow banking network to avoid sanctions and tends to operate within global policy frameworks. The precedence for this is clear with the country having halted all Iranian imports during the first Trump term when secondary sanctions were announced.

One path to a resolution could be some combination of Indian concessions on US agricultural tariffs, some pledged reduction in Russian oil purchases (a rebalancing that seems to be happening already) and/or an increase in commitments to buy energy from the US. However, this will need to be spelled out clearly and officially.

Have Indian refiners gained somewhat from discounted Russian oil? Yes, they have, as initial discounts ballooned to above $20 versus the Dubai benchmark, although higher costs of shipping following sanctions reduced the discounts India received. However, these discounts were also enjoyed by China, Turkey and Brazil (which buys Russian diesel) alike. And since 2022, India’s refinery production has barely risen on average and product exports are fairly steady as domestic demand has been rising and absorbing the increase.

Editor: Sen’s final paragraph is about facing inconvient facts!

The challenge is that, if the west is serious about sanctions on either Russia or Iran or both, it will have to contend with the loss of more than 6 mb/d of crude, a number that is much larger than Opec+ spare capacity. This would lead to a surge in oil prices, probably to well above $100 — a level that Trump and Europe would be likely to balk at. Western leaders continue to use energy as a foreign policy tool — but are not ready to face the true consequences of sanctions tightening.

https://www.ft.com/content/7dc2c278-dcf2-4141-8913-068d6ba75859?_gl=1*g24908*_up*MQ..*_gs*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAjwtrXFBhBiEiwAEKen13Dm9dpA-r72x1ZrMwwxU–BsoToyJjGrOzONRJ0A1nRxcCzng8wcRoC1XwQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&gbraid=0AAAAAC_ArBs9Odm6KtNLmeSpTM3U2OSL7

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Editor: Reader never forget Sen’s ‘Identity and Violence’!!!

Identity and Violence: The Violence of Illusion with Amartya Sen

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ym12o1i2Mak?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is widely recognized for his ability to join economics and philosophy, reflected in his work through ethics and a sense of common humanity. In this Hitchcock Lecture from UC Berkeley he explores the violence of illusion. Series: UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures [5/2005] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 9459]

Editor: Amartya Sen and his revelatory ‘Identitity and Violence’ remaines an indispensable book, he is also a writer/thinker with a self-depricating sence of humor!

Political Observer.