International events

[The Anti-Targ]

6 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

India will go deeper far right wing with this being an election year, neat stunt. The general trend of lots of countries is abandoning ineffective (corrupt even in cases) liberal left only to be swallowed up by the conservatives campaigning for the good old with a dash of what the future holds. All coinciding eerily together. Ominous. 

As I've said elsewhere, progressive govts continue to hamstring themselves by believing the deficit myth, so they don't have the money to implement the progressive programmes that would massively benefit the vast majority because they think they need to pay for everything by putting up taxes. It's a self-inflicted handicap for Eurozone countries since their govts have no currency sovereignty. But for countries with currency sovereignty there is no excuse for not spending what needs to be spent to deliver the social benefits of progressive policies.

[Zorral]

Biden Urges Congress to Quickly Approve F-16 Sale to Turkey
The White House sent a letter to four senior lawmakers, one day after Turkey’s Parliament voted to allow Sweden to join NATO.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/us/politics/biden-congress-f-16-turkey.html

Quote

 

President Biden sent a letter to four senior members of Congress on Wednesday urging them to quickly approve a $20 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, following the vote one day earlier by Turkey’s Parliament to allow Sweden to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, according to three U.S. officials.

The White House sent the letter to the top Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which have oversight of arms transfers by the State Department to other nations. As of Wednesday night, the four senior lawmakers had not given their approval, and one or more of them might ask the Biden administration to give assurances about Turkey’s actions on some foreign policy issues before agreeing to the transfer, a congressional official said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a member of NATO, has linked his country’s approval of Sweden’s accession to the security organization to the F-16 sales, which had been pending. Both Sweden and Finland had asked to join NATO after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the vast majority of the alliance’s members soon agreed. Turkey approved Finland’s bid but, along with Hungary, has withheld approval for Sweden.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Mr. Erdogan in Istanbul this month and pushed him to have Turkey approve Sweden’s accession. Mr. Blinken tried to assure him that the F-16 sale would happen, U.S. officials said. ....

 

 

[Altherion]

15 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

But for countries with currency sovereignty there is no excuse for not spending what needs to be spent to deliver the social benefits of progressive policies.

I don't think this is so clear cut. Much of the world tried fairly extensive government spending during and immediately after the pandemic. The result of this was a temporary reduction in poverty... but it only lasted for a year or two before the advent of the highest inflation in decades led to the end of the spending as well as the tightening of monetary policy. By today, it's not at all clear that most people are better off due to the pandemic spending.

[Rippounet]

It's highly dubious that government spending is the cause of today's inflation.

Though it may have been one of several causes, government spending seems to have been first an opportunity, and then a narrative. But it's a false narrative, because it focuses on demand, when offer should also be examined, especially when combined with opportunistic profit-seeking.
Also, let's bear in mind that fighting inflation through monetary policy rather than taxes is an ideological choice, yes?

But blaming everything on government is a sure way to get fucked.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

16 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

As I've said elsewhere, progressive govts continue to hamstring themselves by believing the deficit myth, so they don't have the money to implement the progressive programmes that would massively benefit the vast majority because they think they need to pay for everything by putting up taxes. It's a self-inflicted handicap for Eurozone countries since their govts have no currency sovereignty. But for countries with currency sovereignty there is no excuse for not spending what needs to be spent to deliver the social benefits of progressive policies.

The massive amounts of cash pushed into the world economy by central banks to fight the snap COVID recession… didn’t contribute to the bout of inflation we are currently still experiencing?

Edited January 25 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Padraig]

As Rippounet said, if you shut down great swaths of the world for months/a couple of years and then you re-open everything again in a disjointed way, logistical chains are going to be significantly impacted, messing up supply v demand and leading to a rise in prices (and some profit seeking).

That always struck me as the number one cause of inflation.  The war in Ukraine was another.  A lot of other environmental and political decisions also need to be considered.  And then maybe government spending.

There must have been proper research on this.  It would be interesting to see the percentages but i'd be amazed if it was primarily government spending.

Edited January 25 by Padraig

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, Padraig said:

As Rippounet said, if you shut down great swaths of the world for months/a couple of years and then you re-open everything again in a disjointed way, logistical chains are going to be significantly impacted, messing up supply v demand and leading to a rise in prices (and some profit seeking).

That always struck me as the number one cause of inflation.  The war in Ukraine was another.  And then maybe government spending.

There must have been proper research on this.  It would be interesting to see the percentages but i'd be amazed if it was primarily government spending.

I’m sure the recent inflation is a mix of both factors, with the supply shocks being made worse by fiscal policy 

There is some research here:

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2022/08/how-much-did-supply-constraints-boost-u-s-inflation/
 

Quote

 The aggregate demand shock (“backed-out AD shock”) explains roughly 60 percent of model-based inflation. The remaining 40 percent of the model-based inflation is primarily explained by sectoral supply shocks (“sectoral supply shock”), while the change in households’ consumption patterns across sectors (“sectoral demand shock”) accounts for very little. The bottom line of this decomposition is that supply constraints magnified the impact of higher demand in inflation. Consequently, most sectors in the U.S.—fifty-eight out of sixty-six—were supply-constrained. This result is consistent with other research that shows that expansionary fiscal policy has increased the share of sectors classified as supply-constrained

 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

It's highly dubious that government spending is the cause of today's inflation.

Though it may have been one of several causes, government spending seems to have been first an opportunity, and then a narrative. But it's a false narrative, because it focuses on demand, when offer should also be examined, especially when combined with opportunistic profit-seeking.

It's undoubtedly only one of several causes, but it's almost certainly a significant one (there are studies). The supply shocks also play a part and profit-seekers will undoubtedly exploit opportunities to raise prices, but the money being spent must come from somewhere and in this case that was certainly the government.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Also, let's bear in mind that fighting inflation through monetary policy rather than taxes is an ideological choice, yes?

I would not call it ideological -- there is no real ideology behind it beyond pragmatism. The central banks are not quite as dysfunctional and politicized as most other institutions and they are (for now) still capable of some measure of long term thought. Thus, they are the only ones who can address this kind of crisis. If the politicians tried to raise taxes and cut spending to a sufficient degree to deal with inflation, there would be riots in the streets and they'd be voted out at the next possible opportunity.

[maarsen]

On the good news side, a vaccine for malaria is being rolled out in Cameroon for children. Considering that malaria is still one of the deadliest diseases around I certainly applaud this effort to vaccinate children. 

[Padraig]

3 hours ago, Altherion said:

The supply shocks also play a part and profit-seekers will undoubtedly exploit opportunities to raise prices, but the money being spent must come from somewhere and in this case that was certainly the government.

Money came from all kinds of sources e.g. some people were able to save money during the pandemic (e.g. they weren't able to travel) and they then spent it afterwards.

Obviously the money the government gave was also spent but that was the whole point of it.  It was to replace the money that would be spent if people hadn't lost their jobs during the pandemic.  (Some obviously benefited more than that).

I find reading economic parties quite boring because they are riddled with techno speak (so I could miss stuff) but I haven't seen this research which says the majority of the inflation was driven by government support.  HeartofIce's info talks about 60% of the inflation was due to demand shocks, 40% due to sectoral supply shocks.  But you'd have to divide those generic terms into lots of subcategories to dive into specific factors.

[Conflicting Thought]

we shouldnt left corporations out of this inflation conversation 

https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/

from the link: "Many of those most dismissive of claims that increased corporate power has driven recent inflation adopt the view that generalized macroeconomic overheating is the culprit. But in dismissing the increased corporate power explanation for recent inflation, they also seem to be discarding any useful information that recent sky-high profit margins might provide about the validity of their alternative view. Profit margins may not be telling us that very recent increases in corporate power are the root cause of inflation. But they are telling us that a simple macroeconomic imbalance of supply and demand is not driving inflation either, unless the relationship between a “hot” economy and profit margins and real wages is just coincidentally behaving entirely differently in the current recovery than it has in the past."

[The Anti-Targ]

16 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The massive amounts of cash pushed into the world economy by central banks to fight the snap COVID recession… didn’t contribute to the bout of inflation we are currently still experiencing?

No, actually it didn't, it was the massive disruption of supply across the globe, huge profit taking by large corporates and the spike in oil prices, and significantly in this particular period of inflation fertiliser costs increased a lot, which will hit the entire food production system. Oil price is almost never driven by demand, it is always driven by how much OPEC opens the taps to let oil flow. Also it matters what the cash release goes to. If you throw it all at rich people who already have more money than they know what to do with through the mechanism of QE then you'll get asset price inflation. But if you spend new money and make the rich keep their treasury investments and the new money goes into the productive economy (build schools, roads, hospitals, maintain infrastructure that's degrading) and help people get by it will have less of an inflationary effect, indeed some of that spending will be dis-inflationary because it will help the wider economy function more efficiently.

Government spending is only significantly inflationary if it starts draining too much real resource (people and material) from the private economy.

It's a massive oversimplification to believe that more money always leads to more inflation. It's always about how the money travels through the economy.

 

[Heartofice]

53 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If you throw it all at rich people who already have more money than they know what to do with through the mechanism of QE then you'll get asset price inflation.

Yes exactly, this is pretty much what happened during and post Covid, the money eventually found it's way to rich people who just used it to pump up asset prices. Which is pretty much the story of the past couple of decades of low interest rates. Thats one reason I am sceptical of any system that likes to keep interest rates low and pump more money into the economy. 

55 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

But if you spend new money and make the rich keep their treasury investments and the new money goes into the productive economy (build schools, roads, hospitals, maintain infrastructure that's degrading) and help people get by it will have less of an inflationary effect,

Ideally yes. That of course is based on the idea that the things governments spend their money on are productive, and aren't just making people dig holes and fill them back in again. Even spending on schools and hospitals is not necessarily going to increase productivity or always be useful. As an example if the money is spent painting all schools a nice bright shade of blue then that's hardly a good use for it. It might also be less inflationary, but the money is still going somewhere, it's still paying private firms to build infrastructure and to provide services, even if the outcome is an increase in public assets. What if you are paying for a HS2 style superhighway that is neither wanted nor needed and is massively over priced? 

I just don't think it's as simple as it's made out to be, and government spending is so often poorly handled (I've seen this first hand for decades in the UK) I find it hard to believe just pumping out more money for them to spend is the cure all solution.

 

[Zorral]

French proposal for free fertility tests at age 25 outrages women’s groups

"Leave our uteruses in peace."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/25/france-fertility-tests-birth-rate-macron/

Quote

 

... Calling infertility a “scourge,” Macron proposed a “major plan” designed to help reverse France’s declining birthrate, which could include offering 25-year-olds free fertility checks as part of their routine medical checkups.

The proposal, which has not been implemented, set off a strong reaction in France. Some women said the government shouldn’t be pressuring them to think about fertility so early. And women’s rights groups complained the French government should be focused on doing more to make it more affordable to have children, or to tackle the climate crisis that threatens the Earth they will live on. ....

.... Though the tests would be offered to men and women, many in France also complained that conversations around boosting fertility tend to disproportionately target women.

In a message to the government, Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women’s Foundation advocacy group, said: “Leave our uteruses in peace.”

In an interview with French television station BFM, Mailfert said if France were “more pro-child” — including by providing quality public education and housing — more people would choose to have children.

Amélie Beauchemin, a 30-year-old lawyer in Paris, said it is “completely crazy” for a country like France — where the average age that women have their first child is 31 — to encourage 25-year-olds to think about their fertility.

“It’s much too early,” she said. ...

 

 

[Zorral]

Whereas in the US, immigration of 2022-2023 did a great deal to prevent recession:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/20/the-fed-immigration-inflation-00116893

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/27/1151734308/immigration-economy-birth-rate-population

https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2023/february/role-of-immigration-in-us-labor-market-tightness/#:~:text=Reopening of borders in 2022,gap created by the pandemic.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/rebound-in-immigration-comes-to-economys-aid-60769edb

[Altherion]

4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If you throw it all at rich people who already have more money than they know what to do with through the mechanism of QE then you'll get asset price inflation. But if you spend new money and make the rich keep their treasury investments and the new money goes into the productive economy (build schools, roads, hospitals, maintain infrastructure that's degrading) and help people get by it will have less of an inflationary effect, indeed some of that spending will be dis-inflationary because it will help the wider economy function more efficiently.

Your first sentence is correct, but the second is more wrong than it is right. Yes, spending on productive infrastructure is dis-inflationary... but how many countries have used the pandemic spending to improve their productive infrastructure? A large fraction of it was direct handouts to individuals and businesses (which are purely inflationary) and infrastructure spending was almost entirely focused on a few sectors (e.g. computer chips) and even that partly fell victim to corruption.

Yes, there was once a time when governments could build massive amounts of infrastructure that were useful for all and did not cause inflation, but for Western nations, this has not been the case for several decades.

[Padraig]

3 hours ago, Altherion said:

A large fraction of it was direct handouts to individuals and businesses (which are purely inflationary)

Why?  I understand that it can be inflationary but you make it sound that it is inflationary as a rule (and significantly so, not that is causes a barely measurable blip).

Economics is way too nebulous for me to easily accept definitive rules, especially during COVID where things were exceptional.  So I can understand why HoI is questioning stuff also.

[Rippounet]

2 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I suppose there can be a sense of relief that the pretense is over and done with.

That won't last very long though, because that pretense is also necessary for both the internal cohesion of Western nations (multiculturalism requires universal values) and international stability (a pretense of universal equality is indispensable for global commerce).
The West no longer pretending to care for peoples who are not Western through a crisis whose human suffering can be watched on screens by the entire world is a huge deal. The consequences won't be obvious right away, but it will subtly fuel many existing tensions or conflicts.
At a moment when the global environmental crisis is already calling the Western model/ideology into question.
A world without any seemingly legitimate ideology will be increasingly chaotic.

You could say that Hamas did even better than Al Qaeda with 9/11, but of course the situation wasn't great to begin with, they only pushed us one step closer to the abyss. The way the free market economy, the environmental crisis, and the budding clash of civilizations are inter-connected means they all feed each other.

I don't want to be doomsaying, so the way out of this is for an alternative model to emerge asap, i.e. an economic model that is sustainable and rooted in universal values. It doesn't have to be perfect (the current one was never that), but it has to be something that enough people can believe in, so they don't fall prey to the lure of fascism.

[Luzifer's right hand]

Pretending to care about human lives was always limited to certain groups.

The killing and forced displacement of natives in countries like Brazil because of agriculture and mining has been ignored for a long time now because we all benefit from it from example. Cheap raw materials and cheap meat/animal feedstock are a key aspect of our way of living after all.

Edited January 27 by Luzifer's right hand

[fionwe1987]

On 1/22/2024 at 11:11 PM, Kyoshi said:

please excuse my ignorance, i'm genuinely curious, but shouldn't a religious leader (or some council of them) inaugurate something like that? i guess i don't trust politicians in general, especially in election years, and this is kind of "uncomfortable" given that a mosque was razed and there seems to be a growing nationalist movement. but i'm not Indian and my discomfort is really just something i feel, not a general condemnation of the temple itself ... not necessarily i guess ...

You're not alone in feeling discomfort. Outright disgust is called for, honestly. There were some religious leaders who objected to this rank politicization of a temple opening. But lets be clear: the BJP (Modi's party) and its partner orgs started this whole thing. It was their goons who tore down the mosque, and their political functionaries who made this Mosque vs. temple issue a thing. The politicization was baked in from the beginning.

Secondly, the BJP explicitly loathes that India became a secular republic, post independence. They call it "sickularism", and think the Hindu majority gave up all its advantages of being a majority. Their entire platform/philosophy revolves around Hindutva, or Hinduness, and making India more and more explicitly Hindu.

That said, Modi may have slightly overplayed his hand here. There were banners where he was shown standing as tall or taller than Rama, the god in question whose birthplace this temple supposedly commemorates. I know very very Hindu, very pro-Modi folks who expressed discomfort with that. Doubt it'll make much difference in the elections, though.

On 1/22/2024 at 11:56 PM, Altherion said:

I'm not Indian either so I don't know exactly how this works. Maybe somebody who does can explain? From what I can tell, there were both priests and secular leaders at the inauguration (as well as all sorts of celebrities) and the celebration was extremely wide spread. From the article in the link:

Yet, they were all kept behind a barrier, while our dear leader got to take the stage alone, the sole source of strength and power for Hinduism...

On 1/22/2024 at 11:56 PM, Altherion said:

And yes, the ruling party of India is definitely milking this for political purposes -- pretty much every article I've seen agrees on that.

Yep. Per Hinduism, you're not even supposed to consecrate a temple before its inner sanctum is ready. It won't be till the elction, but Modi went ahead with this anyway. Also, Ram's birthday is celebrated in the Fall, after the election, so a temple built on his supposed birthplace is being opened on a totally random day that just happens to be suitable for electoral purposes.