The $30 trillion reason Republicans won’t turn on Trump

As far as Wall Street is concerned, it makes no difference whether a jury found Trump’s former campaign chair guilty of eight federal crimes or that Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer pleaded guilty to eight counts himself.

Trump’s policies have been a boon to them — from the GOP tax cuts passed last year that slashed corporate rates, to the administration’s successful rollback of pieces of Dodd-Frank. Now they see a possibility for even more tax cuts. (Trump’s trade tactics have made investors nervous, but by and large, Wall Street has thus far shrugged them off.)

“Investors aren’t moved because most of Trump’s pro-market policies are already out there,” Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Wealth Advisors, said in an email. Investors in the $30 trillion US stock market have had a lot to celebrate this year.

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Wall Street just isn’t shaken by any of this. “When it comes to the Trump news, investors are saying, ‘Tell me something I don’t know, or at least I didn’t expect,’” Stovall said.

Trump and congressional Republicans already delivered on their biggest promise to Wall Street — tax cuts — at the end of last year. They passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill that slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, and while most Americans will see tax savings, the bill overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy.

According to estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the top fifth of earners get 70 percent of the bill’s benefits, and the top 1 percent get 34 percent. The new tax treatment for “pass-through” entities — companies organized as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, or S corporations — will mean an estimated $17 billion in tax savings for millionaires in 2018. American corporations are rewarding their shareholders with stock buybacks this year, thanks in part to their tax savings.

Link here.

How to interfere in a foreign election

American interference in the 1996 Russian election was hardly secret. On the contrary, the press reveled in our ability to shape the politics of a country we once feared. When Clinton maneuvered the IMF into giving Yeltsin and his cronies $10.2 billion, the Washington Post approved: “Now this is the right way to serve Western interests. . . It’s to use the politically bland but powerful instrument of the International Monetary Fund.” After Yeltsin won, Time put him on the cover—holding an American flag. Its story was headlined, “Yanks to the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisors Helped Yeltsin Win.” The story was later made into a movie called “Spinning Boris.”

This was the first direct interference in a presidential election in the history of US-Russia relations. It produced bad results. Yeltsin opened his country’s assets to looting on a mass scale. He turned the Chechen capital, Grozny, into a wasteland. Standards of living in Russia fell dramatically. Then, at the end of 1999, plagued by health problems, he shocked his country and the world by resigning. As his final act, he named his successor: a little-known intelligence officer named Vladimir Putin. It is a delightful irony that shows how unwise it can be to interfere in another country’s politics. If the United States had not crashed into a presidential election in Russia 22 years ago, we almost certainly would not be dealing with Putin today.

Link here.

$OEXA200R - 2006 to 2018

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Edmund Burke on the French Revolution (and Republican Legislators)

“But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.”

― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

Interesting stock market charts as of August 2018

We'll find out soon . . .

The Myth of Home Ownership and Why Home Ownership is Not Always a Good Thing

CONCLUSION

"The cultural attachment to home ownership significantly influences public policy discussions about housing. In pursuing the home ownership dream, consumers routinely ignore the financial risks associated with making this large, long-term investment in real property. Though home ownership is touted and subsidized because it helps increase jobs, boosts the demand for goods and services, and helps build prosperity, no one wants to admit that U.S. businesses need potential or existing homeowners to go deeply into debt in order to maintain high corporate earnings for U.S. companies.

Though inconsistent with the home ownership myth, the time has come for consumers to start ignoring the immediate, likely short-term, end result of achieving the status of homeowner. To force consumers to consider the long-term risks on investing in a house, home ownership subsidies should encourage renters and potential homeowners to focus on the likely long-term benefits of the investment itself. This should cause homeowners to decide whether it is in their best interest to devote limited investment funds to purchasing a house and also to consider the economic consequences of a failed investment; that is, the inability to use those funds to make other investments, and potentially losing the home to foreclosure."

Fucking brilliant!

Link here.

Hume the humane

While Hume was lying aged 65 on his deathbed at the end of a happy, successful and (for the times) long life, he told his doctor: ‘I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.’ Three days before he died, on 25 August 1776, probably of abdominal cancer, his doctor could still report that he was ‘quite free from anxiety, impatience, or low spirits, and passes his time very well with the assistance of amusing books’.

When the end came, Dr Black reported that Hume ‘continued to the last perfectly sensible, and free from much pain or feelings of distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always did it with affection and tenderness … He died in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it.’

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Hume saw human beings as we really are, stripped of all pretension. We are not immortal souls temporarily encased in flesh, nor the pure immaterial minds Descartes believed he had proved we were. Humans are animals – remarkable, highly intelligent ones – but animals nonetheless. Hume did not just bring human beings down to Earth, he robbed us of any enduring essence. Arguing against Descartes’s claim that we are aware of ourselves as pure, undivided egos, Hume challenged that when he introspected, he found no such thing. What we call the ‘self’ is just a ‘bundle of perceptions’. Look inside yourself, try to find the ‘I’ that thinks and you’ll only observe this thought, that sensation: an ear worm, an itch, a thought that pops into your head.

Hume was echoing a view that was first articulated by the early Buddhists, whose ‘no-self’ (anattā) view is remarkably similar. He also anticipated the findings of contemporary neuroscience which has found that there is no central controller in the brain, no one place where the sense of self resides. Rather the brain is constantly executing any number of parallel processes. What happens to be most central to consciousness depends on the situation.

Link here.

Democrats Must Reclaim the Center … by Moving Hard Left

This precarious balancing act helps explain why policies that would clearly benefit the majoritarian center are so often rejected as ideologically “far left;” for a centrism that seeks to balance the interests of capital is a centrism that seeks to balance the interests of the very wealthiest Americans against those of everybody else. It’s this sort of “one dollar, one vote” logic that led to Citizens United—a logic that threatens to subvert American democracy itself. For a system that justifies the wealthiest 2 percent purchasing the same political influence as the other 98 percent, isn’t really a democracy at all. I’m not saying that self-described “centrist” Democrats are any more greedy or corrupt than their progressive colleagues, but if they’re honest with themselves, they should recognize how much they have internalized this orthodox ideological bias. Indeed, this is what they mean by “pragmatic centrism”: an economic policy agenda that necessarily balances the interests of business (the few) versus the interests of labor (the many), in an attempt to best serve the interests of all. Yet as pragmatic as such an approach might at first appear, when viewed from a majoritarian perspective, the ideological center consistently fails to hold.

Link here.

Harmony - Part 1 Zhi Yi (538-597)

When entering Zen meditation the first thing which you the practitioner must do is, if you wish to enter samadhi (mental state of concentration focusing on one object) is to properly regulate the body. This must be done outside the state of meditation. Working, resting, walking, stopping, in motion or rest, whatever you do, you must in all things choose with care and discretion.

If your actions are coarse and rough, then your breath and Qi energy will follow in accord, i.e., your Qi energy will become coarse, the heart-mind will be dissipated and hard to control, and when it's time to sit in meditation you'll find it a bother; the heart will not be at peace. Because of this, even when you are outside the state of meditation, you must still use your heart-mind in a way not contrary to the "skillful means" (Upaya) of meditation.

Link here.

Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump

Overall, the model demonstrates that besides partisanship, fears about immigrants and cultural displacement were more powerful factors than economic concerns in predicting support for Trump among white working-class voters. Moreover, the effects of economic concerns were complex—with economic fatalism predicting support for Trump, but economic hardship predicting support for Clinton.

• Identification with the Republican Party. Identifying as Republican, not surprisingly, was strongly predictive of Trump support. White working-class voters who identified as Republican were 11 times more likely to support Trump than those who did not identify as Republican. No other demographic attribute was significant.
• Fears about cultural displacement. White working-class voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their own land and who believe the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump than those who did not share these concerns.
• Support for deporting immigrants living in the country illegally. White working-class voters who favored deporting immigrants living in the country illegally were 3.3 times more likely to express a preference for Trump than those who did not.
• Economic fatalism. White working-class voters who said that college education is a gamble were almost twice as likely to express a preference for Trump as those who said it was an important investment in the future.
• Economic hardship. Notably, while only marginally significant at conventional levels, being in fair or poor financial shape actually predicted support for Hillary Clinton among white working-class Americans, rather than support for Donald Trump. Those who reported being in fair or poor financial shape were 1.7 times more likely to support Clinton, compared to those who were in better financial shape

It is notable that many attitudes and attributes identified as possible explanations for Trump’s support among white working-class voters were not significant independent predictors. Gender, age, region, and religious affiliation were not significant demographic factors in the model. Views about gender roles and attitudes about race were also not significant. It is also notable that neither measure of civic engagement—attendance at civic events or religious services—proved to be a significant independent predictor of support for Trump.

Link here.

Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election

Data from a national probability sample of Americans surveyed soon after the 2016 election shows that greater adherence to Christian nationalist ideology was a robust predictor of voting for Trump, even after controlling for economic dissatisfaction, sexism, anti-black prejudice, anti-Muslim refugee attitudes, and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as measures of religion, sociodemographics, and political identity more generally. These findings indicate that Christian nationalist ideology—although correlated with a variety of class-based, sexist, racist, and ethnocentric views—is not synonymous with, reducible to, or strictly epiphenomenal of such views. Rather, Christian nationalism operates as a unique and independent ideology that can influence political actions by calling forth a defense of mythological narratives about America’s distinctively Christian heritage and future.

Link here.

Net Worth by Age Calculator for the United States

"We present here a net worth by age percentile calculator for the United States in 2016. Enter a net worth and the age of the primary earner in the household and we’ll estimate which percentile it fell into, down to the closest 1%. We’ll also provide our estimate of the number of households matching the bracket’s wealth breakpoint.

Once you select your inputs, we graph every net worth breakpoint for that age range automatically. You can choose whether or not to count the equity in any primary home in the calculation."

Link here.

Wu Wei

The Two-State Solution: An Autopsy

"Pompeo, Haley and the Israel lobby – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and allied organisations – are probably unaware of, or simply refuse to know about, the extent to which terrorism and war crimes marked the creation of Israel. Those who are told about this history dismiss it as a fabrication. What they deny or ignore is that these charges have been fully documented not only by historians, including Israeli ones, but by Israel’s own military. The point of recognizing this history is not to justify terrorism by either Israelis or Palestinians, but to acknowledge the outrageous double standard that has been applied to the two parties and has undermined the possibility of a peace accord. Without knowing that history, it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand the extent to which Israeli propaganda has succeeded in shaping a narrative about the creation of Israel that presents the Palestinians who were brutally expelled from their homes as the aggressors and the Jews as their victims. Without that history, it is impossible to understand the outrage Palestinians feel over having been portrayed as the bad guys for so long."

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"According to this double standard, my people’s terrorism is sacred, but my neighbour’s terrorism is criminal. When my neighbour renames a street after his terrorist hero it proves he will continue his terrorism even after he achieves statehood, whereas when my country elects former terrorists as prime ministers (Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir) it proves we are the greatest democracy in the Middle East. When my terrorists are killed or imprisoned, a grateful people take care of their families. When my neighbours do the same, it proves they reward terrorism, and must be denied statehood. The point is not that states behave hypocritically – of course they do. The point is that when hypocrisy is the starting point of diplomacy, you will not get peace but only more hypocrisy and violence."

Link here.

Bank Stocks Rebound as Home Prices Start to Weaken

With all of the different government programs put into place since the 2008 financial crisis to manipulate the credit markets and artificially boost home ownership, the fact of a bubble in home prices is no great surprise. Add to that the limitations on bank lending for new residential home construction and you have the perfect formula for killing the American dream of home ownership of American families.

We believe that the year 2018 may be remembered as marking the peak in both bank equity valuations and residential home prices. Residential loan default rates are unlikely to rise very quickly given the shortage of moderately priced homes, but as we note in The IRA Bank Book, bank net interest margins are likely to be as flat as the yield curve by year-end. And the embedded credit risk in the financial system will continue to build with each passing day and largely due to the conflicting policy decisions emanating from Washington.

Link here.