[Counter Punch] The ascendance of Wall Street, and of a managerial bureaucracy (PMC) more generally, largely explains the political realignments that have been playing out in the U.S. Beginning in the 1970s, the American political class made decisions at the behest of business interests and oligarchs to restructure the U.S. economy in ways intended to shift the balance of political and economic power towards capital. Finance was, and still is, the method of affecting this transfer of power. However, the current epoch of finance capitalism has run its course. Its logic has been lost. The threats to the neoliberal order are now internal to it.
Bi-partisan claims that China is a growing economic and military threat to the U.S. places economic competition within the national frame that American capitalists have spent the last five decades arguing is no longer relevant because of globalization. This posture of a unified national interest follows several decades of American industrialists cum financiers doing everything they can to concentrate wealth and power for themselves. Now, having done so, the frame of ’nation’ is being opportunistically reasserted to claim a unified national interest to oppose ’foreign’ competition. However, China didn’t pass NAFTA and China didn’t bail out Wall Street.
(Vanderluen) In this episode, we sit down with Craig Harrison, a former sniper in the British Army. Craig takes us through his career including his first kill, his most dangerous mission, and how he broke the world record for the longest kill.
[Reuters] While some technology stocks got a boost Friday after a disappointing U.S. jobs report, some portfolio managers say that blow-out earnings from several large technology companies over the last few weeks are not enough to keep making outsized bets on the sector.
Instead, those fund managers say that they are continuing to rotate into value and cyclical stocks - whose fortunes are closely tied to economic conditions - in anticipation that the economic recovery will be longer and more gradual than originally anticipated.
The notion that the U.S. jobs recovery has not yet peaked was reinforced by data from the Labor Department on Friday that showed U.S. employers hired far fewer workers than anticipated. The lower-than-expected job gains are likely to keep the Federal Reserve's accommodative measures in place for an extended period, economists said.
#2
The slow but steady rotation out of growth and into value stocks started 6 months ago.
For growth stocks, their underperformance will last a decade.
#3
Thing is, if you can talk somebody into buying a trash stock (or anything) from you, the price of the stock goes up. Not the value.
See Greater Fool Theorem.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/08/2021 21:48 Comments ||
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#1
The video seems to completely skip over the war against Pyrrhus of Epirus -- an heir to a successor kingdom who led armies against Rome for the Italic cities that did not want to submit to Roman rule. That would have been Rome's first encounter with troops drilled by Greek/Macedonian veterans, and, tellingly, English took "Pyrrhic victory" from the results of those battles.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
05/08/2021 1:01 Comments ||
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#2
Very nice series thank you
Posted by: Unosing Scourge of the Platypi2169 ||
05/08/2021 4:29 Comments ||
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#3
The biggest advantage was that the smallest Roman unit was more like an individual Lego™ block. The smallest phalanx unit was a "file" of men, one behind the other, from a minimum of four (the Spartans were ferocious enough for this) to a normal to a more normal eight deep. Rearranging files was like shuffling a bundle of spaghetti in your hand --- not something you want to do in combat.
#4
Rome had to re-learn maneuver during Second Punic War.
I forget which battle, and I don't have my books handy, Rome defeated a Greek/Macedonian army simply by a parade demonstration. The Greeks, on paper a fair match, seeing themselves outclassed in command discipline, surrendered without a fight.
What a lesson learned at Cannae, where Hannibal's Spanish and Gallic members, born and raised and successful in maneuver, were up armored with captured Roman equipment, were able to scrum and maneuver.
These lessons must have been passed down enough for Caesar's Gallic and German Campaigns.
[American Thinker] For Democrats, the ideal world is to have three castes — Big Government overlords who know everything and benevolently do the central planning; a cadre of loyal Big Corporate cronies who share their technology and silence their critics; and...peasants — a huge class of people, every last one of whom is dependent on the government for bodily survival. Beggars, after all, are easiest to please, which is the surest means of creating permanent blocs of Democrat voters. Hard work and individual initiative, after all, are for kulaks — hoarders, wreckers, saboteurs, and counterrevolutionaries, as Stalin, more or less, used to say.
That's what's behind the far-left notions of universal basic income, which is a favorite of the Democratic Socialists of America crowd, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Based on the past several stimulus packages passed, complete with small packets of "stimulus" cash handed out to the public through the IRS, they've been pilot-fishing this idea for about a year now and getting ready for bigger things.
Just one problem: Nobody wants to work anymore. Huge labor shortages are appearing in the workforce, with most economists attributing the problem to government stimulus payouts, including supplemental checks for the unemployed. That makes it more attractive not to work than to actually work. Work under such conditions is for suckers. And small businesses in particular, hardest hit by the coronavirus, as well as the ugly prospect that they can capriciously be shut down again while bigger corporate rivals won't be, are looking at a multiple-whammy on the labor front. If the COVID shutdowns didn't get these small businesses, this labor shortage brought on by stimulus handouts will.
Issues and Insights has an excellent write-up of how the labor shortage is happening based on Democrat policies. That isn't the only bad Democrat policy driving the labor shortage; another is Joe Biden dropping all requirements for receiving welfare, returning to the multigenerational model of welfare as a lifestyle choice, promoted by the Democrats.
Fortunately, one by one, the red states are starting to notice. Better still, their governors are saying "no."
#1
"Just one problem: Nobody wants to work anymore. Huge labor shortages are appearing in the workforce, with most economists attributing the problem to government stimulus payouts, including supplemental checks for the unemployed." So true. I see it every day. Supply line stock outs, back orders and such. Within 24's hours ODs occur after "stimulus" received. These people just do not care. White women and they report liberal women are among the worst. Over 50% have serious mental issues. Years on meds such as for ADD and OCD. Major effort to maintain a stable workforce. They just don't show up for work.
#2
It is a highly rational decision to not work when you are being paid 50% or 100% more to not work. As soon as this money disappears, people will go back to work. It's not about "wanting" to work. It's about being able to turn down essentially free (to you) money. Not many people will do that. Even knowing that it's better for you (mentally and physically) to work, and better for society as a whole for you to work, turning down a government subsidy to sit on your butt and get paid more than a day's work could give you is an extremely hard sell.
#3
Almost every business in my small town has a now hiring sign in the window. some are closed on weekends or close after 5PM. It will only get worse.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/08/2021 8:29 Comments ||
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#4
The inclination to chronic indolence is as old as humanity. It just used to be that the gummint didn't make it a viable way to go via confiscatory taxation and politically motivated redistribution.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/08/2021 10:09 Comments ||
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#5
Working is a learned behavioral trait.
Use to be the penalty for not learning how to work, was death in its many natural ways.
Then came the safety net.
Then came the hammock.
And now, with these 21st century children, they were taught they were expected to work, but not why. That is the failure of the previous couple of generations, who were probably not sure why either, when you could just hippie or disco out, pay off the credit card, and others would worry about stuff like space travel, or engineering, or construction.
So these kids, already on the fence about why, are naturally inclined to why not work?
And through their teens they were promised golden apples, Staycation, Funemployment, Food and Shelter Gimmies for the unemployed, shoot, like the drug lifestyle we have a program for that too.
So all these little parakeets, raised by parents who were encouraged to reject the millions of years of proven generational growth, overexposed to anti-social media as a babysitter/nanny/teacher/guild master, only know how to ding a bell for a treat, sit on a perch, and say, "I'm a pretty bird!" when whistled at.
#6
The old sci-fi stories used to be about how everyone had to scrape by after the "old ones," who knew how to keep everything working, died off. Who's going to write the sci-fi story about people finding it hard to get by because their phones and social media have stopped working?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/08/2021 12:36 Comments ||
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#7
We could ask my liberal friends who poo-poo'd Subway's Report/Warning, "Ugh, who would want to work Subway anywayz, gah."
[ENGLISH.AAWSAT] Between Leb ...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... ’s establishment and the 1980s, the contention between Christians and Moslems over the country’s political framework had two extremes: hinting at division and federalism by the former and demands for Arab unity or unity with Syria by the latter. However, alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk... both have reservations about Lebanon that must be dealt with peacefully, through a delicate balancing act, mastery of the art of lying, a blend of modern and clannish political practices, and constant efforts to reduce both sides’ willingness to resort to violence.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/08/2021 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[17 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
