[Skuj]

“I did declassify. If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it.”

Trump has said a lot of really dumb things in his life, but this one might top them all. (Never mind that it is simply not true - as usual.)

And, I'm really happy to see that Desantis is not going to get a free ride with this migrant debacle.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Skuj

“I did declassify. If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it.”

Trump has said a lot of really dumb things in his life, but this one might top them all. (Never mind that it is simply not true - as usual.)

 

Any chance he'll use his powers to declassify the JFK and Roswell files?

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

But hey, magical tax cuts (aka trickle-down voodoo economics) are coming...

The tax-cut zombie attacks Britain

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

Britain is in a very difficult economic position. The British economy, like the U.S. economy, seems to be seriously overheated, with substantial amounts of inflation driven by high domestic demand. Unlike America, it is also facing the full force of Europe’s energy crisis, driven by the efforts of President Vladimir Putin of Russia to use a shut off of natural gas to bully the West into abandoning Ukraine.

So many of us expected Britain’s economy to go through a rough patch in the months, or maybe even years, ahead. What few foresaw, as far as I can tell, was a policy zombie apocalypse.

I’ve written a lot over the years about zombie economic ideas — ideas that have failed repeatedly in practice, and should be dead, but somehow are still shambling around, eating policymakers’ brains. The pre-eminent zombie in American economic discourse has long been the belief that cutting taxes on the rich will create an economic miracle.

That belief is still out there: Even as its infrastructure was collapsing to the point that its largest city no longer had running water, Mississippi tried to raise its economic fortunes with … a tax cut. But in America, zombie economics has lately been overshadowed by zombie beliefs about election fraud, the impact of immigration and so on.

Britain, however, doesn’t (yet?) have an equivalent of the MAGA movement. What it does have is Liz Truss, a new prime minister who seems to be an ardent believer in economic fallacies from the Thatcher/Reagan era.

Before I get to the economic plan that has produced chaos in Britain’s bond and currency markets, let’s talk about the myths that seem to have inspired her.

The important point to understand is that there isn’t a serious debate about the proposition that tax cuts for the rich strongly increase economic growth. The truth is that there is no evidence — none — for that proposition.

Of course, people on the right, raised on the legend of Saint Reagan, believe that his tax cuts did wonders for the U.S. economy. But the data don’t agree.

Reagan did drastically cut taxes on high incomes. Here are Congressional Budget Office estimates of the average federal tax rate paid by the top 1 percent:

 

The ups and downs of elite taxes
Congressional Budget Office

Note both the steepness of the Reagan cut and the rise under Clinton, both of which are relevant to the story.

So what did happen to economic growth? It’s important to distinguish between the long-run trend — which was what tax cuts were supposed to improve — and business cycle fluctuations. Here’s real G.D.P. from the early 1970s (when for some reason growth slowed around the world) until the end of the Reagan era, measured on a log scale so that a straight line represents steady growth:

 

What Reagan didn’t achieve
FRED

I’ve also included a red line showing the growth trend over the whole period. What this picture suggests is that underlying U.S. growth was pretty much unchanged through the 1970s and 1980s. The economy slumped during recessions — especially the double-dip recession of 1979-82 — and grew rapidly during recoveries, but by the end of Reagan’s reign it was more or less exactly where you would have expected it to be if you extrapolated the trend from 1973 to 1979.

And let’s extend the picture through the 1990s:

 

Remember the Clinton bust? Neither do I.
FRED

Bill Clinton effectively undid the original Reagan tax cuts, amid many predictions of imminent disaster. The economy actually grew somewhat faster than it had under Reagan, and by the end of the Clinton years it was above the level it would have reached if you just extrapolated the 1973-1989 trend.

There have also been multiple state-level examples. There was the Kansas tax-cut “experiment,” which was a flat failure. There was Jerry Brown’s California tax hike, which some on the right called “economic suicide,” but somehow failed to prevent an economic boom.

Finally, there’s evidence from abroad. As Martin Wolf of The Financial Times points out, since Margaret Thatcher, Britain has been relatively deregulated and low tax compared with its European neighbors. Its relative economic position hasn’t changed much at all.

So there is no reason anyone who isn’t a right-wing apparatchik, sealed in a hermetic intellectual bubble, should believe that tax cuts for the rich are the answer to what ails us.

continues...

[The Soup Nazi]

...cont'd

Yet on Friday, the Truss government announced plans for big tax cuts, notably a 5 percentage point cut in the tax rate on top earners and cancellation of a planned tax hike on corporations. Unusually, these plans were described as a “fiscal event” rather than a budget, allowing the government to avoid presenting any detailed fiscal or economic projections — projections that would surely have been either dire, ludicrous or both. But officials still insisted, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary, that their tax cuts would do great things for the British economy.

Obviously, I don’t believe their assurances. More important, neither do financial markets. Interest rates soared on the prospect of increased government borrowing, while the foreign exchange value of the pound plunged.

Either of these market movements would, on its own, have been a signal that investors don’t think the Truss government knows what it’s doing. But their combination is especially ominous.

You see, when advanced countries run big budget deficits, we normally expect their currencies to rise. That’s because we expect their central banks to raise interest rates to offset the inflationary impact of the budget deficit, and these higher interest rates tend to attract increased foreign investment. That is in fact what happened under Reagan, where a surging budget deficit — caused by tax cuts and increased military spending — led to a very strong dollar:

 

When deficits strengthened the dollar
FRED

But right now, British markets aren’t acting like those of an advanced country. They are, instead, behaving like those of a developing country, in which investors tend to see budget deficits as a sign of irresponsibility and a harbinger of future policy disaster.

The markets may be overdoing it. Britain isn’t Argentina, and it surely has the economic, the administrative and, I think, the political capacity to turn things around. But the fact that markets are treating it as if it were Argentina shows just how extraordinary a crisis of confidence Liz Truss has managed to create within days of moving into No. 10 Downing Street.

[Skuj]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...mp-qanon-song/

There was a time when this would cause mass outrage and completely disqualify someone from running for office ever again.

But here we are in 2022. Another day in Trumpworld.

[!@#$%!]

meloni's coalition "a clear win"

salvini in there does not bode well for europe, but a majority of italians approve of the euro they need to pay their debts anyway, so we'll see how things go... one small plus here is that meloni is anti-putin.

meanwhile... marcos in the philippines talking about buying russian oil???

-

and kwarteng doubling down on his tax cuts even after the shellacking the pound took last week. he promised "more to come".

but how can you cut taxes and increase subsidies at the same time? only he knows.

also with his flat tax the rich get to keep a lot more, while the poor keep a couple of hundred pounds a year.

the bank of england just increased rates again 50 bps to fight inflation, but tax cuts and subsidies are inflationary, and currency devaluation is inflationary. also brexit is inflationary. are people just going to "keep more" of an eventually worthless currency? 10x0=0...

in the end he's either going to prove to be a revolutionary genius or break the british economy... or maybe they'll bring in someone else to do an emergency reset before that happens.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Skuj

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...mp-qanon-song/

There was a time when this would cause mass outrage and completely disqualify someone from running for office ever again.

But here we are in 2022. Another day in Trumpworld.

At least now I know "the FBI has designated [QAnon] as a domestic terrorism threat".

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

and kwarteng doubling down on his tax cuts even after the shellacking the pound took last week. he promised "more to come".

but how can you cut taxes and increase subsidies at the same time? only he knows.

also with his flat tax the rich get to keep a lot more, while the poor keep a couple of hundred pounds a year.

the bank of england just increased rates again 50 bps to fight inflation, but tax cuts and subsidies are inflationary, and currency devaluation is inflationary. also brexit is inflationary. are people just going to "keep more" of an eventually worthless currency? 10x0=0...

in the end he's either going to prove to be a revolutionary genius or break the british economy... or maybe they'll bring in someone else to do an emergency reset before that happens.

And the guy is an economic historian! You can't make this crazypants shit up...

ETA: As the saying goes, trying the same thing again with the same variables and expect a different outcome is a definition of insanity.

[choc e-Claire]

Italy is why women's rights are bad.

[_tunic_]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

or maybe they'll bring in someone else to do an emergency reset before that happens.

here are a number of candidates ...

 

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by _tunic_

here are a number of candidates ...

 

hahahahaaaaaaaaaa

i meant as chancellor (of the exchequer)

but yeah...

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

And the guy is an economic historian! You can't make this crazypants shit up...

ETA: As the saying goes, trying the same thing again with the same variables and expect a different outcome is a definition of insanity.

i saw that he "read classics at oxford". very "yes minister". why didn't he study math instead lol.

Originally Posted by choc e-Claire

Italy is why women's rights are bad.

i thought it was iran... but i'm waiting to see what happens in italy, the prognosis for the coalition is not a good one. salvini will likely throw a hissy fit very soon, because meloni's voters used to be his. can he stand it and behave himself? who knows with that guy.

[!@#$%!]

 

not to make light of this enemy action on the nordstream pipeline but of course what else...


I can't stand it, I know you planned it
I'm gonna set it straight, this Watergate
I can't stand rocking when I'm in here
'Cause your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear
So while you sit back and wonder why
I got this fucking thorn in my side
Oh my God, it's a mirage
I'm tellin' y'all, it's a sabotage

So, so, so, so listen up 'cause you can't say nothin'
You'll shut me down with a push of your button?
But you, I'm out and I'm gone
I'll tell you now, I keep it on and on

'Cause what you see you might not get
And we can bet, so don't you get souped yet
You're scheming on a thing that's a mirage
I'm trying to tell you now, it's sabotage

Why

Our backs are now against the wall?
Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage
Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage
Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage
Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage

I can't stand it, I know you planned it
I'm gonna set it straight, this Watergate
Lord, I can't stand rockin' when I'm in this place
Because I feel disgrace because you're all in my face
But make no mistakes and switch up my channel
I'm Buddy Rich when I fly off the handle
What could it be? It's a mirage
You're scheming on a thing, that's sabotage

[_tunic_]

Google translation of an article I just read, shocking. Imagine being dragged out of your house to be forced to join the military, and then you have to buy your own gear, and ask you mom or wife or whomever for tampons!

Mobilized Russians have to buy everything themselves for the front: 'We only have ammunition, use tampons for bullet wounds'

The mobilization of at least 300,000 reservists has caused a lot of panic in Russia. Moreover, there is almost nothing in the military depots for men who go to war. Images show that the conscripts first have to purchase almost all necessary items themselves before they can go to the front.
KVE 27 Sep. 2022

Many Russians flee the country for fear of being drafted. But those who cannot escape the mobilization also have to buy everything themselves in some places to be ready for battle.

Belarusian news channel "Nexta" has shown remarkable images of a military rallying point in the Altai region of southern Siberia. There, a representative of a military unit tells the summoned men that there is nothing to distribute but uniforms and ammunition.
First-aid kit

“We're on our own for the rest,” he said gloomily. They are therefore asked to buy everything that can be useful at the front, including sleeping bags, medicines and tourniquets (pressure bandages). “Remove turnstiles from the car's first aid kit,” is the striking recommendation.

The representative also recommends providing tampons to stop bleeding from a bullet wound and using sanitary napkins as insoles. “Men, don't laugh, but ask your mother, wife or daughters for sanitary towels. You're going to need all of this. I know this from my comrades at the front. It is also rainy weather now.”

"Men, take care of yourselves," it concludes.

[The Soup Nazi]

Oh, dude, total bummer:

House Jan. 6 Panel Postpones Hearing, Citing Hurricane Ian

I was ready for the season premiere of my favorite soap!

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

not to make light of this enemy action on the nordstream pipeline but of course what else...

"Sabotage" was also "dedicated" to Dubya by Mike D in that brilliant film Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! The song works for any "evil-doers"...

[Skuj]

Oh please!! Oh please!!

https://thehill.com/regulation/court...oting-systems/

I want to see all of those idiot motherfuckers asses sued right off.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Skuj

Oh please!! Oh please!!

https://thehill.com/regulation/court...oting-systems/

I want to see all of those idiot motherfuckers asses sued right off.

And no Dr. Pepper for them! NEXT!

[Skuj]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

And no Dr. Pepper for them! NEXT!

Yer gonna splain that one to me, right?

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Skuj

Yer gonna splain that one to me, right?

Are you saying you're not aware of DR. PEPPER POWER CHUGGER SIDNEY POWELL?

https://youtu.be/89SeeYjpiuc?t=157

OH MAN that does NOT get old! There was no reason for whoever edited the interview to keep the whole chugging, but that sir or ma'am deserves a comedy medal!

ETA: YouTube URL corrected.

[!@#$%!]

i do not like this forecast. i do not like it at all

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...orecast/house/

sure it's what to be expected of a midterm election. but in the current circumstances, it's downright ominous.