Scotty Rants

Here's Why America Just Went Bankrupt and All Our Savings are Gone!!!

Scotty Kilmere's been an auto mechanic for 50 years and his car videos can be quite entertaining, informative, and humorous. Apparently, he found out about the National Debt. It's 34 Trillion dollars, which is 34,000 Billion dollars (trillion is just another word for "many"). He says it's unsustainable, on account of how they keep running it up by a couple trillion every year. He's not too fond of electric cars, either.

Foreign nations sell us cars (and steel and lots of other stuff) and buy US government debt. They call this an "industrial policy." DC politicians like this because they can dish out money and not raise taxes. Wall Street likes this because they can sell foreigners our assets. Banks like this because the dollar is the world trade currency backed by American Real Estate -- which foreigners can buy as a safe haven when things go bad. It's good for everyone but American workers.

He's down on Capitalism, which he confuses with stupidity, and calls Communist China a Capitalist nation. Maybe, but it is not a free-market economy. They practice Crony Capitalism or, if you prefer, State Capitalism (Fascism). 

The Modern Madame Missionary

Drinker's Chasers - Oh No! She-Hulk Season 2 Cancelled

The crowd discusses the difference between the classic "She-Hulk" comic book and the Disney+ attempted "feminist sitcom" reinterpretation that fell flat.

I can do anything better than you

I didn't watch the show or read the comics, which allows me to be objective. In my objective opinion, the Disney+ creators (Jessica Gao et. al.) are doing missionary work for the woke religion.

Traditionally, missionaries go to where their fellow believers are to get money and then go to where the heathens are to make converts. Repeat as needed. Such inventions as the internet, zero interest rates, and rampant financial speculation make it possible to do this at scale and at a distance (limiting risk and discomfort while improving pay) -- but the basic approach remains.

For quite some time the Wealth of the USA has been concentrated in the hands of women -- the sort of fact that is sometimes called "an inconvenient truth," but not in this case since it is never mentioned. Earlier in that period, their wealthy Husbands would die at sixty (thank you, big Tabaco) and they would live to 85, sipping red wine and attending charitable functions. Their considerable wealth, however, would be managed by men to produce the best returns -- while often promoting the interests of men (expanding industry, for example). These days, it is managed by women, oftentimes to promote the interests of women (specifically, the daughters of the well-to-do).  This is labeled "social justice" and has acquired the trappings of a secular religion combating an evil "them" that strongly resembles working-class white males who read comics (it's where the heathens are). When Steve Jobs (the scion of a working-class family) died his widow became a modern-day Joan D'Arc -- a fortune being mightier than the sword. Multiply this a thousandfold and we get all this ESG nonsense.

Money, Money...Money, Money

It's all good until you make a loss -- and during a period when the Fed was underpinning an economy rife with speculation, it was all good. When the missionary work starts shrinking your assets (and no one likes a shrinking asset), the whole approach deserves a re-think.

Call me Chato has a more professional take.

Better or Badder?

The CCP's Olympic Backsliding

We Need To Discuss This China Economic News

In the 1980s I read that the USSR's rate of capital investment was growing yearly and way higher than in the USA, and I thought "Uh-oh for us." Then I read that all that capital investment was producing a negative return -- that they weren't just running on a treadmill to get ahead, but running on a treadmill and falling behind -- and I thought "Uh-oh for them." As regards Communist China, have we transitioned from the "Uh-Oh for us" stage and into "Uh-Oh for them?"

The Chinese leadership blamed political reform in the USSR for the collapse of the communist regime and vowed not to make that mistake. This is like blaming the cancer on the desperate remedies used to slow its spread. Now they've tossed that politically convenient "two systems" pledge (allowing limited political and economic freedom) onto the Ashheap of Chinese History. What desperate measures will Xi Jinping use to avoid that same fate?

Zeihanism

The Breakdown of the Republican Coalition (Trump's Fault?) || Peter Zeihan

As an aside, incumbents should declare the current horrendous budget deficit as part of their re-election campaign expenses.

As for Peter's screed, yeah. I don't know. The anti-Trump crowd is looking a little bonkers -- and that includes almost all of DC. The "outsider" candidate usually has an advantage. When Democrat Progressives are out of power they run as visionaries, painting a bright picture of the future -- which is best not examined too closely because everyone has a different vision of the future. For a Republican, it helps to be a governor who will bring common sense to running an out-of-control Washington when run by visionaries who are mucking up the present. No more gas ranges for you!  It's probably worth five points in each case (I should mention I don't know what I'm talking about).

The Donald ran as an outsider who became an insider (standing on the stage with Dr. Fauci was enough). He's since been re-outsided. In fact, the establishment would cast him into eternal perdition if they could (and are still trying). Recently, I joked that Democrats want convicts to vote and Republicans want to elect one President.

The Democrats were also the cool party. It really had nothing to do with their candidates and everything to do with their control of culture. Lately, it seems Nurse Ratchet has taken over their nanny state and Hollywood sermons are falling flat. Could be a long-term problem for them if Conservative anti-woke becomes the next fad. They can say Trump wants to control access to abortion but they want to control everything else -- and is forcing an "abortion choice" really out of the question? (They used to argue abortion saved money on Welfare and cut down on crime and, anyway, 90 percent of humanity is excess baggage on Spaceship Earth and is best disposed of. Don't worry, Gaia will sort them out.) 

I think Peter's confusing Business with Wall Street. Wall Street will support Biden (a trillion dollars buys a lot of love) but small to medium-sized businesses are thrown into chaos by the massive expansion of the regulatory state. Trump will give them the good stuff without a lot of the bad.

The Military and national-security-minded voters have every reason to go with Trump. The Obama faction made a lot of left-leaning appointments (the CIA director voted for a Stalinist as his third-party choice) and leaked their political hackery to progressive journalists (Traitor Trump!).  This coalition could be an inch wide and an Inch deep but quite loud (or, if you prefer, outspoken).

Oh, yeah, and it's the economy.

The Material is there, but is the Heart of Russia Willing?

The Ukraine War & the Battle of Avdiivka || Peter Zeihan

Will Putin ever tire of his War of Attrition?

Time was the Peasants would have four or five kids expecting to lose a few to one or two of the four horsemen.  When you have one son the calculations change.  If they are drawing heavily from the minority populations -- who might not be pleased by that approach -- and run out of convicts, they may find that war of attrition has become a threat to the regime -- though stopping so far short of the mark is not necessarily the better option.

Thanks to Putin, many of the folks who wanted the Soviet Union to stay together now want the Russian Federation to fall apart. If China gets Vladivostok -- which they claim -- then the US should take the Kamchatka Peninsula and the tiny bit of Russia that lies to the north of it and some of those islands to the south (we can make it all a National Park).

China hits Parkinson's Wall

 50% Crash: Shocking Reports on Wages, Land & Debt | Chinese Economy |

Tony, on his China Update YouTube channel, gives quite level-headed assessments of the Chinese economy. So if he headlines "Shocking Reports," then the reports are shocking to, you know, level-headed commentators. Which doesn't include me. For a while I've thought a few "lost decades" (an extended period of slow growth) going forward was the best-case scenario for China.

Back in 1964, my ninth-grade glee club ushered at a lecture by C. Northcote Parkinson, a humorist, satirist, and inventor (discoverer?) of Parkinson's law. Here it is, as far as I can remember:

1. Bureaucracies expand, regardless of the amount of work.
2. Officials seek to multiply subordinates and neutralize rivals while creating work for each other.
3. Work expands to fill the time available.

Well before Hong Kong returned to China I gave it 20 years (out of the agreed-upon 50) as an international financial center. The CCP wouldn't immediately kill the golden goose because, after the first Cultural Revolution, it needed the eggs. Over time, the "private economy goose" would grow into a rival to the CCP's official economy, where inefficiency is in the self-interest of those in charge. Add in the shake-up and uncertainty at the top of the CCP -- the start of a second Cultural Revolution? -- and stemming the flight of international capital is not a high priority (if it's a priority at all). This is not a peaceful period of "Work Expands" but an ongoing  CCP purge and "Survival Demands."

Economists can propose but Parkinson's law will dispose.

America, After Argentina

Argentina, After America || Peter Zeihan

Peter provides the conventional thinking of the deep-state with a leavening of common sense. His attitude toward Trump reflects this. His comparison of Trump and Peron is off the mark only because it misses the point.  The Obama/Clinton deep-staters tried to frame Trump as a Russian spy. I was never a Trump fan -- I thought him a bloviating braggart (or, more politely, one accomplished in the art of bragging). But a spy? Com'on. Plus, the accusations came from hacks who are highly paid professional liars. It didn't bother me during the campaign. After all, they were trying to keep hold of the many trillions of dollars that flow through DC every year and, as importantly, exercise the power to regulate everything. That kind of power is well worth the lies (apparently, we are still supposed to believe them). If Hillary could have pulled off an Evita, she'd have done so with song and dance.

What did the Donald want to do as the Prez?

1.  Cut illegal immigration and increase legal immigration.
2.  Put tariffs on China.
3. Rebuild our Military. 
4. Pass the Republican tax plan. 
5. Cut some of the more ridiculous regulations.

Sorry, that is not a Peronist program -- in fact, it was a rather moderate return to the political norm after a left-wing administration. The tariffs on China are still in place, and the military still has its budget. What's the Obama-Biden "not at all Peronist" program? They have deliberately re-havoced the southern border for their own political purposes while wildly growing government spending. They have ballooned the national debt and are obsessively regulating everything.

Meanwhile, the Clinton-Obama Democrats use the government to go after the political opposition -- but it ain't Peronist when they do it. Yeah. Sorry. Peron is the "new normal" in DC and it's not Trump's doing.