Dear Naked Capitalism Reader,
Friends, spring is here, and so the sequence of forsythia, daffodils iris, roses, and wildflowers begins anew. Other cycles are less gratifying: Cycles of Covid, a new round of war, upcoming elections. Still, Naked Capitalism is here to cover and clarify it all -- with your help, dear readers. Here are our favorite stories for this month. Enjoy! | | Major Stories 04/14/22  Post by Yves Smith, Twitter Re-Ban of Scott Ritter, Kafkaesque Support of Impersonator, Is All About Anti-Russia Propaganda. "Scott Ritter has the misfortune to be articulate, well-reasoned, and tenacious in staking our officialdom-offending views. That has put him on Twitter's permanent shit list. We'll recap his current must-read article on Consortium News describing in painful detail why his second ban this month is on obviously fabricated charges. And to add insult to injury, Twitter has allowed a Scott Ritter impersonator to set up shop, despite that clearly violating Twitter's own policies as well as identity theft laws in New York, where Ritter lives, and California, where Twitter is headquartered. ... By way of background, the former UN weapons inspector was one of the loudest, most persistent, and effective critics of the bogus 'WMD in Iraq' claim, which was the basis for our invasion. Ritter has now been making the rounds, mainly on non-mainstream leftish shows like CN Live! Greyzone, Maverick Multimedia, and the Antiwar Coalition as well as what is stereotyped as the bro-ish libertarian right, such at The Duran and Gonzalo Lira. Oh, and he has the temerity to still appear on the verboten RT."
Pat comments: "Not that I am saying he is, but If being inaccurate is grounds for being banned on Twitter when will we see Fauci, Walensky, Neera Tanden, David Brooks, Larry Summers, Thomas Friedman, the Washington Post and NY Times, Gwyneth Paltrow, any Kardashian, Scientology, and so on banned? How many hucksters are raising funds for nonexistent charities? Isn't that a bigger problem than contrary analysis of a war? If he weren't a threat to the obvious misinformation being put forth to support America's proxy war, he could sell snake oil all day long. Think about it."
04/07/22 Post by Michael Hudson, Michael Hudson: The Dollar Devours the Euro. "It is now clear that the New Cold War was planned over a year ago, with serious strategy associated with America's perceived to block Nord Stream 2 as part of its aim of baring Western Europe ('NATO') from seeking prosperity by mutual trade and investment with China and Russia. As President Biden and U.S. national-security reports announced, China was seen as the major enemy. Despite China's helpful role in enabling corporate America to drive down labor's wage rates by de-industrializing the U.S. economy to China's benefit, the latter's growth was recognized as posing the Ultimate Terror: prosperity through socialism. It is that clash of economic systems – socialist industrialization vs. neoliberal finance capitalism – that always has been the great enemy of the rentier economy that has taken over most nations in the century since World War I ended, and especially since the 1980s. In this New Cold War against China, the U.S. strategy was to pry away China's most likely economic allies, especially Russia, Central Asia, South Asia and East Asia. The question was, where to start the carve-up and isolation."
DJG, Reality Czar comments: "'What exactly is in this for Europeans?' This is the question that I still cannot resolve. It is obvious that the US is only concerned with the Five Eyes, which means that for the U.S. administration, Europe is England (and only England). German gets a nod now and again. I don't understand at all the enthusiasm for war among the EU's Mediterranean countries, which means mainly Spain, France, and Italy. They are places where Americans go on vacation–doesn't George Clooney live in one of them? They are already being written off–yet they are agreeing to being subordinated."
04/14/22 Post by Yves Smith, Financial Times Screeches at China's 'Propaganda' for Sticking to Zero Covid Policy. "It's sobering to see multiple examples every day in the press that those in the West who fancy themselves as in charge have lost their minds, drunk on arrogance and provincialism. Today's example is a new story in the Financial Times that berates China (although as you will see 'berates' is too mild a word) for daring to stick to its zero Covid policy. Worse, the pink paper depicts China's policy as 'propaganda' as opposed to 'policy'. ... It's painful to have to make obvious points: since when does the UK have a vote on how China conducts its internal affairs? And the health of its citizens is an internal affair. The fact that all sorts of Western companies located manufacturing operations their or contract for essential components or inputs was a business decision. In the early 2000s, I though it was crazy for any non-Chinese company to invest in China due to the risk of expropriation (which actually has happened quite a lot, just not in the way I envisaged, via intellectual property theft). So for US and European companies and their media lackeys go into a meltdown over their excessive commercial exposure to a country that does not prioritize profit the way they do is rich."
wolfepenguin comments: "As for what the average person in Shanghai is thinking, well, I have two friends in lockdown, and their experience is worlds apart. Part of the problem with any lockdown in China comes down to the quality of the community leaders where some are amazing and others are beyond incompetent with I suspect most in the middle. So, one friend was fine, and she got her deliveries and lockdown was inconvenient while the other suffered quite a bit where his community leader went missing in action. But things have gotten better from what I'm told, so part of it is the early mess associated with a fast lockdown (which you kind of have to do by both speed and secrecy as letting people know would mean they would try to leave the city and thus spread the virus)."
04/25/22 Post by Lambert Strether, Biden Administration's Shambolic Position on Covid's Airborne Transmission Renders Their 'Personal Risk Assessment' Absurd. "As readers know, 'Covid is airborne' ('Ten scientific reasons in support of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2'). Unfortunately, it doesn't seem possible to get the White House to adopt this messaging, which in addition to simplicity, has the great merit of being true ... The White House, apparently, prefers to speak through its actions, doubling down on Vax-only by holding its very own superspreading event, hailed as a paragon of 'thoughtful' risk assessment ... (Wen's 'new normal' is a virtually psychotic dystopia, given that 'living with Covid' implies Long Covid, as well as vascular and neurological damage, both in 'mild' cases.) I don't see how it's possible to be 'thoughtful' about risk without a collectively agreed upon theory of transmission, a theory the Biden Administration resolutely refused to provide; it's like being 'thoughtful' about fire safety when phlogiston and oxygen are competing paradigms."
Verifyfirst comments: "'Covid-19 was third leading cause of death in the United States in 2021, CDC reports' ... These are just the 'official' numbers–I'm going to guess heart disease and cancer–the two causes shown as causing more deaths–are orders of magnitude more accurately counted. 'More than 415,000 people died from Covid-19 in 2021, while about 605,000 people died from cancer and about 693,000 people died from heart disease'. It's really not much of a stretch to think Covid, including Covid-induced deaths down the line–if accurately counted, was in fact #1. Not to mention the much larger disability numbers. And yet, no one cares. It's apparently more dangerous than polio ever was, but if a case of polio pops up in a remote village in Pakistan, WHO is still today all over it and it makes international news. Huh? My own rule of thumb is–if it kills less people than Covid, I no longer have to care about it. And that pretty much eliminates everything–childhood illnesses, car crashes, gun violence, food poisoning–lets stop wasting resources trying to fight all that stuff, cuz who cares? Not us, obviously."
04/23/22 Post by John Helmer, The Ukraine War Clock Is a Time Bomb – It Blows Up On November 8, US Election Day. "If you understand the war in the Ukraine as the US operation to fight to the last Ukrainian for as long as required to save the Democrats at the November election and conceal the most incapacitated president since Woodrow Wilson's stroke in October 1919, how well is it going? And if you understand the war as the Russian operation to defeat the NATO attack against Russia through the Ukraine, and its neighbours, what is the parallel answer? In Washington, the war has steadied President Joseph Biden's falling approval rating. If not for the war, Biden's job approval on inflation and jobs, the direction of the country, and immigration would be crushing the small hope remaining that the Democrats can stave off the loss of both the House of Representatives and the Senate on November 8, and preserve their defence against the rising approval for Donald Trump's re-run for the presidency in 2024. Biden is desperate for Ukrainian and Russian blood to keep flowing; and European too, if need be. ... In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin and the Stavka have completed their reassessment of Phase-1 of the campaign. As Putin told Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in his report on the Battle of Mariupol on Thursday, 'we have to prioritize preserving the lives and health of our soldiers and officers…. There is no need to penetrate these [Azovstal] catacombs and crawl under these industrial facilities. Seal off the industrial zone completely.' Putin explicitly identified the same territorial objectives as he had announced them on February 24 — 'our people in Donbass [to] live in peace and to enable Russia, our country, to live in peace.' "
mrsyk comments: "Hard to see this strategy bearing much success for Team Blue come November. It doesn't seem like Ukraine's plight carries much weight with the average citizen. For instance, in the deep blue college town next door few of the DNC provided 'Black Lives Matter' lawn signs that litter the landscape like discarded Red Bull empties have been converted to the 'I Stand With Ukraine' or the head scratching 'Thank You Poland' signs. Very few. Have the American public become desensitized to 'Russia, Russia, RUSSIA!'? Maybe the DNC is having a 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' moment. Should we worry about the possibility of a domestic false flag event on a 9/11 scale? Our political masters have form in this department, and have shown that they will do just about anything to cling to power."
Continuing Themes 04/20/22 Post by Yves Smith, CDC Delenda Est. "This humble blog has said from the get-go that the CDC's primary role is to be a data shop, and incoming chief Rochelle Walensky needed to make fixing that a top priority. Given the CDC's dependence on state public health agencies for many key inputs, Walensky should have sought their public health leaders out immediately, either inviting them to Atlanta or going out to meet them. No such outreach occurred. Had Walensky shown interest in their needs and impediments, and either gotten funding for them in the huge CARES package, or offered CDC resources and templates to shore up their efforts, it would have helped increase accuracy, timeliness and completeness of reporting. It is particularly frustrating to see the CDC only now take up the obvious idea that the UK implemented in 2020: of large-scale (100,000 each) population-wide testing (I believe swabbing as well as blood tests) every five to six weeks to determine disease prevalence. For instance, these so-called REACT surveys enabled the UK to estimate, based on the rate of decline in antibody levels, that immunity from infection lasted only about six to eight months. The second fresh outrage is the CDC's Emily Litella 'Never mind' on masks in airplanes and airports."
VietnamVet comments: "The ideology that got rid of the New Deal and shattered western democratic nation states has a very simple theological base. The only thing that matters is money. The public is of no consequence. The start of World War III dropped the deaths of a million Americans and the grief of nine million families down the rabbit hole. The revolving door makes money for Insiders. It is good for them. The problem is that the laws, regulations and messaging that protect the public health have been trashed. The Ukraine-Russia War, Climate Change, and Coronavirus Pandemic are all exploding because these catastrophes are extremely profitable to people inside the bubble who can't imagine that they will ever be adversely affected by their avarice. Only a Reformation that throws out this corrupt amoral theology can save the West from collapse."
04/24/22 Post by Lambert Strether, Complex Eligibility Requirements, Much-Beloved of Liberal Democrats, Are Lethal When They Take the Form of Medicare Co-Pays and Deductibles. "Readers will recall I regularly lambaste liberal Democrats for their love of complex eligibility requirements (which function (a) as a Jobs Gaurantee for credentialed gatekeepers, and (b) as an opportunity for endless moralizing about who is worthy of government assistance, and how much). Well, today I get to do a happy dance, because an interesting paper — sadly, a year old — from the National Bureau of Economic Research crossed my Twitter timeline (via; source): from Amitabh Chandra, Evan Flack, and Ziad Obermeyer, 'The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing,' Working Paper 28439. Turns out that complex eligibility requirements are even worse than I imagined they would be (and liberal Democrats more culpable).Readers will recall I regularly lambaste liberal Democrats for their love of complex eligibility requirements (which function (a) as a Jobs Gaurantee for credentialed gatekeepers, and (b) as an opportunity for endless moralizing about who is worthy of government assistance, and how much). Well, today I get to do a happy dance, because an interesting paper — sadly, a year old — from the National Bureau of Economic Research crossed my Twitter timeline (via; source): from Amitabh Chandra, Evan Flack, and Ziad Obermeyer, 'The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing,' Working Paper 28439. Turns out that complex eligibility requirements are even worse than I imagined they would be (and liberal Democrats more culpable)."
anon y'mouse comments: "Democrats appear to want to divide the Worthy from the Unworthy, so that they can't be blamed for helping the Unworthy. Crumbs but only for those who prove that they probably already have some they've managed to scrounge up with ingenuity. Like Biden's recent plan to only help those student debtors on Income Based Repayment who've managed to make payments, because not making payments (being too poor to do so) means you are a failure that should go away and drop dead. The 'market' has weighed your heart and decided that you should be cast into the concrete wilderness. This maintains the Dems street cred as trying to 'help' people, while making sure that so few actually get help that it it is almost of zero material difference. Oh, and while employing bureaucrats to help them write more reports about who they are 'helping'."
Business/Finance 04/15/22 Post by Nick Corbishley, The Global Fertilizer Shortage Is Already Causing Havoc in Latin America. "Russia, as is now common knowledge, is the world's largest exporter of fertilizers. Those exports are being impacted by surging energy prices, Western sanctions and the Russian government's decision, in mid-March, not to export a string of products, including fertilizers, to so-called 'unfriendly' countries. While Peru is not on that list, its imports of fertilizers have nonetheless been severely impacted. The National Convention of Peruvian Agriculture (Conveagro), which represents the interests of agricultural unions and agricultural producers' associations, has warned the country's acute fertilizer shortage could cause food production in Peru to fall by as much as 40% in approximately three to six months' time. What little supply is coming in costs 410% more than the normal price, according to Conveagro's president, Clínico Cárdenas. Conveagro has been warning the Castillo government about tight fertilizer supplies for the past five months, says Cárdenas. Global fertilizer supplies were already under serious pressure long before the Ukraine conflict began. In a meeting with the Deputy Economy Minister and Minister of Agriculture in November Cárdenas was told a solution would be found within eight months, but he says that 'so far nothing has happened.'"
Samuel Conner comments: "I wonder if the high prices for Nitrogen fertilizer will eventually drive up the prices of sustainable alternatives, such as seed for clover and other Nitrogen-fixing ground covers and the corresponding inoculants."
04/08/22 Post by Nick Corbishley, As Bilateral Trade Between Mexico and US Hits Record High, Diplomatic Relations Sink to Lowest Point in Decades. "That Democrats are now calling on the Biden Administration to sanction a handful of lawmakers in its neighboring country for daring to set up a pro-Russian group is illustrative of just how clumsy and heavy handed US foreign policy has become. In its attempt to bully countries into supporting the economic war against Russia, the U.S. is not only showing total disregard for the sovereignty of so-called allied countries, it is (as NC reader PlutoniumKun recently put it) burning up a lot of goodwill and credit in the process, even in potentially sympathetic countries. Mexico is the U.S.' second largest trade partner, after Canada. And trade between the countries has never been more robust. In 2021, bilateral trade between Mexico and the U.S. was worth $661 billion, the highest amount on record. ... But diplomatic relations between the two countries are at a multi-decade low. As I reported in the article, 'US-Mexico Relations Hit New Low Over Russia-Ukraine Conflict,' Washington's already strained relations with Mexico deteriorated further at the end of March after AMLO refused to endorse sanctions against Russia. Like most governments in Latin America, Mexico has condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine but refuses to join the pile on to sanction the country. Matters were hardly helped when the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar instructed Mexican lawmakers that Mexico could never have close diplomatic ties with Russia."
Susan the other comments: "It sounds like AMLO is invoking Mexican sovereignty above foreign investment rights. As a bottom-line argument that has to prevail (sovereignty) because trade agreements are sovereign documents. And when ISDS overrules sovereignty it destroys the very thing that created it (so very neoliberal). Besides which AMLO is the best Mexican president to come along in my memory. And it also sounds like the Mexican people are voicing their preferences in favor of AMLO's government. I certainly hope so. Since the recent revelations about Burisma and all the crap that has gone down in Ukraine I'm not very impressed with John Kerry any more. We can be sure if Mexico is now plagued with 'terrorists' it will be funded by the US State Department. I can imagine that China would happy to help Mexico because they have a good trade relationship."
04/18/22 Post by Yves Smith, CalPERS Consultant Global Governance Advisors Recommends Further Overpaying Grossly Underperforming CalPERS Staff. "CalPERS is singlehandedly making a case against government by doing precisely what libertarians allege: abusing their control of public funds by overpaying themselves for shoddy work. As we will explain in more detail, CalPERS' new compensation consultant, Global Governance Advisors, is enabling the giant pension fund's staff in misappropriating from beneficiaries via the device of fundamentally and pervasively flawed pay benchmarking. The biggest fail is benchmarking CalPERS against private fund managers, without making adjustments for the considerable benefits that CalPERS employees get by working for a public pension fund, the biggest being that it's virtually impossible to fire them once they get past probation. The second is not recognizing and allowing for the fact that the sort of fund management that CalPERS is doing is not high-skill active management, but lower-skilled running of index funds (which let us be clear actually does take skill) and choosing third-party fund managers…with the assistance of consultants…begging the question of the value added by CalPERS employees. The third serious lapse is not acknowledging the elephant in the room, that CalPERS is underperforming even peer and considerably smaller public pension funds. Since CalPERS has low turnover and adverse selection bias (the underperformers have every reason to stay since they can't be fired and they won't be called to account at CalPERS), the effect of this or any scheme that benchmarks off private fund managers will be to pay even more for underperformance."
Thomas Ganow comments: "Hope they do not break it this is a chunk of my retirement income like Social Security that I will rely on for as many years as my life lasts???"
Other Politics 04/18/22 Post by Jerri-Lynn Scofield, Jaishankar Calls Out Europe's Selective Concern on Rules-Based Order. "Jaishankar, a career diplomat before being a member of the government chooses his words carefully and comports himself with dignity (behavior no longer common nor expected in encounters between ministers from different sovereign states). Yet as become increasingly obvious since the shambolic U.S. pullout last summer from Afghanistan, followed by the announcement of the AUKUS security pact last September, and even moreso as India has attempted to steer a neutral course in policies towards the US and Russia (in spite of repeated U.S. bullying): India's no longer kowtowing to anyone. Verbally or otherwise."
ChrisPacific comments: "Looking at the quotes from Indian and Russian diplomats and comparing them to US statements, it strikes me that the US is starting to sound more and more like North Korea in diplomatic terms. North Korean statements generally sound like they were written by an angry 12 year old boy. The US isn't quite there yet, but it's about on par with, say, an angry 16 year old."
Science and Technology 04/22/22 Post by Nick Corbishley, The Russia-NATO Cyber War Is Escalating Fast. "Fears are rising that the boundaries of the cyber war between Russia and NATO could soon spread beyond Europe. Eight cybersecurity authorities from the so-called 'Five Eye' nations (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) released a joint statement on Thursday warning that more malicious cyber activity is on the way as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to undermine geopolitical stability. Before we look at the statement in any depth, an important five-pronged caveat is needed: • Both the US and the UK are among the primary antagonists in NATO's ongoing war with Russia; • They both have significant offensive cyber war capabilities of their own; • US intelligence agencies, at Obama's behest, have drawn up a list of potential overseas targets for cyber attacks; • Both countries have surreptitiously conducted vast surveillance programs, targeting not only their own populations but also citizens and government leaders of other countries; • The world right now is in the grip of the biggest information war of this century. As such, any information coming out of the Five Eyes' intelligence services should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. "
Thuto comments: "If anything the threat situation is the exact reverse and its Russia that should be fortifying its systems against possible Western cyber attacks. Let's not forget that at the beginning of this conflict a report was making the rounds that suggested that over 150k volunteer hackers and cyber experts had been mobilized around the world to launch a cyber war against Russia, and we saw evidence of this when Russian government websites, banks and media outlets like RT and Sputnik came under persistent DDOS attacks. With the level of mistrust between adversarial nations and geopolitical blocs at an all time high, the era of truly global enterprise software companies that deliver mission critical applications for governments, corporations, military and intelligence services, aviation, backhaul telecoms capacity etc. may be over. For nations considered great powers, the prospect of foreigners owning the core technology that makes 21st century nation states function and that can be turned off with the click of a button by an adversary is a bona fide national security risk, that's why Putin himself recently ordered the Russian government and associated agencies to rid themselves of foreign made software within five years."
Literary and Lifestyle 04/17/22 Post by Jerri-Lynn Scofield, Spring Is Here: 324+ Daffodils (and Counting), 33 Tulips, and One Simnel Cake. "The pandemic has largely confined us to quarters, so I've spent lots of time gardening, tending and reviving plantings. Our back garden was once very shady, overshadowed by a neighbor's huge maple and with our own three-trunked river birch as its centerpiece. Each tree became diseased and had to be cut down, leaving us with a very sunny space. Last summer, I added some new plants, and divided and rearranged existing ones. The front garden gets full sunshine during the spring, but then becomes shady when the massive oak tree overhead fills out with leaves. My husband constructed some large planters – very large planters – which I've filled with lenten roses and heuchera; roses, daffodils, and tulips; and other plants and bulbs that should appear throughout the summer. Some of last summer's herb plants survived the winter: rosemary, sage, bay. I'll soon add to those. Although I expect food supply issues to arise this summer, I've decided not to rip out the existing plants and replace them with vegetables. I have plenty of indoor space for storing food and I've been stockpiling extra supplies instead. ... As soon as I finish this post, I'll start putting together our Easter dinner. It'll be just the two of us this year and we'll have ham, which I'll glaze with balsamic vinegar and serve with a mustard sauce. My husband loves roast potatoes, so there will be plenty of those. I parboil them and then carefully toss them into hot fat bubbling in the oven – using dripping, or sometimes duck or goose fat (which can be strained and reused on the next special occasion). Also, we'll have some carrot puree with fresh dill that's lurking in the fridge, and I'll roast some asparagus, to serve with horseradish butter."
John Zelnicker comments: "There are few things better than good friends, good food, good drink, and beautiful flowers. May all of you associated with NC as staff or commentators enjoy an abundance of all of these. My mother used to sell bulbs for the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women every year and we always had loads of gorgeous flowers in the yard. I haven't tried bulbs myself, but I'm waiting impatiently for my front yard meadow of wildflowers to really get going. The first small flowers are out, but the bulk of the crop is just getting started. Another month or so and it should be in full flower. I intend to send pix to Lambert if it looks good enough. Instead of an Easter dinner we, of course, had a Seder with all of the traditional foods and my mother's latkes were delicious. I have fond memories of those evenings."
And another thing….
04/23/22 Basil Pesto comments: It's a source of constant bewilderment that the reality of Living With Covid hasn't sunk it for the Youngs (among whom I count myself) yet. It really couldn't be simpler. The current plan is for everyone to be infected with SARS2 1-4 times a year. This will probably be the plan for about another two years until the penny drops that this is a spectacularly braindead idea. The fact is: if you're infected with SARS2 1-4 times a year, the probability of Extremely Bad Shit Happening will approach 1 – and I suspect no amount of Vitamin D, Zinc, Vaccine or Ivermectin is going to be able to stave that off. Doubt this all you want, say 'well we just don't know what's going to happen!!', etc. we know enough ... Respirators (masks) absolutely suck, and I hate that they are now a necessary mainstay in my life. Yet they remain among the easiest and most effective ways to avoid infection in any given situation, and therefore of preventing Extremely Bad Shit from happening. It's truly staggering to try and get one's head around the degree of suffering that awaits us, all unnecessary, all avoidable, yet now inevitable thanks to a Goebbelsian propaganda campaign of astonishing efficacy. So, yes, the youngs are no longer being forced to wear masks, but anyone who actually recognizes what is at stake recognizes that, whether by force of law or not, they will remain mandatory for years to come unless you want to maximize your risk of a life curtailed and with an abundance of pointless suffering in the meantime. While waves will have peaks and troughs, the virus will never be 'in decline' in any meaningful sense of the word while R0 is allowed (encouraged!) to stay above 1. The threat is omnipresent. The virus is relentless. | |
And that's the way it is - April at Naked Capitalism. We hope you've enjoyed these comments and posts as much as we've enjoyed selecting and arranging them. Thank you for giving us your time and attention.
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