The current (and latest) talking point on the US-Israeli attack on Iran

 

Yeah, assholes.  Checkmate.

Sadly, knee-jerk America will elect Republicans

They'll blame Democrats, not Putin.

The war in Ukraine will result in expensive food and energy for the next three years, the World Bank has warned, intensifying fears that the global economy is heading for a rerun of the weak growth and high inflation of the 1970s.

In a gloomy analysis, the Washington-based development organisation said there was a risk that persistently high commodity costs lasting until the end of 2024 would lead to stagflation – sluggish activity combined with strong cost of living pressures.

[...]

As a result of trade and production disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Bank is forecasting a 50% rise in energy prices this year. It expects the price of Brent crude oil to average $100 a barrel in 2022, its highest level since 2013 and an increase of more than 40% compared with 2021. Prices are expected to fall back to $92 in 2023 but will remain well above the five-year average of $60 a barrel.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

In a fucking nutshell

Bingo.  

It's not just unfair.  It's unconscionable.

Fine, if that's the only way you can get Americans to want to support Ukraine and give them what they need to defend themselves.  JFC.

Perhaps we could stress, however, that Russia's war crimes are obliterating Ukraine, and Putin will not stop at Ukraine if he takes it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Christian nations unite!

Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly, which is expected to be dominated by efforts to stop rich countries monopolising drugs and future vaccines against Covid-19.

  Guardian

Good luck with THAT!

As some countries buy up drugs thought to be useful against the coronavirus, causing global shortages, and the Trump administration does deals with vaccine companies to supply America first, there is dismay among public health experts and campaigners who believe it is vital to pull together to end the pandemic.

While the US and China face off, the EU has taken the lead. The leaders of Italy, France, Germany and Norway, together with the European commission and council, called earlier this month for any innovative tools, therapeutics or vaccines to be shared equally and fairly.

“If we can develop a vaccine that is produced by the world, for the whole world, this will be a unique global public good of the 21st century,” they said in a statement.

Wait...what? We can't let that pass unchallenged. We're the USA!

Countries with major pharmaceutical companies argue they need patents to guarantee sufficiently high prices in wealthy nations to recoup their research and development costs.

Much of their research and development comes from government grants and research.

A hard-fought battle over Aids drugs 20 years ago led to the World Trade Organisation’s Doha declaration on trade-related intellectual property (Trips) in favour of access to medicines for all, but the US, which has some of the world’s biggest drug companies, has strongly opposed wording that would encourage the use of Trips.

Quel suprise.

“In general, it is a disappointment, appalling really. There was better text that was rejected,” said Jamie Love of Knowledge Ecology International. “The US, UK, Swiss and some others, pushed against the WHO taking the lead in pushing for open licensing of patents and knowhow for drugs and vaccines.

“In a global crisis like this, that has such a massive impact on everyone, you would expect the WHO governing body to have the backbone to say no monopolies in this pandemic."

I wouldn't.

Costa Rica will launch a voluntary patent pool later this month. Its president, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, said at the World Health Organization last week: “The pandemic attacks the same in each country regardless of whether you have the resources or not. It attacks people around the world in the same way,.

“Only together with multilateralism, with that sort of leadership, can we defeat coronavirus, not with nationalism and being selfish. It is the time for solidarity. It is the time to work together to show humanity the best that we are made of, the opportunity to show our brotherhood as a whole.”

[...]

Wellcome published a poll on Sunday of 2,000 people in the UK which found 96% supported the idea that national governments should work together to ensure that treatments and vaccines can be manufactured in as many countries as possible and distributed globally to everyone who needs them.

And those people don't run anything other than their own households.

“We have not been included in these discussions and have limited understanding of what exactly is being proposed, and how it is different from the various institutions already facilitating sharing of data, know-how” and intellectual property, [the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA)] said in a statement.

“Voluntary patent pools already exist and many companies are already exploring collaborations and voluntary licenses.”

[...]

“The creation of yet another new platform appears unneeded and would direct resources and energy away from key objectives. We have never needed innovation so much as now and this is probably the worst possible time to weaken intellectual property,” it said.

In other words, let us volunteer; don't regulate us.

The drugmaker Sanofi provoked outrage in its home country of France this week when its CEO, Paul Hudson, told Bloomberg News that the U.S. will get the vaccine first because the U.S. government provided funding for its development.

[...]

“We have manufacturing capacity in the U.S., Europe and all other main regions,” the company said. “The U.S. production will be mainly for the U.S. and the rest of the manufacturing capacity will cover Europe and the rest of the world.”

[...]

One of the potential vaccines that could be ready first, with the first doses as early as September, is being developed by Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

Adrian Hill, director of the Oxford institute working on the vaccine, said Wednesday during the Duke forum that the U.K. government has already spoken to the university about getting priority for the doses of the vaccine.

“We're being told in the U.K. that we've had a lot of U.K. government money, we have, the U.K. would like some doses, soon please,” Hill said. “That's going to be the response everywhere, how do you cut a deal?”

[...]

Of the eight potential vaccines that have entered clinical trials, according to the WHO, four are in China, which would pose an even greater diplomatic challenge for U.S. access compared to close U.S. allies like the U.K. Another of the eight is the Oxford vaccine and three others are developed by U.S. companies: Moderna, Inovio and Pfizer, though Pfizer is also working with the German biotech firm BioNTech.

[...]

Three global health experts, Thomas Bollyky, Lawrence Gostin and Margaret Hamburg, wrote an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association this month to warn that in the 2009 flu pandemic “wealthy nations bought virtually all vaccine supplies.”

Which is what they'll do this time, as well.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told an Israeli journalist on Wednesday that, “We’ll figure out the model for distribution when the time comes.”

  The Hill

That time has come. This attitude of waiting until we're forced to do something is why we're in the situation we are now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

IMF growth projections

Source: International Monetary Fund

Going down

Foreign Policy has an article today: The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back.  In a modern journalistic twist, the article is scarier than the title. (It would be a lot less scary if we had an administration of professionals instead of one of Trump ass kissers) 

I won't bother to excerpt the article.  Every sentence is as necessary as the next.  So, you can read it all for yourself.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Also, remember:  all money is funny money. There's nothing backing it since the gold standard was dropped in the early 30s.  The idea of balancing debits and credits for a government that can simply print money is ridiculous.  (As is the perennial political question:  How are you going to pay for it?)

I thought the Saudis were Trump's friends

Dow futures dropped around 1,000 points on Sunday as a decision by Saudi oil executives to cut prices looked ready to ignite a global price war on crude oil [in what was reportedly the sharpest decline of that resource since 1991].

CNBC reported Sunday evening that futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped nearly 1,100 points, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 also reportedly looked ready to open with losses on Monday.

[...]

Saudi Arabia's price cut looked to be aimed at retaliating at Russian officials, who on Friday declined to join the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in agreeing to a worldwide reduction in oil production in response to the coronavirus outbreak, which has slowed the global demand for oil.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And, the last straw is being drawn

China next?  The only thing keeping us propped up is the petro-dollar.  Be a shame if something happened to it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The no-tension G7

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has floated a plan at the G7 summit to defuse rising tensions in the Gulf by partially lifting the US oil embargo on Iran in exchange for Tehran’s return to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement restricting the country’s nuclear programme.

Donald Trump was noncommittal about the plan. Asked for his reaction at the summit at the French Atlantic resort of Biarritz, the president said he had not discussed the proposal with Macron, contradicting a statement from the Élysée that the G7 had agreed to support a French diplomatic initiative.

  The Guardian

I guess the UK Guardian is also fake news.

America’s differing stance on the climate crisis has been a feature of the past two G7 summits, and just one issue on which divisions were so deep that the meeting was increasingly referred to as the G6 in Quebec last year, when Trump left early.

[...]

US officials insisted the US policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran was working and had international support.

“The G7 countries all agreed the President’s maximum pressure campaign on Iran is having an impact, and that it should continue,” an official familiar with the talks said.

An American official, no doubt.

Under the 2015 joint comprehensive programme of action (JCPOA), Iran accepted strict curbs on its activities in return for tax relief.

Trump withdrew the US from the agreement in May 2018 and has since steadily increased sanctions against Iran. In response, Iran has begun gradually to break out of the JCPOA limits, increasing its stock of low enriched uranium for example, and raising the level at which it enriches uranium. Iranian forces have also stepped up the harassment of oil shipping going through the strait of Hormuz.

The other parties to the JCPOA – the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and the EU – have urged both the US and Iran to return to the agreement.

French officials were optimistic they could persuade the US that Macron’s plan was a better alternative to a drift towards a new Middle East conflict.

That's some seriously misplaced optimism.

Senior aides in Donald Trump’s entourage have accused the G7 host and French president, Emmanuel Macron, of seeking to embarrass his US counterpart by making the summit focus on “niche issues” such as climate change, according to multiple US media reports.

  The Guardian

Only in the current ultra-right-wing climate is climate change a niche issue.

Macron’s plan to heal divisions among G7 leaders in Biarritz this weekend apparently did not factor in the need to keep Trump’s aides happy too.

The spark for the fuse appeared to be lunch. Macron whisked the US president away for an impromptu meal for two on an oceanfront terrace at the Hotel du Palais. Trump initially appeared frosty but later called it “the best meeting we have yet had”.

But even as Mr. Trump bragged about what he called “a special relationship” with Mr. Macron, saying they have “been friends for a long time,” members of Mr. Trump’s administration were publicly and privately dumping on the French president and his team.

[...]

Senior administration officials said that the agenda would center too much on issues designed to play well with Mr. Macron’s domestic audience — like climate change, income and gender equality, and African development — and was engineered to highlight disagreements with Mr. Trump’s administration.

They accused Mr. Macron’s aides of ignoring pleas by Trump administration officials to focus the summit, which runs through Monday, on national security and a looming economic slowdown.

  NYT

So, that's what Fox will report, and what Trump will be tweeting soon.

[A]ccording to Mr. Trump’s advisers, the success or failure of the two-day gathering will be measured by how seriously Mr. Macron and the others address a weakening economy — something that threatens Mr. Trump’s own re-election campaign if it drags down the American economy next year.

[...]

Mr. Trump easily tires of the niceties of diplomacy. Last year, he arrived at the G7 following a Twitter tirade about tariffs with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, whom he continued to berate after leaving and backing out of the joint statement with the other leaders.

Before arriving this year, Mr. Macron said he had decided to abandon efforts to craft a joint agreement at the end of the summit, describing it as an attempt to avoid the inevitable clash with Mr. Trump. He told reporters it would be “pointless” to try to reach consensus on issues like climate change with a leader who has made his contrary views quite clear.

The two men have also recently clashed over Mr. Macron’s imposition of a digital services tax on big American tech companies. Mr. Trump has threatened to retaliate with a tax on French wine, adding to the trade tensions between the countries.

[...]

[D]own the road in Bayonne, 13,000 police officers were arrayed, firing tear gas and water cannons on Saturday to disperse protests by demonstrators opposed to globalization and other tenets the Group of 7 represents.

Meanwhile, when he has down time in his hotel, instead of focusing on the issues, Trump is tweeting shit from watching TV.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About that "crazy inverted yield curve" Trump wants to blame on the media (and the Fed) ...

...or...Recession coming!

Heidi N. Moore on Twitter

But what if the bond market's apparent malaise, the deepest curve inversion since 2007 (remember what happened then?) were signaling something darker and potentially longer lasting than a turn in the business cycle?

Indeed, the yield curve's alarm bells may be global markets' awkward attempt to put a price on the rapid loss of an intangible but deeply valuable asset: global trust in the United States as a trading partner and more generally as a leader in the pursuit of democracy and human rights.

Take note of one irony: Yes, the yield curve's inverted pattern shows a strong appetite for US government bonds when confidence in the country's political stability is waning. That shouldn't offer any comfort, however: It's merely a sign that frightened investors don't see any other safe investment alternatives to Treasury bonds yet. When Standard & Poor's downgraded US Treasuries in 2011, for instance, bond prices rallied.

The US-driven trade war, which went from counterproductive to just plain bizarre over the last week, is both a reflection of Trump's scorched-Earth strategy and a driver of the yield curve's inversion, because the longer the now multi-pronged conflict lasts, the higher the chances of an economic contraction.

Just as he was purportedly trying to negotiate a cumbersome, wide-ranging deal with China, Trump obliterated whatever smidgen of confidence might be left in his team with a single tweet, threatening new tariffs on Mexico despite a pending trade deal between the US, Mexico and Canada. He then abruptly revoked India's special trading status with the United States, further confounding the outlook.

The trade wars are arguably hitting Trump's vaunted base hardest as farmers across the US suffer the brunt of disruptions and poor consumers suddenly face higher prices on key basic goods, ranging from avocados to autos.

And trade is just one of countless policy areas where chaos itself appears to be the strategy.

  CNN

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Whaaaaa whaaaaa

It's not fair!






Pathetic fool.  Other countries should be handling their economies to favor the US.  Sure, why not?




Rise and whine.  I'll have to remember that.  He does it so consistently.

Will he lose Koch backing?

Or will he cave? It probably depends on whether Fox & Friends had time to report on this while The Most Notable Loser was watching this morning. Or whether Sean Hannity saw it and called him. He's supposed to make his announcement this afternoon.

Billionaire conservative megadonor Charles Koch slammed President Donald Trump’s announced plans to impose fresh tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in a Washington Post op-ed, arguing that such policies would do far more harm than good for the U.S., both economically and culturally.

[...]

Koch argued that the president’s proposed tariffs — 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum — will wind up hurting Americans by raising prices, effectively undoing the economic benefits Koch said have come from the package of tax cuts and reforms that Trump signed into law last year.

[...]

Corporate leaders, Koch said, should be urging Trump not to impose his proposed tariffs because “if we are to have a system in which businesses can succeed long term, policies must benefit everyone, not just the few.”

  Politico

Geez, Chuck, maybe you should have been telegraphing that sentiment before Trump was nominated.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Game on at Davos

Or, the Roman Colosseum.

Donald Trump's administration is "a danger to the world" and is attempting to "establish a mafia state", according to a speech by financier and philanthropist George Soros at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

  IB times

Actually, as I mentioned before, Trump's whining about Palestine being disrespectful to the US, does sond like mob talk. You have to wonder how any organization could function with him at the top, though.

Soros told the audience that the US Constitution, other institutions and "a vibrant civil society" are standing in the way of Trump's plans.

[...]

Soros told the audience that the US Constitution, other institutions and "a vibrant civil society" are standing in the way of Trump's plans.

[...]

The billionaire also took aim at monopolistic technology and social media companies, which "while once liberating, are now socially damaging". He said that the power to "shape people's minds" now lies in the hands of a few companies, and that those without freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. In another attack on Trump, Soros pointed to the 2016 presidential elections as an example of this.

The billionaire also took aim at monopolistic technology and social media companies, which "while once liberating, are now socially damaging". He said that the power to "shape people's minds" now lies in the hands of a few companies, and that those without freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. In another attack on Trump, Soros pointed to the 2016 presidential elections as an example of this.

[...]

One solution would be a "multi-track" approach to EU membership, in which member states are free to form coalitions of the willing to pursue particular goals in which they agree.

The EU should also drop the requirement for member states to adopt the euro, Soros said, as "I would like to see Britain remain a member of the EU or eventually rejoin it, and that couldn't happen if it meant adopting the euro".

George Soros knows infinitely more about finance than I do, but I think the idea of the Euro was not such a bad one. The problem was that it was not applied equally to all members. That's one of the things that caused Greece to fall. A euro from a Greek bank was not equivalent in strength and favor as a euro from a German bank. Greece's once finance minister who quit once Greece's president decided to go along with the EU austerity proram, does know as much - and maybe more - about finance than George Soros, and this is what he had to say:

Varoufakis: Well, imagine if in the United States you treated people from Arizona as non-Americans or as people that must fend for themselves and whose banking system is their own problem. Then you wouldn't be having the United States of America.

Brancaccio: And that's the conundrum that Europe is still in. It didn't fix it.

Varoufakis: Indeed, we created the common currency, but did not create everything else which is necessary not to make the common currency a place of shared prosperity.

[...]

Brancaccio: Just so we know a piece of the story, what did the finance minister of Germany want to do but his chancellor wouldn't let them do?

Varoufakis: Wolfgang Schaeuble, decades ago, was a committed federalist, but a combination of Angela Merkel — who usurped him and effectively stole, that's in his view, the prime ministership, the chancellorship from him, as well as the French, did not want a proper federation.

They wanted all the benefits from a common currency, but without the obligations of a federal democratic political system. Schaeuble was against that. But over the years, he became a cynical man, using the finance ministry to do that which he would have wanted to do as the chancellor of Germany.

  Marketplace

The ultimate own

thinks that the Saudis are going to pull the rug out from under the petrol dollar. Wouldn't that be a fine surprise to The Most Notable Loser?

[E]conomist Brandon Smith [...] is sure Riyadh is planning to ditch the dollar.

“I believe the next phase of the global economic reset will begin in part with the breaking of petrodollar dominance. An important element of my analysis on the strategic shift away from the petrodollar has been the symbiosis between the US and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has been the single most important key to the dollar remaining as the petrocurrency from the very beginning,” Smith wrote in an article for his website Alt-market.com.

“Prince Mohammed has also established much deeper ties to Russia and China, creating bilateral agreements which may end up removing the dollar as the mechanism for oil trade between the nations,” Smith added.

  

When the petrodollar is dumped in favor of another country's currency, we will be well and truly fucked.  Because we didn't take seriously the unsustainability of reliance on oil decades ago when we knew we needed to.

Owned by the orb.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

There Goes the Dollar

The Russian government will intensify efforts to cut the country’s dependence on US payment systems and the dollar as a settling currency, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Monday, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

“We will, of course, speed up the work on import substitution, reduce dependence on US payment systems, on the dollar as a settling currency and so on. It is becoming a vitally important,” said Ryabkov. “The US is using its dominating role in the monetary and financial system to impose pressure on foreign business, including Russian companies,” added the deputy minister.

After Washington imposed sanctions on Moscow in 2014, the MasterCard international payment system stopped serving clients of seven Russian banks without warning.

In response, the Russian government ordered the creation of a national payment system. With the support of the country's banking system, the Mir charge card was introduced in 2015.

[...]

Shortly after the new law was passed, Standard & Poor's said the measure would not affect Russia's sovereign credit ratings.

[...]

At the same time, the European Union expressed concerns the new penalties may undermine the bloc’s energy security. European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker pledged to prepare an “adequate” response and “within days” if the measure hurt the interests of European companies.

  RT

And while Trump is pissing off China, it's probably a good time for Chinese currency to take the place of the dollar in international trade.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

HyperNormalisation Convo

This @CHAPOTRAPHOUSE discussion with Adam Curtis is outstanding. Again: watch HyperNormalisation on YouTube. https://t.co/z9TwEdrHPz

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 27, 2016

Yes, this is good.

Here's the documentary:



UPDATE:
And here's a negative review of the film: Another Manager of Perceptions

I think Glenn Greenwald will have some comment on that review, so if you're curious, come back tomorrow and see if I've added anything from him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Do-Over

Back in the early months of 1998 I experienced a series of strange events, one of which was a persistent vision, if you will, saying we would have to repeat the thirties. I didn't know where it came from, but I've thought of it periodically since then. Maybe it really was a sneak peak into the future. And that future is here.

Yanis Varoufakis, ex-finance minister of Greece, offers this to us:

The establishment’s folly is causing its demise. Unable to come to terms with the economic crisis they created, they crushed the Greek Spring because they could. They pushed the majority of British families into austerity-induced hopelessness. They committed millions of Germans to mini-jobs. They conspired to keep Bernie Sanders at bay.

[...]

A Great Deflation is now gripping both sides of the Atlantic, rekindling political forces that have been dormant since the 1930s.

[...]

Donald Trump’s victory marks the end of an era when a self-confident establishment preached the end of history, the end of passion and the supremacy of a technocracy working on behalf of the 1%. But the era it ushers in is not new. It is a new variant of the 1930s, featuring deflationary economics, xenophobia and divide-and-rule politics.

Passion has returned to politics but not in a way that will help the 80% left behind since the 1970s. Passion is now fueling misanthropy. Passion is exploiting the anger of the 80% to rearrange power at the top, while leaving the 80% moribund, betrayed and divided. And it is our job to stop this. It is our job to harness passion in the cause of humanism.

[...]

The spectre of a nationalist international that is upon us (from Trump and the Brexiteers to Poland’s and Hungary’s governments, the Alternative für Deutschland, Austria’s next president, Marine Le Pen) can only be defeated by the progressive international that the Democracy in Europe Movement, DiEM25, is building in Europe.

But, clearly, Europe is not enough. Progressives in the United States, those who supported Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, must band together with progressives in Canada and Latin America, to build a Democracy in the Americas Movement. Progressives in the Middle East, those who are shedding their blood against ISIS, against tyranny as well as against the West’s puppet regimes, must band together with progressive Palestinians and Israelis to build a Democracy in the Middle East Movement.

In 1930, our ancestors failed to reach out to other democrats across borders and political party lines to stop the rot. We must succeed where the others failed [...] to form an effective progressive international and to press passion back into the service of humanism.

Carpe DiEM25.

  Yanis Varoufakis

In order to re-establish trust in the political system and bring back ‘sensible’ vote outcomes, a short-term fix would be to find political candidates who will work on behalf of the 99%, candidates like Bernie Sanders. However, given the corrupting effect of money and power, we should also explore solutions that rely less on a candidate’s good will: reforms that place more power into the hands of the people to understand and control what politicians do in the years between two electoral campaigns, so that our democracies may be ruled by the people.

  Judith Meyer @ DiEM25

Trying to Understand Brexit

I see lots of articles and opinions about the move of Britain away from the European Union, none of which indicate it's a good thing, except for Donald Trump, which makes me think it's probably a bad thing. But I'm just not totally convinced, and I think the best course is to just "Keep Calm and Carry On".

The Guardian US asked for questions from American readers on the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. Here are some of your questions, plus a few from the Guardian US staff, and our answers

In what way will Brexit affect the US?

As my colleague Dan Roberts explains, there are a number of ways Britain’s decision to leave the EU will affect the US – all of them bad. The IMF has warned that Brexit could knock half a percentage point off the output of all advanced economies by 2019, and turmoil in the stock and currency markets has already wiped $2tn off stocks and sent the pound to its lowest level since 1985. The EU could further unravel, threatening a relative anchor of diplomatic stability; US corporations may want to leave London; shared Anglo-US legal and free-market principles could be weakened internationally; and populism in the US could get a shot in the arm.

  Guardian

Of course the first question posed in this article is not about the British, but about how Brexit is going to affect Americans. And I don't buy the answer. More fear-mongering.

Knocking "half a percentage point off the output of all advanced economies by 2019" - there's three years time to work trade deals out amongst everyone in order to avoid major disruption, but I admit, I barely understand my own meager finances, let alone global intricacies. "Turmoil in the stock and currency markets" - that goes without saying, because that's the immediate effect of ANYthing that shifts the status quo. It's not infrequent for stocks to tumble and rise. How does that actually affect most Americans?

And, the pound now costs Americans $1.37, down a good deal from it's earlier rate (but it's been going down for some time).  So, isn't that a better deal for Americans if we're over there spending money?  Or American traders if they're buying British product?

"The EU could further unravel" - and it COULD hold as is.  What would be the effects if the EU did unravel?  That would be more helpful information, but still it wouldn't necessarily be what happened.

"US corporations may want to leave London" - MAY. But, surely not likely. At least not right away. Moving to another market is a huge undertaking for a corporation.  They won't be doing it willy-nilly or in fear mode. England is not going to suddenly become Pakistan. Corporations rule the world. Any that are actually doing business in London will be behind the scenes (or right out in the open) working to help stabilize the situation for their own best interests.

Internationally weakened legal and market principles? Why? Is the British government now going to cut all ties with the US or Europe? Are market principles so unstable?  Pipe me up another dream. Is this just more hacking at Jeremy Corbyn's less than neoconservative leadership? (Btw, he's in a bit of trouble as a Brexit backlash takes hold.)

And here's the big scare: "populism in the US could get a shot in the arm." Is that a BAD thing? How boldly the press denigrates empowering the people these days.

Actually, I do think  uneducated, ignorant, racist masses with power is a scary thought. But I'm not at all sure a world run by them would be worse than the one we have now where elites manipulate them into putting more power and riches into their own pockets. Maybe that's what's keeping the ignorance and racism alive.

How long could it realistically take, and is the Brexit vote more symbolic rather than just a clean break?

The process to leave the EU is meant to take two years once article 50 has been triggered. If negotiations have not concluded by then, the UK gets thrown out without a deal and trade goes back to World Trade Organisation rules, meaning the UK faces tariffs on all goods it sells to the EU. The EU could also agree to prolong negotiations.

Because that would be really smart. But then, what the EU did to Greece doesn't instill a lot of confidence in the intelligence of their leadership. Still, Britain is not Greece, and the major European countries, not to mention the meddling US, will not try to force Britain into a destructive situation.

A leaked German document suggests Berlin would drive a hard bargain in negotiations with the UK to “avoid offering false incentives for other member states when settling on new arrangements”. The document also suggests the EU would give “no automatic access to the single market”, a move obviously designed to deter other states from pushing to leave themselves.

Indeed, the EU leadership has itself in a bit of a sticky wicket regarding complaining members, but that can be attributed to their own manipulations and self-interest. Too bad they couldn't have been a little more far-sighted when dealing with Greece. MAYBE they'll be a little more careful with Britain. Or are they as short-sighted - or blind - as US elites?

Those limits may be an incentive for the next prime minister to conduct negotiations before triggering article 50, to make sure a good deal is struck without the two-year deadline hanging over his or her head. So it’s unclear how long the process could really take – years seem likely.

Indeed.  Everybody will be jockeying for a "good deal".

The EU may not play ball, for fear of encouraging separatist movements in other EU states. Far-right leaders in France, Sweden, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark have already called for their own in/out votes.

The EU will play ball, I have no doubt.  But whether they play smart or not is still a question.  Perhaps if the leaders are faced with that many other nations on the verge of voting out, they should rethink how they're running things.

But here's something I didn't realize and which this article points out: London has to approve Scotland's decision to hold a referendum on whether to leave the UK. Scotland needs PERMISSION to vote on whether they want to be ruled by London?! Sweet deal for England.

And, to end the article - or I should say bookend the article - here's the last uniquely American question presented:

Does that mean the UK may get their guns back?

No, the gun ban was a UK law introduced after the massacre of 16 children and a teacher in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996. There is no political pressure to reopen the issue, although Ukip leader Nigel Farage has called the ban “ludicrous”.

To get a thoughtful, reasoned take on Brexit, I now feel compelled to turn to Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek ex-finance minister who tried in vain to negotiate a workable deal for Greece, and he does not disappoint.

Leave won because too many British voters identified the EU with authoritarianism, irrationality and contempt for parliamentary democracy while too few believed those of us who claimed that another EU was possible.

I campaigned for a radical remain vote reflecting the values of our pan-European Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). I visited towns in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, seeking to convince progressives that dissolving the EU was not the solution. I argued that its disintegration would unleash deflationary forces of the type that predictably tighten the screws of austerity everywhere and end up favouring the establishment and its xenophobic sidekicks. [...] I argued for a strategy of remaining in but against Europe’s established order and institutions.

[...]

The repercussions of the vote will be dire, albeit not the ones Cameron and Brussels had warned of. The markets will soon settle down, and negotiations will probably lead to something like a Norwegian solution that allows the next British parliament to carve out a path toward some mutually agreed arrangement. Schäuble and Brussels will huff and puff but they will, inevitably, seek such a settlement with London. [...] However, despite the relative tranquillity that will follow on from the current shock, insidious forces will be activated under the surface with a terrible capacity for inflicting damage on Europe and on Britain.

Italy, Finland, Spain, France, and certainly Greece, are unsustainable under the present arrangements. The architecture of the euro is a guarantee of stagnation and is deepening the debt-deflationary spiral that strengthens the xenophobic right.

[...]

The only man with a plan is Germany’s finance minister. Schäuble recognises in the post-Brexit fear his great opportunity to implement a permanent austerity union. Under his plan, eurozone states will be offered some carrots and a huge stick. The carrots will come in the form of a small eurozone budget to cover, in some part, unemployment benefits and bank deposit insurance. The stick will be a veto over national budgets.

[...]

The horror of these developments, from which Britain cannot be shielded by Brexit, is the main reason why I, and other members of DiEM25, tried to save the EU from the establishment that is driving Europeanism into the ground. I very much doubt that, despite their panic in Brexit’s aftermath, EU leaders will learn their lesson.

  Yanis Varoufakis

And that's the shame of the whole thing.

While I remain convinced that leave was the wrong choice, I welcome the British people’s determination to tackle the diminution of democratic sovereignty caused by the democratic deficit in the EU. And I refuse to be downcast, even though I count myself on the losing side of the referendum.

As of today, British and European democrats must seize on this vote to confront the establishment in London and Brussels more powerfully than before. The EU’s disintegration is now running at full speed. Building bridges across Europe, bringing democrats together across borders and political parties, is what Europe needs more than ever to avoid a slide into a xenophobic, deflationary, 1930s-like abyss.

Good luck all round. The US won't be of any help. We're busy blowing up our own cart.

From Greece to Great Britain

The groundwork for the Brexit debacle was laid last July when Europe crushed the last progressive pro-European government the EU is likely to see – the SYRIZA government elected in Greece in January 2015. Most Britons were not directly engaged with the Greek trauma. Many surely looked askance at the Greek leaders. But they must have noticed how Europe talked down to Greece, how it scolded its officials, how it dictated terms and how it made rebellious country into an example, so that no one else would ever be tempted to follow the same path.

[...]

If the hard right can rise in Britain, it can rise anywhere. If Britain can exit, so can anyone; neither the EU nor the Euro is irrevocable. And most likely, since the apocalyptic predictions of economic collapse and “Lehman on steroids” that preceded the Brexit referendum will not come true, such warnings will be even less credible when heard the next time.

[...]

That such a campaign could prevail – leading soon to a hard right government in Britain – testifies to the high-handed incompetence of the political, financial, British and European elites. Remain ran a campaign of fear, condescension and bean-counting, as though Britons cared only about the growth rate and the pound.

[...]

The political effect has sent a harsh message to Europeans living in Britain, and to the many who would have liked to come. The economic effect will leave Britain in the hands of simpletons who believe that deregulation is the universal source of growth.

[...]

If the drop in sterling lasts, British exports may actually benefit. If the world gets skittish, the dollar will rise and US exports may suffer, with possible political consequences in America this fall. Otherwise, in the most likely case, the markets will settle down and British life will continue normally at first – except, of course, for immigrants.

  James Galbraith

We shall see, said Grandpa. We shall see.

By the way: what US exports?

Back to Venezuela

Brazil down.  Now Venezuela.  Funny, isn't it, that in all the reporting on the economic crises in Latin American countries there isn't any mention of the part that US banksters played in destabilizing the world economy.

In a bleak assessment of Venezuela's worsening crisis, the senior [US intelligence] officials expressed doubt that unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro would allow a recall referendum this year, despite opposition-led protests demanding a vote to decide whether he stays in office.

But the two officials, briefing a small group of reporters in Washington, predicted that Maduro, who heads Latin America’s most ardently anti-U.S. government and a major U.S. oil supplier, was not likely to be able to complete his term, which is due to end after elections in late 2018.

They said one “plausible” scenario would be that Maduro’s own party or powerful political figures would force him out and would not rule out the possibility of a military coup. Still, they said there was no evidence of any active plotting or that he had lost support from the country’s generals.

  Reuters

Hmmm. They admit there's no evidence of any plotting against Maduro, and yet they suggest possible coups and "predict" he won't last out his term. That's interesting.

Also - "unpopular leftist president" - unpopular with whom might be an informative detail.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.