Trump’s Corporate Lackeys

Correct! Bloody opportunistic business leaders! They deserve no respect, nor their boards. (hfk)

Lucy P. Marcus

Lucy P. Marcus, founder and CEO of Marcus Venture Consulting, Ltd., is Professor of Leadership and Governance at IE Business School and a non-executive board director of Atlantia SpA.

AUG 22, 2017 Project Syndicate

LONDON – In mid-August, alt-right, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a demonstration that ended with a white supremacist driving a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring 19. President Donald Trump responded not by condemning the racist terror, but rather by blaming “many sides” for the violence. For many members of his manufacturing council and the Strategy and Policy Forum, it was the last straw. But the camel’s back actually broke a long time ago.

The first few council members who resigned were labeled “grandstanders” by Trump. But then a trickle of resignations became a wave, and Trump, apparently fearful of a full-scale revolt by the business leaders who were supposed to advise him, quickly dissolved the two economic councils, tweeting that he didn’t want to put pressure on their members.

Why Bannon Had to Go

Elizabeth Drew

Elizabeth Drew is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and the author, most recently, of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall.

AUG 21, 2017 Project Syndicate

WASHINGTON, DC – In many, if not most, US administrations, some figure emerges who convinces the press that the president couldn’t function without him (it’s yet to be a her). The indispensable aide is, indeed, one of the most well-worn tropes of the modern presidency. Karl Rove was “Bush’s Brain”; Harry Hopkins held Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s prolific White House team together; Bill Moyers appeared on a magazine cover as “Johnson’s Good Angel.” Without such a figure, the story inevitably goes, the administration would be a mess, if not a disaster.

As often as not, the trope is invented or encouraged by the particular indispensable figure. Journalists usually fall for the story, regardless of how well-founded it is: it clarifies everything, and it gives them something to write about. The indispensable aide is only too happy to reveal some dramatic story about how he saved the day, devised some particularly ingenious idea, or prevented some terrible mistake.

Don’t Forget About The Red Swan

By David Stockman, Daily Reckoning

Given the anti-Trump feeding frenzy, we continue to believe that a Swan is on its way bearing Orange. But if that’s not enough to dissuade the dip buyers, perhaps the impending arrival of the Red Swan will at least give them pause.

The chart below comprises a picture worth thousands of words. It puts the lie to the latest Wall Street belief that the global economy is accelerating and that surging corporate profits justify the market’s latest manic rip.

What is actually going on is a short-lived global credit/growth impulse emanating from China. Beijing panicked early last year and opened up the capital expenditure (CapEx) spigots at the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) out of fear that China’s great machine was heading for stall speed at exactly the wrong time.

The 19th national communist party Congress scheduled for late fall of 2017. This every five year event is the single most important happening in the Red Ponzi. This time the event is slated to be the coronation of Xi Jinping as the second coming of Mao.

Guilty Man

Nina L. Khrushcheva

Nina L. Khrushcheva, the author of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics and The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind, is Professor of International Affairs and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at The New School and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.

AUG 21, 2017 Project Syndicate

NEW YORK – In 1940, with Britain standing alone against Nazi Germany, a short book called Guilty Men was published under the pseudonym of “Cato.” Its authors were the future Labour Party leader Michael Foot, the Liberal journalist Frank Owen, and the Conservative journalist Peter Howard. Guilty Men was a jeremiad that called to account the men – including Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, then still members of Winston Churchill’s cabinet – whose appeasement of Adolf Hitler had helped to bring the United Kingdom to the brink of annihilation.

Today, it is again time to name names, and not only in the UK, where democracy is writhing with Brexit fever. In the United States, a fetid paranoia has taken hold, with the white supremacist aggression in Charlottesville, Virginia over the August 12 weekend – where a peaceful counter-protester was killed and many were injured – just the latest manifestation.

America’s Chauvinist-in-Chief: The True Face of Donald Trump

Date: 19-08-2017
Source: DER SPIEGEL by Klaus Brinkbäumer

U.S. President Donald Trump is a racist and a hate preacher.
It’s time to stop trivializing the immense damage he is causing.

A KKK rally

Ninety years ago, in the New York borough of Queens, around 1,000 members of the Klu Klux Klan clashed with police. Fred Trump was among those arrested. His case never reached trial because times were different back then. But Fred Trump raised his son Donald to believe that he belonged to a white elite. When asked about the ugly KKK episode in 2015, the presidential candidate answered, „This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened. This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It’s a completely false, ridiculous story.“ Does this mean that something can only be true if it winds up in court?

In 1973, Donald Trump was sued because he preferred renting his 14,000 New York apartments to white tenants rather than blacks. It was documented and proven. Applications were marked with a „C“ for „colored“ and sorted out. Black people were rejected and white people were given the apartments only minutes later. During the 1980s, casino operator Trump considered black employees to be lazier than whites. He said he feared blacks would steal from him. In April 1989, when white investment banker Trisha Meili was raped in Central Park and beaten until she fell into a coma, four blacks and a Latino were arrested. „Bring back the death penalty!“ read the full-page newspaper ads Trump took out in response. A court convicted the men, who were innocent, and they were only released from prison years later.

After the Bannon Presidency

Date: 19-08-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Trump can’t govern with a Breitbart coalition. Does he see that?

Stephen Bannon

The most important fact about Stephen Bannon’s resignation Friday from the
White House staff is that he essentially fired himself. His departure gives President Trump a chance to revive his listing fortunes, if he draws the right lessons.

The triggering event for the dismissal was Mr. Bannon’s interview with the left-wing American Prospect in which he trashed his colleagues and undermined Mr. Trump’s policy toward North Korea. After that show of insubordination, either Mr. Bannon had to go or Mr. Trump might have lost his new chief of staff John Kelly, among others. Mr. Bannon has been telling people privately that he never expected to last even this long, so maybe he was trying to get fired to fulfill his prophesy.

Mr. Bannon will get historical credit for getting Mr. Trump elected, joining the campaign late with Kellyanne Conway and giving it more discipline and focus. At the White House, he was among the advocates for Mr. Trump’s two main achievements—deregulation and Neil Gorsuch’s elevation to the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump has no grasp of what it means to be president

Date: 17-08-2017
Source: The Economist
Subject: After Charlottesville

U-turns, self-regard and equivocation are not what it takes

DEFENDERS of President Donald Trump offer two arguments in his favour—that he is a businessman who will curb the excesses of the state; and that he will help America stand tall again by demolishing the politically correct taboos of left-leaning, establishment elites. From the start, these arguments looked like wishful thinking. After Mr Trump’s press conference in New York on August 15th they lie in ruins.

The unscripted remarks were his third attempt to deal with violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. In them the president stepped back from Monday’s—scripted—condemnation of the white supremacists who had marched to protest against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, and fought with counter-demonstrators, including some from the left. In New York, as his new chief of staff looked on dejected, Mr Trump let rip, stressing once again that there was blame “on both sides”. He left no doubt which of those sides lies closer to his heart.

Are Nazis as American as Apple Pie?

James Q. Whitman

James Q. Whitman is Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, and the author of Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law.

AUG 17, 2017 Project Syndicate

NEW HAVEN – Is the United States threatened by Nazism? The short answer is no, notwithstanding the frightening events in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend.

In Charlottesville, the home of the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, white nationalists, separatists, neo-Nazis, members of the Ku Klux Klan, and other likeminded groups rallied behind Swastika banners and marched in a Nazi-style torchlight procession. By the end of the next day, there had also been thuggish violence. One white supremacist went so far as to drive a car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one and injuring 19 others.

The groups responsible for the violence in Charlottesville reveled in US President Donald Trump’s election last November. And Trump has often hesitated to disavow them; during the election campaign, when former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke publicly backed him, Trump was scandalously slow to reject Duke and his followers. Trump also repeatedly incited violence during the campaign, while evincing a bottomless affection for authoritarian leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

US Presidents: History

Source: Facebook

The End of Asia’s Strategic Miracle?

Richard N. Haass

Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author of A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order.

AUG 16, 2017 Project Syndicate

TOKYO – It is too soon to know whether and how the challenge posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs will be resolved. But it is not too early to consider what that challenge could mean for a part of the world that has in many ways defied history.

The moniker “Asian Miracle” goes some way toward conveying just how extraordinary the last half-century of economic growth in many Asian countries has been. The first economy to take off was Japan, which, despite a slowdown in recent decades and a relatively small population, remains the world’s third-largest economy.

China’s ascent began a bit later, but is no less impressive: the country achieved over three decades of double-digit average GDP growth, making it the world’s second-largest economy today. India, soon to be the world’s most populous country, has lately been experiencing an impressive 7-8% annual rate of GDP growth. And the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations averaged some 5% growth in recent years.