Date: 18-10-2019
Source: The Wall Street Journal By M. Todd Henderson
Though Americans increasingly distrust their institutions, digital platforms are spurring them to rely on one another like never before
Trust in major institutions seems to be collapsing in America in the era of “fake news,” Russian bots on Facebook and tribal politics. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that about seven in 10 Americans say that trust in society—in government, in each other—is declining. And more than four in 10 Americans think that declining trust is “a very big problem.”
The stakes are high. Research shows a strong correlation between trust and the wealth of a society.Trust enables cooperation, cooperation enables specialization, and specialization drives productivity.
Fortunately, indicators of declining trust miss a deeper reality: While Americans may increasingly distrust many of their institutions, technology is enabling certain kinds of trust at levels seldom before seen in human history. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Elizabeth Drew is a Washington-based journalist and the author, most recently, of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall.
Assuming the US House of Representatives votes to impeach President Donald Trump, the fact remains that there are far fewer votes in the Senate than will be needed to convict him and remove him from office. But the willingness of Congress – including the Senate – to continue tolerating his dangerous conduct is now truly in question.
WASHINGTON, DC – For the first time, reasonable people in the United States have begun to speculate that President Donald Trump could be convicted by the Senate and thus removed from office. The likelihood may still seem low, but Trump’s position is weakening, and opinion polls are steadily moving against him. It is widely assumed that the House of Representatives will vote to impeach him, sending the question of his presidency to the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is needed and Republicans hold a majority. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
No one member of Donald Trump’s coterie has fallen further than “America’s mayor”
Had lexington’s 2007 incarnation been informed that the next Republican president would be a pro-gay, pro-choice, thrice-wed New Yorker, the name of Donald Trump would not have leaped to his august mind. Rudy Giuliani led the Republican primary by a big margin throughout that year. There were, to be sure, doubts about whether the former New York mayor was too socially liberal for small-town conservatives. He had once shared a house with two gay people and a Shih Tzu and, what was worse, acted in a comic skit alongside Mr Trump, that symbol of louche metropolitanism. Moreover America was not given to electing “abrasive” New Yorkers, Lexington cautioned then. But, like many others, he suspected Mr Giuliani’s dynamism and the broad support he enjoyed for his calm leadership after 9/11 and record of crime-fighting could compensate for such handicaps.
It has been pretty much downhill ever since for Mr Giuliani—culminating this week in what appears to be the worst crisis of his increasingly scandal-plagued career. In his role as the president’s old mucker and personal lawyer, he is alleged to have run a parallel foreign policy in Ukraine for the main purpose of spreading bogus allegations against Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s most feared Democratic rival. He is also reported to be under investigation—by a federal agency he once led—for breaking lobbying laws, apparently related to the same plot. Two of his business associates in Ukraine are under arrest. How much legal trouble he faces is unclear—though his decision to defy a congressional subpoena related to the Ukraine plot, for which Mr Trump is likely to be impeached, seems unlikely to help. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 09-10-2019
Source: Foreign Affairs By Weijian Shan
Everyone Loses in the U.S.-Chinese Clash—but Especially Americans
In late June, the leaders of China and the United States announced at the G-20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, that they had reached a détente in their trade war. U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that the two sides had set negotiations “back on track.” He put on hold new tariffs on Chinese goods and lifted restrictions preventing U.S. companies from selling to Huawei, the blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giant. Markets rallied, and media reports hailed the move as a “cease-fire.”
That supposed cease-fire was a false dawn, one of many that have marked the on-again, off-again diplomacy between Beijing and Washington. All wasn’t quiet on the trade front; the guns never stopped blazing. In September, after a summer of heated rhetoric, the Trump administration increased tariffs on another $125 billion worth of Chinese imports. China responded by issuing tariffs on an additional $75 billion worth of U.S. goods. The United States might institute further tariffs in December, bringing the total value of Chinese goods subject to punitive tariffs to over half a trillion dollars, covering almost all Chinese imports. China’s retaliation is expected to cover 69 percent of its imports from the United States. If all the threatened hikes are put in place, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports of Chinese goods will be about 24 percent, up from about three percent two years ago, and that on Chinese imports of U.S. goods will be at nearly 26 percent, compared with China’s average tariff rate of 6.7 percent for all other countries. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
The move, linked to repression in Xinjiang, strikes at the heart of China’s technological ambitions
FOR TWO years reports of mass incarceration have seeped out of the remote Chinese province of Xinjiang. Over 1m people, mainly Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, have been locked up in camps. Millions more live under a police state. American officials, fearful of upending trade negotiations, have dithered over a response. On October 7th, three days ahead of the 13th round of talks, they put their foot down. The Commerce Department banned American firms from selling software and hardware to 20 public-security organs. It also blacklisted eight Chinese companies whose products, it says, facilitate the Orwellian surveillance in Xinjiang.
The ban hits at the heart of China’s artificial-intelligence (AI) ambitions.The eight firms include startups working on facial recognition (Megvii, SenseTime, Yitu), voice recognition (iFlytek), digital forensics (Xiamen Meiya Pico) and chipmaking gear (Yixin), as well as Shenzhen-listed makers of video-surveillance kit (Hikvision and Dahua). Together they are worth around $75bn. In August Megvii and Yitu were designated as national champions. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, is President of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.
Driven by domestic nationalist forces and the need to save face, US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have continued to escalate the bilateral trade war, despite their shared interest in resolving it before the end of the year. To make a deal, both sides need to start taking substantive steps immediately.
NEW YORK – Now that the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China are over, it is time to direct attention back to the Sino-American trade war. That conflict may well be about to enter its endgame. Indeed, the next round of negotiations could be the last real chance to find a way through the trade, technology, and wider economic imbroglio that has been engulfing both countries.
Failing that, the world should start preparing for its rockiest economic ride since the 2008 global financial crisis.Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
The president, denying all wrongdoing, has confessed to most of what he stands accused of
Democracy in America
RICHARD NIXON denied all knowledge of the break-in and bugging of the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. Bill Clinton claimed not to have had “sexual relations with that woman”. An oddity of Donald Trump’s increasingly wild defence against a possible impeachment charge, by contrast, is that he has admitted to almost everything he stands accused of.
Even before the release of a whistleblower’s complaint that accuses him of asking Ukraine’s president, Volodomyr Zelensky, to investigate false corruption and other allegations against Joe Biden, Mr Trump confessed to having done so. A record of a phone conversation between the two presidents—subsequently released by the White House—then gave credence to an even more damaging allegation: that Mr Trump had offered Mr Zelensky a quid pro quo. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Die Zentralbank Fed muss US-Banken mit Milliardensummen versorgen, weil ihnen Mittel für das Tagesgeschäft fehlen
Es dürfte einer der merkwürdigsten Vorgänge in der jüngeren Finanzgeschichte sein: Obwohl amerikanische Banken noch immer in Zentralbankgeld schwimmen, scheint ihnen die Abwicklung alltäglicher Geschäfte Probleme zu bereiten. Das geht so weit, dass einer der wichtigsten Finanzmärkte der Welt, der US-Interbankenmarkt, nicht mehr ordnungsgemäß funktioniert.
Das Phänomen weckt schlimme Erinnerungen an die weltweite Finanzkrise vor gut einer Dekade. Der Interbanken- oder Geldmarkt ist eine Einrichtung, die der breiten Öffentlichkeit in aller Regel verborgen bleibt. Kein Wunder, handelt es sich doch um einen sehr speziellen Markt, auf dem sich Banken gegenseitig Finanzmittel für ihr tägliches Geschäft besorgen. Das funktioniert normalerweise absolut reibungslos.
Date: 30-09-2019
Source: The Wall Street Journal By The Editorial Board
Banning investment would hurt the U.S. and reformers in Beijing.
A monitor displays Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York in May.
The Trump Administration is looking for ways to pressure China to change its trade practices, but how about not hurting the U.S. along the way? The latest shoot-self-in-foot moment came Friday when word leaked that the White House may restrict bilateral U.S.-China investment. Bloomberg News reported that the Administration may also block Chinese companies like Alibaba from listing on U.S. stock exchanges.
The delisting of Chinese companies is especially foolish. American financial exchanges are sources of U.S. economic strength, but they compete in a global market. Foreign firms can choose to list in London or Hong Kong or Frankfurt as easily as on the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange. Banning Chinese companies from U.S. exchanges would merely hurt those American businesses and U.S. capital markets. The damage to the Chinese firms would be minor because investors would still be able to raise capital elsewhere. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Date: 28-09-2019
Source: The Guardian by Robert Reich
Watergate brought down a second-term president. If Trump survives and wins the White House again, all bets are off
Amid the impeachment furor, don’t lose sight of the renewed importance of protecting the integrity of the 2020 election.
The difference between Richard Nixon’s abuse of power (trying to get dirt on political opponents to help with his 1972 re-election, and then covering it up) and Donald Trump’s abuse (trying to get Ukraine’s president to get dirt on a political opponent to help with his 2020 reelection, and then covering it up) isn’t just that Nixon’s involved a botched robbery at the Watergate while Trump’s involves a foreign nation.
It’s that Nixon’s abuse of power was discovered during his second term, after he was re-elected. He was still a dangerous crook, but by that time he had no reason to inflict still more damage on American democracy.
Trump’s abuse has been uncovered 14 months before the 2020 election, at a time when he still has every incentive to do whatever he can to win. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
NEW YORK – Now that the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China are over, it is time to direct attention back to the Sino-American trade war. That conflict may well be about to enter its endgame. Indeed, the next round of negotiations could be the last real chance to find a way through the trade, technology, and wider economic imbroglio that has been engulfing both countries.