SeventyTwoTrillion

Here's two pieces that describe and explain the current state of the Chinese economy. I strongly encourage you to read it. It's very good.

Orikron:

I'll probably make it next week's COTW. I was considering either Ethiopia, Chad, or South Africa for the African pick, and I was just like "There's some interesting/tragic stuff going on in Chad but I just don't know enough about it; I don't think the ICJ genocide case will result in much; and at least Ethiopia is relatively regionally relevant being both a new BRICS member and pretty close to the Red Sea (which is a trend one might notice a trend with all these five new additions)

Of the five new members, Ethiopia is the one I know least about. Iran is obviously its own thing, great anti-imperialist force with some internal issues due to sanctions and western intelligence pressure. The UAE is obviously a gulf monarchy oil hellscape, as is Saudi Arabia. Egypt is a can of worms with the comprador Sisi there, but with key control over the Suez Canal, and their economy is doing pretty badly. But Ethiopia? I know that the GERD is a thing, I know of the Meneliks and not much beyond that, I know their geography (the famous highlands and the rift valley there), and... uh... that's basically it.

There won't be a third set of institutions.

I was thinking along the lines of the African Union (or some other alternative to it), or regional organizations (like a less shitty version of ECOWAS or CARICOM). Obviously you could have both a hypothetical BRICS+ alternative to the IMF (which the NDB is still far from being, of course) and regional organizations, it's just that I think that degree to which power is distributed between them in a more multipolar arrangement would change based on these kinds of decisions as they come along in the years to come.

Like, "Oh, China has our backs in our dislike of Israel so we feel fine giving them observer status/doing more deals with us/etc in our new regional organization" vs "China is just abstaining (or even voted down) on this critical issue, so while we still oppose the hegemonic US more, we want more regional power that is less influenced by countries that don't share our views."

In any case, the initial trial would be to see if there is a plausible case for genocide not to see if Israel has committed genocide.

Fair enough.

I've of the opinion that the ICJ case won't get the required votes, but it's kinda whatever regardless. Like:

1. ICJ gets the required votes. Israel will have "officially" committed genocide. Nothing happens. China and Russia establish themselves as the leaders of the periphery.

2. ICJ doesn't get the required votes. Israel will not have "officially" committed genocide. Nothing happens. China and Russia will have degraded their popularity in countries with significant Muslim populations, but the alternative is the United States. Further worldwide disbelief in the power and validity of global institutions, accelerating the decline of Western hegemony.

This whole thing is gonna be won on the battlefield, not the courts. It's basically just a test to see how serious Russia and China truly are at this point, and thus to what extent developing countries will need to form their own institutions independent of both the United States and Russia/China.

Gaza continues to fire missiles at Tel Aviv, as Hamas hasn't yet gotten the memo that they're meant to have been defeated by Israel.

The weekly update ain't here. I'm going to be honest, though: not a shitload has really been happening. The reason why I stopped doing daily briefings after Tuesday last week wasn't exhaustion, but because I had like, at best, 3-4 articles of any interest to share on any given day.

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The Country of the Week is Ethiopia!

As mentioned in the preamble, feel free to post or recommend any material related to Ethiopia, whether from a thousand years ago or yesterday. You can post it anywhere in the thread, but you can also reply to this comment if you wish.

If you're feeling particularly ambitious and want homework, you could take on any or all of these questions (no reward, but I'll be very proud of you):

• Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
• What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
• What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
• What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
• How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
• What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
• If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
• Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?

The previous country was Haiti.

This is our Geopolitics Reading List so far! Please chime in with suggestions!

General Theory:

• Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson.
• Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, by John Smith.
• Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini's 'Dialectics of Dependency' Goes beyond Marx's 'Capital', by Andy Higginbottom.
• Capital Volume 3 Lecture Series, 32 videos, 10-15 minutes each, by Andy Higginbottom.
• World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, by Immanuel Wallerstein.
• Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, by Radhika Desai.
• Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, by Radhika Desai.

Canada:

• Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, by Tyler Shipley.

Chile:

• 1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity (I cannot personally find an online version).
• Santiago Boys Podcast, analyzing Allende's government and Cybersyn.

Lebanon:

• A History of Modern Lebanon, by Fawwaz Traboulsi.

United States:

• Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala.

Venezuela:

• Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People, a longform article by Steve Ellner.

Next thread here.

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It's alright. I prefer doing a lot of reading all at once as that's what I find it easiest to put in my schedule, rather than actually doing 6-7 pages every day and then putting the book down again. So perhaps that will also work out for you.

Even in the worst case scenario, you can just start reading whenever it's convenient for you (whether that's in a week or in six months) and you'll have the threads to look back on at least. If anybody right now is like "god damn it, I'm behind like 20 pages now and it's just gonna get worse and I can't catch up and--" then that is your brain tricking you, as the reading is challenging and it might not wanna do it. You can in fact do it and you don't have to "give up" and try again a year from now when the threads reset - you can just postpone it a few weeks or months for when you're in a better/less busy space. And think about how great it will feel at the end when you have actually read and (hopefully) understood Capital and have become an undisputed Marxist, no ifs, ands, or buts!

gone but not forgotten

feels a lot like "this is the first time in my entire life that I've had an opinion that differs from the fascist state propaganda line and so am extremely confused about how to even formulate what I want, so right now I'm just limited to the ideological and mental tools at my disposal"

vaguely similar to Russian peasants protesting outside of the Tsar's residence due to difficult conditions, but phrased like "Oh, our lovely father, our great ruler, please save us from these terrible things that are happening!" when those terrible things are happening because of the Tsar's actions (or at least he isn't doing anything to mitigate them). they might get to something meaningful eventually. they also might not, and have to have a Palestinian state forced upon them at gunpoint.

FAIR: Media Obsession With Inflation Has Manufactured Discontent

2023 is over, and with it, the great inflation surge of the last few years has essentially come to an end. As the progressive economist Dean Baker trumpeted shortly before Christmas, “This Economy Has Landed, We Are at the Fed’s Target” (Beat the Press, 12/22/23). Inflation is now at 2.6%, according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, and is trending further downward. Remarkably, since the Fed began raising interest rates in the spring of 2022, unemployment has maintained a historically low level of below 4%.

Contrast that with the US’s last experience with an extended period of elevated inflation. That was the double-digit inflation of the late 1970s/early 1980s, which the Fed fought by sending unemployment skyrocketing—from 6% in 1979 to a peak of nearly 11% in 1982. With inflation tamed in the fall of 1984—down to 4.3%—President Ronald Reagan declared “Morning in America.” At the time, the misery index, a rough gauge of societal suffering that sums inflation and unemployment, clocked in at nearly 12%. Today, the same index sits around 7%. If the fall of 1984 was morning, we’re well into the day. The dark, turbulent night is not only behind us; it’s been over for a while.

That’s not how most of the American public seems to feel, though. People continue to rate the economy stunningly poorly, given its performance of late. The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment, for instance, most recently registered 61.3, versus 100.9 during “Morning in America.” In other words, consumer sentiment is currently 39% lower than it was at a time when the misery index was 41% higher. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has a lower approval rating than any president going back to Jimmy Carter at the equivalent stage of their presidencies (New York Times, 12/28/23). Biden is, in fact, 15 percentage points lower than Reagan, whose economy at the same period of his presidency was, in key respects, significantly worse—unemployment, for instance, was 8.3%.

...

... there’s another fundamental cause of economic discontent that should be getting more attention: corporate media’s single-minded obsession with inflation, which has left the public with an objectively inaccurate view of the economy.

FAIR has stepped up to the batting plate with their own possible explanation for why everybody hates the economy despite macroeconomic indicators being so positive - that the media has been too negative about the economy and so everybody is just seeing that analysis and going "Huh, the economy must suck even if my life personally is fine." A swing and a very large miss for FAIR.

But how could this discontent possibly be?! We have done the soft landing! Inflation is way down! Look at our GDP! Idiotic. Inventing macroeconomic figures to quell the misery index will not actually make the underlying problems go away. So now we're in a situation where the actual state of the economy isn't being measured, causing immense confusion for navel-gazing dipshit economists.

The US economy does, in fact, very much fucking suck if you aren't in the top 1-10%. Student loan repayments restarted in October. Fake job listings are inflating the figures. Delinquency rates are at their highest level in almost 30 years. 12.8% of American households were food insecure in 2022, up from 10.2% in 2021. In early 2023, there were record levels of food bank usage despite record low unemployment. US life expectancy is declining. The impact of letting coronavirus rip through the population continues to work in the background. Despite all the hopes, AI almost certainly will not deliver the bourgeoisie to the new promised land of high productivity, as the crisis there continues. Some states are trying to reintroduce child labor.

US Gross Domestic Income has been stagnant since October 2022. US manufacturing PMIs also haven't been positive since October 2022. It's been over a year straight of decline. The post-pandemic boost is well behind us. The US economy is being supported by marginal expansions in services PMI, with the composite coming at 50.9 for December 2023, or 0.9 above stagnation. The services PMI is being supported by healthcare, education, and technology - the last of which received major subsidies due to the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act. The most high-tech sectors are growing, but everything more fundamental is mired in the longest continuous slump in two decades. Non-financial sector corporate profits are falling.

All of this, while the US has been manipulating its vassals to try and get them the best possible economy. They started a war with Russia and then blew up Nord Stream to weaken Europe and force them to buy more energy and goods from the US. They are trying to isolate China via protectionist sanctions designed to boost the US economy instead. All of this warmongering and blood, and it gets the US an economy that is, if you're being very optimistic, merely stagnating (and in actuality is declining).

You know what hasn't declined? The stock market, which is at all-time record levels.

#Tradle #672 3/6
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