#GLOBAL ECONOMY

[sayruq]

[CONT] call, prompting aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower to come to its aid, dispatching helicopters to deal with approaching Yemeni Navy vessels

If the US and the UK go through with this plan, the Yemenis will bomb oilfields across the Gulf. This is will increase global oil prices significantly and ultimately tanking the global economy. If you thought life is hard now, you're not ready for how bad things will get in 2024.

All Joe Biden has to do to stop the Red Sea blockade is lift the siege on Gaza.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I managed to fix the global economy and then some aliens abducted me to fix their spaceship (I'm not an economist or an engineer).

[fresherfriut]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 30, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 30, 2024

The fight between MAGA and DOGE continues. Original MAGAs who want the government to expel immigrants and elevate white evangelical Christian men are facing off against the new DOGE MAGAs who disdain original MAGA culture and want the government to turn the tech billionaires loose from regulations and taxes to create their own global oligarchy.

The fight has taken shape over H-1B visas that allow companies to hire foreign workers for skilled positions. MAGA opposes all immigration and relied on Trump’s promise to deport 11 to 20 million immigrants; DOGE wants more H-1B visas, arguing that America is not producing enough skilled engineers because of the misguided culture that Americans like MAGAs embrace. On Friday, billionaire Elon Musk, who has been very close to Trump since bankrolling his election, agreed with MAGA influencer Ian Miles Cheong, who has more than a million followers on X, when Cheong posted: “Much of the anger being driven toward Elon Musk today is simply disappointment being projected by the ‘ret*rded right’ that’s on the fringes of the conservative movement, against Musk, whom they wish was an unrepentant racist like they are.”

Late on Friday night, Musk defended H-1B visas again, posting on X: “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.” He continued: “Take a big step back and F*CK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” According to Forbes, Musk’s Tesla was among the leading employers of those holding H-1B visas in 2024.

Meanwhile, original MAGA influencer Steve Bannon used Musk’s apparent throwing MAGA critics off X as a route to attack the entire DOGE faction. “They're trying to dump people off the platforms like that's going to matter?” he said to influencer Jack Posobiec. “You can't stop us, we’re relentless…. We’re never going to quit…. We're a thousand times tougher than you guys are…. Keep coming after American citizens like you're coming and you're going to find out exactly how tough we are. We’re not going to tolerate this. Your trashing of the MAGA movement…. How dare you…. I don't care how big a check you wrote.”

Today, Bannon doubled down: “We’re gonna get H-1B visas out, root and stem, and all the workers you brought in. Just like we’re deporting 15 million here, we want them deported, out…. And give those jobs to American citizens today…we demand they get reparations. You stole from them.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out on Saturday that what many of us have been calling a civil war in the MAGA movement is not the best way to look at the MAGA fight. Marshall points out that the 2024–2025 MAGA was mostly just an electoral machine built around Trump. In the past, he notes, MAGA never really had policies. Mostly, it was a vehicle for Trump’s grievance about the investigation into the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives, and after his first impeachment, it became about retribution. But now, as Marshall notes, Trump is “tired and on the way out,” and he never really cared about policy anyway: he ran for president for the purpose of staying out of jail and “lording it over his foes.”

What is going on now, Marshall says, is less a civil war than “a battle over the steering wheel.” Trump absorbed groups into his coalition with the promise he would work for them, but their policies have always been contradictory. Now that it’s time for their payoff, not everyone can be appeased. So, will the Trump machine work for the MAGAs or the DOGEs…or even the Robert F. Kennedy “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) faction—which, as Marshall says, was “grafted on to the movement in the last months of the final stretch of the campaign for narrowly electoral reasons.” Today, Nathaniel Weixel of The Hill outlined how the MAHA faction is itself bitterly divided over issues like drugs to treat obesity.

Marshall concludes that, in any case, “[t]here’s little sign Trump cares. He’s already gotten what he wants.”

On Saturday, in an interview with the New York Post, President-elect Donald Trump threw his MAGA supporters under the bus and sided with Musk and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy on H-1B visas. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said, referring to the H-1B visas that permit companies to hire foreign workers in skilled occupations. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

Trump appeared to be confusing H-1B visas with H-2A and H-2B visas, which cover temporary agricultural workers and seasonal workers in tourism, hospitality, and landscaping. In fact, as Leah McElrath pointed out, Trump said in 2016 that the H-1B program shouldn’t exist. And as Judd Legum pointed out, on June 22, 2020, Trump issued an executive order suspending H-1B visas because he said they were taking jobs from Americans.

The fight within MAGA is only part of the larger fight within the Republican Party, whose leadership needs to organize the newly elected members of the House of Representatives as soon as they get back to Washington, D.C., and come into session on Friday, January 3. The House should have a speaker in place before Congress counts electoral votes on January 6.

Even if Trump no longer needs MAGA voters, extremist MAGAs in the House do, and they are angry at current House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for his willingness to work with less extreme Republicans and Democrats to keep the government operating. Members of the far right want to shut it down until it stops spending more money than it takes in and stops supporting policies they oppose.

This is turning into a fight over the House speaker. Extreme MAGA Republicans say they will not support Johnson for speaker this time around, putting his election in jeopardy because the party’s majority is so thin Johnson cannot lose more than two votes. Trump was angry at Johnson for passing a continuing resolution to fund the government without getting rid of the debt ceiling but, perhaps looking at the tight congressional schedule, endorsed him today with a social media post.

The Republican factions made the Congress that is just ending one of the least productive in history, and that chaos seems likely to get worse. With the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act, Congress suspended the U.S. debt ceiling until January 1, 2025, this Wednesday. The debt ceiling establishes a limit to how much the treasury can borrow to fulfill the country’s financial obligations, “including Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and other payments,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained.

Last Friday, December 27, Yellen warned Congress that the country will likely hit the debt ceiling between January 14 and January 23. The Treasury can resort to extraordinary measures to pay obligations, but if it is to keep the country functioning, the incoming Congress must raise the debt ceiling. That will not be easy.

Trump wants to cut taxes for billionaires and corporations, a plan that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $4.6 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years. After years of complaining about Democratic spending on social welfare programs, he is now demanding that Congress get rid of the debt ceiling altogether. Republican lawmakers have said they will raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion, but only in exchange for $2.5 trillion in cuts to mandatory spending over ten years.

This would require cuts to popular programs, putting the Republicans in the position of cutting benefits to poor and middle-class Americans in order to give tax cuts to the rich. The party has gone a long way from the 1860s, when party members invented the income tax to guarantee both that the nation’s bills got paid and that the burden would fall “not upon each man an equal amount,” as Senator Justin Smith Morrill (R-VT) put it then, “but a tax proportionate to his ability to pay.”

There is also an international dimension of the fight for control of the U.S. government. Musk followed up on last week’s X post supporting the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), criticized as a neo-Nazi group. On Saturday in Welt am Sonntag, Musk wrote that AfD is the “last spark of hope” for Germany. He claimed the right to speak out about Europe’s largest economy because of his “significant investments” in the country. The editor of the newspaper’s opinion section resigned in protest.

Conservative lawyer George Conway posted: “So the world’s richest man, who grew up under apartheid in South Africa and now pulls the mentally deteriorating incoming U.S. president’s strings, has written an op-ed urging Germans to elect a new-Nazi government. Got that?” He added: “Concerning.”

Jens Spahn, the State Secretary of the German Ministry of Finance and a Member of the German Bundestag, Germany’s top federal legislative body, saw an even bigger picture. He pointed out that AdF wants Germany to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and is anti-U.S. and pro-Putin and pro-Russia. “Is that what the USA wants?” Spahn asked. “A Germany that turns towards Russia and away from the USA?” German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier called Musk’s interference with the German elections—whether it's hidden or open, as on X—a threat to democracy.

Over the weekend, Trump’s team appeared to be backing Trump’s threats against Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark. Those threats seem deliberately designed to destroy NATO. Denmark is a U.S. ally and a member of NATO. The U.S. already has a military base there, the Pituffik Space Base, as part of a mutual defense agreement between the U.S. and Denmark.

If the U.S. is concerned about foreign threats to Greenland, it does not have to take over the island. It could simply work with Denmark to increase the U.S. presence there. But Trump’s former national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien posted yesterday on X that Trump is “100% right” to demand the U.S. take possession of Greenland.

“We love the Danes but a couple of additional drones, dogsled teams & inspection ships are not enough to defend Greenland against the Russians & Chinese Communists. [Greenland] needs anti-aircraft, counter UAV (drone) & anti-ship missile systems. It also requires at least one frigate on full time patrol & a squadron of fighters. If our great ally Denmark can't commit to defending the Island, the US will have to step in, as POTUS 47 said.”

CNN anchor and chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto answered: “To be clear, are you saying the Trump administration will deploy US forces on the territory of a NATO [ally] without that ally’s consent?” Former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) was more direct in his response to O’Brien. He posted: “When did you become insane?”

When viewed next to the statements of Russian pundits that a few powerful leaders should divide the world according to spheres of influence, there is perhaps logic to Trump’s demands. Trump is not threatening our rivals, but rather is threatening our own allies in the area around the U.S. And now Musk is supporting an anti-NATO, pro-Russia party in Germany. It could be that what we are seeing is an attempt to throw away NATO and America’s influence across the globe in order to carve up the world into spheres, with Trump offering to abandon Europe to Russia while the U.S., run by the DOGE faction of the Republican Party, officially takes control of a U.S.-centric sphere.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration today stood firm on maintaining the position the United States has held since World War II. President Biden announced nearly $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine, “as the Ukrainian people continue to defend their independence and freedom from Russian aggression.” In addition, Treasury Secretary Yellen announced $3.4 billion in economic assistance to enable Ukraine to pay its healthcare workers, teachers, and first responders. “At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office,” Biden said.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[vyorei]

Hey guys maybe if the West gets money-scared they'll stop the genocide

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Bank of Canada has cut its overnight rate by 25 basis points, a move not seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Wednesday’s announcement puts the policy rate at 4.75 per cent, down from the 5 per cent it has been sitting at since July of last year. The bank began raising its key interest rate in March of 2022, following larger-than-expected inflation numbers that followed a period of pandemic stimulus and disrupted global supply chains. “We’ve come a long way in our fight against inflation,” said Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem, during prepared remarks in Ottawa. “And our confidence that inflation will continue to move closer to the 2 per cent target has increased over recent months.” The central bank now sees enough evidence that underlying inflation is easing at a sustainable level. The Canadian central bank will be the first to cut rates among its peers at the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the United States Federal Reserve.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[jangillman]

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[head-post]

Bangladesh PM blames opposition for job quota violence

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina blamed her political opponents for the recent outbreak of deadly violence that gripped the country during recent student protests against quotas for government jobs and said on Monday that curfews would be lifted as soon as the situation improved.

The prime minister’s comments came a day after the South Asian country’s top court agreed to overturn most quotas in its ruling on Sunday, following days of clashes between protesters and security forces that forced the government to shut down internet services, impose curfews and deploy the army.

The protesters were demanding the cancellation of a quota system that allocates government jobs between relatives of veterans of the 1971 independence war. In Bangladesh, 56 per cent of public sector jobs are allocated to certain groups. 30 per cent are reserved for families of the 1971 War of Independence veterans, 10 per cent for women, 10 per cent for people from backward areas, 5 per cent for local communities and 1 per cent for the disabled. The quotas for families of war veterans were cancelled in 2018 following student protests across the country.

However, the Supreme Court ruled last month to reinstate the quota system, leading to fresh protests. Muhalifa students are demanding the cancellation of quotas for families of war veterans, believing it is “discrimination” and demanding a merit-based system. In a country where much of the population remains below the poverty line, civil service is often the only chance to escape poverty.

Read more HERE

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[hadesoftheladies]

honestly when i mock white culture, i need people to understand that i don't think there's anything innately inhuman or corny or universal about whiteness itself. i recognize the ethnic diversity among westerners. i'm very aware of it.

but skin colour has hierarchical meaning socioeconomically. white people are, on avergae, higher than brown people and black people on a global economic scale as a result of infrastructural white supremacy. so there's things only white people can do, think, say as a result of their privilege.

that's what i make fun of. the effects of how coddled and so divorced from the lived experience of the global south (you know, majority of the people on this planet) that you forget how y'all live is not default. you're not even half of the human population and you still maintain most of the world's wealth. you have no idea how insane that is. white isn't just about colour, it's a label for a certain kind of socio-econimic status. and that status produces a certain kind of people.

i'm making fun of the results of white supremacy and white privilege. i couldn't care less y'all have less melanin. that's not what makes you different. your wealth is what makes your behaviour strange to me and people like me. hope that helps.

[thashining]

BRICS grows, adding Indonesia as member: world's 4th most populous country, 7th biggest economy

BRICS keeps expanding. As a new full member, it added Indonesia, the 4th most populous country with the 7th largest economy on Earth. BRICS now has 10 members and 8 partners. Together they make up 41.4% of global GDP (PPP) and roughly half the world population. Ben Norton explains.

[feckcops]

No, capitalism isn’t democratic

“The progress brought by democracy and capitalism was supposed to give rise to yet more democracy. Checks and balances would put an end to corruption. An educated population would choose the ‘right’ leaders. And rather than campaigning based on outdated ideologies, those leaders would compete for votes by appealing to the ‘median voter’, bringing moderation to previously divided societies.

“Instead, corruption is on the rise, ideology is back, and people keep picking the ‘wrong’ leaders. Perhaps the creation of societies so stratified that the ruling class can barely comprehend the concerns of ordinary voters was not such a foolproof recipe for democracy after all ...

“Despite the fact that it is blindingly obvious that capitalist democracies require some measures to reduce inequality while tackling climate breakdown, the progressive capitalist vision for the future stands no chance of being implemented.

“There’s only one conclusion left to draw—that capitalism and democracy were never really all that compatible to begin with.”

[fresherfriut]

[itsinmymelanin2]

I want her to love me

I want her to comb my hair,

like she loves me

Even though it's rough, she take her time as though she combs through clouds.

I want her to love me

Communicate it to me, not at me, not through me but to me

I want her to see me for me, for the unique glass she carved into perfection.

I need her to understand me, to listen, not hear

I need her to laugh at my jokes because understands me

I need her to open her heart to me, love me like her ownself

I wanted her to wash my hair

I wanted her to care

I wanted her to love my my mind

I needed her to be kind

I needed her to nurture

I needed a perfect future.

C.S.R

[erebusvincent]

I know we’ve been propping up the global economy but I did not expect this much of a panic.

[african-international-magazine]

RWANDA EMERGENT OF A GREEN ENVIRONMENT

Rwanda has stood out to be one of the world's most green economy/ society. The country governed by President Paul Kagame continues to advance environmental protection. Some of the country’s green movements that are reducing eco anxiety include;

Every month in Kigali Rwanda🇷🇼, there is a car-free day which promotes physical activity and environmental awareness, employing the social environment to prioritize health while reducing pollution and congestion on the streets.

Considering these challenges posed by climate change, the Rwandan government prioritized a model of economic development that is low-carbon and climate-resilient balancing environmental sustainability with economic growth thereby achieving poverty reduction and social inclusion in its development vision and strategies.

Rwanda’s policy framework for the building and construction sector underscores the benefits of green/ sustainable buildings. The country has since leveraged the development of green buildings in order to promote environmental protection. In the context of Rwanda, green buildings are buildings that promote energy efficiency, water efficiency, promotes indoor environmental quality and makes use of the country's water efficiency and countries industrial productivity.

Looking ahead this year, 2024, Rwanda’s solar energy roadmap envisions a substantial increase in installed solar capacity. The country aims to generate a significant percentage of its total electricity from solar sources, further reducing its carbon footprint. The widespread adoption of solar energy is expected to drive economic growth, create jobs, and enhance energy resilience.

Rwanda has enforced the ban importing plastic bags and second hand clothes in order to reduce pollution. The ban on Second hand clothes is also aimed at promoting the country's textile industry and boosting the economic environment at large.