Re: Understanding the US- Again
Posted: 07 Aug 2018 05:15
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Consortium of Indian Defence Websites
https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/
Or this one:The rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991, the study found, and the same group accounts for a far greater share of all filers. Driving the surge, the study suggests, is a three-decade shift of financial risk from government and employers to individuals, who are bearing an ever-greater responsibility for their own financial well-being as the social safety net shrinks. The transfer has come in the form of, among other things, longer waits for full Social Security benefits, the replacement of employer-provided pensions with 401(k) savings plans and more out-of-pocket spending on health care. Declining incomes, whether in retirement or leading up to it, compound the challenge.
Boise Idaho?? $300K homes? Wow! Add a humongous heating bill every non-summer (which means 11 months of the year) to that.Ten years after the housing collapse during the Great Recession, a new and different housing crisis has emerged.
Back then, people were losing their homes as home values crashed and homeowners went underwater. Today, home values have rebounded, but people who want to buy a new home are often priced out of the market. There are too few homes and too many potential buyers.
Home construction per household is now at its lowest levels in nearly six decades, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. This isn't just a problem in San Francisco or New York, where home prices and rents have gone sky-high. It is also a problem in midsized, fast-growing cities farther inland, like Des Moines, Iowa; Durham, N.C.; and Boise, Idaho. In Boise, an analysis by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed there is a demand for more than 10 times the number of homes being built right now.
.....She's 37 and manages a learning center for kids who have autism. She's solidly middle class and can afford a house that sells for $200,000. But the median home price in Boise right now is nearly $100,000 higher than that, putting it out of reach for St. John and for the average homebuyer in Boise.
That is fake news or khayali pulav, even per the article you cite.Falijee wrote:Another Blow Handed To POTUS Trump By The Hollywood Crowd !
Donald Trump’s ‘Hall of fame’ star being removed permanently
No.... wiki is telling...........Guddu wrote:That is fake news or khayali pulav, even per the article you cite.Falijee wrote:Another Blow Handed To POTUS Trump By The Hollywood Crowd !
Donald Trump’s ‘Hall of fame’ star being removed permanently
Perhaps. But if investors get 5% return (possibly happening later this year) on 10 yr treasuries they may not mind.chola wrote:Trump is amazing! Lol
He is looking Wall Street right in the eyes and kicking us in the teeth.
The Fortune 500 is going to have its profit projections halved in a few years when they are walled off from the China market.
OR Trump forces the chinis to back down on their “Made in China 2025” tech initiatives and the Fortune 500 keeps its tech lead AND get unfettered access to the chini market. This would cause a massive uptick in the forecast!
No American President has put things on the line like this. He has even odds of winning.
chola wrote:Trump is amazing! Lol
He is looking Wall Street right in the eyes and kicking us in the teeth.
The Fortune 500 is going to have its profit projections halved in a few years when they are walled off from the China market.
OR Trump forces the chinis to back down on their “Made in China 2025” tech initiatives and the Fortune 500 keeps its tech lead AND get unfettered access to the chini market. This would cause a massive uptick in the forecast!
No American President has put things on the line like this. He has even odds of winning.
Wonder what happens if the rest of the world goes to the WTO andIf you ignore our (illegal bullying) Sanctions, your businesses will not be able to do business with the USA
Only among the elderly, who yearn for that they lost 65 years ago. Their number are fast dwindling. Most youngsters have very little appetite for a potentially ruinous re-unification.UlanBatori wrote:But in Korea, there has always been the desire for reunification
You see why the muscle-flexing and teeth-baring against Eyeran.In the last 14 contested Republican primaries where President Donald Trump has endorsed a candidate, his pick has won -- or is leading -- all 14 times........ despite Trump's weak numbers among the general populace, he remains a massively powerful force within the GOP -- someone who can make and break candidacies with a single tweet...Trump offered his conclusion based on Tuesday's results:
"As long as I campaign and/or support Senate and House candidates (within reason), they will win! I LOVE the people, & they certainly seem to like the job I'm doing. If I find the time, in between China, Iran, the Economy and much more, which I must, we will have a giant Red Wave!"
Among anxious commentators, the defining temptation of the Trumpian moment is to emphasize high drama that eventually leads to a rupture in the Pax Americana. America’s establishment primacists pour obsessively over the president’s tweets and antics. They presume the power of one president’s rhetoric to destroy quickly the post-1945 dispensation, suggesting it must have been fragile to begin with. Old Europe and Putinist Russia form the focus of these lamentations. They point to Trump’s antagonisms with allies such as Angela Merkel’s Germany, his overt coercion of European partners and brute demands that NATO allies pay up for American protection or else, his sinister linkages with Moscow, and his gutting of the State Department. The complaints comport to Twitter word limits. “This is Putin’s dream,” claims Nick Kristof. Wailings from some grandees are ahistorical and shallow.
The United States and its diplomacy, though, is not simply the captive of one demagogic commander-in-chief. It moves on two axes. Trump’s heterodox rhetoric and brutally transactional worldview are only one. The second axis is a long built-up assumption that the United States must lead the world. This entrenched idea determines the legitimacy and standing of those who hold office. It is the core concept of what has become an elite “common sense.” In other words, what we on BRF like to call the US "Deep State" is at least as important in determining US Foreign Policy as Trump himself... if not more. It demands that the United States must be the world’s dominant power; that it must have an outsized military power; that it must be preponderant particularly in the three vital power centers of the world, Europe, the Gulf, and East Asia; that it must exercise dominance through allies whom it must contain and subordinate; that it must strive to prevent “rogue” adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons; and that it must prize open and expand markets for the penetration of American capital. To alter this structure, shred alliances, retrench security commitments, frame the world not as an American domain but as multipolar spheres of influence, would take more than attention-grabbing statements. It would take a sustained, costly, and fiercely fought political struggle, domestically and abroad.
Thus far, the bottom line about Trump’s presidency is that before he took office, he threatened to govern as an isolationist, but he has not. Instead of addressing the failures of primacy, he is exacerbating them. When running for office, Trump promised to extricate America from unnecessary wars. He toyed with the idea of tolerating others’ nuclear proliferation. He pronounced NATO to be “obsolete.” He took up the slogan of interwar isolationism, “America First.” This worldview persists. He is no convert to the traditional ethos of the Pax Americana. In his contractual view of international affairs, he would prefer to draw down global military deployments. He would prefer not to be bound by alliance commitments. He would rather accommodate other major powers and let them dominate their back yards. He would be content for regional powers to be security providers. And he has no time for the traditional logic that the hegemon pays more than the lion’s share of the defense bill in order to keep allies subordinate.
He has not governed this way. Look beyond the tweets to follow the money and the troops. Trump is aggressively reasserting American primacy, not dismantling it. Rather than bringing the legions home, Trump is reinforcing their central importance, emptying the treasury to strengthen them, and even asking for military parades. Thanks to his deficit-financed military build-up plus his extravagant tax cuts, the annual budget deficit has ballooned by 12 percent since last year, and is projected to rise by an additional $100 billion a year. In the Middle East, Trump has doubled down on America’s bid to remain predominant for the foreseeable future, increasing civilian and military deployments by 33 percent (as of November 2017) along with accelerated arms sales, while strengthening ties with the Saudi bloc and Israel to confront and coerce Iran, America’s main rival in the region. In Asia, Trump has pursued the nuclear disarmament of North Korea while increasingly confronting China about Taiwan, trade, and the South China Sea. We can debate what to call this, but it isn’t isolationism.
The disjuncture between Trump’s anti-traditionalism and American deeds, indeed between Trump and the policy thrust of the executive branch, is most apparent in U.S.-Russian relations. Trump’s notorious words are often contradicted by the details of actual policy. Trump stands accused of treasonous collaboration with Vladimir Putin’s regime, due not only to allegations of electoral interference and private one-on-one meetings, but deferential statements about Russia’s security interests, congratulating Putin on re-election, and suggesting that Russia be invited back to the G-7. But amid the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s fascination for the extent of Trump’s collusion with Putin, its almost Trumpian fixation with televisual optics, and its fondness for grandiose tracts about “world order,” it neglects the prosaic details of concrete commitments.
Consider the totality of American policy towards Russia since January 2017, which is the product of multiple decision-making centers, and some of which is forged despite Trump. Around the infamous Brussels and Helsinki reports, a significant act went under-reported. Before he went to Brussels, Trump addressed the Three Seas Initiative at Warsaw, where he pitched the United States as an alternative energy supplier to Russia, explicitly to break Russia’s gas monopoly, his Energy Secretary presented the United States as an alternative market provider to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Moscow noticed with displeasure. Whether or not Trump threatened to quit NATO, its members are spending evermore on defense, which is not a happy result for Russia. Despite protestations, European states retain powerful incentives to stick with Washington. There are no signs of their abandoning the alliance to rearm independently or bandwagon with other powers.
Consider too other measures. He has appointed hawkish American primacists and Putin critics to Russia-related official posts. He has expanded sanctions, including an expanded Magnitsky list of targets. The Justice Department has forced Russia Today to register as a foreign agent. Trump has expelled Russian diplomats. Trump has armed Ukraine, Romania and Poland. The U.S. has reinforced NATO’s enhanced forward presence in Poland and the Baltic states with increased troop numbers and more exercises, and presided over the expansion of NATO into Montenegro and Macedonia, against Russian efforts to keep its clients in the Balkans and resist E.U.-NATO enlargement, while courting Ukraine and Georgia as future alliance members. The United States also acquires low-yield nuclear weapons with the explicit rationale of competition against Moscow, to remain “top of the pack” among nuclear powers. Trump twice authorized airstrikes against Syria, Russia’s Middle Eastern client state, against Putin’s protests. He also loosened the rules of engagement in Syria, struck Russian troops and mercenaries there and bragged about it. So far, the U.S. refuses to recognize Crimea as part of Russia. Is this Putin’s dream?
Some commentators, like Daniel Vajdich and James Carafano, maintain this confrontational stance is Trump’s own. Carafano attributes Trump’s reassertion of American hegemony to a coherent Trumpian vision, a “large dose of peace through strength: showing strong face to his enemies with military and economic pressure,” while offering them a “chance to stop competing.” This is an elegant explanation. But it overstates the president’s command of the policy process. The picture that emerges is more fraught. A surer verdict must await future archives, but from the pattern of what we can know about the process behind these choices, a reluctant Trump is constrained to maintain a hard-line policy mix. i.e. he finds that he must GUBO to the Deep State.This is despite his public braggadocio and despite his instinctive belief that Washington should delegate anti-Putin countermeasures to Europeans. Similarly, he retains a personal preference for pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, and Syria. Yet advisors pressed him successfully to maintain the traditional U.S. posture so far. “You guys want me to send troops everywhere,” Trump charged Secretary of Defense Mattis, whose response (“You have no choice”) carried the day. Whatever Trump might say on Twitter or TV, the Deep State unquestionably prevails in determining US foreign policy and grand strategy. On a related note, can you IMAGINE Nirmala Sitharaman telling Modi "you have no choice"??
As well as being subject to constant advice to maintain a tough stance on Russian adventurism, domestic criticism of any conciliation of Russia and the Mueller investigation that the foreign policy establishment has encouraged have led Trump to complain that he “can’t put on the charm” or “be president.” Trump acknowledges that he is boxed in: “Anything you do, it’s always going to be… ‘He loves Russia.’” “I just want peace,” he complained when aides pushed him (successfully) to supply lethal aid to the Ukraine. The White House initially invited Putin to visit Washington, but subsequently postponed the occasion, citing the “Russia witch hunt.” If Trump had his way, as one former official put it, he would purse a “much more open and friendly policy with Russia.” So far, he hasn’t had his way on most first order questions. The environment is too resistant. The actor is not determined enough and doesn’t have enough political capital to spend. True, in the field of economics, Trump’s stoking of trade wars and large leaps in protectionism are a departure from post-Cold War policies, though he adheres to the impulse of creating markets open for American business and on American terms. On security questions, though, if it is hard politically to arrange a Putin visit to the White House, the constraints against doing what Moscow would like, negotiating a “Yalta-2” grand bargain to recognize a Russian sphere of influence — or withdraw from Europe — are strong.
This is why I believe the Deep State Republican Party will do its best to sabotage Trump in 2020. The groundwork is already being laid with the Republicans' most potent financiers, the Koch brothers, publicly pulling away from backing Trump-endorsed candidates in the 2018 midterms. They already have a Trojan horse in the administration... Christian fundamentalist Mike Pence, who is biding his time and carefully avoiding controversy with his boss in the current term. It is very likely that with the first thing that goes wrong... even if it isn't a "shock" of the magnitude described in the article above... a primary challenge will be mounted with the full backing of the Kochs to unseat Trump's re-election bid in 2020.Trump may be fortunate that his re-election timetable coincides with the right side of an economic “boom bust” cycle. Were he to win a second term, and especially if the margin was more decisive, the conditions of his presidency would change. If he won big, he would have more political capital to spend. He would feel vindicated by the authority of a second mandate. Term limits would mean that he would no longer need fear election failure. It is possible that Trump “Mark 2” would be more willing to tolerate the costs of introducing major change in American grand strategy.
Consider further the possibility of a major strategic shock, with an impact comparable to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. By definition, the shape and outline of the shock is unclear. And we can’t know when it would happen. But if the literature on great power decline is sound, it would likely have military and economic dimensions, featuring some fatal interaction of war and debt. The source of the next financial crisis could lie elsewhere, but Trump’s own policies also make more likely what was an implicit tendency, increasing the debt-deficit load and repeating a familiar pattern, whereby a large deficit-financed military build-up, deficit-financed wars (alongside tax cuts) stimulates demand, creates bubbles of irrational exuberance, overheats the economy, and eventually leads to a loss of confidence in markets. This would be followed by a contraction, but this time without the financial reserves that were available to mitigate the last financial crisis. This process could erupt sooner rather than later.
It would take the combination of a strategic shock great enough to discredit the status quo and a determined revisionist president. If so, then these forces might come together, to take the president off the chain, and to create a domestic environment more hospitable to major change. Earlier security shocks, such as the 2008 financial crisis, did not lead in this direction because the Bush administration was averse to retrenching commitments. With Trump or a Trumpian figure in the white house, one response that was once taboo would be on the table: a fundamental retrenchment of overseas commitments, along the lines of Trump’s instincts. It isn’t certain what this will involve, but it would be drastic and imply a different assumption about how to pursue security. It could lead the United States to, for example, withdraw from the Gulf and let Saudi Arabia acquire the bomb, or to acknowledge Russia’s view of its sphere of influence while withdrawing from NATO or decisively repudiating Article 5, or to reduce military expenditure just to the level needed for the United States to deter attacks and defend itself.
American “greatness” would still be Trump’s signature tune, but it would be redefined around liberating America from foreign entanglements, investing in and walling off the country, and an industrial renaissance. To be sure, the American foreign policy class would fight back furiously. But like in the era of Vietnam and the oil embargo, its power and confidence would be diminished. Already scarred by the last global financial crisis, stagnating wages and general alienation, the populace would be more receptive. An emboldened and more risk-prone president would be willing to hire outsiders as officials, less experienced and capable but ideologically attuned to the narrower security vision of “America First.”
All this might be difficult to imagine. But rapid realignments of grand strategy can happen. As I argued, one example is Great Britain’s postwar abandonment of empire. New conditions were inhospitable to the exhausted country maintaining its colonies. These included the cumulative fiscal pressures of World War II, decolonization resistance, the United States’ dismantling of the economic order of imperial preference and the sterling bloc; and the shock of the Suez crisis of 1956, which revealed Britain’s vulnerability to U.S. coercion. Successive British governments were impelled to bow to these pressures once they became overwhelming. They then redefined Britain’s status around alliances and nuclear weapons, presenting retreat from empire as a graceful management of change and casting the emergence of independent countries as “the crowning achievement of British rule.”
If we see a different kind of President Trump unleashed by new conditions, less constrained and more emboldened, in a context where major retrenchment becomes thinkable and attractive, only then will he or his heirs probably try to bring down the priesthood’s temple.
I called it Yalta-2 right on the day the Helsinki meeting occurred. Reason is its similar to the the first Yalta between FDR and Stalin which divided Europe into zones of influence. Churchill was unhappy and started the iron Curtain speech which launched the Cold War as FDR was dead by then.A_Gupta wrote:Why is everyone fascinated with Yalta-2? Is this the grand alliance against China?