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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The elites' toadies, lackeys, shills, sycophants, water-carriers and apologists are desperately hyping the context-free, historically ignorant narrative that “populism leads to autocracy” to protect the existing autocracy of the elites.

There is only one narrative in the mainstream media about populism: it destroys democracy and leads straight to fascism. This is an ignorant and false narrative. Here's a typical example of the mainstream anguish that the elites' preferred narratives are falling apart because they've left the bottom 95% behind: How Democracies Fall Apart: Why Populism Is a Pathway to Autocracy

Granted, this is an international context for populism, but this is no excuse for overlooking America's history of progressive populism. Are the “experts” beating the drum that populism inevitably leads to autocracy so poorly educated about American history that they don't know that populism can be powerfully progressive, or are they being willfully blind to serve their elitist masters?

It's time we recover America's history of progressive populism. It's awfully easy for elites and their toadies (witting or unwitting) to dismiss the citizenry who reject elitst narratives as “deplorables,” just as it is easy for them to dismiss populist resistance to their control as being “undemocratic.”

This is of course the exact opposite of the truth: populism is the result when the institutions of “democracy”–i.e. the machinery of elite control–have failed to respond to the concerns and opinions of non-elites.

Having been rendered impotent and voiceless in the elite-dominated machinery, the bottom 95% have no alternative but to join a populist movement–a movement that in America often takes the form of a third party or an insurgency in an established political party (for example, Sanders and Trump).

Populism arises as a response to crushing inequality in both wealth and political power. The “free silver” movement arose in the late 1800s as a response of the non-elites to the enormous power and wealth of the Gilded Age financiers and industrialists.

The populist idea was to expand the money supply via minting more silver coins, with the goal being to make it easier for small enterprises and family farmers to borrow the new capital that would enter the economy.

Precisely how does this sort of populism lead to autocracy and fascism? The entire claim is laughably absurd. How can so-called “experts” spew this “populism leads to autocracy” nonsense?

Populism is a response to an elitist dominance in wealth and power that have failed the bottom 95%. Populism is a demand for solutions that work for the bottom 95% rather than just for the top 5%, and progressive populism of the sort that enabled Bernie Sanders to raise immense sums from small donors is alive and well–and would be “democratic” if it hadn't been squelched by the elites of the Democratic Party.

The “economic nationalism” of Trump's brand of populism is potentially progressive for the 95% who have not benefitted from neoliberal, financialized globalism. Bringing jobs and capital home is not fascism; rather, it is a movement of economic justice for the bottom …read more

Source: Recovering America’s History Of Progressive Populism

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By Tyler Durden

On Wednesday, Greek yields surged when it emerged that diplomatic relations between Greece and the Eurogroup had broken down once again, after European finance ministers suspended negotiations over granting short-term debt relief to Greece as a result of pledges by embattled Greek PM Tsipras unexpectedly said he would grant low-income pensioners a pre-Christmas payoff by spending €600 million to the nation’s 1 million low-income pensioners, to replace a Christmas bonus scrapped by the Greek bailout supervisors.

Assuming that the threat of not granting Greece some theoretical debt concession (which would reduce Greek debt by 20% some time in 2060) would be sufficient, the bureaucrats gave the Greek government a few hours to come to their senses and to eliminate the promise to pensioners.

That did not happen and instead on Thursday, Greek lawmakers backed the decision to allocate €617 million – a surplus from savings – in a bonus to pensioners as Greece snubbed its international lenders and legislated plans to give pensioners a one-off Christmas bonus despite the clear warning from creditors in what has become the latest standoff over the country’s third bailout.

“(Greek) people have to see that sacrifices of now six, seven years are at last starting to pay off,” said Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos in a visit to Brussels.

But jaded by those sacrifices and almost a dozen pension cuts which has pushed almost half of the country’s elderly into poverty, about 5,000 pensioners marched peacefully through the streets of Athens on Thursday night. “We came here to send a message. No more!,” protesting pensioner Efstratios Bozos told Reuters.

“Our pensions have become restaurant tips.” Well, yes, and your economy remains in a depression. But at least you have your Euro, and following the summer of 2015 when Greece was this close to obtaining its independence from the clutches of Brussels, yet choked in the last minute, the international community no longer cares about the Greek plight any more.

Here’s the even worse news: as long as Greece remains part of the Eurozone, it will only keep getting worse. By now we would think that the Greeks would have gotten it; they haven’t, which is why the pain must go on.

Still, there was some good news.

As Reuters reports, the move by Tsipras “infuriated” officials in Germany and several other member states, but French President Francois Hollande and his finance minister came to Tsipras’s defense on Thursday in a sign of European divisions over how to handle Greece.Arriving at an EU summit in Brussels,

Hollande said it was wrong to prevent Greece from taking “sovereign decisions” and suggested that euro zone ministers had not granted Athens sufficient debt relief. Other socialists chimed in: Finance minister Michel Sapin, speaking in Paris, expressed understanding for Tsipras’s decision to spend 617 million euros on pensioners because Greece had exceeded its 2016 primary surplus target.

How generous of the French president with the lowest approval rating in history: allowing Europe’s vassal state of Greece make its own “sovereign decisions.” …read more

Source: Europe "Infuriated" By Greek Decision To Give Impoverished Pensioners A Christmas Bonus

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The CEO of U.S. Concrete thinks that Donald Trump will be able to get through some form of infrastructure stimulus. And that should be great for construction companies. But he admits that nothing is a slam dunk in Washington. …read more

Source: CEO who voted for Trump likes what he sees

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The CEO of U.S. Concrete thinks that Donald Trump will be able to get through some form of infrastructure stimulus. And that should be great for construction companies. But he admits that nothing is a slam dunk in Washington. …read more

Source: CEO who voted for Trump likes what he sees

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

Saudi Arabia surprised the world by helping to engineer an unexpectedly strong agreement from OPEC members to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day, followed by additional cuts from non-OPEC members. While the two agreements incorporate cuts from a wide range of oil producers, Saudi Arabia will do much of the heavy lifting, cutting nearly 500,000 barrels per day and even promising to go further than that should the markets warrant steeper reductions.

Depending on one’s perspective, Saudi Arabia demonstrated its diplomatic prowess and made OPEC relevant again, succeeding in talking up oil prices without sacrificing much. After all, Saudi Arabia often lowers production in winter months. Other analysts look at it a different way – Riyadh was actually pretty desperate for higher oil prices, given the toll that the two-year bust has taken on the country’s economy. That led Saudi Arabia to shoulder most of the burden of adjustment, achieving only small concessions from other OPEC members, most notably Iran. Riyadh was the big loser of the deal, the thinking goes, but ultimately had no choice as the government needed higher oil prices.

There are arguments to made for both sides, but then there is a third possibility: Saudi Arabia was motivated to pullback because it was actually leaning on its oilfields too hard this year when it pushed output up to 10.7 million barrels per day, an output level that might have strained the reservoirs of some of its largest fields. Producing too aggressively can ultimately damage the long-term recovery of oil reserves. Reuters reports in an exclusive report that Saudi Aramco could have been pushing its oil fields to the limit this year, and had little choice to but to climb down from record high output levels.

Saudi Arabia has long maintained that it could ratchet production up to 12 mb/d or more if it wanted to, but such a massive rate of production has never actually been proven or even tested. Reuters raises the possibility that Saudi Arabia might not actually have the ability to go that high. A source told the news organization that Saudi Aramco might only be able to produce at 11.4 mb/d, and going beyond that level would require billions of dollars in new investment in several years of development.

But making the enormous investments needed to take its production capacity up to 12 mb/d at a time when government coffers are depleting led Saudi officials to the conclusion that it needed to take a breather, sources told Reuters. With its oilfields feeling the strain, Saudi Arabia saw an urgent need to dial back output a bit, which made it particularly determined to strike a deal with fellow OPEC members. The prospect of higher oil prices ultimately made the promised production cuts seem like much less of a sacrifice.

The question surrounding how much oil Saudi Arabia can ultimately produce if it completely opened the taps is not an academic one. Saudi Arabia is the one country …read more

Source: The Oil Mystery Behind Saudi Arabia’s Production Cut

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By Tyler Durden

The escalating, so far mostly verbal conflict with China may have just heated up following a Reuters reports that China has seized an unmanned, underwater US navy vehicle inside off international waters in the South China Sea, and that the US has issued a formal statement demanding the return of the vehicle.

• CHINA’S NAVY HAS SEIZED AN UNMANNNED, UNDERWATER U.S. NAVY VEHICLE COLLECTING SCIENTIFIC DATA IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS OF SOUTH CHINA SEA
• UNITED STATES HAS ISSUED A FORMAL DEMARCHE TO CHINA, DEMANDING THE RETURN OF UNDERWATER VEHICLE -U.S. OFFICIAL TELLS REUTERS

BREAKING: China’s navy has seized an unmanned, underwater U.S. Navy vehicle in international waters of South China Sea.

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) December 16, 2016

This “seizure” takes place one day after China’s influential state-run tabloid, the Global Times, called for a plan to take Taiwan by force and make swift preparations for a military incursion. The article urged China to rebalance its stance towards Taiwan to “make the use of force as a main option” and carefully prepare for possible moves toward independence.

It also follows a series of warnings to the Trump administration by Chinese diplomats, in which they cautioned that China will not allow the “One China” policy to be used as a bargaining chip, something Trump hinted he was willing to do in a Fox News interview last Sunday.

Developing story.

…read more

Source: China Seizes Unmanned, Underwater US Navy Vehicle Off South China Sea

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Llewellyn Rockwell via The Mises Institute,

Amid all the hysteria surrounding Donald Trump, clear and sober analyses of who he is and what to expect have been few and far between.

I’ve already seen numerous progressives warning that Trump intends to eviscerate entitlements. It’s as if facts never enter the progressive consciousness. Their opponents are an undifferentiated blob and hold what progressives take to be generically right-wing positions.

Only this robotic approach to politics can account for why progressives seem to think Donald Trump, by far the most pro-LGBT GOP nominee in history, intends to harm homosexuals, or that despite his repeated assurances that he wants nothing more than to shore up entitlements, he intends to cut them sharply.

As anyone who isn’t tone deaf when it comes to American politics knows, nobody in public life favors cutting back entitlements. What the left has to worry about isn’t budget-cutting Republicans. It’s making complete fools of themselves with hysterical predictions anyone in his right mind knows will never come true.

For one thing, to think Trump’s aim is to eviscerate entitlements is to misunderstand the Trump phenomenon altogether.

During the presidential campaign, a number of observers, trying to understand the Trump phenomenon, suddenly discovered the work of Sam Francis, an author and newspaper columnist, from 25 years earlier. Francis wrote about what he called Middle American Radicals (MARs).

The MARs hold political correctness in precisely the same contempt that Hollywood, the media, and the political class hold them. They are not rigidly ideological, nor even ideological at all. While in general, they support private property and the US Constitution, they are not philosophically opposed to business regulation, they believe free trade has made them worse off, and they have no interest at all in cutting Social Security and Medicare. And they are anti-globalist.

At the time Francis wrote about them, his analysis seemed off: if these people existed in the numbers he suggested, how were people like Bob Dole getting the GOP nomination?

The 2016 election, at last, vindicated the Francis analysis. The MARs came out in droves, despite the most relentless attack on their candidate by the media and cultural elite anyone can remember.

Now in this non-libertarian milieu, what might a libertarian reasonably hope for, while of course bracing himself for the usual horrors? Primarily these: (1) de-escalation of tension with Russia; (2) lower corporate taxes; (3) regulatory relief.

In a speech just days ago, Trump summarized his foreign policy. He still wants to fight ISIS. But he went on to say, “We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past. We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments, folks.”

Now you might think a speech so at odds with the past half-century of bipartisan interventionism would get some media attention and be discussed for days.

You’d think that if you’d had no previous exposure to the American media. That aspect of the speech was picked up on by the alt-media, and that’s about it.

But more than that, Trump’s election …read more

Source: Understanding The Trump Phenomenon

    

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Posted December 16th, 2016 in Uncategorized.