As I've said, Rabo gives Michael Every a lot of leeway in what he writes.
Via ZeroHedge, January 23:
Lenin Lives!
Vladimir Lenin died 100 years ago last Sunday. He led a workers’ revolution, and was responsible for five million deaths. His successor, Stalin, killed another 20 million. Today, The Guardian asks: “‘Angel or antichrist’: Russia grapples with Lenin’s legacy 100 years after death”, Stalin is being rehabilitated, and Western protestors embrace the hammer-and-sickle and ends-justifies-the-means political violence. In short, a century on, ‘Lenin lives!’
Even at Davos, German Finance Minister Lindner stated we are in a “Marxist New Normal.” Yet he’s wrong in a way that matters: it isn’t Marxist, but Marxist-Leninist.
In a ‘Marxist New Normal’, the good times roll for the bourgeoise, capital is concentrated, and pressure builds on socio-economic tectonic plates. That’s what we saw pre-Covid, and it’s sympathetic with ‘lower for longer’ rates and “fictitious capital” asset bubbles. Part of that is still in the air, with the Dow Jones over 38,000, and markets still pricing for rate cut after rate cut.
In a ‘Marxist-Leninist New Normal’, political violence emerges: as Lenin said, “Sometimes history needs a push,” --off a cliff-- adding, “A man with a gun can control 100 without one”. Likewise, on media, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth,” and on education, “Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever”. After nationalizing at gunpoint and trying to crush the power of capital by printing money --and learning the hard way that “The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation”-- Lenin pivoted to a New Economic Policy of state capitalism with a gold-backed currency, a ‘deal with the devil’ always planned to be rolled back, which Stalin did with a vengeance. And on foreign policy, the view was, “You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” Simply, that backdrop is *not* sympathetic with ‘lower for longer’ and asset bubbles. Indeed, Chinese and Hong Kong stocks, the latter close to a 20-year low, are being dragged into a modern-day ‘NEP’ discussion. Those who didn’t want to talk about that kind of thing are suffering: Bloomberg quotes the head of one recently failed Asian hedge fund that had gone long China saying: “I have lost my knowledge, trading, and psychological edge. The principle of risk-reward for both the short term and long term has turned its head.” He should have read Marx-Lenin theory.
Is this a “Marxist” or a “Leninist” political era? In Germany, the AfD’s pro-Russia and pro-China leaders promising a referendum on “Dexit” which nearly half its supporters back are at over 30% in one poll: together with two real leftist parties, the vote share is over 40%. Yes, Brexit is a failed model. Yet so are others around us, including those that keep getting pushed. With German and French farmers on the streets, the EU elections are likely to see angry protest votes.
The US looks like 2024 can’t avoid a replay of Trump vs. Biden. The market thinks it won’t be caught out like it was in 2016 (or by Biden’s embrace of Trump’s China tariffs?). It’s even taking Trump’s proposed 10% universal tariffs as dollar positive and rates negative. Yet The Street is so deep in the Cantillon trough it can’t see above the rim to note Trump’s neo-Hamiltonian policy is focused on domestic production, not financialisation. If tariffs don’t work at 10%, they could move as high as needed to reorder things; or, logically, if less likely, capital controls could be imposed on foreign buyers of Treasuries. Yet Wall Street DSGE models can’t show any fragmentation of the global system into separate spheres because they don’t work that way: just as turkeys don’t just not vote for Christmas, they don’t know what Christmas is either.
Yet Davosniks won’t admit the West can’t provide what US President Hoover promised in 1928: “A Chicken in Every Pot and a Car in Every Garage.” Have you seen the price of chickens and cars – and of garages?
Is this a “Marxist” or a “Leninist” geopolitical era? The Ukraine War meat-grinds on. West Africa sees coups and the Sahel violence. North Korea makes threats. The South China Sea and Taiwan are very tense. Venezuela claims parts of Guyana. And the Red Sea crisis is getting worse: maritime insurance rates have soared 70-fold; Asia-Europe spot freight rates reportedly hit $10,000; and, as flagged last week, we now see a global container shortage as a result.
In response, the US is now prepping a long (special?) military operation vs. the Houthis that ‘won’t last years’. Another bombing raid was made last night by the US and UK, supported by Australia, Bahrain(!), Canada, and the Netherlands....
....MUCH MORE
