Economy

Publicly-traded companies in California are now required to have a woman on their board of directors thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed a bill enacting the new mandate on in September. Although they intended to diversify corporate boardrooms, California legislators actually revealed that they believe adult women should be treated like helpless children. Ostensibly ‘feminist’ policies that give women an advantage based solely upon their gender will in fact undermine women’s equality. Women do not need hand-holding from the government to get ahead in their careers, and such legislation is counterproductive and patronising.

‘The Trump administration knows the planet is going to boil. It doesn’t care,’ claims Canadian eco-activist Bill McKibben in a Guardian editorial. With enemies as unhinged as this, who needs friends? McKibben is basing his claim on a few paragraphs buried within a 500-page ‘Draft Environmental Impact Statement’ issued by the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA) and subsequently bigged up by the Washington Post as conclusive proof that Trump is the ultimate Gaia-raping super villain. According to the report, on current projections the global mean temperature is going to rise by around 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.

As Kamala Harris presents evidence that Brett Kavanaugh habitually exposed himself to several nurses upon being born and then to other females for months, nay, years afterwards, Donald Trump just secured a new trilateral trade deal between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This, friends, is yuge, yuge! The deal replaces, or amends, the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement between the three countries. From the moment he announced his candidacy, way back in 2015, until the day before yesterday, President Trump has assailed the original Nafta as ‘the worst deal ever.’ The fact that US trade with Mexico has gone from a modest surplus in the early years of Nafta to a $68 billion deficit now highlights his concern.

An acquaintance recently told me that I have become a ‘Red Tory.’ The description probably fits. Indeed, I rather like it. As I get older, when it comes to matters related to social justice I find myself reaching conclusions of the sort commonly heard from Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts. I’ve long since outgrown any social Darwinian inclinations that I might have entertained as a young man. Use public resources to help the downtrodden and distressed and to ensure equal opportunity for all? You bet: I’m as Left as they come. Similarly, on issues related to war and peace, I’ve become a thoroughgoing dove. My idea of ‘supporting the troops’ is to keep them out of harm’s way, except when genuinely vital interests are at stake.

If the Democrats want to surf a real blue wave in the midterm elections they will have to stop conceding the economy to President Trump. Look at a current snapshot and consider: job numbers are great, minority unemployment is at record lows, the stock market is happy. But beneath this cheery – temporary – façade, the same problems that caused the 2008 financial crash are still lurking. In fact, the contributing factors of the last recession have, in many respects, worsened. Ultra-high-risk financial behaviour, increasing deregulation and rosy political rhetoric telling us all to forget about the problems of the past: these are a few hallmarks of the current situation that also echo loudly with the lead-up to the 2008 collapse.

Over the summer, the Supreme Court ruled that public sector unions cannot require non-members to pay the fees that fund collective bargaining efforts, in American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees v. Janus. While publicly defiant, the Los Angeles Times reported that AFSCME privately estimated that it could lose half of its members under the ruling. Public sector unions like AFSCME and the Service Employees International Union were among the last important labour organisations in the country and the Janus ruling left them reeling. In Harper’s, Garret Keizer writes that ‘American workers may soon be engaged in a virtual Armageddon with capital’.

There’s a fresh Nixon scandal brewing. This past Sunday, Cynthia Nixon, the former Sex and the City actress who is running for Governor against Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary in New York, ordered a cinnamon raisin bagel with lox, capers and red onion at Zabar’s. Outrage was instant. The New York Post deemed it a ‘horrifying’ culinary lapse. George Conway, the husband of Kellyanne Conway and a prominent conservative lawyer, asked on Twitter, ‘Lox her up?’ So far, Donald Trump, who appears to subsist on a daily regimen of about 12 Diet Cokes, steaks slathered in ketchup and eight hours of television, hasn’t weighed in on his hometown gastronomic controversy.

With September marking a decade since the Lehman Brothers implosion, stand by for a slew of economic retrospectives. Any meaningful analysis, though, needs to get beyond historic balance sheets and plunging share price graphs — however dramatic the data. For the most significant impact of the biggest financial and economic upheaval since the Great Depression has been the growing loss of faith in western liberal capitalism. Politics has been upended by the 2008 crisis — doing much to explain Trump, Corbyn and the broader shift away from centrist parties towards extremes. The demise of Lehmans, a once-impregnable investment bank, exposed a US financial sector riddled with chronic debts and fraud.

Donald Trump’s Twitter bragging about the soaring stock market can be tiresome. Come on — it’s not all about you, Mr President. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that, as Dominic suggests, under President Hillary Clinton, the world would probably not have enjoyed such a boom. And as the Nasdaq breaks 8000 for the first time, it’s also worth rewinding the clock to when Trump won the presidential election. Let’s look at what Paul Krugman predicted, in November 2016. I quote at length: ‘If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

Last year I ran into a person associated with the Koch organisation on a street near the White House. He was absolutely delighted with President Trump’s deregulation policies. Freeing business from all sorts of senseless and burdensome government regulation has long been a goal of the conservative/libertarian Koch brothers and their far-reaching donor network. Trump was making it happen. Kochworld was equally happy when the president passed a major corporate tax cut. Fast forward 12 months, to the Kochs’ annual meeting of donors in Colorado.

Should Donald Trump be afraid of Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book Fear: Trump in the White House? The book title comes from a remark that Trump apparently made to Woodward and fellow Washington Post reporter Robert Costa in 2016: “Real power is through respect… real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, ‘fear.’” The legendary Watergate reporter’s latest effort is said to be stuffed with numerous interviews of top Trump officials whom Woodward—drumroll here—apparently often visited late at night to get the inside dope on the nefarious activities occurring in the Trump White House. It’s supposed to be Watergate all over again.

Donald Trump declared Friday morning on Twitter, “We have accomplished an economic turnaround of HISTORIC proportions!” Will the press and the pundits claim that the president is simply trying to change the subject again?That’s what most of them said earlier in the week when Trump sent an all-caps, instant-classic tweet addressed to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Conveniently missing from many of their missives was the fact that Rouhani had himself addressed Trump earlier that day. “Mr. Trump, don’t play with the lion’s tail, this would only lead to regret,” Rouhani had warned, adding that “war with Iran is the mother of all wars.

President Trump’s announcement Wednesday of a trade breakthrough with the European Union was like the summit with North Korea but on a much smaller scale. It was a step back from the ledge after Trump himself contributed to the ratcheting up of tensions. Whether it translates into anything substantively remains to be seen. No, we’re not talking about nuclear weapons as was the case with North Korea. And the trade war with China is more consequential than the haggling with the EU. But just as Trump was seen as risking conflict with “Little Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un, he’d described the EU as a “foe.

Elon Musk, the California-based entrepreneur behind the Tesla electric car, the SpaceX commercial rocket venture and several other wacky start-ups, made a fool of himself with his attempt to intervene in the Thai cave rescue and subsequent Twitter spat, but there’s no doubt he’s an original thinker and a remarkable businessman. If the futuristic Tesla is a fine feat of technology, what’s more impressive is that the company is not only still in business after 15 years without turning a profit and having lost at least $3.5 billion since 2015, but that its market capitalisation, at $52 billion, is bigger than Ford’s at $42 billion. Tesla built more than 100,000 cars last year compared with 6.6 million by Ford worldwide.