Economy

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.

President Trump declared “Wow!” after he learned of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the third version of his travel ban. It’s a big victory for him. In its decision, the Supreme Court pointed to national security concerns, which Trump has consistently invoked about immigration and trade.The dubious decision underscores the extent to America has become a national security state. The Washington Post reports that a major new study indicates that a majority of Americans believe that the United States is in peril of becoming a “nondemocratic, authoritarian country.” Eight in 10 said they are “somewhat” or “very” apprehensive about the state of democracy in America.

Jared Kushner had his security clearance restored last month. He can, once again, read classified documents, such as the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB, which contains some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets. Many American commentators said this must mean Kushner is out of danger with the special counsel’s inquiry into the Trump campaign and Russia. If the special counsel, Robert Mueller, had turned up anything really bad, they argue, he would have told the FBI agents doing Kushner’s background check. One legal expert told the New York Times that Kushner could breath a sigh of relief. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Kusher, Trump’s son in law, had been working in the White House for a year under a temporary top secret clearance.

Facebook has had a great ride, but they are now hitting limits. At least in the U.S., we can’t spend much more time than we do on social media, and Facebook can’t gain a much larger fraction of that time. So instead of seeking new vistas here, Facebook is probably now turning their attention to how to lock in their current advantage.And one classic strategy, widely known among economic and business experts, is “regulatory capture.” Get your industry regulated in a way that puts new smaller competitors at a disadvantage.

President Trump has invited Russian president Vladimir Putin to the White House. This news is rocking Washington, but it shouldn’t really come as a surprise, at least no more than Trump’s willingness to meet with the portly pariah of Pyongyang. I have long suspected that Trump would like nothing more than to hold a state dinner for Putin. Trump’s move has temporarily managed to displace his budding tariff war with China from the headlines, but it is of a piece with his embrace of what might be called his inner Trump. Recall that at the July 2017 Republican Convention in Cleveland, Trump declared that “I alone can fix it.” Now he is giving it a go. But what, exactly, is he fixing? When it comes to trade, Trump is manufacturing an artificial crisis.

Cockburn has learned that Lawrence Kudlow, the CNBC star, former Reagan official and financier, is a major candidate to replace Gary Cohn as Donald Trump’s top economic advisor, according to a source familiar with the matter.Other candidates include the man who forced Cohn’s departure: the tariff-loving Peter Navarro.Also in contention are Mick Mulvaney, the former South Carolina Congressman who is currently holding down not one, but two jobs for Trump, Andy Puzder, who was once nominated, but then withdrawn for Labor Secretary, and little-known Cohn subordinate Sharira Knight.Navarro and Kudlow are the biggest names.