The architect of the Death Star, the moral Shepard of the Right and Head of Slytherin House , Matthew Hooton, knows when there’s blood in the water.
Not the blood of Nicky Hager who Hoots gave the address of to right wing toxin Cathy Odgers as she pondered having organised crime figures she provided legal loopholes for in China, to chop Hager up into little pieces…
…oh no, not Nicky’s blood, Hoots can smell the blood of an economic hegemony in its last throws of influence.
As a Lord of the Sith whose homicidal devotion to right wing ultra free markets is masked by expensive face lotions and a charming turn of phrase on Radio NZ, Hoots knows crisis is the perfect time to hit with radical ideas that sound reasonable but are ultimately sociopathic.
Matthew’s lack of drinking means we don’t get to see the sociopath as much as we used to, but it’s there just beneath the surface of his carefully scrubbed pores.
His latest anti-Trump propoganda column has managed to stay on line longer than his defamatory attack on the ethics of David Parker, (possibly the only MP who makes Golriz Ghahraman look like a meat eating heteronormative cis-white car driving male nazi sympathiser) and to be honest, it’s a doozy…
Matthew Hooton: Markets undervalue Donald Trump risk
Trump’s several trade wars — which he says are “good, and easy to win” — have grievously harmed the post-World War II economic order, with early warnings they will also undermine the high-value end of the US economy.
Hoots knows when chaos is about to reign and is positioning his Consultancy for a great unravelling and with any new assault on the commons, the narrative needs to be cemented into place so we all know what we are fighting for, and apparently what the Hoots would have you believe, you’re fighting for the Godfather of Neoliberalism, Milton fucking Friedman.
In the short-run, the US economy is protected by Trump’s tax cuts but his trade policy is already shifting the US away from being the developer and owner of knowledge-based products, as Liddell advocated for New Zealand, towards being a supplier of subsidised commodities.
That’s a problem for the US. Far more dangerous is Trump’s attack on the global rules-based system launched by Harry Truman in the 1940s and advanced by Ronald Reagan and other 1980s visionaries.
Much is said about Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the UN’s corrupt Human Rights Council but infinitely more alarming are reports he has drafted legislation to effectively withdraw the US from the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
That would risk a contagion, collapsing the rules-based trading system and causing a full-scale global trade war.
Hoots correctly identifies the madness of Trump, but purposely misdiagnoses the problem and ends up suggesting a cure of more free market neoliberalism.
That neoliberal globalisation has gutted the working classes of developed nations doesn’t matter to Hoots, the concern is that they have seen the hypocrisy of a rigged casino they are destined to lose in and have elected a narcissistic fascist who won’t do what the corporations have paid for. Hoots suddenly fears the masses have seen through the Emperor’s clothes and screams at us in NZ to continue to applaud the trickle down threads and free market stitching of such sartorial finery.
The rules based economic order that Ronald Reagan corrupted and which Hoots believes is all that stands between us and Trumpian madness is a neoliberal fairytale that starts in October 1929.
At 1pm on October 24th 1929, the vice president of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Whitney marched onto the stock exchange floor after a morning of devastating losses and purchased well over the sale price in front of everyone $20million dollars worth of US. Steel stock. He then went on to purchase General Electric, AT&T and other blue chip stocks spending $130million. His move funded by the wealthiest elites at the time was an attempt to insert confidence into a financial system on the verge of collapse. It worked. Until Monday 28th of October, four days later.
This attempted insertion of confidence by Whitney was misplaced and lacked macro economic foresight. Each panicked Government regulation response brought about worse outcomes like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, until eventually global world war was the economic circuit breaker. The market demanded cuts in costs and thought of labour as merely another supply and demand graph, the political fallout for abandoning people to that terrible equation however demanded a political response.
Roosevelt’s election in 1933 saw laissez faire replaced as the dominant economic management ideology with Keynesianism. Capitalism adapted to the legitimacy threat with a social welfare state and unprecedented reform within banking, employment, agriculture and industry.
The Bretton Woods conference was the reestablishment of hegemonic stability with managed developmental capitalism at it’s heart before warping under Friedman & Reagan in the 80s into the neoliberal Washington Consensus.
This neoliberal Washington Consensus gutted the working classes of developed nations and transferred their jobs offshore in the ever diminishing returns of lower and lower labour costs.
The very same jobs that Hooton holds up in China as a success of this process are the jobs they work 20 hours a day for with suicide nets outside the buildings to stop workers from throwing themselves out of windows.
The solution to Trump isn’t as Hoots suggests, more free trade neoliberalism, because this will simply create those very same social frictions in NZ.
To understand Trump, you need to look at the people around him. They all believe that China is an existential threat to American hegemony and believe it’s either a trade war or hot war that will sort this issue of dominance out.
Trump’s much mocked ‘Space Force’ is actually an extension of this dominance ‘Art of the Deal’ Chaos theory. What Trump is actually demanding with his ‘Space Force’ is a militarisation of space, something that had previously been a sacred no go zone.
America doesn’t want to go to war with China, but Trump’s cavalcade of political circus freaks believe China is far weaker economically than the official figures suggest and that a trade war could implode China…
China: The US has started ‘the biggest trade war’ in history
China on Friday accused the United States of starting “the biggest trade war in economic history” as the two sides imposed steep new tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of each other’s exports.
…this trade war comes at the end of a super inflated decade of ‘growth’ that saw central banks print billions to prop up stock and bond markets to artificially create the lowest inflation rate for 5000 years.
That means this Trumpian madness comes at the exact worst moment…
Risk of ‘brutal correction’ in global stock markets
France’s market watchdog is bracing for a surge in global bond yields and a Wall Street crash as soon as this year, fearing that contagion will spread to Europe and snuff out the fragile recovery.“The world has never been so indebted – even more than before the 2007 crisis – and this debt has never been so risky,” said the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) in its -annual report.”
The number one risk for 2018 is a brutal correction of stock prices. The current valuation levels look high both by historical standards, and in fundamental terms across a whole range of indicators, starting with American equities.
Any correction there would most likely spread to other stock markets,” it said.
…while Trump considers military intervention in the dagger to Antartica’s heart, South America…
Trump pressed aides on Venezuela invasion, US official says
As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, US President Donald Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unravelling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t America just simply invade the troubled country?The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H R McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration. This account of the previously undisclosed conversation comes from a senior administration official familiar with what was said.
In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, McMaster and others took turns explaining to Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.
…all this at the same time the planet faces the existential crisis of global warming…
All-time heat records have been set all over the world during the past week
From the normally mild summer climes of Ireland, Scotland and Canada to the scorching Middle East, numerous locations in the Northern Hemisphere have witnessed their hottest weather ever recorded over the past week.
Large areas of heat pressure or heat domes scattered around the hemisphere led to the sweltering temperatures.
No single record, in isolation, can be attributed to global warming. But collectively, these heat records are consistent with the kind of extremes we expect to see increase in a warming world.
…a threat even our own military are taking seriously…
‘Global warming is happening’: Defence adds climate change issues to its strategy for the first time
…Hoots is correct to hold up Trump as a risk to everything, but it’s not the destruction he’ll do to the neoliberal hegemony that’s the issue, it’s that the neoliberal hegemony empowered Trump in the first place.
The response to the madness Trump is about to bring down upon us is not to embrace free markets and corporate rule, it’s to desperately identify a new type of economics to get us through what will become increasingly turbulent and damaging times.
Which is why Hoots is desperately resetting the narrative because when the shit hits the fan in NZ, what is Grant Robertson going to do?
My advice is call Winston Peters.
Originally Labour Party mandarins in Wellington didn’t want to form a Government with NZ First because Winston’s economic agenda was far too radical for the neoliberal Treasury goons to accept. Grant was one of those voices inside the negotiations that ensured a deal with Winston was made.
The tight rope Grant will walk is the demands of a country that is in desperate need of investment after 9 years of brutal National rule against a huge swath of the public who are mortgaged up their eyeballs because of property speculation and dairy intensification with a looming economic collapse.
One of the things that the new Government are convinced of is that there will be a global economic recession unlike anything we’ve seen before. Winston’s words on the failure of capitalism on the night he went with Labour weren’t rhetoric, they were belief.
Grant will need to step outside the straight jacket he was forced to wear the moment the collapse begins. If the new Government are seen to be reacting to an external shock and not provoking it, the new Government can dump its financial rules and react to the crisis without getting blamed by voters for it.
Who will the Government save? First time home owners? Dairy Farmers? Beneficiaries?
Hoots will be there to argue that we need to bail out his rich mates who bravely charter the mighty waves of neoliberalism.
We shouldn’t let him.
Given that China have a history of fighting and protecting their country at any cost, as when Japan invaded before WW2 and in the Korean war. With very limited resources and against enormous odds they will fight to the death. Both times they survived, therefore in this trade war they will win, making Trump and his idiot mates try a military option next , this won’t work either. Makes a scary future
Yeah, and when unarmed protesters stood up to the Chinese Communist Party, they ran them over with tanks and washed their blood down the drains. They’re really honourable folks. Xi Jinkipinki’s wife even sang for the troops after the massacre:
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/peng-liyuan-singing-to-tiananmen-troops-2013-3?r=US&IR=T
Racism comes in all forms misspelling names is a silly unpleasant one, his name is Xi Jinping. I looked at your picture and saw a woman in uniform singing to troops, there was nothing to identify when this was. Xenophobia is all very well but if we are talking about what happens when protestors stand up to Governments New Zealand does not look very honourable!
Sorry, you’re right – he’s a lovely bloke:
https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/uyghurs-victims-of-21st-century-concentration-camps/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/03/chinese-nobel-laureates-widow-ready-to-die-in-house-arrest
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/human-rights-repression-in-china-worsens-under-xi-activists-1.3681875
If there’s one thing murderous dictators hate it’s people laughing at them, so I’m happy to be of service :o)
You didn’t think the People’s Liberation Army or the CCP would caption that photo “Peng Liyuan sings for troops after the Tienanmen massacre” did you? Odd how the censors scrubbed all traces of it from the Chinese internet immediately after it appeared though.
And whatever your criticisms of the NZ government’s handling of unarmed protesters, they’ve never run them over with tanks as I recall – or shot them in cold blood like the Israel “Defence” Forces. (Oops – looks I’m an anti-Semite too!)
Didn’t say he was loveable just said childish misnaming of people is unpleasant and brings any points you were making to a level that invalidates your arguments. You may not be able to recall the NZ Government killing protesters that doesn’t mean they haven’t. How many protesters have been hanged and deported during the Maori Wars? How many protesters have been beaten by police batons in the 19th and 20th centuries? Ever heard of Massey’s Cossacks?
New Zealand is over exposed to trade with Australia by 50%, then China 20%, then America about 20% with 10% for everywhere else. All that means is our foreign, defence and trade policies are weak and we’ve allowed ourselves to become some ones else’s bitch. We’ve ignored the pacific isles for to long and now we have attitude.
So yeah, we can either limit exposure with Australia or boost trade so it’s a more even split across the board and quit relying on forign powers discounting our own trade.
https://tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/exports-by-country
https://tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/imports-by-country
Great expose’ Martyn top marks here for your deapth of investigative journo’;
“…this trade war comes at the end of a super inflated decade of ‘growth’ that saw central banks print billions to prop up stock and bond markets to artificially create the lowest inflation rate for 5000 years.
That means this Trumpian madness comes at the exact worst moment…
Well the world needs a correctioon after the years of falsely proping up the broken, flawed, capitalist system rife with speculation.
Trumps will just edge us toward the cliff of reality that we can mo longer keep publically ‘subsidising corrupt industries with puiblic money and low wage economic slavery.’
When I begun my working life in the 1950’s we were taught the real value of money and work for wages verses what your work produced then.
Today we have so many people inventing jobs for themselves that fail to produce any value so we need to return to the old system of work production for value.
For example when I came out of my electrical apprentiship I went into the army as a conscript around the time of the first NZ Army 101 battery was sent to vietnam and instead I opted to go and contribute to beginng building the Tongarero power sheme which added real value to our future ‘wellbeing & economic security”.
In those years the average tradesman’s weekly wage was 20 -25 pounds a week or $50 in the private employment market but working for the Ministry of Works as I did our wage was about $40 per week but the experience earned was far maore there than inn the private market so I was valuable to the national economy as being on the job I could repair or build equiptent for the Nation’s electricity system, rather than Ministry contracting in short term tradesman to do the job at a higher cost.
We need to get back to building our own government engineering companies again as we had then.
That is just one of the ways to make us all more valuable rather than sitting at home and speculating on making money on the over inflated stock market.
I don’t agree that Trump is the product of neoliberalism. He is one answer to neoliberalism from the proto fascist far right.
Otherwise he would not reject the ‘globalization’ which was neo-liberals big project to export capital to restore profits at home by investing in offshore production to capture cheap labour and new markets.
Because neo-liberalism failed to stop the long term problem with capitalism which – despite decades of austerity (squeezing wages to boost profits) and destroying the Soviet Union – has exhausted its productive capacity to return to profitable growth in the developed world.
Despite being put onto the drip feed of bailouts, neo-liberal capitalism in the advanced capitalist world has used the trillions to prop up its own falling share prices rather than invest in new unprofitable production. Making neoliberalism hostage to a bastardised neo-Keynesian statism.
Trump was white ‘middle class’ America’s answer to neoliberalism gutting their jobs and lives. This puts him at odds with US capital which makes more money from offshore plants in China etc than their parent plants in the US. A trade war with China is also a trade war with US investment in China (and the EU) which is an economic war against the US itself.
So Trump has bought a fight with his own ruling class. He knows this, and the return to Amerikan national chauvinism in the middle class is his gamble to hold onto power. That is why all his isolationist policies are designed to promote America as a bastion of white civilization. Chauvinism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Trump is not mad. He is a scoundrel. He is the Bonapartist figure that stands above the bourgeois state as the cult leader of the petty bourgeois and lumpenproletariat. As Congress pathetically tries to block this or that retreat from globalization, and therefore the interests of the dominant finance capital fraction of the US ruling class, Trump will resort increasingly to executive orders to rally his support and keep the reactionary momentum for US going.
All this points to a new war between the US and China/Russia.
The question as to what the NZ military needs in such a war is the wrong question. Right now we should be rejecting all military alliances with the US or Russia/China blocs, and preparing ourselves for this threat by building strong anti-fascist bonds with workers in all of these countries whose common interest is not to go to war or become nuclear fodder to a tiny ruling class that will risk global destruction before they surrender their wealth.
Exactly.
That’s one of the reasons why we need to purge the banks, write off mortgage debt and go it alone, or at least prepare to do so.
We have every single essential resource here to do just that and yet we bugger about still. To our grave peril, in my view.
The other thing that’s essential for our safety and security, like it or not, is to remain cosy’d up to the British Common Wealth. While they’re far from perfect, ( Who is? ) at least their heads of state are human beings, not mouth-pieces for a brutal and sociopathic fundamentalist economic system that only sees workers, therefore earner/spenders, or dead people.
This is what keeps me awake of an evening; Once our planet has one established ‘ owner/occupier ‘ we’ll see culling’s.
This makes total sense. Just like your answer to crypto fascists trying to stir shit up.
Marxist analysis makes much more sense than liberalism.
Noam Chomsky suggests Trump is just a foil for the back room boys who are completely destroying the US goverment , Pruitt is a good example of the destruction the neo libs are having, look out, the US will get more aggressive
and out of control.
Is anyone aware of what’s happening in America…and coming to a city near you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYGrmHFdr08&feature=em-uploademail
Powerful, chilling analysis Dave.
I disagree that this is about the ‘neo-liberal’ thing. It is much, much more threatening to the planet. The United States represented by the current Administration has become ‘the enemy’, yet NZ is still considering the purchase of billions of dollars of military equipment – under the auspices of our own little pile of right wing specimen – Ron Mark.
Let go of America before the bastards take us down with them. Fascism is a creeping social disease and just as during the 1930s, the silent majority has missed the point of no return. I may be proven wrong – or not. I’ll go with Madeleine Albright on this.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/08/madeleine-albright-fascism-is-not-an-ideology-its-a-method-interview-fascism-a-warning
Comments are closed.