#peter hartcher

[nicklloydnow]

“In short order, Donald Trump has inflicted deep damage to three of the unique sources of American superpower. And he’s on the very brink of shattering a fourth.

The United States enjoyed the unique advantage of an alliance network of more than 40 countries. But an alliance is meaningless to Trump’s America. The US uniquely created and built the world trading system as a source of growth and prosperity. Trump is dismembering it.

The US uniquely held in check war between great powers through its military might and strategic credibility. Its might remains. But American credibility started to slide under Barack Obama and today approaches the point of extinction.

Trump’s threats and promises are worth nil. Russia ignores his threats to stop the war in Ukraine. China successfully called his bluff over tariffs. Trump claims to have stopped an escalating war between India and Pakistan, but they say he had nothing to do with it.

Two newborn acronyms, both coined in the finance world, tell the story. One, coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong this month, is TACO – Trump always chickens out. The other, first reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, conveys investor sentiment about where to put money. It’s ABUSA – anywhere but USA.

Now Trump is on the cusp of surrendering a fourth unique source of US superpower, and perhaps the single most important – America’s “full faith and credit”. That is, the ability to borrow cheaply, to spend lavishly and to enjoy the “exorbitant privilege” of issuing the global reserve currency.

(…)

It’s no secret that the US has been building a vast national debt for years. Indeed, it’s literally up in lights in the form of debt clocks at multiple bus shelters around Washington, DC, courtesy of the Peterson Foundation. The clocks show US government debt at $US36 trillion and ticking higher by the minute. That’s about $US106,000 for every man, woman and child in that nation. Before the pandemic, US debt stood at the equivalent of about 100 per cent of America’s GDP. Today, it’s 122 per cent.

Some investors are starting to doubt that the US ever will repay it. The doubters include Trump himself. In 2023, he was asked about the risk of a US sovereign default. He replied: “You might as well do it now because you’ll do it later.”

The worry is that “later” has arrived. Eleven days ago, the credit rating agency Moody’s cut the US government’s creditworthiness – for the first time since 1919 – to second-tier.

Of the 200 countries in the world, only 10, plus the European Union, are rated as risk-free by all three major credit agencies. The US is not among them. The AAA sovereigns are Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland.

There are signs of growing anxiety in the markets. The US dollar has been sold off in the past week and bond interest rates bid up. And now comes the fiscal vandalism that Trump likes to call his “big beautiful” bill.

(…)

But that’s their country, their business. Where it gets ugly for the world is its effect on the federal debt. The technocrats of the Congressional Budget Office calculate that it would add about $US4 trillion to the debt over a decade.

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Peter Orszag, head of the US investment bank, Lazard, and previously director of the Congressional Budget Office, said this month that, in the past, he had ignored “all the Chicken Little, kind of ‘the sky is falling’ fiscal stuff because all the dire predictions were not happening. But if you compare where we are now to where we were a decade ago, it’s a lot different. The deficit is twice as high. Interest rates are dramatically higher. I think it’s time to worry again about this trajectory”.

So does historian Niall Ferguson. In February, he proposed something he calls “Ferguson’s law”. It posits that “any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defence risks ceasing to be a great power”.

He describes his proposed threshold as timely “as the US began violating Ferguson’s Law for the first time in nearly a century in 2024”. The Congressional Budget Office says that US net interest payments hit 3.1 per cent as a share of GDP last year, overtaking defence spending at 2.9 per cent.

Different agencies have slightly different estimates, but the broad point is that the US is now in Ferguson’s danger zone, which he calls “a useful predictor of the decline of a great power”.

How does this hurt a great power? Because there is less butter and fewer guns: “The debt burden draws scarce resources towards itself, reducing the amount available for national security and leaving the power increasingly vulnerable to military challenge.”

He also finds the “Ferguson limit” signals the internal fragility of a great power, as well as its external vulnerability. His paper for the Hoover Institution studies empires from Habsburg to British to support his thesis.

Ferguson doesn’t claim that US collapse is inevitable at this point. But if its political system plunges ahead into ever-deeper debt, the risk of a market panic rises. And a chaotic sell-off could indeed seal the fate of empire. There’s an old market adage: “Deficits don’t matter. Until the day they do.””

“If we take a step back from all this, Samantha, the really big significance of what we’re talking about here is we are witnessing in the daily news the implosion of an empire. We are witnessing the end of the American Empire that has stood like a colossus across the globe since World War II. It’s coming to an end. Donald Trump is accelerating it and day by day, these developments we’re talking about are all details in that larger pattern of decline.” [7:53 - 8:22]

[kermodefan94-blog]

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes. Movie Review.  

Even as someone broadly unfamiliar with the original run of the Planet of the  Apes franchise ( beyond the ubiquity of the original film ending)  as a complete piece the reboot “Caesar”  trilogy (  annoyingly sold as simply the “ Planet of the Apes Trilogy”)   in box sets is a modern blockbuster masterpiece. This is the textbook example of how to resurrect a franchise that no one asked for until…

[christinamac1]

Can Trump 2.0 defuse the nuclear threat? These Washington heavyweights fear not

The concern about Trump rests on his chaotic and erratic method of decision-making and his personal preference for dictators over democrats – for America’s traditional enemies over its allies. Peter Hartcher, November 9, 2024  Political and international editor Bob Woodward is doing his best to remain optimistic in the face of an impending second Donald Trump presidency. “Don’t give up on…

[avandelay20]

On nearly every measure, Australia’s mass immigration policy has been a failure, and Australian living standards have declined.

Yet, here we have the housing and construction industries arguing for more immigration under the veil of labour shortages. The situation is laughable.

Even the Big Australia boosters are struggling to maintain the façade.

First, we witnessed current and former NSW political leaders – Chris Minns, Mark Speakman, and Domonic Perrottet – pivot against mass immigration, noting that it is wrecking Sydney.

Now we have The SMH, which has long pumped Big Australia migration propaganda, having second thoughts.

“A long-running housing shortage has become acute. We have priced a generation out of the ability to buy a home. It’s a grave national failure”, The SMH’s political editor, Peter Hartcher, wrote over the weekend.

The SMH even published an article stating that it is not racist to want lower immigration—a massive change in rhetoric from an outlet that always loved to play the racism card.

The fact remains that the Albanese government has jumped the shark on immigration, and the mainstream media can no longer ignore the policy idiocy.

[andrewwhalan]

The Boring ALP Leadership Soap Opera!

The Boring ALP Leadership Soap Opera! #auspol #http://wp.me/p1D1R7-8M

Yet again I turn to the political section of the newspaper. Yet again I feel I am reading the script of a soap opera. But the same scene and same dialogue is being replayed. More stories on the Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard leadership crisis! Should Kevin be leader instead of Julia? Should some one else? It should be newsworthy. It isn’t. It’s boring. I’ve heard it all before. Sorry Michelle…

[sublimeobservationarcade]

Fox News Should Be Banned From Broadcasting to Australian Audiences

The evidence thrown up via the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News clearly shows that Fox News knowingly lied in their presentation of the news pertaining to the 2020 US federal election. Their CEO and owner both sent messages to staff directing them to refrain from telling their viewers the facts about the declared result of the election. They promoted the big lie, which contributed to January 6 and the undermining of social cohesion within America. This was because they were scared of the damage it would do to their viewing audience. This must contravene the standards of a network purporting to be a news station. How can purposely not telling the news be in line with the rules and regulations governing the media here in Australia. Fox News should be banned from broadcasting to Australian audiences.

'Hidden Figures' Media Interviews (NHQ201612130007) by NASA HQ PHOTO is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

Imagine If Fox News Was Chinese Owned

I would like to stop and hypothesise for a moment. Imagine if this was a Chinese news service made for English speakers beaming into Australia. Suddenly, the news got out that this network was deliberately misleading viewers about the result of something globally important on the direction of their management and central Chinese government controllers. The outcry would be enormous and the calls for their immediate banning from broadcasting would be sharp and loud. Talking heads would be damning the network as propagandists. The rabid right wing fringe would be marching in the streets in protest with all their Nazi posturing.

Double Standard For Fox & Telling White Skinned Lies On TV

There seems to be a convenient double standard when it comes to capitalism and ‘money talking’ when blatant manipulation of the media happens in the West. Our much lauded ‘so-called’ free press, which is no such thing, is free of scrutiny from the Peter Hartcher’s and fellow war with China drum beaters in the local media. The Western media does not need to be dictated to by autocratic regimes, as in Russia, because the power of money does the same job without the jackboots and uniforms. The concentration of media ownership into corporate hands in America, the UK, and in Australia ensures that editorial toes the company line. Investigative journalism has been largely replaced by paid opinion pieces and PR. Look at what happened to Wiki Leaks and Julian Assange – and what the kow towing media made of that in their deafening silence at his treatment.

It is absolutely outrageous that Fox News should be able to carry on, indifferent to the blatant lies and media manipulation carried out by the network revealed by this lawsuit, it is a travesty of our media laws and confirmation of the toothless tigers that roam the corridors of government. Corporate power is so vast and unaccountable in the West it makes the whole Westminster system of government and our democratic traditions a very bad joke. Fox News should be banned from broadcasting to Australian audiences on the basis that they don’t tell the news. Not truthfully, anyway. They lie in order to pander to their rabid right wing audience. The first amendment does not give Americans the right to knowingly misinform and mislead others on any platform of freedom to speech. It is one thing to hold an opinion about something and voice that, it is quite another to deliberately lie and present liars and crackpots in order to make money from selling advertising space at a higher rate via a larger audience of viewers. The American dream is just that a dream and bears no semblance to the reality of life in the United States. Free press - BS. Free market - more BS. ©House Therapy Read the full article

[workersbushtelegraph]

Ukraine, why not Palestine?

Ukraine, why not Palestine?

Russian soldiers give us the lowdown on what is actually happening in Ukraine (“Exposing Putin’s War of Delusion” by Peter Hartcher (SMH), August 30, 2022). “Breaking the Silence” is an Israeli veterans’ organisation which raises awareness to the dire consequences of prolonged military occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, when will the Herald let us hear from them? Gareth W R…

[t-jfh]

Hear no evil? Russian President Vladimir Putin.

(Photo: Sputnik, Kremlin Pool via AP)

The ruins of Putin’s war in Ukraine. (Photo: AP)

Put this cruel tyrant on trial. Let humanity be the judge

As Vladimir Putin’s war enters its third year, it is time to count the bodies. Ukraine admits to 31,000 deaths suffered by its troops. The actual toll is probably much higher, not to mention all the serious injuries. Tens of thousands of its civilians have lost their lives, including hundreds of children, while 21,000 young people have been kidnapped and taken by force to Russia.

Damage to infrastructure and housing and the environment has been huge. Russia has not dared to admit to the number of its military casualties, estimated at more than four times that of Ukraine. It is thought that by the end of this year, half a million people will be dead or disfigured.

What does international law say about all this?

It says, very clearly, that Putin is guilty of invading another country for no good reason and, as one of the founders of international law, Emmerich de Vattel, said centuries ago, the Russian leader bears legal responsibility for “all the evils, all the horrors of war; all the effusion of blood, the desolation of families, the rapine, the ravages are his works and his crimes”.

Opinion by Geoffrey Robertson

Human rights barrister and author

The Age - March 4, 2024

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Illustration: Dionne Gain

Late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny embraces his wife Yulia in 2013. (Photo: AP)

One murder too many, Mr Putin? It could be Ukraine’s lifeline

Russia’s dystopia deepened on the weekend when Vladimir Putin murdered his leading political critic, Alexei Navalny. We are supposed to believe that the cause of death was “taking a walk” in a Russian prison.

But while Putin’s rule by terror is dismaying for Russians who yearn for change, it could backfire against Putin on the Ukraine battlefield, according to a leading analyst.

“There is a bleakness in Russia now,” says the doyen of British strategic experts, Sir Lawrence Freedman. “It’s very hard to see sources of vulnerability for Putin with Navalny dead, [Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny] Prigozhin dead. He has more control of Russia now than he’s ever had.”

Opinion by Peter Hartcher

Political and international editor

The Age & Sydney Morning Herald - February 20, 2024

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Vladimir Putin delivers his state-of-the-nation address in Moscow. (Photo: AP)

During his state-of-the-nation address, Putin warned the West against deeper involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. (Photo: AP)

Putin warns that sending Western troops to Ukraine risks a global nuclear conflict

Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to fulfil Moscow’s goals in Ukraine and sternly warned the West against deeper involvement in the fighting, saying that such a move is fraught with the risk of a global nuclear conflict.

Putin’s warning on Thursday (Russia time) came in a state-of-the-nation address ahead of next month’s election which he’s all but certain to win through fraudulent manipulation.

By Vladimir Isachenkov

The Age & Sydney Morning Herald - February 29, 2024

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[christinamac1]

White House pushes for AUKUS to move to ‘pillar two’ weapons focus

SMH, By Peter Hartcher, September 9, 2024 The US is pushing for the AUKUS partnership to launch some world-leading new military technology projects before Joe Biden’s presidency ends, amid signs of growing impatience with the initiative. The US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, revealed in an interview at the White House that he wanted to see “two or three signature projects launched…

[worldnewsinpictures]

Panellist Peter Hartcher writes the the first Liberal MP to join the #March4Justice had a message for the Prime Minister. Morrison needs to be overthrown before change will take place Narcissistic males cant change.... Do you have an opinion on this? Share it! HERE -> https://worldnewsinpictures.com/panellist-peter-hartcher-writes-liberal-mp #Panellist #PanellistPeter #PanellistPeterHartcher #March4Justice #March4JusticePrime #March4JusticePrimeMinister #Narcissistic #NarcissisticShare #NarcissisticShareHERE #Hartcher #writes #Liberal

[sophreads]

Books I read in 2017

I love reading, but I wasn’t doing it as much as I wanted to - so I set myself a challenge of reading a ‘book a week’ in 2017 (inspired by Paige and Jonty). I had a lot of fun and am very happy that I reached my goal!

I really liked almost all of these books, but my particular favourites are marked in bold. Re-reads are marked with a ^. Here are the books I read:

1. My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante – 5/1

2. Reckoning: A Memoir – Magda Szubanski – 9/1

3. The Mission Song – John Le Carre – 16/1

4. The Secret River – Kate Grenville – 19/1

5. Dear Life: On Caring For The Elderly – Karen Hitchcock – 26/1

6. What It Takes: The Way to the White House – Richard Ben Cramer – 18/2

7. Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty – 19/2

^ 8. Saving Francesca – Melina Marchetta – 23/2

9. The Empathy Exams: Essays – Leslie Jamison – 2/3

10. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis – JD Vance – 4/3

11. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline – 10/3

12. Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia – Peter Pomerantsev – 15/3

^ 13. Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power – Steve Coll – 4/4

14. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed – Jon Ronson – 9/4

15. SS-GB – Len Deighton – 25/4

^ 16. Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) – Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson – 2/5

17. Depends What You Mean by Extremist: Going Rogue with Australian Deplorables – John Safran – 7/5

18. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood – 15/5

19. The Spare Room – Helen Garner – 16/5

20. Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?: A Story About Women and Economics – Katrine Marcal – 17/5

21. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies – Jared Diamond – 28/5

22. The Adolescent Country – Peter Hartcher – 30/5

23. The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead – 2/6

24. Political Amnesia: How We Forgot to Govern – Laura Tingle – 6/6

25. Shrill – Lindy West – 13/6

26. Searching for the Secret River – Kate Grenville – 20/6

27. The Good Girl Stripped Bare – Tracey Spicer – 29/6

^ 28. Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil – Melina Marchetta – 3/7

29. The Green Road – Anne Enright – 10/7

30. Joe Cinque’s Consolation: A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law – Helen Garner – 12/7

31. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote – 23/7

32. Stop Fixing Women – Catherine Fox – 29/7

33. All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr – 6/8

34. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It – Paul Collier – 13/8

35. The Wife Drought: Why Women Need Wives and Men Need Lives – Annabel Crabb – 16/8

^ 36. Tinker, Tailer, Solider, Spy – John Le Carre – 19/8

37. The Death of Yugoslavia – Allan Little and Laura Silber – 5/9

38. Supermarket Monsters: The Price of Coles and Woolworths’ Dominance – Malcolm Knox – 7/9

39. Commonwealth – Ann Patchett – 10/9

40. A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara – 16/9

41. Talking To My Country – Stan Grant – 19/9

42. Stasiland: Stories from behind the Berlin Wall – Anna Funder – 26/9

43. The Museum of Modern Love – Heather Rose – 11/10

44. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West – William Cronon – 19/10

45. People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks – 28/10

46. Bad News: Murdoch’s Australian and the Shaping of the Nation – Robert Manne – 31/10

47. La Belle Sauvage – Philip Pullman – 2/11

48. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads – Tim Wu – 12/11

49. A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Bachman – 16/11

50. Light and Shadow: Memoirs of a Spy’s Son – Mark Colvin – 24/11

51. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold – John Le Carre – 28/11

52. Without America: Australia in the New Asia – Hugh White – 4/12

53. Fight Like a Girl – Clementine Ford – 11/12

54. Still Alice – Lisa Genova – 11/12

55. The Downfall of Money: Germany’s Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class – Frederick Taylor – 30/12

[t-jfh]

As the war in Ukraine grinds into a third year it is now clear that Russia is becoming more dangerous. (Photo: Monique Westermann)

Heavy artillery fire in the battle of Bakhmut in May 2023. (Photo: Associated Press)

Is Europe ready for war with Putin?

As the war in Ukraine grinds into a third year it is now clear that Russia is becoming more dangerous. A politically divided America is also less reliable and Europe remains, as ever, under-prepared as the security arrangements that emerged from the end of World War II — and which have so far prevented a third global war — seem stuck in post-Soviet complacency.

By Rob Harris

The Age - March 2, 2024

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Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Kremlin opposition leader Alexei Navalny, addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

(Photo: Reuters - Frederick Florin)

Navalny’s widow warns in E.U. speech of arrests at husband’s funeral

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, warned the European Parliament on Wednesday of possible arrests at her husband’s funeral, which is now set for Friday.

By Francesca Ebel

The Washington Post - February 28, 2024

Shared from Apple News

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YouTube video >> ABC News: Alexei Navalny's widow accuses Putin of killing husband, vows to fight on for free Russia [Released 20 February 2024 / 2mins.+52secs.]:

Alexei Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, alleges the Kremlin is hiding her husband's body in a cover up and says she has 'no right to give up' on his vision of a free and democratic Russia.

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YouTube video >> The Morning Edition podcast: Peter Hartcher on who’s next on Vladimir Putin’s hit list [Released 22 February 2024 / 26mins.+22secs.]:

When Alexei Navalny died last week in a remote Arctic penal colony, many felt that it signified the death of hope for a future, democratic Russia.

Because for nearly two decades, Navalny fought for fair elections, human rights, and freedom of speech; eventually rising to become Vladimir Putin’s most feared opponent.

Today, political correspondent Peter Hartcher talks on Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to take over her late husband's work. And whether she will be able to unite the fractious democratic movement within Russia.

International political editor Peter Hartcher interviewed by TME host Samantha Selinger-Morris

The Morning Edition podcast - 22 February 2024

The Age & Sydney Morning Herald

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[go-rod-posts]

Dave Sharma please explain to your constituents how a ‘gas-lead recovery’ will result in lower emissions Peter Hartcher of The Sydney Morning Herald has written a scathing critique of climate inaction by the federal government.