John Cassidy's Blog, page 36

What Is the Post-Post-Davos Model of the World?

As the masters of the universe (and many journalists, too) gather for their annual confab in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the world economy that they will be gazing down upon isn’t looking very healthy. The financial markets are in turmoil. The oil price is in a free fall. China just announced its lowest G.D.P. growth rate in a quarter of a century. The European Union has been in crisis for years. The Middle East . . . enough said. Even the American economy, one of the world’s few bright spots, is showing some signs of slowing down.

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Related:
Why Chinese Factories Fare Poorly in the U.S.
The Good (and Bad) News About Poverty and Global Trade
The Corporate-Friendly World of the T.P.P.

Bernie Sanders’s Big Night

As Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern demonstrated in 1968 and 1972, respectively, the sweet spot in the Democratic electoral calendar for an insurgent liberal-leftist campaign is often right about now: those weeks in the deep midwinter of an election year when the nation’s eyes turn to Iowa and New Hampshire, two states with a populist streak. Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, is running strongly in both places. At Sunday night’s television debate, which was held in South Carolina, he was inevitably the center of attention. He made the most of it.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Hillary Clinton’s New Progressive Alignment
Comment from the January 25, 2016, Issue
Bernie Sanders, Guns, and the Idea of Vermont

Only Republican Voters Can Stop Donald Trump Now

At about eleven-thirty on Thursday night, Donald Trump stepped off a stage at the North Charleston Coliseum, in South Carolina, and posed for some pictures with his wife, Melania, his daughter Ivanka, and his sons Eric and Donald, Jr. As Trump is fond of pointing out, they make a striking family. Chances are we will be seeing more of them.

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Related:
Debate Watchers Disappointed That Trump and Cruz Did Not Actually Punch Each Other’s Faces
Daily Cartoon: Friday, January 15th
Donald Trump, Tourist Trap

Ted Cruz’s Goldman Sachs Problem

Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, likes to portray himself as the straight-talking, shit-kicking, anti-establishment type. Last summer, when he was languishing in the G.O.P. primary polls, he went to the Heritage Foundation, in D.C., up the street from Union Station, and declared war on the “Washington cartel”—a cozy club of big banks, major corporations, and shadowy lobbyists that, he claimed, was quietly pulling the strings in the nation’s capital. “It operates like OPEC,” Cruz said, according to a report at Fortune.com. “I don’t know, like sheikhs, if they actually wear robes. But they nonetheless on a daily basis are conspiring against the American people.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Donald Trump, Tourist Trap
Marco Rubio and the Problem of the Political Natural
The Republicans’ Principle-Free Presidential Debate

Obama’s Darkly Optimistic State of the Union Address

By convention, the State of the Union address is part laundry list and part rallying cry. The President of the day lays out his policy priorities for the coming year, bookending and interspersing them with airy salutations to the strength, resilience, and creativity of the American people and the American republic. If a Democratic President is in office, there is often talk of new frontiers, new challenges, new covenants, or another synonym for “new deal” that White House speechwriters have wrung from their thesauruses. And whatever the policy details of the speech, or the party of its presenter, or the actual state of the union—be it even at war or mired in recession—a consistent stance is maintained: one of optimism.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Obama Celebrates Last Time He Has to Talk to These Bastards
The Far-Right Revival: A Thirty-Year War?
How Old Is Donald Trump?

Cassidy’s Count: Bernie Sanders Is Gaining Ground on Hillary Clinton

In Iowa on Monday, Senator Bernie Sanders said that his rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign was in serious trouble, and claimed that this explained why she was attacking him on such issues as gun control and health care. “I think a candidate who was originally thought to be the anointed candidate, to be the inevitable candidate, is now locked in a very difficult race,” Sanders told reporters. “Obviously, what people in that scenario do is start attacking. . . . That is not surprising when you have a Clinton campaign that is now in trouble and now understands that they can lose.”

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Related:
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, January 12th
How Old Is Donald Trump?
A Lunar Theory of Bill Clinton

China’s Two Big Economic Challenges

The renewed turbulence in China’s stock markets—on Monday, the Shanghai exchange closed down more than five per cent—highlights the dual challenges facing the government in Beijing. The first task is restoring some stability to the country’s notoriously volatile markets. The second challenge, which is of much greater importance, is fixing the Chinese economy, which, for a couple of years now, has been looking a bit like Wile E. Coyote—stepping off a cliff and hovering in the air for a while, legs pumping furiously to defy gravity.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Dubious Logic of Stock-Market Circuit Breakers
The Case of the Missing Hong Kong Book Publishers
What Just Happened in North Korea?

The Most Important Message in the December Job Figures

Friday’s employment report from the Labor Department, which showed that the U.S. economy added nearly three hundred thousand jobs in December, is obviously good news. Coming after a spate of China-inspired turmoil in the financial markets this week, it confirms that the U.S. economy, now in the sixth year of a recovery from the Great Recession, is still expanding steadily.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Janet Yellen Era Starts Here
What Hillary Clinton Gets (and Bernie Sanders Doesn’t) About Wall Street
A Dow-DuPont Merger Would Raise Big Questions

Cassidy’s Count: Can Anyone Stop Donald Trump?

With just three and a half weeks to go until the Iowa caucus, Donald Trump’s bubble shows no signs of bursting. Earlier this week, more than eight thousand people turned up to see him in Lowell, Massachusetts, which is just across the border from New Hampshire. On Thursday night, a similar-sized crowd is expected to attend a Trump rally in ultra-liberal Burlington, Vermont—the home base of Bernie Sanders. And the first poll of the new year from New Hampshire, where voting will take place on Tuesday, February 9th, shows Trump retaining a big lead over the other G.O.P. candidates.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Case of the Missing Hong Kong Book Publishers
Movie of the Week: “Damsels in Distress”
A New York City Settlement on Surveillance of Muslims

Obama’s Tears of Despair and Defiance

For advocates of greater gun-control measures, the buildup to Tuesday’s announcement by President Obama of a series of administrative measures designed to prevent gun violence, including expanded background checks for gun sales, wasn’t promising. In a New York Times report that previewed the new policy moves, an official from the National Rifle Association was quoted as saying, “This is it, really? This is what they have been hyping for how long now?” On Wall Street, stock prices for gun manufacturers, such as Smith & Wesson, rose, evidently reflecting a belief that the new policies wouldn’t hurt sales, and might even boost them.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
How the Arab Spring Became the Arab Cataclysm
Congress Marks Third Anniversary of Doing Nothing After Newtown
Six Snowballs Thrown in the Gun-Control Debate