24: Canada

Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)

Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)

Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)

Trump’s Gilded Ballroom and the Fall of the American Republic Tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand .............. Donald Trump is in the process of destroying a large part of the White House so he can construct a 90,000 square foot gold-encrusted ballroom. And this is being done without any historical or architectural review, treating a national treasure that belongs to the people as if it were his own personal property. In true Trumpian style, this act of vandalism is being paid for by large corporate donors — mostly tech and crypto companies — seeking to buy Trump’s favor. ........... Masked government agents are snatching people off the street. The National Guard has been sent into major cities on the obviously false pretext that these cities are in chaos. The U.S. military is essentially murdering people on the high seas. Huge tariffs are, in addition to their economic costs, undermining a system of alliances former presidents spent generations building. Green energy is being eviscerated, vindictive prosecutions are the norm, and many millions are on course to lose their health insurance. ..............

tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand

........... York is an authority on the design and décor choices of modern despots, from Saddam Hussein to Ferdinand Marcos to Nicolae Ceausescu. He noted that despite the vast differences in their cultural backgrounds, the palaces of despots all looked very similar: Gigantic rooms confected with massive amounts of gold, glass and marble, clearly in imitation of Versailles. ............. Trump is turning the White House into Mar-a-Lago North .............. Washington DC is a city full of grand monuments and impressive public buildings. Yet the style of these monuments and public buildings is generally one of restrained neoclassicism meant to evoke the Roman Republic – an ideal of a republic of equals reflected in law and norms as well as architecture. Anything approximating the Louis XIV style of Trump would have been considered monarchical and autocratic by the Founding Fathers. ............ Trump is turning the people’s house into a palace fit for a despot partly because that’s his taste, but also to show everyone that he can. L’etat, c’est moi. .............. even at the height of its glory the Roman Empire would have looked incredibly poor and shabby by 21st-century standards. ................ Modern historians of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire mostly agree upon one explanation for the Republic’s collapse – namely that the enormous loot from Rome’s conquests created a class of incredibly wealthy oligarchs who were too wealthy and powerful to be constrained by republican norms, institutions and laws. ............. Trump’s demolition of the White House — because that’s what it is. This isn’t a remodeling or building an addition, it’s a teardown. It may seem like a trivial story, but it’s a highly visual metaphor for the way MAGA is tearing down almost everything good about our country. And that ballroom’s hideousness is an equally good metaphor for all the political ugliness that lies in our future.

The Mamdani Moment And the Future of the Democratic Party ...... the current Democratic Party is dysfunctional if not dead. .......

The brightest light in the Democratic Party is Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old member of the New York State Assembly who has a good chance of being elected the next mayor of New York City when New Yorkers go to the polls a week from Tuesday.

.......... He’s proposing a few easy-to-understand things — free buses, free childcare, a four-year rent freeze for some two million residents, and a $30 minimum wage. He’s aiming to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 1930s — fix it. ......... (My seventeen-year-old granddaughter is spending her weekends knocking on doors for him, as are her friends.) ............. Nonetheless, Mamdani is horrifying the leaders of the Democratic Party. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries haven’t endorsed him. Hillary Clinton has endorsed Andrew Cuomo, who’s spending what are likely to be the last days of his political career indulging in the kind of racist, Islamophobic attacks we’d expect from Trump. ........... Tell me: Where’s the center between democracy and fascism ......... the Times’s so-called “moderate center” is code for corporate Democrats using gobs of money to pursue culturally-conservative “swing” voters — which is what the Democratic Party has been doing for decades. ......... Corporate Democrats took the Party’s away from its real mission — to lift up the working class and lower middle class, and help the poor. Instead, they pushed for globalization, privatization, and the deregulation of Wall Street. They became Republican-Lite. ......... In 2016 and again in 2024, working and lower-middle class voters saw this and opted for a squalid real estate developer who at least sounded like he was on their side. He wasn’t and still isn’t — he’s on the side of the billionaires to whom he gave two whopping tax cuts. ............ Trump also fed voters red-meat cultural populism — blaming their problems on immigrants, Latinos, Black people, transgender people, bureaucrats, and “coastal elites.” Democrats gave voters incomprehensible 10-point plans. ......... He aims to generate $9 billion in new tax revenue by raising taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents and businesses. He’s calling for a 2% tax on incomes over $1 million, which would produce $4 billion in tax revenue. He wants to increase the state’s corporate tax rate to 11.5 percent to match New Jersey’s, generating about $5 billion annually. ..............

The wealthy have never been as wealthy as they are now, while the tax rate they pay hasn’t been as low in living memory.

.......... Inequalities of income and wealth are at record levels. A handful of billionaires now control almost every facet of the United States government and the U.S. economy. .......... Wages are nearly stagnant, prices are rising. Monopolies control food processing, housing, technology, oil and gas. ........... The time is made for the Democrats. If the Party stands for anything, it should be the growing needs of bottom 90 percent — for affordable groceries, housing, and childcare. For higher wages and better working conditions. For paid family leave. For busting up monopolies that keep prices high. For making it easier to form and join labor unions.

Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)

Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)

Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)

Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)

Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)

3: Canada

1: Tariff

23: Canada

An analyst looks ahead to how the US economy might fare under Trump

17: Canada

14: India-Canada

Could America Grow At 5%

I think it is extremely possible. The 2008 fiasco was a policy failure on a massive scale. The 2008 fiasco was preventable. The 2008 fiasco was stupidity run amok, on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill. Main Street paid the price, and continues to do so. In any other industry the fiasco would have given rise to a whole new generation of innovative companies. The rules in finance are obviously not market friendly enough.

It was like somebody (at home) bombed the interstate highways. The basic fabric of finance lay in tatters.

China is on its way to becoming the leading economy in the world by 2016. But that is based on PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) and that is a country with four times as many people as America. And a lot of that growth is coming from playing catch up with America. America still shows signs of coming up with the industries of tomorrow. I think the explanation is simple. A country that celebrates free speech will beat a country that does not celebrate free speech any day when it comes to cutting edge innovation.

Yes but of course America could hit 5% growth rates. The Great Recession could have been avoided, if only the people on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill had been doing their job.

The American economy: Comeback Kid

Unemployment is stuck above 8% and growth probably slipped below an annualised 2% in the first half of this year. Ahead lie the threats of a euro break-up, a slowdown in China and the “fiscal cliff”, a withering year-end combination of tax increases and spending cuts...... Led by its inventive private sector, the economy is remaking itself. Old weaknesses are being remedied and new strengths discovered, with an agility that has much to teach stagnant Europe and dirigiste Asia. ..... America’s sluggishness stems above all from pre-crisis excesses ..... Until 2008 growth relied too heavily on consumer spending and house-buying, both of them financed by foreign savings channelled through an undercapitalised financial system. Household debt, already nearly 100% of income in 2000, reached 133% in 2007. Recoveries from debt-driven busts always take years, as households and banks repair their balance-sheets. ...... in the past three years that repair has proceeded fast. America’s houses are now among the world’s most undervalued: 19% below fair value ..... because the Treasury and other regulators, unlike their euro-zone counterparts, chose to confront the rot in their financial system quickly, American banks have had to write off debts and raise equity faster than their peers. (Citigroup alone has flushed through some $143 billion of loan losses; no euro-zone bank has set aside more than $30 billion.) American capital ratios are among the world’s highest. And consumers have cut back, too: debts are now 114% of income. ..... a richer China has become the third-largest market for America’s exports, up 53% since 2007 ...... a growing “app economy”, nurtured by Facebook, Apple and Google, which employs more than 300,000 people; its games, virtual merchandise and so on sell effortlessly across borders .... even small companies are seeking a toehold in emerging markets ..... Many countries have shale gas, but, as it did with the internet revolution, America leads in exploiting it ...... Even the most productive start-ups cannot help an economy held back by dilapidated roads, the world’s most expensive health system, underachieving union-dominated schools and a Byzantine immigration system that deprives companies of the world’s best talent

America’s economy: Points of light

American companies have left their mark all over Shanghai’s skyline..... Five of America’s biggest banks wrote off almost $500 billion in the aftermath of the financial crisis and raised $318 billion in fresh capital. As a result, their equity ratios now exceed 10%—above both pre-crisis levels and those of euro-zone banks. ...... Consumers are now engaged in a long, hard process of shedding debt and learning to live within their means. .... an uncommonly feeble recovery. In the three years since the recession ended, GDP has grown by an average of 2.4%. ..... With many old mortgages defaulted on and written off, and new ones harder to get, debt burdens have shrunk considerably. ..... two things beyond America’s control: the slowing world economy and the rising price of oil, America’s largest import. ..... Sales to traditional markets in the OECD, a rich-world club, have risen 20% since the end of 2007. But they have risen 51% to Latin America and 53% to China, which is now America’s third-largest market after Canada and Mexico. ..... Services have long been an American strength, consistently making up 30% of its exports. ..... scientific, engineering and other consulting, plus financial services .... Exports of such services to Brazil, India and China nearly doubled between 2006 and 2010. .... This trend has been pushed on by digital technology, which makes effortless the sale of many services across borders. ..... Zynga, one of the largest makers of online games and mobile entertainment applications, recorded $1.1 billion in revenue last year, largely from the sales of virtual goods in its games. A third of this came from players who live outside America. ...... Manufacturing employment has risen steadily for two years now. ..... Traditionally, America’s largest companies, such as Boeing and Caterpillar, have dominated exports. Small companies find distribution, regulation and language barriers overwhelming in foreign countries. ...... Small companies (with fewer than 500 employees) accounted for 34% of exports in 2010, up from 29% in 2006. ..... Soaring grain exports have raised farmers’ incomes to record levels, and regulators fret about incipient bubbles in agricultural land. At the same time, surging oil prices have triggered a gusher of new output. ..... America is the world’s third-largest oil producer. ..... a bonanza of domestic gas. Americans pay less than $3 for 1m British thermal units, where Europeans and Asians often pay more than $10. ..... America’s most successful exporters employ relatively few people. .... Emerging markets may have survived the 2008 crisis largely unscathed, but their growth is now succumbing to their own financial excesses. Nor are they an easy place to make money. China’s government, in particular, often forces foreign companies to share with local partners the ideas that give them their competitive advantage

Related articles

• Fears of global economic slowdown weigh on emerging markets
• Comeback Nation: Why the U.S. Economy Is Much Stronger Than You Think
• 3D Printing: Rise of the machines
• The Economist: America's economy is once again reinventing itself
• Don't Count America Out
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Massive Power Outage In India

Hydroelectric dam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When about a third of the people in a country the size of India (US + Europe + Africa) lose power, that is massive.

What the India Blackout Says About India's Frailties

Even for India, though, the blackout that began in the early hours of Monday was extraordinary. Nearly 360 million people—more than the population of the U.S. and Canada combined—lost power across seven states in northern India when excessive demand and a shortfall in hydro power overwhelmed the electricity grid. The worst blackout in a decade started at 2:32 in the morning, leaving people sweltering in their homes and stopping service on trains and subways in Delhi..... Slightly more than 12 hours later, power resumed in the capital...... The less-than-normal rainfall has put strains on India’s hydroelectric power supply, which accounts for 19 percent of the country’s 205 gigawatt generation capacity ..... The blackout “is symbolic of the infrastructure bottlenecks of the country” ...... The government wants to spend $400 billion over the next five years on power-sector investment, adding 76 gigawatts of capacity by 2017. That’s on top of the 85 gigawatts of power India has added in the past 10 years.

The real solution might be on the moon.

Related articles

• Wind Competing with Coal in India
• Jindal Power to Invest $7.7 Billion in Hydro: Corporate India - Bloomberg
• China's controversial Three Gorges dam marks completion
• Brazil to Invest Heavily in Wind Power
• Welspun Says India Set to Double Solar Capacity Target - Bloomberg
• Brazil To Invest Heavily In Wind Power

Facebook's Money Problem

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook's Earnings Report Underscores Its Challenges

the decelerating growth of its advertising business, which accounted for 85 percent of its $3.7 billion in revenue ..... in the last quarter, Facebook got $1.28 in revenue from each of its users, which is barely changed from the same time last year. .... the average revenue per user in the U.S. and Canada jumped to $3.20 from $2.84 a year ago

There is no relationship at Facebook between user growth and revenue growth. And that seems to be the problem. Long term I am not worried. There are several ways to monetize Facebook. Facebook has to figure out Facebook-unique ways to make money.

Related articles

• Solid growth in FB's first earnings report
• Facebook Sales Top Analysts' Estimates as Ad Spending Gains - Bloomberg
• Facebook earnings: How much will Zynga's troubles hurt?
• Facebook's first financial results: live - Telegraph.co.uk
• Facebook posts loss in first quarterly earnings report
• Facebook's stock tumbles after 1st public quarter
• The Only Three Things To Look For In Facebook's Earnings Report This Afternoon (FB)
• Facebook barely hits revenue mark with $1.18 billion in Q2, stock hits all time low
• Much riding on Facebook's first earnings report
• Earnings Outlook: Facebook faces low-key expectations

New Technology And Old Media

Earlier I got back from a dinner party at Arianna's place. (Dinner At Arianna's) If it had been a private party it would have been bad taste to blog about it.

I had no idea The Huffington Post has major international expansion gameplans. I am so impressed. The Huffington Post is still very much a startup, just with more resources.

Paramendra, I very much hope you can join me for a dinner for Juan Luis Cebrian, who heads El Pais, our partner in launching The Huffington Post in Spain. It is at 7pm at my home at _________ 17th Street_______. Let me know if you can make it. All the best, Arianna.

The Huffington Post has been in Canada for a while now. I did not know. It even has a French edition in Canada. And it has already teamed up with the top French newspaper. I did not know. And I thought Arianna bought a yacht and went on a world tour after selling The Huffington Post to AOL. Not so. She is hard at work. If you think the newspaper is dead, talk to Arianna. I did not know El Pais was the biggest newspaper in the Spanish speaking world. I had never heard of that brand name.

I got to meet a whole bunch of people on the El Pais team. And I congratulated each of them. I told them I was not with The Huffington Post, although looks like I might do a few projects for them. ("How do you know Arianna?" "I met her at a party a few days back.")

I told them, this is a really smart move for both of you to be making. You have the content and the culture and the local reach that The Huffington Post does not have. The Huffington Post has the magic that you don't have. They do not embrace new technology, they have not mastered new technology, it is more like they were born out of new technology. Being big will not save you. RIM of Blackberry fame was big. The Huffington Post does new technology better than any newspaper in the world. Teaming up with them will rub off on you.

And I got to meet Joe Klein, the Time columnist. "You are Joe Klein, right?"

And - take this - I got to meet Charlie Rose, the man himself. "Charlie, I am a huge fan of your show." So true. Nobody quite like Charlie in the business.

I also met the president of MSNBC, but he had to tell me that.

I met a Danish guy out of London who sold a video startup to AOL for $100 million, and another guy who sold a startup to AOL for an undisclosed sum.

Towards the very end I got to meet Arianna's sister: "I am the artist in the family."

Meeting Arianna Huffington

Ends up Arianna did not buy a yacht. She bought something better. She has a great, great apartment. The big, open space of the living room, the view of the Freedom Tower, the white coloring of the walls. It is nice.

Mike Arrington and Arianna Huffington are a study in contrasts. One sold the top tech blog in the world to AOL, another sold the top blog in the world to AOL. And the similarities kind of end there. Arianna's is the biggest startup newspaper in the world, a newspaper for the digital era. In short, you ain't seen nothing yet.

If AOL remakes itself in Arianna's image, it will more than thrive. It will not end up a Yahoo.

A Rising Economy?

Image via WikipediaThe recovery is slow but sure. I would have liked something more dramatic, but good news is good news. I don't think it's fragile. I don't think next month we will be like, oops, we are going down again. The rise I think will be steady, although not a smooth steady. Much of it is about growth in jobs. People need work. And the economy simply has to come up with those jobs.

There has been some good news especially on the jobs front today.

A dramatic realignment that I was expecting did not happen. The stimulus bill of 2009 was not dramatic enough as far as I was concerned. But the president perhaps did what he could under the given political alignments.

How long before the unemployment rate hits 6% again, you think?

Brazil: The Largeness Of A Country

Some countries are huge geographically but minuscule in population: Canada, Russia, Australia. Brazil is not one of those. Its large presence on the map is matched by the people who populate that map.

After Party

I have missed three NY Tech MeetUps in a row. That is uncharacteristic of someone who used to show up when the NY Tech MeetUp was half a dozen people at a Lower East Side bar. But I missed. And livestreaming does not work for me, I never really went that route. So I showed up for the after party last night: 218 Sullivan. No presentations, and no beer, I decided, and it was such great fun. I worked the room like a politician.