Real GDP limped along at an annual rate of just 0.9% in 2022 in today's third estimate

 

The always feckless Barack Obama makes speeches abroad for $1 million, blames threat of China on Trump when he himself failed to recognize the new threat in Xi Jinping from 2012

 The vacuum was all his.

Here's Obama:

“With my successor coming in, I think he saw an opportunity because the U.S. president didn’t seem to care that much about a rules-based international system,” Obama said, the Daily Mail reported. "As a consequence, I think China’s attitude [is], 'Well, we can take advantage of what appears to be a vacuum internationally on a lot of these issues.'"

 

It was Obama who never cared about the rules, never challenged China's military expansion in the South China Sea under Xi, and telegraphed nothing but weakness to China. 

Here's Xi Jinping as early as 2014:

Tabled by the popular ultranationalist blogger Zhou Xiaoping, the plan would authorize the assassination of blacklisted individuals—including Taiwan’s vice president, William Lai Ching-te—if they do not reform their ways. Zhou later told the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao that his proposal had been accepted by the conference and “relayed to relevant authorities for evaluation and consideration.” Proposals like Zhou’s do not come by accident. In 2014, Xi praised Zhou for the “positive energy” of his jeremiads against Taiwan and the United States. ...

But the most telling moments of the two-sessions meetings, perhaps unsurprisingly, involved Xi himself. The Chinese leader gave four speeches in all—one to delegates of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, two to the National People’s Congress, and one to military and paramilitary leaders. In them, he described a bleak geopolitical landscape, singled out the United States as China’s adversary, exhorted private businesses to serve China’s military and strategic aims, and reiterated that he sees uniting Taiwan and the mainland as vital to the success of his signature policy to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese ethnos.”

In his first speech on March 6, Xi appeared to be girding China’s industrial base for struggle and conflict. “In the coming period, the risks and challenges we face will only increase and become more severe,” he warned. “Only when all the people think in one place, work hard in one place, help each other in the same boat, unite as one, dare to fight, and be good at fighting, can they continue to win new and greater victories.” To help the CCP achieve these “greater victories,” he vowed to “correctly guide” private businesses to invest in projects that the state has prioritized.

Xi also blasted the United States directly in his speech, breaking his practice of not naming Washington as an adversary except in historical contexts. He described the United States and its allies as leading causes of China’s current problems. “Western countries headed by the United States have implemented containment from all directions, encirclement and suppression against us, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,” he said. Whereas U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has emphasized “guardrails” and other means of slowing the deterioration of U.S.-China relations, Beijing is clearly preparing for a new, more confrontational era.

On March 5, Xi gave a second speech laying out a vision of Chinese self-sufficiency that went considerably further than any of his previous discussions of the topic, saying China’s march to modernization is contingent on breaking technological dependence on foreign economies—meaning the United States and other industrialized democracies. Xi also said that he wants China to end its reliance on imports of grain and manufactured goods. “In case we’re short of either, the international market will not protect us,” Xi declared. Li, the outgoing premier, emphasized the same point in his annual government “work report” on the same day, saying Beijing must “unremittingly keep the rice bowls of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people firmly in their own hands.” China currently depends on imports for more than a third of its net food consumption.

In his third speech, on March 8 to representatives from the PLA and the People’s Armed Police, Xi declared that China must focus its innovation efforts on bolstering national defense and establish a network of national reserve forces that could be tapped in wartime. Xi also called for a “National Defense Education” campaign to unite society behind the PLA, invoking as inspiration the Double Support Movement, a 1943 campaign by the Communists to militarize society in their base area of Yan’an.

In his fourth speech (and his first as a third-term president), on March 13, Xi announced that the “essence” of his great rejuvenation campaign was “the unification of the motherland.” Although he has hinted at the connection between absorbing Taiwan and his much-vaunted campaign to, essentially, make China great again, he has rarely if ever done so with such clarity.

One thing that is clear a decade into Xi’s rule is that it is important to take him seriously—something that many U.S. analysts regrettably do not do. When Xi launched a series of aggressive campaigns against corruption, private enterprise, financial institutions, and the property and tech sectors, many analysts predicted that these campaigns would be short-lived. But they endured. The same was true of Xi’s draconian “zero COVID” policy for three years—until he was uncharacteristically forced to reverse course in late 2022.

Xi is now intensifying a decade long campaign to break key economic and technological dependencies on the U.S.-led democratic world. He is doing so in anticipation of a new phase of ideological and geostrategic “struggle,” as he puts it. His messaging about war preparation and his equating of national rejuvenation with unification mark a new phase in his political warfare campaign to intimidate Taiwan. He is clearly willing to use force to take the island. What remains unclear is whether he thinks he can do so without risking uncontrolled escalation with the United States.

The cost of the Silicon Valley Bank failure to the Deposit Insurance Fund dwarfs the number one IndyMac failure, the Signature Bank failure cost will rank fourth highest ever

 SVB will cost the DIF $20 billion. Signature will cost $2.5 billion.

These are enormous sums.

Combined they represent a 17.55% hit to the $128.2 billion balance of the Deposit Insurance Fund as of 12/31/22.

Reported here and here.

SVB will rank numero uno in this list ahead of IndyMac's $12 billion.

Signature Bank will probably rank fourth ahead of Colonial Bank's $2.4 billion. The final costs are yet to be determined.

Until these two recent failures there were just six institutions in the billion dollar or higher club for DIF bailouts.

FDIC member institutions fund the DIF through FDIC-imposed assessments.

It is received opinion that these bailouts will cost the taxpayers nothing. 

It is a fact that the tax-paying customers of these banks end up paying, through high interest rates on loans and effectively zero return paid by the banks on deposits. 

The best thing which can be said about the values of present day Americans is that those who hold them won't reproduce themselves

They will die off.

We can outlast them, if we don't join them.

NORC survey reported here.

 

The poor retailers

 

Shrinking food stamp benefits for families mean yet another challenge for retailers

The State of New York is run by green energy extremists who hate your use of natural gas, same as in California and Washington

First they came for your toilets, dishwashers, and clothes washers, and you said nothing.

Then they came for your coal, and you said nothing.

Then they came for your lightbulbs, and you said nothing.

 

Because the squirrel wanted to die

 

Gold price is having fun, fun, fun now that Daddy took the T-bird away

 

King of France cancels King of England's visit lol

 The French are rioting because Macron, who lost his parliamentary majority last summer, decided to ram through his changes to the retirement system without a vote of the National Assembly.

In other words, he thinks he's king.

 

Ron DeSantis missteps, tries to weasel out of his characterization of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "territorial dispute"

One message for Tucker Carlson viewers, another for "neocons".

But trying to thread that needle is a fool's errand.

Ron DeSantis obviously isn't ready for this yet. No one thinks any part of Ukraine is Russian territory, especially since Russia agreed to the new borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

DeSantis could elevate himself by pointing out that Ukraine also pledged itself to neutrality in that agreement, and that Ukraine should return to that position instead of seeking EU and NATO membership.

Unfortunately, it appears that DeSantis, and the rest of the field, needs to let Trump become the candidate and lose again in order to cleanse the GOP of Trump once and for all. 

DeSantis would be better positioned for 2028 anyway, when the Russia-Ukraine conflict enters its sixth year, at which time he can better Monday morning quarterback the whole thing. He will turn 50 in 2028. He has time. He needs time.

'Well, I think it's been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong,' DeSantis told Piers Morgan in an interview more than a week after his initial comments. ...

'What I'm referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don't think legitimately but they had,' he said.

More.

Byron York has DeSantis now trailing Trump in Monmouth poll in which DeSantis formerly had the lead

 Story.

Sounds about right

 STUDY: Americans' IQ Scores Falling First Time In Century...

Freud comeback...New generation embracing father of psychoanalysis...

Soft-on-sex-crime liberal Democrat in Wisconsin could make it to its Supreme Court on April 4

 

The Kelly commercial isn’t the first to attack Protasiewicz’s sentencing record. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business association, launched an ad campaign highlighting multiple convicted rapists and pedophiles who received light sentences from Protasiewicz.

More.

Worlds in collision: Jeb Bush and Pat Buchanan both go out of their way as 2024 looms to find things to like in Ron DeSantis

 Everyone is exhausted by you know who.

Piers Morgan interviews Ron DeSantis

I asked him if he was familiar with the story of Frankenstein, and he said he’d seen the movie.

“And you’re alluding to what?” he smirked, knowing full well what I was alluding to.

“Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster, then loses control of the monster, and then the monster ends up killing him,” I reminded him. “You know the parallel I’m making …”

 He chuckled. “Let’s put the country first rather than worry about any personalities or any type of individual … at the end of the day, I’m a vessel for the aspirations of the people I represent. It’s not about me — as Ronald Reagan said, ‘There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.’ ”

“That’s true,” I replied, “but you’re up against somebody who definitely cares who gets the credit, and who’s desperate to want to win back the White House.”    

More.

Byron York is crystal clear, as usual

Five things to remember about a 'zombie' Trump indictment

3) The "zombie" timing.

Bragg's indictment, if it comes, is often referred to as a "zombie" case because federal officials earlier declined to prosecute Trump on these grounds, and then Bragg himself considered and rejected a prosecution on the same grounds. Now, with time running out on the statute of limitations and to charge Trump before the 2024 presidential campaign is fully underway, Bragg has flip-flopped. The "zombie" case has been revived and is apparently going full speed ahead.

The death wish, among other things, puts the libertarian on the side of liberalism, not conservatism

 

OK, you can safely return to hating the banks now

 

The prediction of the end of humanity ain't happenin', so Greta Thunberg has deleted it

 But the internet is forever.

 

Never murder a man who is committing suicide -- Woodrow Wilson 1916

 He, meteor-like, flames lawless through the void,

Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.

-- Alexander Pope