Category Archives: Economics

A Christmas Post: Jesus Comes to America, Meets Voodoo Economics………

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I once responded to a poll posted on social media about whether Jesus would be allowed into America. That was a few years ago. I got in the habit of upgrading and modifying the post every year around the Holiday and Christmas time. Here is my modified updated version for this unusual year of 2018:

  • He, Jesus Son of Maryam the Virgin as we call him, wants to come to America. They call him Christ, the anointed, or Messiah/Massih in Hebrew/Arabic/PersianHe has heard that this new land is the last bastion of his true-blue red followers, those who truly adhere to his small sect of Judaism, or so he thinks. He knows they call themselves Christians now. He wants to come visit his true believers in what was and is called the Old Confederacy and the Bible Belt West, once called fly-over land. As well as some inland pockets on the two coasts. 
  • He, Jesus Christ, would probably not be allowed on a connecting flight from Europe (back in the Middle East there are many who look like him). Eventually, After some agitation, he will likely be put on a no-fly list as a potential terrorist.
  • If not, or if he manages to sneak through the controls, he will face the next obstacle. Some other passenger (most likely an American) would complain that he/she feels uncomfortable with someone dressed in long a robe, a hairy man mumbling in some strange language, a typical raghead, on the same airplane. So, Jesus would likely be bounced off the flight anyway (maybe he’ll be handed a check for $300 as compensation).
  • Let’s assume that he manages to make it after all, perhaps walking across from Mexico or Canada. He will not be allowed into many churches because his attire (robe & sandals) is deemed un-Christian. The first Mega-Buck Church would throw him out because he does not fit the image of a “member” of their House of God.
  • Besides, he wouldn’t know what a church is. Jesus would look for a synagogue upon arrival. Lucky for him, he’d most likely land in New York City.
  • He wouldn’t be any more welcome in a synagogue than in a church. Memories of the Diaspora and pogroms and massacres and the Holocaust perpetrated by his alleged later followers do not fade easily. Besides he has no money to pay the very high New York annual fees required for joining. 
  • He, as Son of Maryam and fruit of Immaculate Conception, might be allowed into a mosque (no fees usually needed there; Mosques are not used as exclusive or exclusionary private clubs). But that welcome of a non-Muslim would be only with the hope of converting him to the teachings of the illiterate Arab shepherd from Mecca who came after him. It wouldn’t last long. 
  • He would also wonder who this blue-eyed blond namesake of his was, whose alleged birthday is celebrated by corporate America so eagerly every year. From September to January of each year. Whose image is posted all over towns and museums. And he would wonder what he has to do with a fat jolly Germanic man who likes to wear red and white tights, and jingle his bells, his only utterances: ho ho ho.
  • Once enlightened, Jesus would wonder what do Amazon and Apple and Macy’s and gas prices and NASDAQ have to do with his birthday.
  • Most of all, he is intrigued about this new noisy Roman governor of America who is all orange, who is pushing a vague new creed that he calls MAGA. He knows it involves some kind of new miracle or, as someone explained: Rich people elected mainly by poor people taking money from the poor and giving it to the very rich, in the hope of somehow making the poor richer“.
  • Makes sense?

Cheers & Have a Merry One……
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Game of Musical Pockets Between the Trumps and Gulf Princes, Fuzzy iPhone Math and Immigration…..

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Some Arab media have recently quoted an Israeli source that First Son-In-Law Jared Kushner and some Trump associate and lawyer named Jason Greenblatt are using several allied Persian Gulf leaders and potentates as ATM cash machines. For their own financial advantage.
Previously, some media had quoted certain Persian Gulf princes & potentates as claiming that in fact it is they who have Kushner in their deep pocket.
Others had previously also quoted Kushner that the said Gulf princes are in his own pocket of questionable depth….

A bit confusing, this game of pockets, both deep and not so deep, no?

 

I saw some interesting figures put out by Spectator Index that:

It takes earnings of 133.3 average working days in Cairo (Egypt) to buy one iPhone X.
It takes earnings of 4.7 average working days in Zurich (Switzerland) to buy one iPhone.

Truly unfuzzy economic math that partly explains the recent westward and northward immigration surge. If you leave Cairo and go work in Zurich instead, you can buy 28.4 iPhones instead of only one, if you work for 133.3 days. And it can only get worse for the foreseeable future, unless Generalissimo Field Marshal Al Sisi and his ruling military Junta can perform a miracle.

On a lighter yet potentially more serious more ominous note: President Donald Trump was quoted today about Hurricane Florence that “it’s tremendously big and tremendously wet”
No doubt, ‘tremendously wet‘ is a higher category than merely ‘bigly wet’.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Of Wars, Budget Deficits, Predatory College Loans: from Germany to USA and Saudi Arabia……

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The budget shows a deficit for all those countries listed below. With the exception of Germany, which had a healthy surplus.

Germany also has an extensive public healthcare system and a generous social safety net system. In addition, Germany has tuition-free education at universities and colleges. It does not saddle its younger generation with heavy education loans for the benefit of predatory banking corporations. Many other countries, including Saudi Arabia, also provide free university education. Germany also, unlike the USA and Saudi Arabia, is not engaged in major expensive stupid unwinnable foreign wars.

Spectator Index:
Govt budget balance as share of GDP, 2017.

Germany: +1.2%

Greece: -0.6%
Russia: -1.5%
Turkey: -1.5%
Australia: -1.5%
Canada: -1.6%
Italy: -2.3%
Indonesia: -2.8%
France: -2.9%
UK: -2.9%
India: -3.5%
US: -3.5%
China: -3.7%
Japan: -4.4%
Brazil: -8%
Saudi: -8.9%
Venezuela: -19%

 

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

New Trump Team: Tea Party Men, Chickenhawks, and a Cavalier Rah Rah Economist Ascendant…..

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Trump is going fully hard right now, on cruise control:


Tea Party war hawk Mike Pompeo nominated for top diplomat (oxymoronic). Tillerson was fired with a tweet yesterday as he was flying from Africa, as I mentioned here yesterday……..

Alleged supporter of Enhanced Interrogation/Rendition Gina Haspel to head the CIA……

Larry (Rah Rah Rah) Kudlow as chief Economic Adviser (but he can’t guarantee 4% GDP growth off CNBC programs)…….Here is how cavalierly Kudlow diagnosed the pre-crash economy of 2007: What’s more, the entire market in sub-prime debt is just 1.4 percent of the global equity markets. On any given day, a 1.4 percent drop in world stocks would erase the same amount of value as the collective markdown of all sub-prime-backed bonds to $0. It’s just not that big a deal……”

Possibly chickenhawk/Vietnam evader John Bolton for National Security chief….

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Benyamin Netanyahu as Trump co-nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize…..

Kim Jong Un for ambassador to Pyongyang…… ?
Thomas Friedman as ambassador to the Court of Saint Saud in Riyadh…..?

Anthony Scaramucci is making the cable TV rounds again, whatever that means for now…..

It is Stormy Days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (pun intended)…….

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Trump Economics, Friedman Economics: the Oligarchy, the Swamp, and the Cesspool…….

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And the beat goes on……
This time I’ll keep my feet on solid ground
Now I understand myself when I’m down
Like the sweet sound of hip music
There’ll always be something new
To keep the tables turning
Hey, this super song
There’ll never be an ending…
And the beat goes on……”    
The Whispers

Betting Against Trump Was a Market-Beater. The companies the president disparaged have done much better than those he favored. Remember when President Donald Trump would call out a company by name, causing its stock price to gyrate madly, whacking a few billions off its market value with just one offhanded tweet? ……. Looking back on this one year later is revealing. From the November 2016 election until when we looked at it January 2017, the Oligarch Index was thoroughly trouncing the Drain the Swamp Index, 15.8 percent to 3.5 percent. Trump hadn’t even been sworn in, yet he was already making his heft felt in the marketplace. Things change…….”

So the famous bi-partisan, lobbyist-driven, Washington Swamp beat the Trump-favored Oligarchy in terms of market performance, at least for the first year. During the past year, the Oligarchy started quickly to morph into what it has always had the potential to be: a Cesspool……….

But still the Oligarchy is not done: it has at least three more years, potentially seven more years. The Swamp will expand and get more odorous for now, become more of a new oligarchy Cesspool. Until the next bubble created by deregulation and natural greed and hubris bursts. Then look out for all the flying “stuff“. Then the new need for “government” help and “regulation”. Back to 2008 and 2009, and……
Perhaps hopefully a more-lasting New Deal (after all, Milton Friedman is dead, along with his brilliant but misguided mind and his Nobel)……….

And the Beat Goes On…..

Cheers
M Haider Ghuloum

Economics of Spanking: Forbes Magazine Allegedly Edified in a Stormy Style……..

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Stormy Daniels Reportedly Spanked Trump With A Copy of Forbes Magazine. In the wake of a Wall Street Journal article that alleges Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a 2006 sexual encounter with now-president Donald Trump, several other stories about Daniels’ rendezvous with Trump have surfaced – including one account that she spanked Trump with a copy of Forbes…… “She says one time he made her sit with him for three hours watching ‘shark week.’ Another time he had her spank him with a Forbes magazine.”……..”

Talk about mixing ‘business’ with pleasure…..
I can see Steve Forbes’ famous lopsided smile/grin that some think lost him the Republican nomination so many years ago (he had no chance anyway). His magazine has been edified with the rump of a future (now current) President Trump.

The suddenly-wittier-than-usual Bill Kristol (of Weekly Standard) tweeted that it was a Supply-Side spanking: thus introducing a risky mix of dismal economics with kinky sex.
Which probably (hopefully) tells us what he really thinks of the theoretical underpinnings of the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, Steve Forbes, and possibly Trump (not clear if the latter focuses beyond self-interest). 

Yet I have some doubts about this Stormy story, until I see, hear, read more. No savvy politician or prominent businessman (even some not-so-prominent ones) would engage such services in a hotel room. Probably not even a New York businessman-about-town who is steeped in the culture surrounding beauty pageants and reality shows. There is always the possibility, nay the probability, of electronic recording and taping and blackmail. So all this spank-gate can be fake news as well, even in the case of someone as impulsive as Donald Trump. Maybe, maybe not.

On the other hand: this that allegedly happened, if it happened, was a completely private matter. Besides, there are so many houses of glass around, on both sides.

Either way: way to go, Stormy….

Cheers
M. Haider Ghuloum

Jesus Comes to America: On Christmas and the Economic Miracle of MAGA…….

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MAGA Economics: Rich people elected mainly by poor people taking money from the poor and giving it to the very rich, in the hope of somehow making the poor richer

I once responded to a poll posted on social media about whether Jesus would be allowed into America. That was a couple of years ago. Here is my modified updated version for this unusual year of 2017:

  • He, Jesus Son of Maryam as we call him, wants to come to America. He has heard that this new land is the last bastion of his true followers, those who truly adhere to his sect of Judaism, or so he thinks. He knows they call themselves Christians. He wants to come visit his true believers in what was and is called the Old Confederacy and the Bible Belt West, once called fly-over land. As well as some inland pockets of the two coasts. 
  • He, Jesus Christ, would probably not be allowed on a connecting flight from Europe (back in the Middle East there are many who look like him). Eventually, After some agitation, he might be put on a no-fly list.
  • If not, or if he manages to sneak through the controls, he will face the next obstacle. Some other passenger (almost certainly an American) would complain that he feels uncomfortable with someone dressed in a robe, a hairy man mumbling some strange language, on the same airplane. So, Jesus would likely be bounced off the flight anyway (maybe he’ll be handed a check for $200 as compensation).
  • Let’s assume that he manages to make it after all, perhaps walking across from Mexico or Canada. He will not be allowed into any church because his attire (robe & sandals) is deemed un-Christian. The first Mega-Buck Church would throw him out because he does not fit the image of a member.
  • Besides, he wouldn’t know what a church is. Jesus would look for a synagogue upon arrival. Lucky for him, like I did in my teens, he’d most likely land in New York City.
  • He wouldn’t be any more welcome in a synagogue than in a church. Memories of the Diaspora and pogroms and massacres and the Holocaust perpetrated by his alleged followers do not fade easily. Besides he has no money to pay the very high New York annual fees.
  • He, as Son of Maryam and fruit of Immaculate Conception, might be allowed into a mosque (no fees usually needed there), but only with the hope of converting him to the teachings of the Arab shepherd who came after him. But it wouldn’t last long.
  • He would also wonder who this blue-eyed blond namesake of his was, whose alleged birthday is celebrated by corporate America so eagerly every year. From September to January of each year. And he would wonder what he has to do with a fat jolly Germanic man who likes to wear red and white tights, and jingle his bells.
  • Once enlightened he would wonder what do Amazon and Apple and Macy’s and gas prices and NASDAQ have to do with him.
  • Most of all, he is intrigued about this new noisy Roman governor of America who is pushing a vague new creed that he calls MAGA. He knows it involves some kind of new miracle: Rich people elected mainly by poor people taking money from the poor and giving it to the very rich, in the hope of somehow making the poor richer“. Makes sense?

Cheers & Have a Merry One……
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Saudi Arabian Perestroika but No Glasnost: Ditching Wahhabism, the Aramco Dilemma…….

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“Saudi Arabia unveiled a $500bn plan on Tuesday to create a vast economic zone in the kingdom’s north-west, the most ambitious and expensive project in Riyadh’s efforts to diversify the oil-dependent economy. Details of the new city, called Neom, were released as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hosted some of the world’s most powerful investors and bankers at a conference designed to showcase his vision to modernise the conservative kingdom and lure investment to the country…….”

Interesting and unprecedented things may be about to happen in Saudi Arabia, if the ruling crown prince keeps all his promises. Possibly positive things. It will have reverberations across the Arab world.

Saudi Crown Prince MBS seems to be impressed by the example of the United Arab Emirates, especially Dubai. It will be a tough sell in the Wahhabi heartland of Najd in Central Arabia. To diversify the economy also means to diversify the society, and open it not only economically, but also culturally. That is the most closed of Middle East societies.

So far there are signs that the top Wahhabi establishment is falling in line, but that may change: the prince had to incarcerate several mid-level but prominent Wahhabi clerics before he started talking of his version of Perestroika (perhaps not so much Glasnost for now).

A few independent Arab media outlets have been hinting for months that the new Saudi order is impressed with the economic experience of the UAE. At the same time, the substantial Islamist (mainly Wahhabi) opposition in exile has been warning and complaining that the ruling Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi in the UAE (an economically and culturally open Gulf state, definitely non-Wahhabi) has too much influence over the Saudi Crown Prince. There might be some truth in that, and it will create a dilemma for the Salafist movement from the Gulf to Egypt. Persian Gulf Salafis, who are practically Saudi proxies, have always been very critical of the openness of the UAE and its social and religious openness.


The domestic impact depends on success in keeping the population content, economically speaking. But times are hard, with oil revenues declining, and the weapons-selling pressures of Donald Trump are strong. Add to that the expensive and stalemated war in Yemen, and the new financial commitments to select remaining “friends” in Syria and Iraq.
So it may require disengagement in Yemen and reducing commitments in the Levant, as well as reducing the huge weapons deals with the Western powers. But then there is a catch in all that too: it might mean ceding the Northern Tier of the Arab world, the Levant/Fertile Crescent, to long-term Iranian influence. The Saudis already seem to have given up on Lebanon, where a Hezbollah-Christian coalition seems to have strengthened its hold on power.

Stopping the bleeding from Yemen will be a tough one: that country is the soft underbelly of the Arabian Peninsula, and a reasonable cause for worry. But war will not solve the Yemen problem, only some kind of political deal that is agreed upon by the Sanaa coalition and the Saudis. That still leaves the problem of Aden in secessionist-oriented Southern Arabia, now largely dominated by the UAE. And I haven’t even mentioned the expansion of AQAP and ISIS in Southern Yemen.

It would be quite interesting to see how the Wahhabi kingdom is transformed into a truly modern state (without the political opportunities of Glasnost).

(P.S: As for selling off the huge state oil company, ARAMCO, we can forget about that for now. My educated fatwa about ARAMCO? It will take much longer than two or three years or even five years to get it ready for privatization. IF it ever happens: I have seen similar films before in our Gulf region.)

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Imagine a New Middle East Slogan: Export Beautiful Pork, Not Beautiful Guns……

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Vice President Mike Pence tweeted today that:”@Potus just announced that American pork will be exported to Argentina & American farmers and ranchers will reap the rewards.”

Mr. Pence forgot to add the obligatory “Great” this time. In fact Mr. Pence has not used the “epithet” of greatness for a couple of days now to describe his boss. I wonder why….

Mr. Trump was in the Middle East last May, being anointed by Arab leaders as the new prophet of our age. He claimed he had made deals worth more than $450 billion. He claimed.
Too bad Potus forgot to negotiate, during his May Summit, to have American pork exported to the Middle East. Imagine exclusive export of pork to all those allied Arab and Muslim countries. (Scratch sanctioned Iran: they don’t deserve all that beautiful pork, not yet).

Imagine the rewards.
Imagine, if you can, the new slogan:

Export Beautiful Pork, not Beautiful Guns.

Or:

Raise Fat Pigs, not Skinny Terrorists….

(FYI: for some reason Congress always prefers “pork” to “pigs”).

It won’t be kosher or halal, but just imagine the added rewards….

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Why Not Liquidate the IMF?………..

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“IMF members delete anti-protectionism pledge, keep currency commitments. Member countries of the International Monetary Fund on Saturday pledged to work to reduce global imbalances but failed to repeat their past pledge to resist all forms of protectionism. The International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), the IMF’s steering body, also repeated its past commitments on currency exchange rates. “We will refrain from competitive devaluations, and will not target our exchange rates for competitive purposes,” the IMFC said……….”

It has been years since I stopped attending the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings (annual, semi-annual, etc). So now is the time for me to ask: Why not liquidate the IMF?
I was never impressed with the people I met there, nor with their tailor-made policies: tailor made to satisfy richer countries, tailor-made to squeeze poorer countries. All written up by their Gucci-clad, duty-free addicted staff allegedly for the benefit of the Wretched of the Earth (including the Middle Classes of the major Industrial Countries).

Ditto the IBRD (World Bank), although the latter can be somewhat useful for the poorer countries.
Just think outside the box…….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum