The federal debt & herd psychology; Radical right & the moral rot of cronyism

The Hill reports about an issue that has been personally increasingly concerning for years, namely the psychology of things that trigger herd panic:

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Phillip Swagel warned the United States could suffer a similar market shock as seen in the United Kingdom during former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s brief stint leading Britain, citing the nation’s “unprecedented” fiscal trajectory.

In an interview with the Financial Times this week, Swagel discussed the country’s rising debt, while warning of the dangers of the U.S. facing “what the U.K. faced with former prime minister Truss — where policymakers tried to take an action, and then there’s a market reaction to that action.”

Truss roiled markets in October 2022 as she pressed for significant tax cuts, including changes lessening the tax burden on wealthier individuals without offsets, as well as other economic measures. The budget proposal spurred a major selloff of British debt, forcing U.K. interest rates to decades-long highs and causing the value of the pound to tank.

While Swagel said the U.S. is “not there yet,” he raised concerns of how bond markets could fare as interest rates have climbed.

He added that the nation has “the potential for some changes that seem modest — or maybe start off modest and then get more serious — to have outsized effects on interest rates, and therefore on the fiscal trajectory.”

Some budget experts, however, have cast doubt on Swagel’s alarm.

Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, pointed to improved deficit projections in recent years, as well as forecasts from the CBO he said “don’t project anything that looks like a panic.”

“If someone were thinking about, ‘Should I panic or should I not panic?’ I would just say, ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right?’” Kogan said, adding “there’s been lower, long-term projected deficits in the Biden administration.”

“You either should have been worried a long time ago, or you should be less worried now,” he said. “Because we’ve been on roughly the same path for forever, but to the extent that it’s different, it’s better.”

A couple of things in that are not comforting. First, although Swagel says the U.S. is “not there yet” in terms of Britain’s economic situation, there is no way to know what might trigger an out of control reaction by debt holders. Maybe we are there now, but maybe we are not. We are talking about a herd (of wealthy investors) that can get spooked if a panic gets triggered by all sorts of things. A change in tax policy can do it. So can a high enough level of US federal debt, on the books or off. )Estimates of unfunded off the books debt obligations runs into the tens of trillions.) So can an enraged, crackpot president who incites a civil war.

Second, the “logic” that experts who downplay the threat evinces arrogance grounded in gross ignorance of basic human cognitive biology and social behavior. The question, should I panic or should I not panic?, cannot be blithely rationalized away by simply saying ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right’? That ‘reasoning’ is childish and asinine. Panic can arise in the face an allegedly improving underlying situation, because complex situations may not in fact be improving by simply looking at one factor. 

What other factors might be relevant? How one encapsulated by this blithe vapidity quoted in The Hill article: “Because we’ve been on roughly the same path for forever, but to the extent that it’s different, it’s better.” That is a testament to the fact that the TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) no longer cares about piling up debt. That has been the case at least since George Bush was in office. A part of the mindset kill government at all costs TTKP mindset is called Starve the Beast, which is significantly responsible for increasing debt even in good economic times.

If we have been on the same bad path forever, that is direct evidence the path remains bad and no fix is in sight, so therefore, don’t worry, be happy.  

An expert says, don’t worry, it has always been 

getting worse but we are still just fine!

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The NYT reports:

How Justice Thomas’s ‘Nearly Adopted Daughter’ 

Became His Law Clerk

Justice Clarence Thomas gave Crystal Clanton a home and a job after she left a conservative youth organization in controversy. Then the justice picked her for one of the most coveted positions in the legal world.

“Crystal Clanton’s clerkship for OT ’24 was announced by Scalia Law today!” wrote an assistant to Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, who is known as Ginni. The email referred to the 2024 October term of the court, and the tone was jubilant: “Please take a look at these posts of congratulations and support. Consider reposting, replying or adding your own!”

The Thomases and Ms. Clanton, a 29-year-old conservative organizer turned lawyer, have built such a close relationship that the couple informally refer to her as their “nearly adopted daughter.” Ms. Clanton, who was previously accused of sending racist text messages, including one that read “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE,” has lived in the Thomas home, assisted Ms. Thomas in her political consulting business and joined her in a “girls trip” to New York.  

Ethics experts say there is nothing in the Supreme Court’s new ethics code that prohibits a justice from hiring someone accused of racism, or even a close family friend.

This is just more evidence of the deep moral rot that dominates TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) thinking and behavior. Ethics are not even an afterthought. We saw the same with the corrupt, clueless and useless Jared and Ivanka in government. Here we see the moral rot operating in the USSC. We also see the sick joke that “ethics in government” actually is.

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From the TTKP Crackpots and Liars Files: The WaPo reports about hypocritical, baseless finger pointing by TTKP liars in the aftermath  of the bridge collapse in Baltimore:

Day after bridge collapse, Republicans are blaming Democrats, 

floating unfounded and sometimes racist theories

Some Republican officials, candidates and right-wing pundits attempted to connect the tragedy to some of their most frequent political targets: diversity initiatives, illegal immigration, coronavirus lockdowns and the Biden administration. And early reaction to the incident also provided fresh ground for unfounded theories that the collapse was not an accident at all.

Several sitting Republican officials have sought to tie the Biden administration to the collapse of the nearly 50-year-old bridge.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told Newsmax on Tuesday that the government is focusing on spending federal funds on “waste,” “when it could be going to things that are the government’s purpose, just like this.”  

“We’re not spending it on roads and bridges. Look at the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was done a couple of years ago that the left hails as this massive success. But it was mostly Green New Deal, actually, in that bill,” Mace said, referencing the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden.

Republicans previously criticized Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as not visiting East Palestine, Ohio, quickly enough after a toxic train derailment there last year. But after the secretary visited Baltimore on the day of the bridge collapse, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) suggested without evidence that the visit was politically motivated and that Buttigieg was preoccupied with diversity policies.  

“Well, this is an election year, so he probably, if it was two years ago might have been a month before he went at all,” Van Drew told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday. “He’s worried too much about pronouns, worried too much about DEI policies, worried too much about being the cool kid on the block. … I’m disappointed in the job that he does.”  

Along with Van Drew, conservative political candidates and right-wing media personalities have turned to blaming diversity, equity and inclusion policies — a loosely defined term broadly used to refer to efforts to diversify the workforce and academia — for the collapse. It’s the latest in a series of issues that the right has blamed on DEI.

Again, the moral rot in the form of lies, crackpot conspiracy theories, shameless hypocrisy and slanders comes out loud and clear. For example, TTKP members of congress bitterly opposed the Democratic infrastructure bill but now they lie, telling us it is a failure due to an accident having nothing to do with the infrastructure bill.

TTKP moral rot knows no bounds, ethical, legal or rational. The rot is constant, shameless and packed full of lies and slanders. 

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News about DJT’s worldwide support for dictatorship: 

Trump calls his globe-trotting ex-diplomat ‘my envoy.’ 

Neither is in office. Richard Grenell is meeting with far-right foreign leaders, attacking President Biden and offering a glimpse at what U.S. foreign policy could be like in a second Trump term 

After an anti-corruption crusader unexpectedly won last year’s presidential election in Guatemala, democracy teetered on the edge in the Central American country. Amid law enforcement raids on election offices and threats of violence, the Biden administration worked feverishly to lay the groundwork for a peaceful transfer of power.

But not Richard Grenell, a former diplomat and intelligence official in Donald Trump’s administration, who arrived in Guatemala in January, days before the new president was to be sworn in — and threw his support behind a right-wing campaign to undermine the election. 

Grenell met with a hard-line group that sued to block the inauguration, which thanked him for his “visit and trust.” He defended Guatemalan officials who had seized ballot boxes in an effort to overturn a vote declared “free and fair” by the United States and international observers, and he attacked the U.S. State Department’s sanctions against hundreds of anti-democratic actors.

“They are trying to intimidate conservatives in Guatemala,” Grenell said in a television interview. “This is all wrapped into this kind of phony concern about democracy.”

The take-home point is crystal clear: 

DJT considers defending free and fair elections to be a phony concern about democracy, therefore DJT is a full-blown dictator

Grenell - defender of dictators everywhere