Stocks likely to have their worst December since the Great Depression.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/18/investin ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)Few people on Wall Street remember the last time the stock market had this tough of a December. That's because the Dow and S&P 500 are currently on track for their biggest December loss since the Great Depression.

The Dow and S&P 500 were each down about 7.8% through Monday. That's the largest drop for each key market barometer since 1931, according to data from LPL Research. But those Depression-era losses were much bigger: the S&P 500 plunged 14.5% while the Dow plunged 17%.
Still, the December 2018 swoon is making investors nervous that earnings growth may have peaked this year. They're worried that the economy could slow in 2019 because of continued trade tensions with China and rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
The Dow and S&P 500 are both in the red for the year, putting stocks on track to have their worst annual loss since the 2008 Great Recession — and first annual loss since 2015.
But investors can still hope that the markets will turn around in the month's (and year's) final days.
December is usually a very solid month for the market. Professional money managers tend to buy top-performing stocks to make their portfolios look good — a phenomenon known as window dressing.
There's also the somewhat mysterious Santa Claus rally effect. The market tends to do well in the final week of the year, which some chalk up to light trading volume with so many people off for the Christmas holiday.
But volatility remains. Stocks got off to a promising start Tuesday morning but the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq had all turned lower in late afternoon trading. They staged a rally into the close to end the day flat to modestly higher.
What it means
For a president who has so often used the stock market as a personal poll, this next statistic is perhaps most galling: The Dow is 1,000 points lower than when President Donald Trump signed tax reform into law exactly one year ago.
That's a shock for stock market investors who over the past decade have become used to winning. In seven of the past nine years, the S&P 500 has boasted double-digit returns. Last year, the S&P 500 returned 22%.
The economy is strong and the jobless rate at the lowest in a generation. So what's wrong?
The view among investors is 2018 was a year of peak earnings and growth that can't last. The sugar rush of the corporate tax cuts will fade. The trade war with China is raising costs for business. And most importantly, interest rates are rising. The Fed is widely expected to raise interest rates for a fourth time this year to keep a strong US economy from overheating.
Remember, interest rates after the financial crisis a decade ago were kept at near zero to resuscitate the economy. Now that the economy is healed and strong, the Fed is raising rates back to a more neutral policy. Raising them too much or too quickly could thwart the expansion.
At the same time, signs of slowing growth are popping up from China to Germany.
"There's a fear of weaker economic growth virtually everywhere, as the world emerges from quantitative easing and confronts tighter monetary policy," says Greg Valliere, political economist at Horizon Investments. "That, in a nutshell, is the greatest concern."
CNN's Matt Egan contributed to this report.

CNN also reporting today that its been the worst week since 2008.

[aerius]

Good. It's way past time for all the bubbles to die.

[The Romulan Republic]

Good. It's way past time for all the bubbles to die.

You do know that another Depression would literally fuck over every single person on the planet, don't you?

Hell, considering how much political instability and extremism resulted from the 2008 recession (it and the following economic difficulties are likely a major cause of the "Arab Spring", and thus the Syrian war, the refugee crisis, and the rise of neo-fascism), I think it very likely that another such crisis would push us into a third world war/global neo-fascism altogether.

[aerius]

You can't unbake the cake. My entire lifetime was nothing but monetary & economic policies which blew a bunch of bubbles everywhere and did their damn best to keep them from resetting to a sustainable level. It's mathematically guaranteed that the bubbles will implode and put us in a depression, the only questions are when and how bad.

20 years ago we had a chance to get out of it without a depression. But instead of letting things reset to something stable & sustainable, we blew more fucking bubbles and kicked the can down the road. 2008 was our last chance to get off with a quick depression and reset without too much long term damage. We blew it. Again. We are now out of options.

Hard times are coming, ain't no way around it. Enjoy the peace while it lasts. Merry fucking Christmas.

[The Romulan Republic]

Is it too much to hope for that this time the public backlash will swing in the direction of socialism rather than Nazism?

[Broomstick]

Yes, it is too much to hope for.

Desperate people want a strong leader and someone to blame. Two things fascism is good at.

[The Romulan Republic]

Then its up to socialism to make its case.

I'm going to piss off a lot of people by saying this, but what the hell, I don't have a lot of friends to lose anyway:

If the economy fails, Dems need to nominate either Bernie Sanders, or someone with similar economic views, in 2020. Because when things get bad, people look for radical alternatives. I doubt that Trump has become sufficiently the norm yet for a return to liberal centrism to be seen as a radical alternative. In which case, the angry and disaffected portions of the public will swing either to socialism, or fascism. If no viable socialist alternative is presented, they will pick fascism. Anyone to the Right of Elizabeth Warren should not be considered as a nominee for the Democratic Party.

That is not to say that we should try to beat the Republicans at their own game by pandering to bigots- we should absolutely continue to take a strong stand, indeed a stronger stand than we have, against misogyny, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and religious bigotry, both as a moral imperative and because failing to do so will alienate key parts of our base. But we need to provide a viable economic alternative that will markedly improve living standards and economic security for the working and middle classes. We should have done it three years ago, and we NEED to do it now.

Heck, Bernie Sanders isn't going far enough at this point. We need to be talking not only universal Medicare, tuition free college and 15 an hour minimum wage- we need to be talking basic income and state-funded housing.

If a Centrist does get the nomination, I'll suck it up and vote for them because what else am I going to do, vote Nazi? But I deeply fear for the future of the world if we go into another economic crisis with a spineless corporate centrist as our standard-bearer.

[His Divine Shadow]

Just more icing on the shit cake we've been baking since Reagan and Thatcher ushered in the new era.

Feels somewhat relevant and something which the inevitable bubble popping will probably only amplify:
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2 ... l-collapse

Adam Curtis: “HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, knew that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase “HyperNormalisation” to describe that feeling.
...
There is a sense of everything being slightly unreal; that you fight a war that seems to cost you nothing and it has no consequences at home; that money seems to grow on trees; that goods come from China and don’t seem to cost you anything; that phones make you feel liberated but that maybe they’re manipulating you but you’re not quite sure. It’s all slightly odd and slightly corrupt.

Pretty nicely puts the thumb on what I felt was off about modern society.

And here's a marxist take on the EU today just for kicks.
https://www.marxist.com/euro-crisis-the ... he-end.htm

All the crises and bubbles just seem to be building up, we're probably like Mr Burns right now:

[The Jester]

20 years ago we had a chance to get out of it without a depression. But instead of letting things reset to something stable & sustainable, we blew more fucking bubbles and kicked the can down the road. 2008 was our last chance to get off with a quick depression and reset without too much long term damage. We blew it. Again. We are now out of options.

With all due respect, Aerius, you and your wife have been proclaiming different variations of the impending economic apocalypse for more than a decade now. And while I'm definitely not the most optimistic for the future--we're certainly not living in the same economic world as our parents--the idea that we have an impending debt/bubble fueled collapse into an epic, unavoidable, unmitigable depression appears no closer now than it did back in 2008.

There will be a global economy tomorrow. It may be working out so well for the younger generations and the UK may be in for a horrific mess, I'll gladly grant you that, but most of us will be comparatively okay.

[K. A. Pital]

With all due respect, Aerius, you and your wife have been proclaiming different variations of the impending economic apocalypse for more than a decade now. And while I'm definitely not the most optimistic for the future--we're certainly not living in the same economic world as our parents--the idea that we have an impending debt/bubble fueled collapse into an epic, unavoidable, unmitigable depression appears no closer now than it did back in 2008. There will be a global economy tomorrow. It may be working out so well for the younger generations and the UK may be in for a horrific mess, I'll gladly grant you that, but most of us will be comparatively okay.

Are we indeed going to be "comparatively okay"? I think you've been blessed with a very sheltered life if the last 10 years weren't quite the turbulent cyberpunk nightmare.

You do know that another Depression would literally fuck over every single person on the planet, don't you?

Hell, considering how much political instability and extremism resulted from the 2008 recession (it and the following economic difficulties are likely a major cause of the "Arab Spring", and thus the Syrian war, the refugee crisis, and the rise of neo-fascism), I think it very likely that another such crisis would push us into a third world war/global neo-fascism altogether.

TRR, don't be an idiot - the crises result from the way the system functions - debt-fuelled "endless growth" mantra - therefore it is inevitable that extreme crises will continue to happen until the system has such a dire crisis that it might not get over it.

Your approach has actually been conducive to the continuation of the crisis. How so? Well, you seem to think that it is stupid to let the bubble blow up, if there can and will be disastrous consequences. A similar policy has been enacted by central banks in the aftermath of 2008-2011 - SAVE CAPITALISM AT ALL COSTS! And THE BANKS. God save the banks.

And you know the end result? Trump, Brexit, fascists round the world and - finally, because you can't CHANGE REALITY WITH FUCKING PR, no - another economic crisis in the making.

A horrible end is preferrable to endless horror, so the saying goes.

[Tribble]

Trump's economic policies are causing massive global instabilities and chaos? Who knew?

In other news, water is wet.

[K. A. Pital]

Trump's economic policies are causing massive global instabilities and chaos? Who knew?

In other news, water is wet.

It is not just Trump. Overall, the causes of the crises have not been adequately dealt with. Even by capitalist reform standards. And yet the valuations are at all-times highs, the PE ratio signals "valuations are a bit crazy", but nobody cares. In the end, there is only so much PR and "sentiment" can do to avert a collision with reality and facts.

Of course, we've had clowns proclaiming "the new normal", but nobody in their right mind thinks a bubble wouldn't burst at some point.

[FaxModem1]

CNBC

Dow dives 600 points to below 22,000, S&P 500 enters bear market - worst Christmas Eve ever
Trump resumed his attack on the Fed on Monday, tweeting that the central bank is "the only problem" with the U.S. economy.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held calls on Sunday with the heads of the six largest U.S. banks in order to reassure nervous investors.
The NYSE closes early on Monday at 1 p.m. ET. The exchange is closed on Tuesday for Christmas day.
Michael Sheetz | John Melloy
Published 19 Hours Ago Updated 30 Mins Ago
CNBC.com
U.S. stocks plunged on Monday in their worst day of Christmas Eve trading ever, as the S&P 500 entered a bear market.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 653 points Monday in volatile trading, falling below 22,000. The Dow sank more than 2 percent, then recovered nearly all of the day's losses, before again falling more than 2 percent. The S&P 500 fell 2.7 percent, slipping into a bear market as it fell 20.06 percent from recent highs. Wall Street traditionally considers a drop of 20 percent or more from recent highs to be a bear market. The Nasdaq Composite Index slid 2.2 percent.

Markets responded to turmoil in Washington. Multiple reports said President Donald Trump is discussing how to remove Jerome Powell from his position as chairman of the Federal Reserve. That discussion, as well as the recent market volatility, spurred Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to call the leaders of the six largest U.S. banks over the weekend. Additionally, Defense Secretary James Mattis announced he would step down at the end of February, saying his views do not align with the president's.

Trump resumed his attack on the Fed on Monday, tweeting that the central bank is "the only problem" with the U.S. economy.


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don’t have a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch - he can’t putt!

53.1K
9:55 AM - Dec 24, 2018
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"They don't have a feel for the Market," Trump said.



All 11 sectors of the S&P 500 are now negative for December, the fourth quarter and the full year.

Last week the Dow lost 1,655 points, or 6.8 percent. That was the Dow's worst week of trading since October 2008 during the financial crisis. The S&P 500 also lost 7 percent for the week. The Nasdaq Composite is now 22 percent below its record reached in August and is in a bear market.

WATCH: How the Fed could cause the next recession, according to Gary Shilling

How the Fed could cause the next recession, according to Gary Shilling How the Fed could cause the next recession, according to Gary Shilling
3:01 PM ET Fri, 16 Nov 2018 | 04:48
Stocks temporarily climbed off their lows after billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper told CNBC that he's buying some stocks following the market's move lower. CNBC's Scott Wapner says that Tepper told him that "it's still a tough market," so you've "got to be careful about your exposure."

"The key question is whether the market of stellar returns is going to a market of slow or stalling returns," Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told CNBC.

"This is a market selling off as if it believes that we are headed in to a stall. Exacerbating that is the thesis that the Federal Reserve's policies are leading us to a hard landing, rather than a soft landing," Krosby said.

Last Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate for a fourth time this year and Chairman Jerome Powell signaled the central bank would continue to unwind its balance sheet at the current pace. The two monetary tightening actions are driving the stock market declines, traders say.

David Tepper buys stocks as market continues to fall David Tepper buys stocks as market continues to fall
2 Hours Ago | 02:28
There was a report late Friday that President Donald Trump was discussing the possibility of firing Powell, a move that could undermine confidence in the U.S. financial system. Other media outlets later confirmed those reports, but Mnuchin sought to calm the fears that arose from those reports this weekend. A senior Treasury official acknowledged that the reports about Trump's discussion of firing Powell was part of the catalyst for Mnuchin's call but not the sole reason.

Mnuchin tweeted that he spoke with the president. Mnuchin declared that Trump said he never suggested firing Powell and doesn't believe he has the right to do so.


Steven Mnuchin
✔
@stevenmnuchin1
(1/2) I have spoken with the President @realDonaldTrump and he said “I totally disagree with Fed policy. I think the increasing of interest rates and the shrinking of the Fed portfolio is an absolute terrible thing to do at this time,...

3,360
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Steven Mnuchin
✔
@stevenmnuchin1
(2/2) especially in light of my major trade negotiations which are ongoing, but I never suggested firing Chairman Jay Powell, nor do I believe I have the right to do so.”

1,950
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Mnuchin held calls on Sunday with the heads of the six largest U.S. banks in order to reassure nervous investors that the financial markets and economy were functioning properly.

"The banks all confirmed ample liquidity is available for lending to consumer and business markets," the statement from the Treasury said.

"We continue to see strong economic growth in the U.S. economy with robust activity from consumers and business," said Mnuchin added in the statement on Sunday. A senior Treasury official told CNBC on Monday that the purpose of Mnuchin's call and statement was to take a "prudent, preemptive measure" after last week's market volatility.

Wall Street is processing Mnuchin's call, which seems "to raise more questions than answers," Raymond James analyst Ed Mills said in a note. Mills thinks it is unclear why the Treasury secretary hosted the call, "as no one had seemed to raise any concerns related to these issues of which Mnuchin is seeking to reassure the market," Mills said.

December is typically a buoyant month for stocks. Yet both the Dow and S&P 500 are down more than 14 percent this month -- on track for their worst December performances since the Great Depression in 1931.

Oppenheimer equity analyst John Stoltzfus said in a note Monday that "putting the recent equity market declines into historical context lessens their sting." The three catalysts which pushed the market lower in 2015 and 2016 -- China, the Federal Reserve, and oil -- are roiling "the market yet again in 2018," Stoltzfus said.

"I think there's a massive gap between sentiment and fundamentals" for the market, Blackstone investment strategist Joe Zidle said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Profits and the economy will grow in 2019, strategist says Profits and economy will grow in 2019, strategist says
4 Hours Ago | 02:44
"If the market closes down for the year, which looks likely … it will only be the 13th time that we've seen a full year decline since 1960," Zidle said. Of those 13 full year declines in the past 58 years, seven occurred before or during a recession.

"The markets are saying there's a greater than 50 percent chance we enter a recession and fundamentals don't support it and fundamentals win," Zidle said.

Also weighing on investor confidence is a government shutdown, that will apparently drag on through at least Thursday.

Both the Dow and the S&P 500 are now in the red for 2018 by more than 10 percent. Some traders have suggested that the market has gotten to the point where a short-term bounce could occur, if only for technical reasons. Seasonally, this is usually a positive, or at least benign, time for the markets.

The next worst Christmas Eve for the Dow and S&P 500 was in 1985, when both indexes fell a little over 0.6 percent.

The NYSE closed early on Monday at 1 p.m. ET. The exchange is closed on Tuesday for Christmas day. Wednesday through Friday are normal trading days.

Merry Christmas everyone.

[K. A. Pital]

Red Christmas = best Christmas.

[The Romulan Republic]

With all due respect, Aerius, you and your wife have been proclaiming different variations of the impending economic apocalypse for more than a decade now. And while I'm definitely not the most optimistic for the future--we're certainly not living in the same economic world as our parents--the idea that we have an impending debt/bubble fueled collapse into an epic, unavoidable, unmitigable depression appears no closer now than it did back in 2008. There will be a global economy tomorrow. It may be working out so well for the younger generations and the UK may be in for a horrific mess, I'll gladly grant you that, but most of us will be comparatively okay.

Are we indeed going to be "comparatively okay"? I think you've been blessed with a very sheltered life if the last 10 years weren't quite the turbulent cyberpunk nightmare.

You do know that another Depression would literally fuck over every single person on the planet, don't you?

Hell, considering how much political instability and extremism resulted from the 2008 recession (it and the following economic difficulties are likely a major cause of the "Arab Spring", and thus the Syrian war, the refugee crisis, and the rise of neo-fascism), I think it very likely that another such crisis would push us into a third world war/global neo-fascism altogether.

TRR, don't be an idiot - the crises result from the way the system functions - debt-fuelled "endless growth" mantra - therefore it is inevitable that extreme crises will continue to happen until the system has such a dire crisis that it might not get over it.

Your approach has actually been conducive to the continuation of the crisis. How so? Well, you seem to think that it is stupid to let the bubble blow up, if there can and will be disastrous consequences. A similar policy has been enacted by central banks in the aftermath of 2008-2011 - SAVE CAPITALISM AT ALL COSTS! And THE BANKS. God save the banks.

And you know the end result? Trump, Brexit, fascists round the world and - finally, because you can't CHANGE REALITY WITH FUCKING PR, no - another economic crisis in the making.

A horrible end is preferrable to endless horror, so the saying goes.

Considering that the horrible end might entail the torment and destruction of millions or conceivably billions of sapient lives, I find that quite appalling. Also, if you meant to insinuate that my goal is to save capitalism, then you are wilfully misrepresenting my position. I'm certain you know perfectly well that I am an advocate for democratic socialism.

But there is a question of how we best achieve reform. My goal is not to save capitalism- it is to destroy it with the minimum of collateral damage. You seem to believe, as fanatics tend to do, that maximum destruction will somehow guarantee a better world. All of the evil will be purged and the new utopia will spring from the ashes. It's called an appocalypse myth, and you can find a variation on the same theme in most major religions' texts. You even use words like "inevitable" to justify your wish to purge humanity with fire and blood, just as a prophet might speak of the inevitability of Judgement Day. It is easy to accept the destruction of millions when it is "inevitable". You may substitute "Marxist theory" or whatever for "God", but it comes to much the same thing in the end.

What you "Burn it all" folks never seem to understand is that as flawed as our world is, it is very much not the worst of all possible worlds- and it seems to me that only someone very sheltered (or privileged, to use the contemporary lingo), or someone who is wilfully blind to inconvenient facts, could fail to understand that there are much worse possibilities. Like global fascist dictatorship, for example, or global nuclear fire. And because this is the real world, not an apocalypse myth, there is no guarantee that a better society will magically spring from the ashes of the old. On the contrary, it is very difficult to build something stable on top of rubble. You have also have to consider the very real possibility, when faced with the twin crises of nuclear proliferation and climate change, and the increasingly interconnected nature of society, that a collapse might be sufficiently devastating that there is no better world after.

In any case, I have no wish to see humanity scarified on the alter of your ideology.

Red Christmas = best Christmas.

Red may be the colour of communism, but it is also the colour of the Republican fascist party, and of the blood of innocents. All three references are potentially applicable to this situation.

[Zaune]

As far as I'm concerned, this is all academic. The collapse is going to happen no matter what we do, because we are a tiny and utterly irrelevant minority: The majority of the population don't have the imagination or critical-thinking skills to understand there's a problem, and most of the slightly less tiny minority who do understand are more interested in exploiting the looming crisis for their own gain.

Those of you who still have the option would be better off focusing your time and money on maximising your own survival chances, and those of your loved ones. That's about as much damage control as we have time for.

[aerius]

Considering that the horrible end might entail the torment and destruction of millions or conceivably billions of sapient lives, I find that quite appalling. Also, if you meant to insinuate that my goal is to save capitalism, then you are wilfully misrepresenting my position. I'm certain you know perfectly well that I am an advocate for democratic socialism.

That's what you say, the problem is I don't believe you have a full picture of what you're actually saying. What I mean is you usually look at the symptoms rather than the root causes of the issues in question, then advocate for various actions which make the problems worse in the long term. You don't seem to understand 2nd order effects and how things work. Just in this thread you ask for another Bernie Sanders when the economy fails, there is little in his policies that would actually reform our economic system to something sustainable, and in fact some of them will actually make things a lot worse.

But there is a question of how we best achieve reform. My goal is not to save capitalism- it is to destroy it with the minimum of collateral damage. You seem to believe, as fanatics tend to do, that maximum destruction will somehow guarantee a better world. All of the evil will be purged and the new utopia will spring from the ashes. It's called an appocalypse myth, and you can find a variation on the same theme in most major religions' texts. You even use words like "inevitable" to justify your wish to purge humanity with fire and blood, just as a prophet might speak of the inevitability of Judgement Day. It is easy to accept the destruction of millions when it is "inevitable". You may substitute "Marxist theory" or whatever for "God", but it comes to much the same thing in the end.

What you "Burn it all" folks never seem to understand is that as flawed as our world is, it is very much not the worst of all possible worlds- and it seems to me that only someone very sheltered (or privileged, to use the contemporary lingo), or someone who is wilfully blind to inconvenient facts, could fail to understand that there are much worse possibilities. Like global fascist dictatorship, for example, or global nuclear fire. And because this is the real world, not an apocalypse myth, there is no guarantee that a better society will magically spring from the ashes of the old. On the contrary, it is very difficult to build something stable on top of rubble. You have also have to consider the very real possibility, when faced with the twin crises of nuclear proliferation and climate change, and the increasingly interconnected nature of society, that a collapse might be sufficiently devastating that there is no better world after.

In any case, I have no wish to see humanity scarified on the alter of your ideology.

I'll say this. You haven't been around here long enough. If you knew K. A. Pital's background you'd delete everything you just wrote. I don't know how much he wants to share, but I'll put it this way. He has been through real hardship and suffering. Not 1st world poverty & hardship, the real deal in a country & time that we in the 1st world would have a hard time conceiving. He understands the consequences better than we do.

[The Romulan Republic]

You're right that I can't speak to his personal experiences. And I apologize if I was inadvertently insensitive. But it doesn't change my underlying argument, which is that:

a) A "Burn it all" approach to political reform has uncanny reflections of apocalypse mythology.

b) Celebrating events which may lead to the wholesale destruction of millions of innocents out of a belief that it will ultimately lead to a better future is callous, and justifying it on the basis of "inevitability" is arrogant.

c) The world we live in, as terrible as it often is, is far from the worst possible reality.

And I will stand by every one of those positions.

As to addressing the root causes rather than the symptoms, I think that we must address both, but I am well aware of the root causes of fascism, and its part of why I abhor the prospect of a return to Centrist corporatist candidates. As to Bernie Sanders, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as to which of his policies would be insufficient or worse the situation, and why, though I will remind you that I myself said that Bernie is not going far enough (my preference would be for basic income, which is an issue that Bernie has never to my knowledge discussed). His is simply the strongest economic reform platform which is even close to being politically viable on a national level in the US right now.

[The Romulan Republic]

As far as I'm concerned, this is all academic. The collapse is going to happen no matter what we do, because we are a tiny and utterly irrelevant minority: The majority of the population don't have the imagination or critical-thinking skills to understand there's a problem, and most of the slightly less tiny minority who do understand are more interested in exploiting the looming crisis for their own gain.

Those of you who still have the option would be better off focusing your time and money on maximising your own survival chances, and those of your loved ones. That's about as much damage control as we have time for.

I can understand that feeling of hopelessness, but I think that it is ultimately counterproductive, nor do I think that public opinion is as against my views as you seem to believe. The majority of Americans, for example, do not in fact support the policies of Trump and his ilk- and many who do so are simply ignorant (often willfully), or don't care because they haven't personally felt the direct effects of those policies. I also firmly believe that radical conservatism is an inherently self-defeating ideology, because it is premised on trying to halt (or reverse) change, and change is an innate constant of the universe- perhaps THE innate constant of the universe. I suppose I could be wrong, and I do not wish to fall into the same mistake that I just criticized, of believing that the outcome I desire or believe in is inevitable. But I don't see the point in defeatism. Quite the contrary: tyrants and those who aspire to be tyrants want us to feel helpless and small. That is how they win.

There's a reason why I chose the Sherman/Grant quote for my sig. Those words were spoken in a hell far worse than any that America or any other Western nation is currently experiencing, during a full-blown civil war against men who committed treason in the name of owning black people and overturning an election that didn't go their way. They were said during a battle which was, up to that point, the most bloody in the history of the Western Hemisphere. A battle which, up to that point, had been a seeming disaster for the Union. I chose that quote in response to the appointment of Kavanaugh, as a constant reminder that even in the face of a devastating defeat, we can and should continue to have hope and to resist (not necessarily through violence, but through whatever means the circumstances call for), and that we ultimately can prevail. I chose them in the hopes that they would help me, and others, to keep some perspective about what is happening.

[aerius]

As to addressing the root causes rather than the symptoms, I think that we must address both, but I am well aware of the root causes of fascism, and its part of why I abhor the prospect of a return to Centrist corporatist candidates. As to Bernie Sanders, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as to which of his policies would be insufficient or worse the situation, and why, though I will remind you that I myself said that Bernie is not going far enough (my preference would be for basic income, which is an issue that Bernie has never to my knowledge discussed). His is simply the strongest economic reform platform which is even close to being politically viable on a national level in the US right now.

You keep saying those words, but I don't believe you've thought them through.

Quick example, using Bernie Sanders. I think we can all agree that universal healthcare is something the US desperately needs. The system is clearly broken and healthcare is simply unavailable or unaffordable to many. So let's put in a single payer system, kill the insurance companies and HMOs and everything will be good, right? It'll be just like Canada and other civilized nations.

Well, no. And that's what I mean by missing the big picture. See, here in Canada we actually enforce anti-collusion and anti-monopoly laws, the medical industry doesn't get to price fix its shit like it does in the US. Did you know that the US healthcare industry has written itself various exemptions from anti-trust and consumer protection laws? Things that sell for $1 in Canada will go for $100, $1000, or whatever they feel like charging south of the border. So even if you go single payer it merely transfers the cost to the government via your taxes and blows a giant gaping hole in the federal budget. Given that healthcare expenditures in the US are something like 20% of GDP and your entire tax revenues are also in that range, well, you've got a bit of a problem don't you?

You need to break the medical industry monopolies & exemptions to anti-trust law and no one in US politics has ever proposed doing that. And unless you do it, single payer solves nothing, it just explodes the federal budget and puts the country in even more shit.

You have similar situations in education, banking & finance, and quite a few other areas. No politicians or policy makers to my knowledge have made proposals to go after the root causes, and more importantly, no one's really thought through the consequences of any proposed actions.

[The Romulan Republic]

While I'm not certain of the accuracy of your numbers, you are of course correct that simply passing Universal Health Care won't fix everything by itself. We need to be fighting both corporatism and neo-fasism on multiple fronts, containing the threat of fascism and passing stop-gap measures to improve living quality while attacking the underlying systemic weaknesses and corruption.

What we need to do, if you really want to get to root causes, is remove the various mechanisms that the (predominantly white Christian male) wealthy conservatives have put in place to tip the scales in their favour. It would be much easier to talk about systemic reform of anti-trust laws, for example, if a powerful and corrupt minority were less able to tip the political scales in their favour. Because they are NOT the fucking majority. The people who buy their shit are not the majority. In a straight popular vote, without voter suppression, the Republicans would have lost six of the last seven Presidential elections, been creamed in the House, and have lost multiple Senate seats that they currently possess.

We need to neuter or abolish the Electoral College, either get a Supreme Court that will overturn Citizens United or pass a Constitutional amendment declaring that unlimited campaign donations are not protected speech, have automatic voter registration, and probably a bunch of other things.

You want to talk root causes, talk electoral reform. And if you want to cut the legs out from under Neo-Fascism, talk Basic Income.

[aerius]

I'm going to say the same thing again. You keep saying those words, but I don't believe you know what you're saying. You still haven't thought through the consequences of your proposed actions and considered the 2nd order effects. You might want to consider what UBI looks like, particularly, how we get from here to there. I will be surprised if you can propose a plausible path that doesn't involve megadeaths.

[The Romulan Republic]

Turning that around, I'd be curious to hear exactly why you perceive UBI=megadeaths. Because that seems a non-sequitur to me, one so outlandish that this is quite possibly the first time I've ever heard it (okay, that's not necessarily true, the straw welfare state of the bad guys in the early Honor Harrington novels might qualify).

The idea, as I understand it, would be to fund Basic Income through a combination of higher taxes on the wealthy and through streamlining the existing social safety net, with Basic Income taking the place of much of the current patchwork of different programs (Welfare, Social Security, food stamps, etc.). This is part of what actually gives it some bipartisan appeal to conservatives- that and the fact that everyone would receive an equal amount, which they could then spend as they freely chose, which makes it hard to paint it as "parasites taking our hard-earned tax dollars".

The benefits, likewise, should be equally apparent- a reliable social safety net which makes survival a right rather than a privilege that must be earned, as well as greater financial security which would both allow people to put more money into the economy, and to take more risks on pursuing their dreams without having to worry about where their next meal is coming from. And, ultimately, assurance that we won't end up with half the population starving on the street (and the revolts that would inevitably follow) as more and more jobs are automated away. That last point alone is enough to convince me that Basic Income is probably going to be an existential question in the long-term.

Note also that basic income test projects have already been done on a small scale in a number of countries without massive upheavals or mass slaughter.

[aerius]

How do you propose we get from our capitalist system with a captured government to socialist UBI utopia without completely breaking the system somewhere in the process and having mass unrest, government failures, and possibly a shooting war? You think you can just hold some elections and it'll magically happen?

[bilateralrope]

You need to break the medical industry monopolies & exemptions to anti-trust law and no one in US politics has ever proposed doing that. And unless you do it, single payer solves nothing, it just explodes the federal budget and puts the country in even more shit.

I'd argue that single payer plus a major increase to the federal budget would be an improvement to the current situation. Except that it's not going to stay there. The increased cost will be seen as a problem, leading to a fight between people trying to solve it by tackling the root causes and people trying to solve it by repealing single payer. I'm not sure who would win that fight.

Still, probably worth a try.

In a straight popular vote, without voter suppression, the Republicans would have lost six of the last seven Presidential elections, been creamed in the House, and have lost multiple Senate seats that they currently possess.

It's not that simple. Had the last Presidential election been a popular vote, that would have meant Trump campaigning to win the popular vote instead of aiming for the EC win. With how close the popular vote margin was, it seems plausible that a Trump campaign aimed at winning the popular vote could have still won.