As an avid reader of history, and a follower of the US political scene –  I have to rank last nights election of Donald Trump to the presidency as one of the most astonishing national events that I have witnessed.  Much will be written in the next days/months/years/decades about how this came about, so I may not have any unique insight, but I thought it would be worth recording my initial impression.

The fact that the winning candidate himself was so flawed is perhaps not the biggest political wonder.  Not to mention a popular incumbent Democrat, a 4.9% unemployment rate, and little inflation.  A Republican party which in large part refused to endorse their candidate, waiting for him to go away, is now running the show.  This defies all conventional thinking.  This also results in the huge power vacuum that was in the Republican party to make its way to the White House.  Nobody knows what to expect or who the power players will ultimately be – for that matter nobody really knows what Donald Trump stands for.  The Democratic opposition is temporarily shattered, decapitated overnight.  Trump’s policy predictions were necessarily incoherent to get him elected.  Nobody even knows if he wants the job of President.

Long term, the big takeaway from me is how nationalism is gaining momentum in the US and in most developed economies.  I think people did not vote for Donald Trump, they voted against the status quo and the elites, a vote driven by the growing wealth inequality.  Call it the ‘revenge of the flyover states’ – but the booming high tech wages and increasingly large Wall street profits caused this as much as any of the politicians messages.

This proves Brexit was not an anomaly – too me this election has the same signature as the Brexit – the middle class taking control and voting for change regardless of what the power elite recommend.  I would expect more nationalist and rightwing votes to happen in Europe, and possibly Japan.  Should this trend continue, I have little optimism for the world economy and the hope of world peace.

After writing this post, but before publishing it,  I ran across Glenn Greenwald’s post also supporting this theory.  It’s a great read to help try to make sense of this.

Shorter term, I look for a recession within the next year.  Nothing to do with whatever policies might arise out of the new administration, more due to the massive uncertainty in the next few months.  This has to put a lot of capital spending (across the world) on hold as corporations wait and see who fills the power vacuum.  Early reports are the widely expected December rate hike is off the table- if so, that shows the Fed is already going on the defensive.  I can’t see how this will not slow the the world economy.

The Obama administration came in on the slogan of ‘Hope and Change’, and in some ways he delivered on the promise.  Now perhaps the slogan should be changed to ‘Fear and Hope’,  as we perhaps need to fear the anger demonstrated by the middle class with this vote, and hope that this administration can surprise us and help build a better world.

For all the internet has brought is in the last 20 years, perhaps overlooked the most is how much media has changed.  Pre-Internet – news was provided by the Big 3 Networks and your local newspapers or weekly periodicals.  Now you have thousands of sources of news, anybody can publish (for better or worse) info that would never make the news outlets.

I thought of this when I ran across this article written by Russ Baker – exposing a little known angle on the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan by John W. Hinkley.

One could easily file this under one of the many internet conspiracies out there, but the information contained in Russ Baker’s article is at least eyebrow raising when you look other Bush family political  lore.  Who knew there was a relationship between the Hinkleys and the Bush’s,  and you would think it would of at least been discussed more indepth than the minor references printed in the news coverage of the day.

Russ mentioned that he left this story out of his book on the Bush family, fearing the book would be seen as a collection of conspiracy theories.  So perhaps his website is the best place for this information – maybe not really ‘history’, but worth a special note.

How many previous historical documents have left out fringe stories or things feared to hurt the sales of books?

Historians have always had the tough job of piecing together a narrative based on fragments collected from documents, interviews, or news reporting of the day.  It will be interesting to see if future historians are able to build a ‘more accurate’ history, as the volume of information on the internet should provide a huge increase in documentation and multiple facets of events and people.  The future of history should soon be upon us.

It’s been awhile since I have had a US foreign policy rant, so I figured it was probably time.  While the US populace has been distracted by the US Election Show, the administration took the opportunity to expand our militaristic role in the Middle East.

The US started bombing ISIS in Libya last week, apparently because our litany of bombing other countries has been so successful – or perhaps we are running out of targets in those countries.  This time there is a twist, as we are bombing targets at behest of the interim government – so we are acting as hired guns to officially do the worlds dirty work.

Why is this story so under-reported?   Are Americans numb to the mess that is American Middle East foreign policy?  According to Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook, the strikes did not have “an end point at this particular moment in time”.

So this is a new front against the ever expanding battle against ISIS.  And there is no end in sight.  And don’t look for anything to change under a new Democratic or Republican administration.

But wait a minute – I have to cut this post short – Donald Trump just tweeted something that has all the news networks giving him 7×24 coverage… so I gotta go and watch whats really important.

A surprising frank interview with Ray McGovern – an ex CIA Analyst who appears to be spilling the beans on the ‘Deep State’ running American foreign policy:

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/07/intelligent_people_know_that_the_empire_is_on_the_downhill_a_veteran_cia_agent_spills_the_goods_on_the_deep_state_and_our_foreign_policy_nightmares/

The first half of this article is marginally interesting but provides some historical perspective – but the 2nd half picks up speed when discussing Ukraine, Syria and the ‘Deep State’.

Looking at Ray McGovern’s bio on Wikipedia shows that he was “a CIA analyst for 27 years (1963 to 1990), “routinely presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House” and “where he was responsible for the analysis of Soviet policy in Vietnam”.

He is clearly a student of Russian history, and maybe he could be biased towards the Russian point of view (And the interview took place while he was attending a global political conference sponsored by RT (Russia Today).

Having said that – even if the truth about American foreign policy is ‘somewhere in the middle’ of his version and the Russia/Putin perception propagated by American media, its a pretty scary revelation about how far out of control the CIA is.

This is perhaps the most damning article I have seen on the CIA from a pseudo – main-stream news source (Salon is rated the 38th most popular News Entity in January 2015 by unique visits).   If only more news sites would expose this kind of information.

PS.  the article references the leaked discussion between Victoria Nuland and Geoff Pyatt regarding the American strategy in the Ukrainian coup – this article has the transcript and analysis of the call providing more great insight into how foreign policy works.

A quick rant – though I know this article is over a month old.

The latest foreign policy dilemma America is facing:

Air Force burning through bomb stockpiles striking ISIL

One would think this article is from the satirical site The Onion – but this is a serious new piece.   This quote from the article shows the emergency America is facing:

The Air Force has fired more than 20,000 missiles and bombs in the air war against the Islamic State, depleting its stocks of munitions and prompting the service to scour depots around the world for more weapons and to find money to buy them, according to records obtained by USA TODAY.

Wow – I guess we should throw a few more billion at the military budget.

But wait – lets see how effective this campaign is:

USA TODAY reported earlier this week that Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, who oversees U.S. military activities in the Middle East, estimated that the air war has killed 23,000 ISIL fighters, raising the death toll by 3,000 in just over a month. However, the movement continues to recruit replacements, and the Pentagon does not release its estimates of the war dead.

Lets see… 20,000 bombs, and we have killed 23,000 ISIL fighters – yet the movement continues to recruit replacements.  So effectively once could calculate easily that each bomb produces under 1 enemy casualty (lets assume that for each casualty we recruit .5 replacements) – no statistic on how many innocent people are killed.

This is really our best strategy?  But hey – what else should we do with American tax dollars – its not like we need to save money or anything.

In honor of CISA passing the senate, which is another nail in the coffin of the rule of law in exchange for homeland security,  I thought it would be a good time to post a lot of random stuff on how all the emphasis on intelligence by the CIA and others has grown over the last 60 years or so.

First off, a great read here on the architect of the modern day CIA – Allen Dulles:

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/10/12/new-book-on-cia-master-plotter-dulles-sneak-peek-part-1/

Granted, this is a pretty evil account of Allen Dulles – who knows how much of it is true.  But given the fact that we already know Operation Northwoods and Operation Mockingbird was engineered by the CIA during Dulles tenure, it doesn’t seem like this account is too much of a stretch.

Speaking of Operation Mockingbird, I ran across this article from the 1970’s from none other than Carl Bernstein on how effective the CIA has been in partnering with the media.

http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

Worth a read – a couple good outtakes:

The Columbia Broadcasting System. CBS was unquestionably the CIAs most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS President William Paley and Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship.

Time and Newsweek magazines. According to CIA and Senate sources, Agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents and stringers for both the weekly news magazines.

Finally, here is a copy of the op-ed that Harry Truman wrote in 1963 regarding  his concerns about the CIA:

http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman’s%20CIA%20article.html

The last quote is particularly prescient:

 I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

Interesting to see Carl Icahn is creating a $150 million Super-PAC expressly to lower taxes on foreign earnings.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-10-23/icahn-says-he-ll-use-new-super-pac-to-help-america-and-himself

Given his investments that will benefit from a lowering of foreign taxes, this seems like a no-brainer as far as return on investment.  The good news is he is being public and straightforward about his motives.  The bad news is it only takes his pocket change to dangle in front of Congress to do it.  This will be a good test to see the market value of what it costs to buy legislation changes – if this legislation gets passed, hidden in some other bill no doubt, we will at least know the market price for democracy.

The Donald Trump candidacy has had me stumped as to what he is up to. Many observers believe his candidacy is being powered by some third party (Democrat or Republican leaning), and I can subscribe to that theory.  But what’s in it for The Donald?

The one thing of late that has stood out as odd to me is Trump’s focus on his net worth. He has repeatedly gone out of his way to talk up his net worth – so much so that I think there is more to this bluster than just ego.

So I have a theory on maybe whats going on here. Stay with me here as I do some math. Lets say Trump has 10 buildings with a true market value of 1 Billion (10 buildings at 100 million each), each with a mortgage of 90 Million. That would give his net worth in these buildings 100 million (1 billion – 900M in debt). Lets say his friend wants his help in getting someone elected for President. His friend invests 51 million for a 1% equity share of these office buildings, along with a personal services/media consultancy agreement with Mr. Trump (an agreement valued at say, 1 million).

Once this agreement is signed, the “market value” of Trumps 10 buildings is now 5 Billion (50 million * 100) – the accounting theory that if one person would pay 50 million for 1% share, there are 99 other people out there willing to pay 50 million each for the rest of the equity). Trump instantly gained 4 billion in net assets.

Trumps next move? Fleece the silly bankers that will loan him a few more billion against his buildings, then when the market value goes south squeeze the bankers with threats of defaulting on the loans and giving them the buildings.  And as a political candidate, he has the potential of distributing future political favors – and what banker could pass up on that perceived opportunity?

So when Trump is bragging about his net worth – I think he is talking to his bankers – that’s his end game – with the side benefit of having a grand time making headlines, running a reality show, and pretending to run for President.

Meanwhile, Trump’s friend gets to influence the political process in a brilliant use of media, without having to deal with a political action committee or any election regulations (well.. whats left of them).

So if my theory is right, and the main motive for Trump is to up his net worth in order to fleece stupid bankers by getting them to loan him money against ethereal assets, he may have my vote.