Richard Fernandez, at Belmont Club is my go to guy for news and analysis. Today, he is getting as pessimistic as I am.
[R]emembering how the migrant boat from Libya sank on the way to Italy. The passengers crammed into the ship rushed blindly to one side to catch a glimpse of a freighter, thereby capsizing it. The perfectly describes the Left, who , facing catastrophe on every front is doing the only thing it knows how: doubling down on Leftist canon. Everyone is now stampeding left, because that will save the boat.
He provides a series of examples but the best one comes from Huffungton Post which functions as a sort of Bible for the left.
Why the Planet Is Happy That Bernie Sanders Is Running for President
It’s amusing in an Anthropology sort of way, but it is depressing to see what is important to the left.
The Baltimore mayor was unconcerned about property destruction because she was convinced that “someone” would rebuild it. The same “someone” who will pay for the deficit and ransoms to al-Qaeda, as well as the bribes to Iran. The identical “someone” that will cough up the reparations to the inmates of Guantanamo. The “someone” who will man the ships to fight the Iranian boghammers, should it come to that.
“Someone” is the source of other people’s money.
Whose ?
Lenin called imperialism the final stage of capitalism, but he always assumed that Communism would be the highest phase of socialism. That’s where he was wrong. What Lenin didn’t realize was that prayerful piety is the ultimate stage of Leftism. It’s when you are in a line praying there is still toilet paper, or bread or a job left for you at the end; it is when you are on your knees before al-Qaeda begging them to reduce the ransom from $2 to $1.85 million because that’s all your house, car, jewelry and life savings are worth. It is when your arms are raised in rapturous hope at the coming of Obama, Warren, Sanders — or Hillary. That’s the last vision of heaven you will see as you rush to one side of the boat.
The stock market is in 1929 territory with interest rates at zero or less.
At least one Spanish bank, Bankinter SA, the country’s seventh-largest lender by market value, has been paying some customers interest on mortgages by deducting that amount from the principal the borrower owes.
The problem is just one of many challenges caused by interest rates falling below zero, known as a negative interest rate. All over Europe, banks are being compelled to rebuild computer programs, update legal documents and redo spreadsheets to account for negative rates.
Interest rates have been falling sharply, in some cases into negative territory, since the European Central Bank last year introduced measures meant to spur the economy in the eurozone, including cutting its own deposit rate.
That should help the economy.
Meanwhile, the political left is obsessed with gay rights and women’s risk of rape on college campuses.
Pessimism may not be pessimistic enough.
