Well, Iran and their allies' response may happen sometime this week and apparently they aren't talking to the US in order to negotiate how and where they will hit Israel (and Shoigu arrived in Tehran rather auspiciously), the Bangladeshi government just fell, F16s have been given to Ukraine, there are fascist riots in the UK, and Japan just had its worst stock fall since 1987 and seems to be taking several other countries/corporations with it. I don't really know where to look right now.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Don't expect the Fed to cut rates any time soon. The stock market has been on a fucking tear this year despite some shitty fundamentals from a lot of companies. The S&P 500 is still up over 10% on the year as of right now. The DJIA, NASDAQ Composite, and Russell 2000 are all still up YTD. If this continues and begins to negatively impact employment and productive output, then expect a rate cut. There's going to be a lot of pressure for them to do a cut in September, but unless jobs numbers tank in August, I'm leaning towards the Fed telling the market to tough it out. There's a lot of zombie companies doing business right now that should have gone bankrupt 5-10 years ago, and everybody and their mother is either opening up a restructuring & turnaround practice or expanding their existing one. There's a lot of legal and financial institutional people who are planning as if the corporate debt reckoning is on the horizon.
Michael Roberts has been saying for a while now that corporate debt and zombie companies will be the next big crash in the US (I think he’s right btw)
Yeah, there is a lot of what's called "liability management exercises" going on right now, wherein companies are taking advantage of the expanded realm of creditors that entered the market post-2008, who don't have enough restrictive/maintenance covenants on their debt agreements. Sometimes these deals are to the benefit of and agreed to by existing creditors. However, a lot of companies have been able to, frankly, fuck around with assets that are supposed to be collateral on existing debt, and do some "legal shenanigans" to move these assets to a subsidiary that isn't subject to their current debt covenants and borrow against those assets again with a new lender. If you are interested, here is an article from FT's Alphaville column, that comes with a supporting report from Barclays.
I think that reminds of something, but I'm sure it wasn't some major economic collapse that happened recently. It's fine.
Credit default swaps are a whole separate issue lol, but yes, a lot of these "new lenders" with "covenant-lite" debt are repacking the debt into collateralized debt obligations and selling them to other investors.
If we do see a correction even close to 2020 the Fed will definitely cut rates.
IMO one point is that these people are not motivated by principled rethoric or fundamental theories, on the contrary mainstream econ is literaly vibes and buzzwords. You know the ones: "overheating", "sticky" inflation, "quiet quitters" etc. You know the idiots in charge are literaly making a separate inflation index to make it all look better. Its literaly "~~COVID~~ inflation goes away if you stop ~~testing~~ measuring it".
The media and the financial market circus has the same ability to manufacture a narrative and in times like this, if the narrative becomes the Fed must cut rates now or the economy will crash then it leaves them no option.
Of course I do see the counter argument too, this isn't the first time either but I do note some differences
1- This is the first time I think there is any sort of call for "emergency" rate cut. The last time was during COVID.
2-There are correlating factors like Trump is almost a decided loser now and so goes the Trump bet narrative(major tax cuts, de-reg, incentives etc). Now the "market" wants another excuse to push higher and the only thing left is the holy grail aka rate cuts.
3- The AI bubble just isn't enough. The US market was primarily riding on these magnificent 7 profits and now even that is being called into question.
The point about these zombies is that they don't invest and they don't grow, they're not profitable and they barely survive only through debt.
The fundamental Marxist principle is capitalist economy only grows through corporate investment into productivity or larger scale. If there is no investment there wont be growth. Mainstream theories that say growth comes from consumer demand are all bunk nonsense anyway.
Even if you take that at face value US consumer demand is well known to be dependent on credit(e.g credit card) and the population is already scraping by with no emergency funds, with no wage growth, crippling inflation etc.
If they're smart they damn well should be lol.
None of these look very promising
Default, Transition, and Recovery: Monthly Default Tally Reached Four-Year High In April
Yeah, I think if unemployment takes off or we somehow manage to see the mythical price deflation, then we get a small rate cut or two in Q4. But Powell has been much less of a squish than Yellen about political pressure. When asset prices were going up and people were saying the Fed needed to step in, he more-or-less said "That ain't my fucking job," and now that asset prices are seemingly going to come back down to earth, I suspect he is again going to say "Still not my fucking job".
I haven't read FOMC minutes in a while, but frankly, Powell strikes me as the type of guy who has no problems doing the Volcker Summoning Circle if it comes down to it. This is obviously a different situation from when Volcker was in charge, but still.
Yeah, I mention that part because people have been talking about this for a while, but the people who make money off corporate bankruptcies now think this is real enough to start increasing headcount in preparation.
I think they're going to cut. The end game for the US as we know it is out of control (not hyper) inflation.