Mark Copelovitch

Also, it remains illegal under the law, Constitution, & the UN Charter

Congrats again to everyone who told us this guy was a “credible Treasury Secretary” & a “financial markets genius” because he had the right degrees, went to the right cocktail parties, & it’s a Big Club.

👇

One day we will be ready to talk about 👇. But we’re not even close to that yet & won’t be for a very long time:

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

I can remember quite a bit 🧐

As we hear today about Q4 growth being downgraded & 3.1% core inflation, a reminder about how wildly unserious our National Conversation™️ about Joe Biden’s economy was in 2022-23:

Don’t. Print. Lies. In. The. Newspapers.

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It already is:

One day we will be ready to talk about 👇. But we’re not even close to that yet & won’t be for a very long time:

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Once again, behold the unparalleled parsimony & explanatory power of the Dennis Green Unified Theory Of American Politics

The narcissistic inability to realize that other countries, like other people, also have agency. Not surprising, given that everything Trump does stems from totally out of control narcissism.

Today in “neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party”

Look, it was bad enough at Yale knowing these guys who cheated on their problem sets were going to become rich on Wall St because their dads were well connected. But the bargain was that the rule of law & the Constitution still mattered & they couldn’t just do a fascism & dismantle the government.

Watch this clip.

Professors will recognize this kid as the student who didn't do the reading but still has very strong opinions about how it's all "bullshit," except this time he's not the callow student who's going to fail your course, he's the reviewer who's going to cancel your grant.

Converse (1964)

“Where’s the politics in money and finance? This isn’t political science.” 🤔

I teach an entire ten week graduate seminar on how money is political and they just ... minted it out.

We could have sensible debates about taxes versus debt & about spending priorities. But we could dispense with the idea that the country issuing the global reserve currency, with a floating exchange rate, & a debt/GDP ratio <1/2 that of 🇯🇵, can’t afford both all the guns & all the butter we want.

Again, perhaps one thing that can be salvaged from this authoritarian omnishambles is finally consigning to the dustbin of history the idea that the 🇺🇸 government faces any meaningful hard economic constraints on what it can afford.

It’s <politics> all the way down:

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

As a thought experiment, imagine if there were a Joint(ly) & Comprehensive(ly) negotiated Agreement, designed as a Plan of Action to prevent this very regime from having nuclear weapons for at least decades. And imagine a world where this regime doesn’t have long-range missiles to reach 🇺🇸 cities 🤔

Again, the tone of the coverage about this absolute debacle is just totally different than the way Biden was covered about 🇦🇫:

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People are replying that this is no different/worse in 🇪🇺, & I’m sorry, that’s simply not true. In 🇪🇺, governments pay for & provide all or most of the security. 🇩🇪 synagogues, e.g., are not left to fend for themselves, as is the default norm here in 🇺🇸.

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Signs you might be a far right authoritarian party (#3338):

Just wanted to send out good vibes to everyone.

The band may have retired but they are still friends and now WE are all friends because of them.

“We are R.E.M.
and this is what we do.”

👇🎯 As it turns out, if you act as if other actors don't have agency, demand "unconditional surrender" without specifying what that means, & you shred all the institutions & norms that enable actors to make credible commitments, then they <can't> make deals with you, even if they want to do so.

He actually sounds like a person whose brain has been flattered into a sycophantic state of self-obsessed rot by an LLM.