Tom Friedman Explains Why The International System Is At Risk

Tom Friedman reports from Italy where he has learned about the risks that we face in Europe and elsewhere.  He argues that Italy's new government came to power because of a very serious mistake by NATO.  A dictator was removed from Libya, but NATO did nothing to restore order in Lybia.  Consequently, there is no effective government in Libya. Instead it is run by a number of competing tribes.  As a result,  Italy has been overwhelmed by an unmanageable number of immigrants.  The second largest segment of Lybia's economy is moving immigrants to Europe via Italy.  Moreover, that situation has been made worse by the refusal of some governments to accept immigrants flowing into Europe via Italy.   Italians are unhappy with the flow of immigrants and they also blame the EU for not assuming more of the responsibility for accepting the immigrants.  Anti EU, and anti-immigration sentiments opened the door for the right wing coalition government in Italy.

Italy is only one of the problems that Friedman is concerned about.  Russia, of course has been active in supporting Brexit in the UK and it has fueled discontent with the EU by supporting nationalist political parties that have also taken advantage of popular concerns about the flow of immigrants and refugees from troubled nations outside of Europe.  Donald Trump's rise to power in the US has also been harmful.  He has been critical of the EU and NATO.  He imagines that he can create a new world order in which he negotiates better deals between thFriee US and individual nations. 

Friedman is also concerned about demographics.  The population of Africa, which is larger than the population of the EU, will double in size while the population of the EU is shrinking,  Unless governments in Africa become more able to deal with their economic and social problems there will be more pressure on developed nations to deal with the flow of immigrants and refugees from Africa. Friedman is also worried about the consequences of our inability to deal with global warming.  He did not have much to say in this article about global warming because he did not want to ruin you dinner, lunch and breakfast with bad news.  I suspect that his enjoyment of the great food in Italy has also been diminished by his concerns about our future.

Apple And Other Social Media Platforms Remove Alex Jones

Apple removed Alex Jones from several of its platforms; Facebook and others followed suit.  Its about time that the social media took some responsibility for providing a megaphone to conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.  Apple justified its action by claiming that Jones violated its rule about distributing hate mail.  Conservatives reacted as one might expect.  They claimed that the social media violated Jones' right to free speech.  In other words, publishing fake conspiracy theories that have been harmful to others is protected by the Constitution.  That is utter nonsense.  Newspapers and  other media outlets are not required to provide a platform that liars like Jones can use to become rich.  Conservative media like Brietbart News and Fox News are obviously selective about whose views they make available to their  conservative market.  Moreover, only a small subset of conservatives follow Alex Jones.  It makes no sense to view the Jones decision as a battle between conservatives and liberals.  It should make most conservatives happy that they are not defined by predators like Alex Jones.

Why Its Hard To Prevent Disinformation Programs On Social Media

Russian disinformation campaigns continue to make extensive use of the social media to divide our nation and to weaken democratic institutions in the US and elsewhere.  This article illustrates one the problems that make it hard to block Russian disinformation programs.  Twitter was aware of several Russian disinformation programs and they shut them down.  Many of those programs were also operating on Facebook but they were not blocked by Facebook.  That is because security personnel at Facebook claim that it is too difficult to precisely determine whether the Russian Twitter operators were  identical to similar operators on Facebook.  In other words, Facebook, and perhaps other social media firms, do not have the technical ability to do their job.  Security executives at Facebook also claim that that they have an obligation to promote free speech.  That concern seems to override the importance of protecting their users from disinformation campaigns. 

This will be an ongoing "arms race" between the social media platforms and the Russians in charge of the disinformation programs.  The Russians have demonstrated the ability disguise their operations faster than the social media can identify them.  The Russians may have a more powerful incentive to win that battle than the social media firms.  The payoff from their disinformation programs is large relative to the expense.  That is not true for the social media firms which have a very different incentive system.

Facebook and the other social media firms are actually in the advertising business.  Their revenue comes from advertisers.  Moreover, the price that they charge for ad placements is directly related to the size of their user base and the amount of activity within their user base.  Provocative placements get more attention than mundane placements.  Its also the case that providing security from disinformation operations is an added expense for the social media firms.  These are some of the reasons why Facebook suffered the largest stock market decrease on one day after they reported their quarterly results.  They reported a large decline in their user base and their profit margin declined as they added thousands of employees to their security force.  Facebook was a much more attractive investment before it became a vehicle for disinformation campaigns. Its defense of free speech is also spurious.  Newspapers make most of their money from advertising.  However, they don't permit everyone to publish unedited articles and they even monitor the comments on their opinion pages.  Protecting free speech on Facebook and other social media is less important than enabling disinformation programs that go well beyond meddling in our elections.  The more general goal of the Russian disinformation campaigns is to exploit cultural and racial issues that divide our society and weaken our democratic institutions.  That extends as well to the "world order" that we have created since WW ll.  They found the perfect tool in Donald Trump.

Why Will The US Budget Deficit Hit $1 Trillion?

If a business suffers a steep decline in revenue it must find a way to increase its revenue or borrow money.  The US Treasury faces that problem today.  It made huge cuts to corporate taxes and it made other changes in corporate expense accounting which has been great for corporate profits and for shareholders.  However, the tax cuts have not produced the economic growth that was supposed to compensate for the corporate tax cuts as promised by the Trump administration.  Some in the administration still argue that the economic growth it promised is still coming.  On the other hand, several economic forecasters don't believe that will happen.  They expect US budget deficits will continue to grow in response to the huge drop in corporate tax payments.

A Simple Explanation For Trump's Lies

This article describes several of Trump's most recent lies.  The lies are so obvious that they cannot be defended by "alternative facts".  The reason the Trump makes such frequent use of lies is not hard to explain.  He lies about almost everything because a lie is not a lie if his base believes it.  However, Trump faces a problem that is beginning to affect many of his true believers.  Recent polls show that Trump's base of true believers in shrinking.  It is becoming harder and harder for Fox News to convince its market of true believers that obvious lies are not truthful.

Facebook Suffers 24% Drop In Stock Price

Facebook lost $150 billion in market value yesterday.  The shares fell 24% after Facebook's revenue growth did not meet investor expectations.  It reported $13.23 billion in revenue for the  quarter and profit of $5.1 billion but its stock price had been bolstered by Google's report of accelerating revenue growth.  They are in the same market for advertising revenues on their social media platforms.  However,  Facebook lost 3 million users in Europe and user growth in the US and Canada was flat for the quarter.  Facebook expects user growth on several of its other social media platforms but they do not generate the advertising revenues that are produced by Facebook which has suffered from reported abuses of Facebook by Russia and others who have used the platform to spread fake news.  In addition to declining revenue growth, Facebook has been forced to increase its workforce to reduce the abuses of its platform that have been widely reported.

How Trump's Trade War Is Crushing Farm Communities

Rural Americans love Donald Trump.  They voted him into office because rural farm communities have been dying a slow death.  This article describes how Trump's tariff policies are accelerating the death of rural farm communities in the Mid-West.  The Trump administration has provided a $12 billion subsidy to farmers who have been suffering from the loss of export markets.  That may help Republicans in the mid-term election but it won't help farm communities over the longer term.  Other nations have already taken over the export markets that the farmers have depended upon.  Small farmers will be unable to survive and pass on their farms to family members.  Large corporate farms will buy their farms at auction and the communities that supported the small farmers will erode rapidly.  The corporate farms will not use the small community banks that are a pillar of the community and other services that supported the community will evaporate because the market for their services will be too small. 

Unfortunately for the small farmers and many farm communities in the Mid-West Trump does not understand how his tariffs are doing the opposite of what he had promised.  He understands how to run a political campaign that is based upon promises that cannot be realized but he has unleashed a devil for the voters that put him in the White House.  They cannot survive on promises or on federal subsidies.