The Geopolitical Avalanche
We are in the midst of a geopolitical avalanche. The speed, breadth, and seemingly unrelated nature of recent critical events make it hard to rise above the rolling events long enough to survey their meaning. It’s nearly impossible to assess an avalanche while still in its midst.
But, we can already see some critical happenings that need to be understood as a whole. They are as follows:
The Chevron decision means that the American civil service and agencies will no longer have wide authority to interpret legislation. Now, they will generally require legislation to act. In practical terms, this means that there is no more latitude in engaging in administrative guidance. This means that the kind of bank bailouts and creative financing arrangements that have characterized financial crises in the past are no longer possible. All problems of that magnitude will have to be handled directly by Congress, which has never been known to be very responsive or sympathetic to financial experts making mistakes. Can the Fed even continue to engage in “forward guidance” now? The transfer of power from the administration to Congress is stunning in its importance and consequences.
The Supreme Court's decision on Presidential immunity means that any President can now pursue almost any action without consequence. As one observer put it, Presidents could always fire a Cabinet Member, but could they assassinate them? Now, they can, in theory. This takes on more meaning now that it is more apparent that The President himself is not running things at The White House. So, who is? He says he will not use these new powers, but that does not preclude his team from using them. All agencies can now simply say, “The President ordered it.” Nobody can prove that he didn’t, especially if national security matters precludes access to internal communications. Given that The President is first and foremost The Commander in Chief, the new powers “put the military in a tricky spot” because they serve to protect the Constitution, not The President. Will the gain of immunity plus the loss of administrative guidance hang a President more than help him? Probably. Will all this make it much harder to run the country? Certainly yes.
What if the US Presidential and Congressional elections cannot be held? Let’s look at two building scenarios. One is the fast-moving story of the Bird Flu microbe. It’s harder to dismiss this as scaremongering in the press now the US government has just formally awarded Moderna $178m to produce an MRNA vaccine for it. Farms across Australia are already being locked down. Eggs shortages in Australia are already underway. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 92.34 million birds have been killed in the US alone since the outbreak began in 2022. It’s is spreading to other mammals from dolphins to cows and now to humans. The CDC just confirmed a 4th human case in the US (463 deaths globally). The WHO is putting the human fatality rate at over 50%. It’s sobering and perhaps coming just in time for this autumn.
The Presidential race has now descended into chaos in part because of the President’s cognitive condition. He’s made strange statements in a radio interview about being the “first black woman” to serve “with a black President.” Will he remain the nominee? Biden says, “God will tell him.” Meanwhile, it seems a Parkinson’s specialist from Walter Reed visited the White House eight times since last year. Rumours abound that President just had a prolonged medical emergency. Then again, the Secretary of Defence also went AWOL for days before anybody noticed. The Democratic National Committee has long believed that the candidate is not as important as the party. Any nominee just needs to execute the party’s position. They believe that people vote for the party, not the person. This is why Governor Gavin Newsom’s name keeps coming up even though most Americans don’t want California policies. This is irrelevant to the party leadership. It is also the main reason the Democratic leadership won’t consider bringing Robert Kennedy back into the fold even though his live debate attracted three times as many live viewers as the CNN official debate (ultimately 10m+) and even though Zogby polls show that Kennedy is the only person who beats Trump in a head-to-head race. Instead, there is now rising chatter about bringing Hillary Clinton back, perhaps even as a VP to Kamala Harris. Clinton has been running a mini-campaign behind the scenes, showing up (sometimes unexpectedly or uninvited) at Democratic fundraisers for some time. Her new book is conveniently coming out in early September. Will Democrats bet on a Trump-Clinton redux? Or a Harris-Clinton ticket? They might. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s popularity keeps rising, especially amongst the under 45-year-olds. It is probably going to rise a lot more for these reasons:
1. As many as 50% of Americans now identify as independent. Many of these are“double haters,” who hate both Trump and Biden and want to vote for “anybody else.” I believe that Kennedy now has the signatures he needs to be on all the ballots. 2. The courts and the data are increasingly confirming that Kennedy’s point about the novel MRNA vaccine developed for COVID perhaps saved some lives but also caused an unacceptable level of deaths and vaccine injuries. The data is changing the legal situation. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently said, “At this stage, we must accept Plaintiff’s allegations that the vaccine does not prevent the spread of COVID-