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Open thread October 28, 2022

Dan Crawford | October 28, 2022 7:42 am

Open thread October 25, 2022 – Angry Bear (angrybearblog.com)

7 Comments

Fred C. Dobbs says:

October 28, 2022 at 8:08 am

With Recession Looming, Big European Economies Still Show Some Growth

NY Times – Oct 28

Germany surprised economists by expanding in the third quarter, but the French and Spanish economies both slowed down.

The German economy expanded modestly over the summer, defying expectations that it would slide into a recession, but several other big European countries reported slowing economic growth on Friday, an ominous sign as record inflation driven by high energy and fuel prices continues to take a toll.

Europe’s largest economy, Germany surprised economists by expanding 0.3 percent in the July-to-September quarter, compared with the previous three months, data released by the country’s statistics office on Friday showed. Economists polled by Bloomberg had expected a 0.2 percent contraction. The increase was driven largely by consumer spending, the office said, and marked an acceleration from 0.1 percent growth in the previous quarter.

But growth slowed in France and Spain. The European Union’s second-largest economy, France grew 0.2 percent in the quarter, down from 0.5 percent in the previous period. Consumer spending slipped as record inflation in September pushed consumer prices 6.2 percent higher, government data showed.

In Spain, gross domestic product rose by 0.2 percent in the final months of the summer, a steep drop from 1.5 percent growth in the second quarter. The slide was unexpected, given the strong rebound of the country’s important tourism sector that had suffered during the coronavirus lockdowns in the past two years. But a drop in spending by consumers appeared to weigh on the Spanish economy.

Growth in Germany has now exceeded its prepandemic level, marking the economy’s recovery for the worst of the effects of the coronavirus. Nevertheless, disrupted supply chains have dragged on Germany’s export-driven economy, as have the high energy prices driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 28, 2022 at 8:09 am
  
  … In an effort to quell Europe’s record-high inflation, the European Central Bank on Thursday raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, matching the previous increase last month. The central bank, which sets monetary policy for the 19 countries that use the euro, said it had rapidly tightened its policy stance as inflation has proved worse and more persistent than the bank expected.
  
  Consumer prices rose 9.9 percent on average in the eurozone in September from a year earlier, the fastest pace on record, driven by energy and food prices.
Ken Melvin says:

October 29, 2022 at 3:02 pm

Paul Pelosi
The Republican Party has reverted to using KKK tactics in re voting for some time now. This bad-mouthing crap, so southern white trash, is endemic the whole area. Now the nation.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

October 30, 2022 at 8:58 am

‘Originalism is intellectually indefensible,’ says noted historian about right-leaning Supreme Court

Boston Globe – Oct 28

Eric Foner, a leading authority on the post-Civil War era, wants to see liberal justices develop a vision of the Constitution that doesn’t build on conservative legal ideology

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made waves recently when she used her perch to offer a vision of racial equality that stands at odds with how the U.S. Supreme Court often treats matters of race. The justice’s lengthy remarks, which came during oral arguments in Merrill v. Milligan, an important redistricting case that could weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, felt like a mini-history lesson on Reconstruction and the constitutional amendments ratified during that period.

With the fate of affirmative action hanging in the balance at the Supreme Court, I wanted to know what Eric Foner, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on Reconstruction, thought about Jackson’s take on this history, which contemplated policies that uplifted former enslaved Americans: “I am of two minds about Justice Jackson’s remarks,” he told The Emancipator in an email. “I am not a believer in originalism and do not want to operate on terrain constructed by the conservative justices. Originalism is intellectually indefensible. But if you are going to talk about history, you had better get it right, and she does a much better job of that than those who believe the architects of Reconstruction were colorblind.”

There was a lot to unpack there, so the two of us spoke on the phone to talk some more about Jackson, the sham of originalism, the current Supreme Court’s selective reading of history, and what Foner might tell the liberal justices if he had their ear. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 30, 2022 at 9:02 am
  
  (Somewhat lengthy interview follows, at the link.)
  
  Cristian Farias is a legal journalist who writes about law and the courts. He edits Inquest, a digital journal focused on ending the harms of mass incarceration. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. A longer version appears at ballsandstrikes.org, a site that publishes progressive analysis and commentary about the Supreme Court.
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 30, 2022 at 9:17 am
  
  The justice’s lengthy remarks
  
  are presented in a tweet, which links to a full transcript of 134 pages.
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    October 30, 2022 at 9:58 am
    
    The transcript is lengthy. Justice Brown’s remarks/questions (as posted in the tweet) are not.