As published in John Menadue's blog 7 August

 first published here

October 1972, October 2020: prospects for the United States… and us.

By DENNIS ARGALL | On 7 August 2020

Decent minded Australians are tending to assure themselves that Trump will be defeated in November; many decent Americans work feverishly for the defeat of Trump. But the defeat of Trump is far from assured.  Whoever is president of the United States next year will not be helpful to Australia, though we will perform our well-established rites of fealty. There are lessons from the elections of 1972.

By October 1972, US President Nixon was deeply unpopular, beset by opposition to the Vietnam war. Then in late October Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s National Security Advisor gave a press conference claiming that peace with Vietnam was at hand. Nixon was re-elected, over a scarcely visible Democrat candidate George McGovern… but by Christmas the United States had resumed bombing of North Vietnam, dropping 20,000 tonnes of explosives mainly on Hanoi, killing at least one thousand people.

In October 2020, US President Trump will probably announce a vaccine against COVID-19 which will be scheduled for distribution by network unknown with priorities unclear, in January. The Democratic candidate Biden, who in August is still scarcely visible and seems concerned to pick a vice-presidential running mate who will not outshine him, will be outclassed.

It seems forgotten that there is an enormous obstacle to Democrat success in the slur of 2016 when Hillary Clinton described half the supporters of Trump as a basket of deplorables. This is an ulcer under the hide of acceptability of a Democrat candidate by a necessary proportion of current Trump supporters. Until Biden can come out in the street and denounce the label ‘deplorable’ he is likely unelectable. Unelectable because the Democrat campaign will remain seen as an elitist patronising force, dependent on the quiet assumption of capacity to win because Trump will lose. We have seen such in the deliberately invisible campaign of Kim Beazley as Labor leader in Australia in 1998.

No amount of charming vice presidential candidate presence is likely to shift Biden from dead centre motionless. Daily the Democrat-sweet New York Times and Washington Post fidget in seeking to present Biden as shifting somewhere to the left, to adopting policies of those he defeated in the primary election process, or of wisely not doing so. Without a visible, vigorous and convincing vice presidential candidate, Joseph Robinette Biden, aged 77, remains a slow-talking, scarcely visible, slightly shuffling disappointment to many who are giving their hearts and energies to his election. Trump’s labellings of Biden as Sleepy Joe, etc have street cred. Here is a New York Times commentary explaining how an invisible campaign is actually good.

We are three months from the US presidential election on 3 November 2020. Nobody knows the practical effect on the elections of COVID-19, or the practical effect of Trump’s work to seriously damage the US Postal Service, having placed in charge people who work for its destruction. It is unclear to what extent public opinion and voting intentions will be affected by Trump efforts to undermine the place of government in infrastructure of all kinds, a core desire of the Republican Party.

In Australia, we tend to take the public sector’s engagement with physical, social, health and other infrastructure, though we may observe the ideologically driven work of the coalition to undo it. We take for granted the place of government in a broad spread of services, believing in the regulation of business as a natural function of government. We, therefore, miss the historical reality in the United States that this public sector engagement with infrastructure has roots no further back than President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. And we are not fully aware that the Republican Party has consistently worked against it.

The Republican ideal is that government be as small as possible and services of whatever kind be bought from unregulated private business. The Democratic Party’s view, its readiness to defend the public sector, is far from clear. Just as in Australia the currently scarcely visible Australian Labor Party’s view is at best unclear, some utterances in support of the public ownership of services and the means of redistribution of wealth, but mainly acquiescence to the dismantling policies of the coalition… The ALP’s fealty is particularly evident in foreign and strategic policy.

One thing of which we can be sure is that the Australian government will, in the wake of presidential elections in the United States, express its fealty to the United States and its identification with whatever policies of whichever candidate has been successful. Be proud of our chameleon-like capacity to identify with whoever rules in Washington. But whoever wins in Washington will, in any case, have these qualities:

• a preoccupation with domestic economic issues in a time of depression
• an absence of leadership on climate issues, meaning
• an incapacity, as in Australia, to build new infrastructure, post-pandemic or persistent-pandemic, with new models of energy sustainability and climate change survivability
• a persistence of American exceptionalism, a rejection of international regulation, a readiness to continue with military adventures illegal and unsuccessful.

Australia will be weirdly hitched to all that. The outlook is bleak.

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Giuseppe Felloni, historian of banking, Genova

The extraordinary history of Felloni's work recounted in the Financial Times in 2009

I wrote here  that: "If owners of the title to this title wish to put it elsewhere on the web, please do, I will link to it. But don't lose it. It shines a light for us now". The web site has reemerged.

BEGIN QUOTE FROM first section of Giuseppe Felloni, The Primacy of Italian finance from the Middle Ages to early modern times. 

The birth of Europe

Between the 11th and 16th centuries Europe’s position with regards to other civilisations radically changed. With the advent of the Ottos in the 10th century, when the fundamental features of the continent’s policies became established, Europe was still socially, culturally and economically backward, overtaken by the refined and still solid Byzantine Empire, the flourishing world of Islam, albeit showing the first signs of political division, and the magnificent Song Dynasty in China. In the 16th century, with the disappearance of the Byzantine Empire and an upturn in the fortunes of Islam with the Ottoman Empire, Europe by now was able to compete with the China of the Ming dynasty in terms of scientific knowledge and military strength. This self-sustaining change had its roots in Italy and the Flemish area and gradually was to spread elsewhere in Europe. These extraordinary advances, which were set to continue in the forthcoming centuries and would allow European countries to expand their spheres of influences all over the world, have no easy explanation. In the competition with China, Europe enjoyed an immediate advantage. Both areas had an immense heritage of scientific and technical knowledge, but the Chinese world was dominated by a veneration of the past and constant reference to traditional models, whilst in Europe there was greater openness and acceptance of ideas coming from outside. Both areas enjoyed an abundance of raw materials, but Europe had the edge thanks to its network of seas and rivers that aided communications. In China, the existence of a sole power of celestial origin helped to keep society in a dangerous state of conformity which led during the Ming period to a decline in knowledge in the areas of mathematics and astronomy, aggravated until 1567 by the prohibition of maritime trade with abroad. Europe, on the other hand, was divided into states that were almost always at war with each other and whose inhabitants enjoyed greater degrees of freedom, which gradually increased as the feudal system declined and their rulers sought economic progress both as a way of replenishing state coffers and garnering political supremacy. As regards these aspects, the fragmented situation of the Italian peninsula lent itself particularly well since competition amongst new political players (communes, seigneurs, principalities) fuelled costly local tensions and acted as a stimulus for individual initiative. At the same time, social ideals were changing and the pursuit of wealth became a widespread socially acceptable goal thanks also to the rising importance of the Italian mercantile classes engaged in overseas and transalpine trade. Against this already favourable backdrop, the rise of individual initiative and the capitalistic ideal were determinants in setting off an irreversible mechanism of technical and scientific progress that would lead to the adoption of the method of experimentation and confirm Europe’s new superiority, at least in certain fundamental sectors. Proof of the continent’s new found primacy lay in the fact that in 1620 China officially authorised the importation into the celestial empire of canons from Europe, despite having had their own firearms since the 12th century. Whatever the decisive factors were, in the last centuries of the middle ages Europe demonstrated an inventiveness that was made up, rather than by a series of epoch-defining events, by the efforts of artisans and merchants who on a daily basis sought to improve the efficiency of their work. Over time, it was the sum of these small-scale advances and innovations that was to be of extraordinary importance. This process of advancement was particularly evident in the industrial field: new techniques in metallurgy and mechanics (albeit thanks mostly to the invention of gunpowder), improvements to windmills (the major energy source of the time), the invention of the printing press, etc.. Often in the background lie the innovations made in finance and commerce, which originated in Italy and would later be exported throughout Europe and become part of its collective heritage. One possible reason for this could be that advances in manufacturing, industry and weapons were tangible, whilst mercantile procedures, laws and litigation can only be understood via the study of historical documents that are by no means easy to interpret. Amongst these less immediately recognisable financial innovations, some have been so important for economic development that the contemporary world has absorbed not only the principle underlying them, but also the substance. These innovations are essentially linked to the diffusion of credit and consist in the development of rules, instruments and techniques capable of satisfying more effectively the requirements of both the credit demand and credit supply sides.

First section of Giuseppe Felloni, The Primacy of Italian finance from the Middle Ages to early modern times. http://www.giuseppefelloni.it