Daily Archives: May 11, 2021

EUR: When Ancient Meets Modern.

EUR (which is the acronym of Esposizione Universale di Roma, meaning Romes Universal Exposition) is a metaphysical district of Rome that dates back to the Fascist era.

The original project was inspired by Fascist ideology and by the classical Roman urban planning, adding the elements of Italian Rationalism. The layout of the EUR district includes wide streets, and majestic and imposing architectural buildings, that are massive and square, mostly built with white marble to recall the classical monuments of the Ancient Imperial Rome.

This district detaches from the rest of the city of Rome as its architecture is uniquely modern and presents any visitor with the perception of being in a timeless place, characterized by the sharp and tall buildings as well as the many green areas and massive artificial lake, creating a contrast between its modernity and the ancient buildings in the centre of Rome. The clean white marble buildings, the ancient roman architecture, along with the majestic fountains make this district seem like it was meant to be the return of the Ancient

Roman Empire with the influence of the Fascist ideology. So, how did this district come to life and how did it change throughout the years?

In 1937, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini announces the start of construction for this district, designing a project planned to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the March on Rome in 1942. Due to the Second World War, an anti-bomb bunker was constructed 14 meters underground extending for 475 sqmin order to continue the construction regardless of the war.

However, after the events of the war and the loss of Mussolini, the exhibition never took place and the district was abandoned in 1942, the same year in which the original project was intended to be inaugurated. In between the 1950s and 1960s, the EUR district was revived, and new buildings were constructed, such as the Palazzo dello Sport (Sport Palace) in occasion of the Olympics Games of 1960, as well as the Piscina delle Rose (Rose Swimming Pool), an Olympic outdoor pool in the Central Park of the Lake.

The ambitious urban and architectural complexes attract tourists and inhabitants with the magnificence of buildings that rise mighty to the sky of Rome. EURs rationalist architecture characterizes many monuments that distinguish this district to the rest of the city. A symbolic monument of the district is the Square Colosseum, which is a nickname given to the Palazzo della Civilt Italiana (Palace of Italian Civilization), and was built by the architects Guerrini, La Padula and Romano inspired by metaphysical art. The district also benefits a sophisticated and well- connected system of underground galleries 4 meters below the ground that extend for 18 kilometres and provide water to the artificial lake as well as the rest of the district, as well as the optic fibre for a faster internet connection for the inhabitants.

The structural design and internal psychology of the districts architecture was commented by the notorious Italian director Federico Fellini, during an episode of a series released in 1970 by RAI.

In this series, Fellini walks through the architectural scenography of EUR and illustrates the reasons that led him to choose the metaphysical and abstractscenarios of this district to set some of his films, such as La Dolce Vita (1960) and Boccaccio 70 (1962).

According to Fellini, the space of EUR provides its visitors with an artistic atmosphere as if you were in a painting, beyond any law except perhaps the aesthetic ones. A place where there are no relationships other than those with solitude and objects. This reflection argues that this district hosts a metaphysical environment in which the monumental architecture is uniform and in harmony with its wide surroundings.

The urban development of EUR has continued to this day with the construction of the new Congress Centre called La Nuvola di Fuksas (Fuksas Cloud), a massive keel anchored to the ground by three solid metal feet, placed inside a giant glass and steel container and covered by an opalescent white fabric giving the complex the appearance of a cloud. Today, EUR is a Roman urban area in which most of the buildings are owned by the state-owned company EUR Spa.

EUR has thus become the most important financial pole of the capital with the presence of numerous banks, such as Unicredit, BNL and others, as well as public and private buildings, such as Poste Italiane (Italian Post Office) and theItalian multinational oil and gas company (ENI). The district also hosts the Museum of Roman Civilization and the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, affirming its strong cultural connection to the past.Ph:MarcelloCerauloPortfolio / Shutterstock.com

Top ph:Marco Rubino / Shutterstock.com

See more here:

Introducing the EUR district in Rome - Wanted in Rome

Introduction

Over the last decade or so it seems geopolitical risk has become of greater significance for investors particularly with the 2016 Brexit vote and Donald Trumps election, and tensions with China from 2018. However, beyond lots of noise around President Trump and the US election, geopolitical risk took a back seat for most of the last year in terms of relevance for global investment markets as coronavirus dominated. But, after a period of relative calm following the handover to President Biden, there is a growing risk that it may make a bit of a comeback with tensions building in a number of areas.

Although significant geopolitical events impacted investment markets in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s (with notably two Gulf Wars and 9/11), the broad trend in terms of geopolitical influence was reasonably positive for investment markets with the embrace of free market/economic rationalism (after the perceived failure of widespread government intervention in the 1970s), the collapse of communism and associated surge in global trade, the peace dividend and the dominance of the US as the global cop. However, over the last decade geopolitical developments have arguably started to move in a direction which is less favourable for investment markets. There are three big geopolitical developments contributing to this:

The political pendulum is swinging back to the left the slow post-global financial crisis recovery, rising inequality, a dimming in memories of the malaise associated with interventionist economic policies and high inflation in the 1970s, and stress around immigration in various developed countries has contributed to a backlash against establishment politics and economic rationalist policies. This has been showing up in support for re-regulation, nationalisation, increased taxes and protectionism and other populist responses. While aspirational politics ruled in the 1980s & 1990s its since been replaced with scepticism about trickle-down economics. The trend towards bigger government has been pushed along by the pandemic, which has seen last decades fiscal austerity ditched in favour of big government spending and big budget deficits made possible by very low interest rates.

The swing of the political pendulum to the left is most acute in Anglo Saxon countries as it was here that the pendulum swung most towards free markets in the 1980s and 1990s. This swing is clearly evident under President Biden who is ushering in a greater focus on public spending to fix economic and social problems, partly financed by increased taxes and with bigger budget deficits. Its also evident in Australia with the budget repair focus of last decade now on the backburner and the Government focussed on pushing unemployment below 5%. But the swing to the left is also evident in German politics. And scepticism about western capitalist democracy has also become more evident in some countries, notably China which has backed away from becoming more like the West.

In the short term, big government spending could boost growth and productivity and may be seen as necessary to save capitalism from itself (as FDRs New Deal did). Longer term, big government could act as a dampener on productivity growth and boost inflation but if the post-WW2 experience is anything go by that could take a while to be a major issue.

The relative decline of US power this is shifting us away from the unipolar world that dominated after the Cold War when the US was the global cop, and most countries were moving to become free market democracies. Now we are seeing the rise of China at the same time that its strengthening the role of the Communist Party, Russia revisiting its Soviet past and efforts by other countries to fill the gap left by the US in parts of the world, resulting in a multi-polar world and increased tensions all of which has the potential to upset investment markets at times.

Third, social media is allowing us to make our own reality resulting in entrenched division and less scope for cooperation amongst socio-political groups to achieve common goals. As politicians pander to this, the danger is that economic policy making will be less rational and more populist.

The main geopolitical risks to key an eye on this year are:

US/China tensions, particularly regarding Taiwan this is probably the biggest risk. Trumps tariffs have not been reduced and Biden has maintained a hard line on China reflecting US public opinion. Tensions are heating up again as the US is preparing to sell weapons to Taiwan with military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, and some in China threatening to reunify Taiwan by force. The issue is arguably being accentuated by US restrictions on semiconductor sales to China and, of course, Taiwan has a state-of-the-art semiconductor industry. Its hard to see China reunifying Taiwan by force given the economic costs that would flow from trade sanctions and it all sounds like a lot of posturing, but the risks have gone up and markets may start to focus on it more, particularly if there are accidental military clashes in the area. And there are reportedly signs Europe may be moving towards the USs side on the broader US-China issue. Key to watch will be the Biden Admins review of US policy on China in coming months and Bidens first bilateral meeting with President Xi.

Australia/China tensions these have been building since Australia banned Huawei from participating in its 5G rollout and intensified last year after Australia called for an independent inquiry into the source of coronavirus, and China put bans and tariffs on various imports from Australia. The tensions may be escalating again with the Federal Government cancelling Victorias Belt and Road Initiative with China which could result in a further escalation in bans and tariffs on Australian exports to China. So far these have not had a major macroeconomic impact because the value of the products affected is small (less than 1% of GDP) and the impact has been swamped by the strength in iron ore exports and prices. And with Australia accounting for 50% of iron ore exports globally, there is insufficient iron ore supply from other countries for China to move to other sources. It could become more of an issue over the longer term if the tensions continue to worsen and ultimately impact iron ore, and this may already be showing up as a risk premium in Australian assets with the $A trading lower against the $US than might be suggested by the level of commodity prices and the trade surplus, and this may also be constraining the relative performance of the Australian share market. So any easing of tensions could boost the $A and Australian shares, but it could also go the other way if tensions escalate.

Iran/Israel tensions the US is looking to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in order to continue its pivot to Asia and given its energy independence making it less reliant on Middle East oil. Iran wants a return to the deal to take pressure of its economy. But Israel is not keen, is strongly opposed to Irans nuclear ambitions and has allegedly sabotaged some Iranian facilities with Iran vowing retaliation. Ideally Biden needs to get a deal done before August when a more hawkish Iranian president may take over. Reports indicate US/Iran talks are making progress, but there is a long way go and tensions between Iran & Israel and Saudi Arabia & Iran could flare up in the interim with potential to impact oil prices although beyond short term spikes the impact here is not what it used to be.

Russia tensions Biden has taken a hard line against Russia. It could insist that Germany cancel the Nord Stream 2 (Russian/German gas) pipeline which would risk Russian retaliation possibly with another incursion into Ukraine. A full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine is unlikely as it would unite Europe & the US against Russia and be costly economically, but another incursion is a risk. Tensions have faded in the last few weeks but could flare up again ahead of Russian elections in September with Putin looking for something to rally political support. Note though that the Russian invasion of Crimea and the shooting down of MH17 only saw brief 2% and 1% dips respectively in US shares in 2014 in what was a solid year.

German election with Angela Merkel stepping down after nearly 16 years as Chancellor in Germany, polls indicate there is a good chance that the Greens will win control of government in the 26th September elections or if not then be a part of it. However, while this will likely need to be in coalition with the Christian Democrats which would limit the Greens more extreme left-wing policies, its likely to see German policy tilt to the left with more fiscal stimulus (a direction the Christian Democrats are leaning in anyway) which will boost recovery in Europe and be a further force for European integration. So, a Green win could actually be a positive risk for European shares.

Terrorism The risks here have subsided, but new attacks cant be ruled out. However, economies and markets seem to have become desensitised to them to a degree.

North Korea Biden appears to be set on taking a more incremental approach to resolving issues with North Korea than Trump did, but more North Korean provocations could occur before progress is made. Note though that North Korean provocations had little lasting impact on markets in 2017.

US tax hikes so far, the US share market has not been too concerned much about the Biden Administrations proposed tax hikes on the assumption the negative impact will be offset by extra spending and congress will scale them back which they probably will. This could change if they are not scaled back.

Australia the main risk is an early election but differences between the Government and Labor are minor compared to the 2019 election. The Coalition is now eschewing fiscal austerity in favour of boosting growth to deliver a tight jobs market and higher wages. And Labor Leader Anthony Albanese has dropped most of the big end of town taxes it proposed in 2019. A Labor Government would take a tougher stance on climate and a more interventionist approach, however, a significant impact on the economy from a change of government is low compared to the 2019 election. To avoid separate House and Senate elections, the latest the next election can be is 21 May 2022. Recent controversies have reduced the chance of an early election.

Our view is that share markets will head higher this year as recovery continues and this boosts earnings. However, investor sentiment is very bullish which is negative from a contrarian perspective and we are coming into a seasonally softer period of the year for shares, as the old saying sell in May and go away.. reminds us and the next chart illustrates (although Australian shares can push higher into July). Geopolitical risks as noted above along with a resumption of the bond market tantrum as inflation rises further and maybe a new coronavirus scare could provide a trigger for a short-term correction.

That said, there are several points for investors to bear in mind. First, geopolitical issues create much interest, but as we seen with, eg, Brexit, North Korea and trade wars, they rarely have lasting negative impacts on markets. Second, its hard to quantify geopolitical risks as you have to understand each issue separately. Finally, trying to time negative geopolitical shocks & pick their impact is not easy and it often makes more sense for investors to respond once they are factored into markets as the worst usually doesnt happen, rather than permanently sheltering from them in low returning cash.

Read the rest here:

The Return of Geopolitical Risk? What to Watch over the Remainder of 2021 ShareCafe - ShareCafe

Review of Being Left-Wing in Australia: Identity, Culture and Politics after Socialism, by Geoff Robinson (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2019).

Over the last decade, left-populist and socialist politics have made a comeback in the United States, UK, and Europe, but so far Australia has been an exception to this trend. Explaining this is as difficult as it is pressing. Geoff Robinsons book Being Left-Wing in Australia: Identity, Culture and Politics After Socialism, published in 2019, is perhaps the most thorough attempt to do so yet.

Being Left-Wing in Australia traverses the large-scale collapse of collective politics that has plagued Australia for thirty years. Robinson adopts a broad understanding of the Left based on how individuals and groups define themselves. He surveys a range of organizations and leaders, from far-left groups to the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Greens, not to mention contemporary political archetypes like the green capitalist or the human rights bureaucrat.

In particular, Robinson pays close attention to the shift away from socialism toward liberalism, and to the development of what he calls progressive neoliberalism within the ALP. Despite the continued grip of this doctrine on the party, it constitutes an exhausted political project Robinson compares it to a ghost begging for release.

Being Left-Wing in Australia is an intellectual history, but not a history of intellectuals alone. Robinson goes to great lengths to document the disintegration of the world that once sustained Australias Left.

During the twentieth century, a proletarian public sphere thrived, comprising working-class parties, unions, bookshops, newspapers, and publishers. This world existed both within and against a wider system of corporate liberalism, namely, a society based on the relations between groups, rather than one based on relations between individuals and the state.

The dissolution of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in 1991 was a watershed moment in the decline of this working-class political culture. Prior to 1991, as Robinson notes, the CPA had occupied a central position in the culture of the left as an alternative focus to the ALP, and had been a long-running source of intellectual sustenance for the Labor Left.

Yet the Australian left was not simply a passive victim swept away by historical processes beyond its control. Indeed, parts of the Left including left-aligned unions and the CPA itself were active participants in establishing and shaping the paradigm that followed.

In Australia, as in much of the world, neoliberalism sought to ensure the smooth continuation of capitalism following the high-water mark of class struggle in the 1970s. Australia was exceptional, however, because this project led by Bob Hawke, from Labors right faction required the cooperation of the trade union and ALP left. This allowed the ALPs left-wing tendency to come closer to power than ever before. On its own terms, it was, for a time, highly successful.

In similar fashion to Elizabeth Humphrys, author of How Labour Built Neoliberalism, Robinson demonstrates the role figures from the Left played in laying the bedrocks of Australian neoliberalism. In particular, this involved helping push through the Prices and Incomes Accord between the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the ALP. While Humphrys focuses on the mechanisms whereby militant union leaders and activists are incorporated into state projects of restructuring, Robinson places the accord in the context of broader ideological compromises that were taking place.

In 1969, Bill Brown, president of the Victorian Labor Party, addressed a party conference with the following message:

Only the conscious organization of production in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way can save the world from destruction. This cannot be achieved by simply winning seats in Parliament and seeking to change capitalism into a morally good society. It can only be realized by a complete break from capitalist institutions, culture and morality.

Victorias Socialist Left faction was the most left-wing of all state Labor factions. Yet just compare Browns words with the career of Brian Howe, a leading figure in the Victorian Socialist Left.

Symbolizing the de-radicalization of the Labor Left, Howe oversaw a series of devastating cuts as a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments. Labors commitment to social justice offset those cuts, according to Howe. In practice, this meant that he urged the Left and the labor movement to accept the broad direction of government macroeconomic policy in exchange for support from the right on social policy.

The goal of social policy ceased to be social or economic transformation. Instead, the ALP confined the welfare state to a much more modest role in helping societys very poorest members with relief of poverty replacing a broader egalitarianism. His service in Paul Keatings razor gang earned Howe a promotion to deputy prime minister in 1991, just over twenty years after Bill Brown had denounced parliamentarism.

As ALP prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating spearheaded a process of market-led reforms that transformed Australian society, much of the Left dropped even a vague commitment to socialism. This coincided with the hollowing out of the social sphere. The result was a new form of politics that bore little resemblance to what had preceded it.

Pragmatism and policy replaced ideology. Party-political insiders and wonks supplanted activists and organizers. In place of Australias tradition of working-class autodidacticism, a new breed of public intellectual arose who believed that technocratic governance could improve society.

At the same time, social movements declined and became marginal or were incorporated into the state. Communities that had formerly been collectively organized for example, many Indigenous communities were atomized into groups of individualized clients. Unions traded militancy and shop-floor organization away to become arbitrators of industrial policy. This made them reliant on federal industrial relations institutions they had previously opposed, reducing their political role to that of pressure groups on the ALP.

This was the world that gave birth to what Robinson calls progressive neoliberalism. In his understanding, this was a form of ideology and political practice combining cultural politics that were broadly socially liberal with advocacy for economic rationalism, as neoliberalism was then known in Australia. It still dominates the Australian center left. Spend five minutes in the company of a typical ALP or Greens politico, and youll likely encounter a worldview built around these concepts.

However, these shifts only lay the basis for Robinsons account of a contemporary Australian left, whose origins he dates back to 2001 and the reelection of Liberal PM John Howard. Howards triumph that year was traumatic for the Left. Many had begrudgingly explained his 1996 victory over the ALP as a consequence of economic uncertainty and even as a vote against the model put in place by the accord.

In contrast, as Robinson notes, the 2001 election seemed to demand a cultural explanation. Having long since discarded a substantively different view of organizing society and the economy, the Australian left responded rather with a moral declaration of opposition to racism and xenophobia. For the center-left this led to an awkward politics that stressed balancing the interests of the working class and an enlightened middle class, with the latter supposedly being motivated by post-materialist issues.

For Robinson, Robert Manne exemplifies the Lefts embrace of liberalism during this period. Manne was an anticommunist onetime conservative who had voted for John Howard in 1996. By 2001, he had become a key intellectual figure on the Left thanks to his moral critique of aspects of Australian society and Howards leadership.

Robinson does not argue that the Australian left lost its traditional working-class base as a result of embracing social liberalism and identity politics. Instead, he demonstrates that this base had been eroding well before there was any cultural turn. That turn itself was a consequence of the collapse of collective, class-based politics.

Desperate to win back the base, sections of the ALP engaged in anguished acrobatics, appealing to socially conservative attitudes, or attempting to develop a new class identity politics, which regarded working-class as a cultural identity, rather than a socioeconomic reality. Robinson treats these strategies with the derision they deserve. His sensitivity to the subject and the breadth of source material he draws on allow him to trace the Lefts prioritization of culture and identity back to multiple sources.

For one example, Robinson cites Julia Gillards attempts to redefine working-class identity as distinctively male, white, ageing, socially conservative, left behind and susceptible to the appeal of the populist right. He suggests that this view evolved along a crooked road that can be traced back to the last years of the CPA specifically, the Socialist Forum, a right-wing split from the Communist Party. This shift toward prioritizing culture and identity was also encouraged by an academic left that had largely abandoned Marxism in favor of theorists like Michel Foucault and new disciplines such as cultural studies.

Having abandoned its social, economic, and political vision, the ALP as a whole increasingly found itself unable to differentiate itself from the Australian right on any basis other than culture and identity. Meanwhile, Labors Left faction came to distinguish itself internally from the Labor Right in similar terms. The ALP that emerges in Robinsons book is a party that lacks an engaged membership, led by a political elite still waging old faction fights that date back to the Cold War, with little or no grounding in contemporary Australian politics and society.

Identity also became key to the way the Left in and around the ALP understood itself. Shorn of its organic connection to collective politics, ideology became a matter of moral identification. Today, an online subculture known as Raindrop Twitter is emblematic of this trend. Doggedly committed to Labor, its a kind of baby-boomer liberalism that breathlessly decries corruption and media concentration while staying largely silent on privatization, Indigenous deaths in custody, or rising rates of casualization.

Robinson also looks back at an earlier online left that responded to any criticism of the ALP with defensive hostility. Bad news about the party, he suggests, was met with complaint and deflection and with general cycles of outrage produced on social media. This center-left, Labor-adjacent milieu increasingly boasted of its technocratic superiority to the Right, while claiming to be the true inheritors of Australias supposed egalitarian traditions of fairness and mateship.

If this all sounds depressingly familiar, its because the ALP hasnt really changed in over a decade. Even the great financial crash of 2008 did little to dislodge Labor from its progressive neoliberal rut. The party has not won a federal election since 2010. Robinson traces the partys microscopic shifts: some more social conservatism here, a greater focus on fairness there. But these modifications have virtually no meaning.

For socialists, Being Left-Wing in Australia can be a challenging read. Although it confirms much about what we thought was wrong, we only play a bit part in Robinsons account. Although occasionally correct in our analysis, we have lacked the strength in numbers or connection with the working class that could make our project meaningful. But Robinson helps us understand the unique and badly outdated world of Australian progressive neoliberalism that must be replaced. He tells us what not to do the rest will be up to us.

Read more from the original source:

How the Myths of Progressive Neoliberalism Hollowed Out Australia's Left - Jacobin magazine