politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The GOP Race: It’s hard now to see beyond Trump, Cruz or Ru
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The GOP Race: It’s hard now to see beyond Trump, Cruz or Rubio
The screen grab at the top is from Fox News and show the line up of GOP contenders to this week’s TV debate. The ranking numbers are based on where they currently stand in the national polling.
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First runner upThirdI think it's a bit more complicated than just currency over/under valuation. Between December 2007 and now, GBPUSD has gone from 2.00 to 1.44 (a c. 30% devaluation); by contrast EURUSD has gone from 1.45 to 1.09 (a c. 30% devaluation).
You would think they would spur roughly the same change in export volumes, but instead you've see only a modest pick up in the UK (8%), compared to about 17% for the Eurozone as a whole and a staggering 48% for Spain.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/?cartoon=12093600&cc=12083568
Trump, if nominated, would be heavily defeated by either Hillary Clinton or Sanders or Whoever else, even if Hillary is bogged down in further revelations of the email or sex scandals. It would be a bit like the French people voting for a crook in order to stop a fascist.
If I had a quid for every time I've read this. It really is starting to look like conventional wisdom.
Consumer debt-to-GDP is very low across most of the Eurozone, which is why most of the "banking sector is fucked" stories have turned out to be completely wrong. There's some excellent data here: https://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/fsi/eng/fsi.htm
Basically, if you are saying that the (say) Italian banking sector is fucked you are basically saying:
Even though Italians owe less than a third of what Brits do, and even though their banks have already written off hundreds of billions of bad loans, and even though their banks have increased their capital bases by tens of billions... they're still fucked.
The problem debt in Italy is the government, which has debt-to-GDP of north of 130%.
As an aside, Italy's Manufacturing PMIs are the highest in the world right now - ahead of us, China, Germany, Korea, etc. etc etc
This sounds really cool. But so much to go wrong ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35290384
America is not Britain, not by a long chalk. Politicians lazily dismissed as lunatics here and eminently electable there.
Here's a link to the IMF site (http://data.imf.org/?sk=9F855EAE-C765-405E-9C9A-A9DC2C1FEE47) with the ratio of risk weighted assets to capital.
Essentially, the smaller the ratio, the less levered the banks are.
Of the 77 countries with data for end '14, Portugal is 76th, Spain is 72nd, and Italy is 66th.
1 is worst (i.e. most levered) and 77 is best (i.e. least levered).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statewide_opinion_polling_for_the_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries,_January_2012
Generally, anyone who doesn't do well in either Iowa or New Hampshire drops out
Historical rules of thumb should only be applied in as far as the situation is analogous, and even then only tentatively. Trump & Sanders would throw precedent out of the window.
That said, this is not a fight the government want to have or even win in any conventional sense. A victory that left a demoralised workforce that was looking for options elsewhere would be Pyrrhic indeed.
I think, trying to take a step back, that the medical profession has got itself into something of a hole. They have been addicted to a long hours culture which generated high pay but also created quite an alarming turnover in staff, staff who are incredibly expensive to train. I have heard many doctors justify these long hours by the need for training and the importance of having continuity of care. Toms' excellent contributions on the last thread made reference to both.
It is telling that the losers under the new contract are those that work the longest and most anti-social hours. I would also say from friends that Toms made an excellent point about the intensity of the work. 30 years ago friends who were doctors would sometimes work really absurd 120 hour shifts. The reality was that they spent some of the time on those shifts asleep but at the hospital and on call when required. Over time the number of times they were interrupted in their sleep increased to the point things became dangerous and really had to change.
Medicine needs to find a way to normalise its work patterns. This may mean that doctors earn somewhat less but the present culture of absurd overtime is dangerous. The normalisation process has to be on a 7 day week basis. This makes the job less attractive, particularly to those with school age children. The stress levels referred to in the Telegraph article need to be reduced and all trusts should have a target of reducing staff turnover. We cannot afford to subsidise the training of doctors to the extent that we do and then lose 20%+ of them in a short time. Getting from where we are to where we want to be is going to be difficult but the present set up does not really work for anyone.
I know American politics is slightly to the right of British politics, and what we can consider loonies in America are fairly mainstream over the pond, but Trump is a whole new level of loonbag.
Even the likes of Dick Cheney and the Koch brothers have criticised Trump.
When you get criticised by Dick Cheney for being too extreme, that candidate shouldn't be the favourite.
Hillary Clinton (Democrat) 26%
Marco Rubio (Republican) 25%
Donald Trump (Independent Right) 24%
Bernie Sanders (Corbyn Party of America) 23%
Others 1%
The electoral college will be
Hillary Clinton 538
Others 0
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/mary-wilson-wife-of-former-prime-minister-harold-turning-100-years-old-a6803271.html
Here
Why was there such an overwhelming ballot in favour of strike action,but come the day 40% don't strike,I presume many of these voted for strike action to pressurise the Gov,but with no intention of actually striking.
I hope future action is now cancelled,especially the "all out" planned in Feb,more than 50% could refuse an all out strike,essentially ending support for the action.
Maybe, but I think that to look at the presidential election in terms of right and left is to misinterpret the issues a bit.
To some extent this is establishment versus anti establishment. The GOP establishment arguably hate Trump far more than Clinton.
I was listening to parts of Trump's stump speech yesterday. He is just bonkers- he really doesn't say anything of any note except just nonsense and hyperbole. He is quite ridiculous. He is obviously funny, and has a UNS point of funding his own campaign- a point he hammers home to ad nauseum, but he has to fall away at some point. The Democrats would love it if he wins- all they need to do is combine ethnics with women and try and keep some of the traditional base and they will clear up the electoral college.
That may prove a bit more difficult than you might imagine. African American may well not turn out to vote for Clinton as heavily as they voted for Obama.
As for women, the attacks on Billary have only just started.
And there is some polling evidence Trump appeals to the WWC abandoned by the dems as labour has abandoned them here.
BMA tells striking junior doctors to defy Sandwell hospital orders to return
Midlands hospital declares level four incident but union tells members not to return to work until situation is clarified
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/12/junior-doctors-strike-begins
We assume that because we think he's unpalatable that Americans will think the same, whereas the evidence shows he is tapping into something quite visceral.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/republican_presidential_nomination-1452.html
Hemrna Cain = Ben Carson, and perhaps Newt Gingrich = Ted Cruz.
https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/686926308027305984
We've never had one in my lifetime and apparently they are fun
There's an assumption that the platform favoured by the Republican establishment (liberal on immigration, give big business whatever it wants) is popular. It isn't. And, it wouldn't be popular over here, either.
Just checking.
Although Ted Cruz has insisted he will not personally attack Donald Trump as the race for the Republican nomination heats up, supporters of the Texas senator appear to be weighing how best to target Trump in Iowa, where Cruz holds a narrow lead.
A message-testing phone call in Iowa on Monday floated seven distinct lines of attack against the national frontrunner, asking whether each one would make the listener more or less likely to support him.
Kedron Bardwell, a political science professor at Simpson College in Iowa, received the call and recorded detailed notes, which he provided to RealClearPolitics.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/01/12/cruz_camp_tests_lines_of_attack_on_trump_129288.html
Sarah Wollaston talks about back in the day- 90 hour shifts, sleepless weekends etc...
It's not the long shifts, or the pay- it is the stress that we put these poor bastards under. Junior Doctors are left with out of hours clinical responsibility for 3 or 4 wards for hours at a time. And the clinical needs of patients are just so complex, and the range of treatments equally so. The amount of decisions, many critical, they have to make is staggering- something Wollaston would never have faced because medicine has incomprehensibly. And if their colleagues don't turn in- they have to double their workloads.
One hour of this kind of pressure is too much for a young doctor, never mind shift after shift after shift of full on stress.
For any of the cynics here- have you ever been responsible for critical care? Have you ever worn an emergency bleeper and faced life and death decisions in the middle off the night? We should lionise these young, intelligent, caring doctors for being willing to put themselves into the line of fire in this way, listen to them and make their workload manageable so they carry out their responsibilities safely.
Also, O/T, the only worthwhile betting on Mayoral race will be for 3rd place. Galloway, Libs, UKIP all evenly matched. Is there a market for this?
Also, O/T, 2nd preferences making it very hard to determine winner in main event too.
After seeing quite a few of Rubio's interviews over the past few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that he's Not Very Good. Not particularly charismatic, very wooden and scripted when he's asked questions and, even though he's quite conservative in terms of his policy positions, his tone is nowhere near angry or passionate enough to appeal to the Republican base in their current mood. (Conversely, Trump is arguably more moderate than Rubio in policy positions, but is much better at having the furious tone of voice that Republican voters have.)
100% agree.
Russia is slashing budget expenditure by 10 per cent as it scrambles to cope with lower revenues following the latest drastic drop in oil prices.
Ministries and other government departments have until this Friday to come up with plans for cuts that must add up to a total of Rbs700bn ($9.2bn), according to three cabinet officials, writes Kathrin Hille in Moscow.
The amendments mark the second straight year sliding crude prices force Russia to redo its budget, underscoring the country’s continued dependency on commodity exports to keep its economy going.
The government decided on the 10 per cent cuts at a meeting called by prime minister Dmitry Medvedev at the end of last month when Brent crude sold for $37 a barrel. Since then, prices have fallen to $32.05 on Tuesday, with a drop to $30 or lower seen as increasingly likely.
That's real austerity.
Oh dear !
It's not over by a long chalk.
If Sanders wins, we'll need to have Corbyn as PM to save the Special Relationship. :-)
Finally!!!!! Maybe this stupid idea of "safe spaces" will start to go away.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/12094277/Cecil-Rhodes-Oxford-University-students-must-confront-views-they-find-objectionable-says-new-head.html
"How do we ensure that they appreciate the value of engaging with ideas they find objectionable, trying through reason to change another’s mind, while always being open to changing their own? How do we ensure that our students understand the true nature of freedom of inquiry and expression?
...
"If we can provide leaders for tomorrow who have been educated to think critically, to act ethically and always to question, these are the people who will prevent the next financial crisis; who will help us grapple with the fundamental questions prompted by the accelerating pace of technological change, as we confront profound ethical choices about the prolongation and even replication of life."
Well done Professor Louise Richardson.