Worries - shelved

It's been a sort of a hectic weekend, hence a very short note. My dear few avid readers - accept my apologies.

The political event of the week in Poland was a debacle of referendum in Warsaw. The turnout of 25.66%, vs. roughly 29% required to deem the voting valid, was too low to oust Mrs Gronkiewicz Waltz from her stool in the town hall. A month before the referendum at least 40% of Warsaw's inhabitants would avow to take part in a vote (and depose the mayor). In my opinion all the efforts of the civic movement aimed at removing the haughty mayor were thwarted, when the referendum campaign was dominated by politicians trying to capitalise on Warsaw's inhabitants disgruntlement. Warsaw remains a stronghold of PO, but those people would easily give up on supporting the party, if only they were faced with a decent alternative. When Mr Kaczynski stepped in, the lesser of two evils was chosen. PiS officially treats the referendum as its success, however I dare to argue had it been engaging so actively in the anti-mayoral campaign, the turnout would have been higher. Lots of people must have got angry seeing the civic initiative turning into political squabble. The proper course of action would have been for the politicians to launch a campaign after the new election were called, or to run a campaign in more constructive way - all what the critics of the mayor would say was "Mrs Gronkiewicz Waltz is a bad mayor, let's oust her", no proposal beyond the moment she loses her position, no counter-proposals on how to sort out what has been done wrong by her. To recap - pure flavour of Polish politics with little policies.

The global political event of the week was the debt ceiling in the United States. As illustrated to the right, the easier option has been chosen - now there is more room to pump in the shit. Currently creditworthiness of the United States cannot be evaluated in terms of its capacity to repay its debt, this may only be considered as ability to roll it over. Yet, this cannot be done until the end of the world. The only way the US government can get rid of its huge debt is... inflation, which would reduce the real value of liabilities, thus through inflation tax the US government would dupe its creditors and its own citizens - the middle class, except for those heavily indebted, who usually benefit from high inflation. The new Fed governor, extremely dovish, would most probably see to it.