Monthly Archives: May 2018

Italy and the Eurozone

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Since the last Italian election all those interminable months ago, which yielded no party with even a serious plurality, the several (and I do mean several) political parties have been trying to form a coalition of some sort so they could form an actual government with which to operate the country.  The coalition most likely to succeed in forming a government, if not in actual governing, consists of the far-left 5Star Movement and the equally far-right League (Lega Nord, Northern League).  What’s of interest to me is less the irony of these two parties trying to govern together and more the impact on the eurozone and the EU if these two parties actually succeed in allying and governing Italy.  They want

renegotiation of EU treaties, including the Stability and Growth Pact, the cancellation of €250 billion in Italian government debt by the European Central Bank, and a revision of Italy’s contribution to the EU budget.

Although formally walking back much of that, they’re not walking that far back.  Among the things included in those three items, and one that directly impacts Italy’s debt, is the 3% of GDP limit on government deficit that every eurozone nation’s government must meet.  The coalition wants that waived for Italy.  Not raised, gotten rid of.

The coalition didn’t include a commitment to hold a national referendum on whether Italy should remain in the eurozone, or even the European Union, if Italy doesn’t get satisfaction these items, but you can bet that’s still there in the background.  A significant fraction of the population would vote to leave, too; although whether that fraction is large enough to reach a majority is iffy so far.

I’ve suggested before that all of the nations of Europe are a bad fit when jammed together under one imitation government.  Italy is one of those nations that, in concert with the rest of the Mediterranean EU members, would be better off outside.

US Corn Exports

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The Trump administration is working on a deal with the People’s Republic of China to reduce the trade imbalance we have with them (whether the trade imbalance really is a bad thing and whether the PRC is working the deal as hard as the Trump administration are questions outside this post).  American farmers would have trouble producing enough to meet their part of the goal, were the deal to go through.

US corn exports could jump from $150 million to about $10 billion annually within a few years if China vastly expanded its quotas and reduced its duties that are as high as 65%, according to one estimate.

The farmers—particularly corn farmers—would get a great deal of help in ramping up their exports if they weren’t…encouraged…to divert significant fractions of their crop to ethanol production.  This is another consequence of ethanol mandates and another reason to get rid of them.

Update: In 2016, the US diverted 5.28 billion bushels of corn to ethanol production, or 36% of our total corn production that year. At roughly $3.45/bushel, that works out to $18.2 billion of corn production that was diverted.  Simply eliminating this useless diversion would seem to cover that production jump cited in the quote above.  It also would seem to leave $8 billion of production to mitigate food costs that are inflated by the diversion.  This, in turn, would help our poor and mitigate the need for food stamps and therewith reduce the tap on taxpayer pocketbooks.

Get Rid of Calculus in High School?

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James Makarian, SnapLogic CTO, thinks high school calculus is overrated; he’d rather see statistics and computer science get the emphasis.

I agree: don’t teach calculus in senior high school.  Push it down into freshman/late junior high classes.  Then do computer science and statistics in close sequence behind the calc course.  It’s not possible to do more than (badly) cookbook statistics without the underlying arithmetic.  And cookbooking something as serious as statistics means the related research will be badly done more often than not or badly understood by those reading the research.

Lack of underlying arithmetic also will limit computer “science” to work that doesn’t involve arithmetic: first tier tech support where all the junior rep can do is run through a checklist whose steps may or may not address the confused problem description coming to him over the phone.  Actual computer or related development won’t be possible.

And this: the thinking style and rigor associated with learning calculus has its own value wholly independent of whether the high/jr high schooler would ever do arithmetic as he pursues his non-STEM college studies and career.

“Iran deal: The European Union’s ugly options”

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That’s the headline of a Deutsche Welle piece regarding the impact on Europe of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Executive Agreement that sought to codify Iran’s “right” to obtain nuclear weapons, if Iran were to have only a little patience and wait until the Agreement’s blocks, such as they are, expire in a few years.

Then Ten Schultz, the author of the article, opened with this statement.

The United States’ withdrawal from the Iran deal, despite the personal pleadings of Europe’s most powerful politicians, has provided one more example that President Donald Trump has no hesitation in dismissing European interests and trans-Atlantic concerns.

Of course, it couldn’t possibly be the case that Europe’s most powerful politicians have no hesitation in dismissing American interests and trans-Atlantic concerns.  No, of course not: those worthies are lily-pure.

Schultz then touts his false choice:

…stand up to Trump in efforts to preserve the deal…or to acquiesce to whatever Washington wants, even if it means abandoning a UN-approved agreement they brokered and believe in.

Never mind that for 16 months Trump has been trying to get those most powerful politicians to negotiate to shore up the deal and fill its glaring gaps and that those worthies have steadfastly refused to negotiate.  It’s certainly true that French President Emmanuel Macron came to DC offered pretty words about wanting to satisfy three of Trump’s four pillars that would have done the shoring up.  It’s also true that German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to DC to insist personally that the US stay with the deal.  Macron had nothing, though, other than his pretty words.  He had no concrete proposals to offer—just that willingness to keep talking in lieu of acting.  Merkel didn’t even have that much.

The UN? That’s just a debating society for politicians with nothing else to do with their countries’ payroll money.  It’s certainly been unwilling to do anything serious about Iran’s threats—and lately outright attacks—against Israel, or about Iran’s missile attacks on Saudi Arabia via their client terrorists in Yemen (itself wracked by an Iranian-caused and supported civil war).

That debating society refuses, also, to deal with Iran’s active missile development program (for which the Yemen launches serve as excellent OT&E evaluations).  Keep in mind that, for all of Iran’s future nuclear weapons—they could build dozens of them—those bombs are useless without a means of delivering them to Iran’s targets.  Missiles are a central such means.  Oh, and this: the most powerful politicians’ UN also has barred Iran from doing missile development.  Those politicians are conveniently silent about that.

And never mind that Iran has never signed the Obama Agreement.

No, it’s all Trump’s fault.  It’s all America’s fault.

We had enough of that during Obama’s eight years.  It’s about time we regained our willingness to act unilaterally when our allies won’t even talk seriously with us about joint action.

Congressional Intent

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In a piece centered on Federalism and the Supreme Court’s ruling that Congress cannot require individual States to ban sports gambling, there’s this bit at the end of the article that interests my grasshopper mind.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in concurring, protested the Court’s analysis of Congressional intent.

The Court also determined that PASPA’s [Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act] prohibition on sports gambling advertising can’t be severed from the law. But as Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his pithy concurrence, the Court’s severability analysis requires courts to make “a nebulous inquiry into hypothetical congressional intent.”

On this, I disagree with Justice Thomas. In Connecticut National Bank v Germain the Supremes held

…that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there.

If Congress had intended sports gambling advertising to be severable, it would have said so in PASPA. Congress did not say so; arguing the possibility of severability would be Thomas’ own inquiry into congressional intent.