Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

What the Ratings Mean

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Viewpoint Diversity Score is a relatively new organization; it’s a project of Alliance Defending Freedom. VDS’ goal:

Through our Business Index and Resources we’re providing a roadmap for businesses to meaningfully respect customers, and other external stakeholders who hold diverse religious and ideological beliefs, foster viewpoint diversity in their workplaces, and reflect a commitment to the underlying principles of American democracy through their giving and political engagement.

This isn’t, though, a crowd pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion claptrap; it’s much more serious than that. They’re not demanding that everyone comport themselves in accordance with VDS’ viewpoints or be cancelled. Instead,

The Business Index evaluates corporate policies, practices, and activities to determine whether companies respect their stakeholders’ freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief as a standard part of doing business.

And from their Business Index report,

Viewpoint Diversity Score’s annual Business Index is the first comprehensive benchmark designed to measure corporate respect for religious and ideological diversity in the market, workplace, and public square. True diversity requires protecting freedom of expression and belief for employees, customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders.

VDS’ Business Index surveys companies, and based on their answers along with outside, publicly available information regarding what the surveyed companies actually do, the Business Index awards a Market Score, a Workplace Score, a Public Square Score, and a composite of the three. Each score and the composite could range from 0% (a terrible score) to 100% (and outstanding score).

Market-related questions for the survey include things like

  • Terms of Use/Service Avoid Unclear or Imprecise Terms
  • Harmful Conduct Policies Apply Equally
  • Terms of Use/Service Avoid Viewpoint Discrimination
  • Public Anti-Viewpoint Discrimination Policy
  • Notice of Content or Service Restrictions
  • CSR/ESG Reporting Includes Freedom of Expression and Belief

under Respecting Customers’ Freedom of Expression and Belief. There were similarly probing questions under Respecting Venders’ Freedom of Expression and Belief and Transparent Screening and Enforcement Practices.

Workplace-related categories included Religious and Ideological Diversity in the Workplace, Respecting Civil Rights and Promoting Viewpoint Diversity, Respecting Religious Diversity at Work, and Respecting Employee Charity Choice.

Public Square-related categories included Political Spending and Advocacy Reflects Diverse Views, Respecting Shareholder Support for Viewpoint Diversity, and Respect Diverse Views in Charity and Society.

The Business Index surveyed 50 companies in this first survey; it expects to expand the number surveyed in the coming years.

The results of this survey were…disappointing. The highest score any company achieved was 35%, and most of the scores were in the range of 18% or less, including 16 of the companies in single digits and 6 of the companies doing no better than 6%. One barely made it onto the board at 2%.

From the Executive Summary [emphasis in the original]:

Benchmarked companies scored an average of 12% overall on respecting religious and ideological diversity in the market, workplace, and public square. This poor performance is cause for concern, especially because these companies represent some of the largest businesses in America and provide essential services to millions of people and organizations every day. While no industry exhibited strong performance, there were a handful that scored particularly poorly. The two industries with the lowest overall scores were computer software at 6%, and internet services and retailing at 8%. The financial and data services industry also came in at a low overall average score of 11%. These subpar results paint a grim picture of Corporate America’s respect for religious and ideological diversity.

And [emphasis in the original]:

One finding of particular concern is that social media companies, which provide services critical to the freedom of individuals and groups to participate equally in the digital public square, are concentrated in an industry (internet services and retailing) with one of the lowest average overall scores. Not surprisingly, nearly all of those companies are also among the lowest performers across industries.

This is how far the Left’s Woke Culture has penetrated, and deprecated our society—it’s deeply into our businesses, especially those dominating our ability to speak and to debate the questions of concern to us.

The complete report, including a review of the survey’s outcome and details of how the scores were generated, can be found here or via Viewpoint Diversity Score’s site here.

Another Power Grab

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This one by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A proposal under consideration by the agency would generally require brokers to route small investors’ market orders into auctions, where trading firms would compete to execute them, people familiar with the matter said. …
Brokers would have a way out. Instead of sending the orders to auctions, the brokers could attempt to have them filled at the midpoint price or better, the people said.

And

The proposed midpoint requirement and auctions would apply to market orders. Commonly used by small investors, market orders are instructions entered through a brokerage to buy or sell stocks at whatever their current market price is.

This sounds good, but in reality, it’s a solution for a nonexistent problem.

I’m one of those poor, downtrodden small investors, and my broker already uses a price improvement procedure whereby my market orders are routed to the trading house that offers the best execution price—which is the price shaded above the mid-point toward the buy price if I’m selling and below the mid-point toward the sell price if I’m buying. I’m already getting a better price than the mid-point.

My broker isn’t alone, either; most brokers offer/provide that procedure: it’s a means of competing for the small investors’ business.

But wait—don’t those trading houses pay the brokers for the orders to be routed to them? Why yes, yes they do. And those trading houses compete among themselves for the brokers’ business, which means the brokers get a range of trading houses from which to select the best price improvement for their customers.

The SEC’s…proposal…is just another exercise in power for the sake of power being carried out by SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.

Putin Wants an Arms Race

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Russia threatens arms race in space if commercial satellites do not stop assisting Ukraine in war, goes the subheadline.

And:

[Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Konstantin] Vorontsov argued that commercial satellites used to benefit Ukraine in the war violates The Outer Space Treaty and warned it could start a “full-fledged arms race in outer space.”

An arms race in space.

I say bring it. The Soviet Union couldn’t handle a Reagan arms race in space; the USSR couldn’t keep up with the technology developments, and its economy couldn’t keep up with anything—military or civilian.

The Russian economy is in worse shape. Let’s have that arms race. Russia will lose this one, and just as catastrophically, even if the nation doesn’t actually disintegrate the way the USSR did.

Here’s Another Thought

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Two in a week. Settle down.

NASDAQ is (rightfully) suspicious of small-cap companies domiciled in the People’s Republic of China listing their IPOs on NASDAQ’s exchange. The one-day spikes in share prices followed quickly by nearly total collapse of those share prices in so many of the IPOs is what’s drawn attention. For instance:

Shares of more than 20 recently listed companies have risen over 100% on their first day of trading. They include Hong Kong-based fintech company AMTD Digital Inc, which briefly jumped over 320-fold after its July listing, and Chinese garment maker Addentax Group Corp, which rose more than 130-fold on its market debut in August. The two stocks have since lost more than 98% of their value.

As a result, NASDAQ has stopped approving PRC small-caps for listing, for the time being. Which brings me to my thought.

Don’t list any companies domiciled in the PRC on any American exchange, and encourage the other nations in the OECD to do the same. After all, at least since the PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, those PRC companies are too closely tied to the PRC’s intelligence community, and as such, they have no legitimate business raising money through any nation’s stock or bond exchanges other than their own.

Here’s a Thought

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Take a breath. I have those once in a while.

Anyway.

The Biden administration has just sent $530 million to two (count ’em, two) companies in deep Progressive-Democratic (I won’t say “blue;” that sullies the term used to describe our State and local police forces) Massachusetts so they can make batteries for battery-powered vehicles.

Ascend Elements and 6K Inc were recipients Wednesday [19 October] of more than $530 million in federal funding through a program designed to support battery manufacturing, recycling, and material processing for the electric vehicle market.

Massachusetts Progressive-Democrat Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Congressmen Jim McGovern and Seth Moulton all think the taxpayer money transfer is just peachy-keen.

Which brings me to my thought. The money has flowed. When the new Congressional session begins, Ascend and 6K will have had 2½ months by which to have committed at least some of that money. Of course, as serious companies, they already have had a year, or two, or more in which to plan their use of all that taxpayer money as they lobbied for it with their Massachusetts Congressional delegation.

If the Republican Party wins a majority in the House, and especially if it wins a majority in the Senate also, then by the end of January 2023, they should hale Mike O’Kronley and Andrew Aberdale, Ascend’s CEO and CFO respectively, before the relevant committees to testify, under oath, concerning the disposition of those moneys so far, and the concrete results obtained with those expenditures. The two should appear on the same day, but in separate committees, cycling through all of them separately so as to be unable to coordinate their responses in real time.

The same should be done with Aaron Bent and Gary Hall, 6K’s CEO and CFO, respectively.

Following that, House auditors to visit the two companies to audit their performance under the contracts. Such testimony and auditing subsequently should be done annually.

It’s a new concept—Congress exercising its oversight responsibility by actually monitoring private contractor performance rather than just paying lip service to the obligation—but it’s one that needs to be put into effect.