Category Archives: markets

It’d Be All Right

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The USPS is planning on raising their first class mail rates to 58¢ from the current 55¢ and raising the rates on their other mail classes by 6.8%-8.8%.

This is another example of price-fixing by the Federal government. Maybe the increases are legitimate, maybe they’re not. But we can’t tell because market forces aren’t at work here, only government bureaucrats’ impressions are at work.

It’d be all right if we privatized all of mail delivery. Let a free, competitive market determine prices. Recognize the ubiquitousness of email, texting, Skype, Zoom, etc, etc, etc as competing communications techniques, and let a privatized snail mail system compete in that same free market.

It’s doable; our Constitution only says that

The Congress shall have Power…To establish Post Offices and Post Roads

It doesn’t require Congress actually establish Post Offices, much less have the Federal government run them. The establishment (and operation) are easily done by letting free enterprise do them.

All it takes is the political will to do so.

PRC Regulation of US-Listed PRC Companies

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The Cyberspace Administration of China is moving to extend its regulation of PRC companies to include those listed on American exchanges. That’s all well and good; the US looks to regulate American companies that are listed on foreign exchanges.

However.

All companies domiciled or headquartered in the People’s Republic of China became, formally, arms of the PRC’s intelligence community under that nation’s 2017 intelligence law.

No PRC company should be allowed to list on an American exchange, and those currently listed should be delisted.

Beyond that, no PRC company should be allowed to acquire, or gain a stake of any size in, any American company, nor should any PRC company be allowed to partner in any way with any American company.

The risks to the safety of intellectual property, the technology risks, the national security risks are simply too great.

Too Weak

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Nike’s CEO, John Donahoe, has given his company’s game away. Recall that, earlier this year he claimed dismay over the People’s Republic of China government’s, and the Communist Party of China’s, abuse, slavery, and overt genocide against the Uighurs.

We are concerned about reports of forced labor in, and connected to, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Nike does not source products from the XUAR and we have confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region.

Even that weak statement turns out to have been just pretense, virtue-signaling for his American audience, which is doubly dishonest just for that.

Now, via an earnings call, he

called the sportswear apparel giant a “brand of China” this week, following a fiasco it was involved in earlier this year over concerns about human rights abuses committed by the communist government.

And

…we are a brand of China and for China[.]

With that call, Donahoe announced his utter rejection of everything for which the US, the nation with the economic, political, and moral environment that enabled his Nike to flourish, stands.

With that call, Donahoe has announced his complete acceptance of abuse, slavery, genocide by the nation he prefers to call home.

Reasons enough to not do business with Nike.

Rule By Law

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…and not rule of law, which our Constitution so strongly pushes. That’s what SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has decided to do.

The SEC announced this month that it will suspend enforcement of new rules issued under former Chairman Jay Clayton that subjected proxy advisory firms to the same anti-fraud rules as public companies and required them to disclose their business conflicts.

Just pick and choose the rules the Biden appointee deigns enforce. Don’t move first to change the rule, while enforcing it while it’s in force. Gensler Knows Better which rules are fit, and disdains the need for someone so awesome to submit his wishes to lesser masses who might impudently comment contrariwise to any change he deems necessary during such a rule change’s comment period.

Oh, wait:

Mr Gensler has directed SEC staff to consider revising the rules.

Give him a rule that better suits him. But he’ll still ignore the existing rule as beneath his dignity.

This is rule by law—which is another way of saying rule by men with the raw power to reign.

Blatant Cowardice

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Or blatant aiding and abetting. Or both. Here is the critical part of how things went down in the JBS Corporation hacker attack and JBS’…surrender…to the hackers:

After identifying the incursion early on Sunday, May 30, JBS said it alerted US authorities…. By that afternoon, the company had concluded that encrypted backups of its data were intact, said Andre Nogueira, chief executive officer of JBS USA Holdings Inc.

Then

Tuesday evening, progress getting JBS’s systems back online using its backup data made Mr Nogueira confident enough to issue a statement announcing that the majority of JBS plants would be operational on Wednesday, June 2.
The company’s consultants had continued negotiating with the hackers. Though forensic analyses by JBS and its specialists showed that no customer, supplier or employee data had been compromised, Mr Nogueira said, the cybercriminals claimed they had captured some.
JBS’s cybersecurity experts warned that the attackers may have left themselves some way to pry back in. After JBS negotiators and the hackers arrived at an $11 million sum….

Promptly getting back on the air with sound backups, JBS unharmed even if sorely inconvenienced, Nogueira continued negotiating with the hackers, and ultimately, Nogueira paid off anyway. And all, apparently, because the hackers claimed to have gained “some” data and that, according to his consultants, maybe—maybe—the hackers had left a back door for later use.

Never mind that the hackers claimed, after payment, that no, they didn’t have any stolen data. Who can trust the words of criminals? Never mind that, payment or not, the hackers’ back door remains—if it exists at all. Where’s JBS’ IT? Where’s JBS’ training—with enforced sanctions—of its employees regarding phishing and malware in general?

Then there’s this bit of cynicism:

The cost of the attack, he [Nogueira] said, would be immaterial to JBS….

Except for the part about Nogueira has made JBS an open target for further hacks, and their costs. Never mind the exposure Nogueira’s behavior has created for other businesses by demonstrating that such hacks actually work with impunity and as revenue-generators for the criminals (and political gain-generators for their State sponsors). Never mind, either, the costs this particular hack imposed on JBS’ customers and on the company’s suppliers.