Category Archives: markets

More EU Bad Faith

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Finance operations, a key industry for Great Britain but not so much for the European Union, is being excluded from existing Brexit transition negotiations. That much is on the Brits as well as the EU, but the EU is abusing the mutual error.

In anticipation,

European regulators have demanded banks base certain operations currently conducted in London in the EU post-Brexit. … The EU last week committed to rules governing derivatives that will prevent London-based traders at EU banks from continuing business seamlessly after Brexit is completed on New Year’s Eve.

Derivatives trading is a significant fraction of the Brits’ financial industry, and the new rules prevent even London-based branches of EU banks from trading with UK-regulated firms unless those transactions occur in other jurisdictions recognized by both sides.

As Tim Cant, a London-based Partner at Ashurst Group, notes,

This is part of a wider strategy of moving finance into the EU[.]

It’s also part of the EU’s wider strategy of punishing Great Britain for its effrontery and of warning the more uppity remaining member nations to not even think about doing such a dastardly thing as leaving their Betters in Brussels.

Time to Buy

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Ex-President Barack Obama (D), he of the open contempt for ordinary Americans, us bitter Bible- and gun-clinging denizens of flyover country (i.e., the vasty expanse of America that lies between the western coast and the northeastern coast), is at it again.

Former President Barack Obama, in his latest memoir, criticized Americans for liking “cheap gas and big cars” more than they care about “the environment”—even during a catastrophic event like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

And

…many American voters for decades had “bought into the idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better….”

That last is fully vindicated by the arrogant Know Better attitude of Obama and his ilk, who insist that Government is the only solution, and us petty voters need to sit down, shut up, and do what we’re told.

It’s true enough that business is imperfect and often screws up. However, even with that, it’s axiomatic that business always knows better than Government.

With Obama spouting off again, it looks like it’s time to go out and buy a Humvee and a muscle car or two.

Tech Company Protections

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Tech companies, primarily Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet, get nearly blanket immunity from responsibility for the content that’s published on their outlets. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was instrumental to their initial success, gives them that broad immunity, based on those companies’ initial status as agnostic pipelines that merely provided a place for disparate commentary to be promulgated.

Protected monopolies (vis., pre-breakup Ma Bell) gave government-sanctioned special, protective, treatment to selected companies in order to facilitate their initial success. There came a time when that protection no longer was warranted, and the protection was eliminated.

So it is with Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet. Their special, protective, treatment is no longer warranted, and it needs to be withdrawn. Those companies are no longer agnostic pipelines; they’ve taken—increasingly over the last few years—the role of controlling (some might say censoring) the content they allow on their platforms. They block some content, limit access to other content, even delete content after promulgation. They’re no longer agnostic; they limit discussions to directions that satisfy their management teams’ approval. They’ve become publishers of content.

Tech companies acknowledge they need to improve their content moderation practices, but they deny negligence or political bias.

These tech companies cannot be trusted to “improve their content moderation practices,” not when they issue such openly ridiculous denials. Those denials demonstrate either those companies’ management teams’ dishonesty or those teams’ inability to recognize their own negligence or bias.

Indeed, the very existence of “content moderation practices” beyond that required by the FCC—which center on barring active incitements to violence—demonstrates the teams’ dishonesty or inability to recognize their own bias.

The Business of Business and the Wuhan Virus

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Another precinct is passing in its results.

After scrambling to hoard cash in the spring, some large US companies that halted their dividend payments are reversing their decision, a sign that their leaders believe the worst of the crisis is behind them.

Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics:

The resumption of corporate dividend payments is an encouraging sign that executives believe that the pandemic will soon be behind us.

And

[Kohl’s r]evenue fell 14%, compared with a 23% drop in the previous quarter. Kohl’s said it would resume its dividend in the first half of 2021.

And

Retailer TJX Cos said last week that it would resume its dividend, but at a 13% higher rate than it last paid in March, citing its cash flow and $10.6 billion in cash on its balance sheet. The company has reopened most of the TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods stores it had closed in the spring.
“We are very bullish on the longer-term outlook because that feels significantly better than it did at the beginning of [the third quarter] when we didn’t know where all of this was heading,” CEO Ernie Herrman said on a conference call.

Those are just a few of the myriad illustrative examples that aggregate into the trend. It’s time the bureaucrats in our governments, at all levels of jurisdiction, stopped abusing their authority and stopped their panicky responses to the Wuhan Virus situation.

Full stop.

Tyranny and the First Amendment

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On the matter of Target’s initial attempt to ban a book (Irreversible Damage: the Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters for those following along) because some folks objected to it, followed by Target’s reversal and decision to sell the book after all, a letter-writer published in The Wall Street Journal‘s Thursday Letters had this remark:

Lobbying the government to make a book illegal is pro-book banning. Lobbying Target to take a book off the shelves is pro-capitalism.

This is not even close to correct. Lobbying Target to take a book off the shelves is suppression of speech, even when done by private citizens.

Not buying the book is capitalism. Encouraging one’s fellows to not buy the book—boycotting the book—is capitalism.

Demanding the book not be sold denies others those same choices, along with denying them their opposing choice to buy the book. That’s at the core of tyranny.