Category Archives: political economy

A Clear Demonstration

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Michigan’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed, in the name of the State of Michigan, a deal with Gotion Inc, a subsidiary of Gotion High Tech Co Ltd which is headquartered in the People’s Republic of China. Gotion Hi Tech is not only subject to PRC national security law that requires domestic companies to provide information the intelligence community “requests” in whatever nation that information might reside, it has open and direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party. From that, Gotion Inc, the party to that Whitmer deal, has those same ties and PRC-legal obligations.

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Biden isn’t the Only One

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On the matter of the Republic of China’s ability to defeat a People’s Republic of China invasion, Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden isn’t the only US President who’s been terrified of offending the PRC too badly. The RoC has long sought to buy offensive, and long-range weapons from the US, even concluding some deals that a variety of US administrations have failed to deliver on. Instead, in the main,

[f]or more than a decade, US officials have encouraged Taiwan to invest in small, relatively cheap weapons such as shoulder-fired missiles, drones, and sea mines. The goal would be to bring a Chinese amphibious invasion force to a halt at close range with thousands of small strikes.
Such asymmetrical warfare is a favorite tactic of guerrillas and weaker nations facing big rivals.

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A Thought on Interest Rates

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The Wall Street Journal is speculating on when the Fed might start lowering its benchmark interest rates, speculating further that the Fed might be worrying about whether it’s time and whether leaving its rates where they are might spark a recession. (I was one of those worrying about a recession starting up over the last year or year-and-a-half, and still, but maybe the Fed’s worry is as overblown as mine.)

Early in the article, the WSJ has this:

The central bank will keep its benchmark interest-rate target at a range of 5.25% to 5.5%, a 23-year high….

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Imagine That

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Don’t take government money to do something good, thereby avoiding the government’s strings necessarily attached (as well as government’s strings that are attached unnecessarily), and be able to do the good thing at much less cost, including for the taxpayers providing the government’s fettered money.

By forgoing government assistance and the many regulations and requirements that come with it, SDS Capital Group said the [affordable housing] 49-unit apartment building it is financing in South Los Angeles will cost about $291,000 a unit to build.
The roughly 4,500 apartments for low-income people that have been built with funding from a $1.2 billion bond measure LA voters approved in 2016 have cost an average of $600,000 each.

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Inflation is Coming Down—So What?

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So what, indeed.

Shelter cost inflation slowed, to 0.4% in February from the previous month compared with a 0.6% pace in January. This reinforced suspicions that January’s high reading in that category was an anomaly. But apparel prices, a category that had been in deflation, jumped 0.6%.

There’s concern that inflation isn’t “slowing” enough to encourage the Federal Reserve to start cutting its benchmark interest rates, and that’s a two-edged sword.

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This Time I Disagree with Bjorn Lomborg

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But only a little bit. Lomborg (among other things, Copenhagen Consensus President), in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, writes absolutely correctly about the need for climatistas (my term, as is “doomsayers” below) to consider much more than their simple claim of climate change and the imminent destruction from their claimed change. Lomborg, though, concentrated on the economic destruction the doomsayers’ policies would inflict even as those worthies ignore technological advances that would mitigate their claims’ outcome, even were their claims in any way accurate.

Where I disagree is in the lack of discussion of the larger, and more important, context within which today’s alleged climate disaster is supposedly developing.

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The Forgotten Man

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A recent Wall Street Journal editorial correctly pointed out the costs to us ordinary Americans of a variety of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden administration plans. The editors were particularly concerned with the administration’s plans for bank and credit card fees that these institutions charge individuals who overdraw their account or make late payments on their credit cards and that these institutions charge businesses for using the various ATM and credit card payment networks.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency proximately responsible for the latest round of regulations capping those fees at markedly lower levels,

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Boeing Production Problems and Unions

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Yes, the two are related. This is from a Wall Street Journal article on Boeing’s production sloppiness (my term) in its airline assembly operations. “Traveled work” is work done on the production line at a later station on the line than it should have been done, and generally by the personnel at that later step rather than by those who should have done it moving to the next station to complete it. For instance,

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Government Making Crime Pay

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Now the Progressive-Democratic Party reigning in the New York State government wants to reward felons for their crimes. After those felons have paid their debt to New York society through their jail time (and apparently before they’ve served out the rest of their penalty in the form of parole), the State wants to give them $2,600 for their trouble.

The legislation, introduced by State Senator Kevin Parker [D] and Assemblyman Eddie Gibbs [D], would allow inmates to collect around $400 each month over six months once they leave prison.
As the bill currently stands, there are no limitations on how or where the money can be spent, according to Fox 5 New York.

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Further Reasons to Ban TikTok

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And not just force its sale by ByteDance. ByteDance is domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, and as such it’s subject to PRC laws, including the PRC’s national security law requiring PRC companies to answer queries from that nation’s intelligence community, queries which can range from “what do you know about this subject in that country” to “go find out, conduct the espionage.” That’s reason enough to ban the company (that subordination of PRC-domiciled companies to that nation’s intelligence apparatus is reason enough to ban all PRC-domiciled companies from the US, but that’s a different story).

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