Category Archives: Uncategorized

Loosening Financial Regulations

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Felix Hufeld, President of Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, is worried about an outcome of Donald Trump’s election.  He’s concerned that financial regulations laid on in the aftermath of the Panic of 2008, regulations that expanded the reach of Government into men’s financial lives, will begin to be loosened during a Trump administration.

Barely 10 years after the start of the financial crisis I once more hear the bugle calls of deregulation.

And I have the impression that these sounds are becoming louder.  That is not without risk.

To live life is to live with risk.  The thing about risk, though, is that the more Government tries to mandate rules against it, the more Government increases the risks that ordinary folks must live with.

Hufeld has this much right, though:

The [financial] industry, just as politics and regulators, are in need of predictability and continuity—not regulatory volatility[.]

Indeed.  Regulations need to be vastly reduced, Government gotten out of the way of free markets and the free citizens operating in them.  And then politicians and regulators need to leave the remainder alone and stable and not constantly be adding regulations and “tweaking” others.

The problem Hufeld and other bureaucrats of the Left—both in Europe and in the US—have is that they can’t conceive the idea the ordinary citizens are fully capable of making their own financial decisions without Government holding their hands.

Or these bureaucrats worry about their own loss of power were ordinary folks freed to make their own financial decisions without Government holding their hands.

Or both.

Iran: Other Countries Mustn’t Dictate Syria’s Political Future

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Iranian officials say it is up to the Syrian people to decide whether he stays in power as part of any peace settlement.

The Syrian people have decided. But here is Iran, with Russian help, dictating at gunpoint that the Syrian people must accept the Iranian/Russian decreed government, the government against which the Syrian people have been rebelling these last several years.

“Other countries mustn’t dictate Syria’s political future.” No, Iran has reserved that task to itself.

I Have Use For…

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…those seized weapons. The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi…rebels…in Yemen has seized an Iranian “fishing” boat laden with missile launchers and anti-tank weapons bound for those Houthis.

It would be good if the Saudis pass those weapons along to the Kurds, who are fighting the Daesh in northern Iraq. Those weapons would be put to good use by folks who know how to fight.

And they’ll be better than those un-armored “MRAPs” we shipped to them.

A Thought on a Mayor’s Statement

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What Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake actually said:

It’s a very delicate balancing act. Because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.

What she said she meant in the next day’s press conference:

I was asked a question about the property damage that was done, and in answering that question I made it very clear that we balance a very line between giving protesters—peaceful protesters—space to protest. What I said is, in doing so, people can hijack that and use that space for bad.

That’s an entirely legitimate reading of her initial statement: “In the course of,” not “by deliberate, separate decision.”

I think there are a number of factors in play that led to the NLMSM’s distortion (in my view) of Rawlings-Blake’s original statement:

  • the mayor’s fatigue—a thin read; leaders aren’t supposed to be tired, but the fact is, they’re human
  • losing sight of the fact that whatever she says will be presented in sound bites—no matter the difficulty of acting on that recognition while speaking extemporaneously
  • the NLMSM’s interpretation also is plausible
  • nevertheless, the NLMSM’s routine distortion of politicians’ statements in order to generate “a unique slant” about which to write, or because it has personal axes to grind
  • coupled with the NLMSM’s decision to take such a shocking statement (under their interpretation) at face value rather than first questioning whether an American city’s mayor actually could mean such a thing
  • the NLMSM’s haste to be first in the news cycle

It didn’t help that the Detroit police official interviewed so extensively, especially on Fox News, and so many other allegedly responsible public officials who were interviewed apparently took the mayor’s words under the NLMSM’s interpretation at face value rather than themselves asking whether a mayor really could intend such a thing.

Free Speech

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…especially, the aim of those clauses of the First Amendment, free political speech.  Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, had this to say in striking down aggregate limits to political contributions:

There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders. Citizens can exercise that right in a variety of ways: They can run for office themselves, vote, urge others to vote for a particular candidate, volunteer to work on a campaign, and contribute to a candidate’s campaign. This case is about the last of those options.

And

Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades—despite the profound offense such spectacles cause—it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.

And [bold added, italics in the original]

The Government has a strong interest, no less critical to our democratic system, in combatting corruption and its appearance.  We have, however, held that this interest must be limited to a specific kind of corruption—quid pro quo corruption—in order to ensure that the Government’s efforts do not have the effect of restricting the First Amendment right of citizens to choose who shall govern them.  For the reasons set forth, we conclude that the aggregate limits on contributions do not further the only governmental interest this Court accepted as legitimate in Buckley.  They instead intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise “the most fundamental First Amendment activities.”

What he said.  The Supremes’ ruling can be seen here.