More Censorship

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Mark Zuckerberg is at it again, this time blocking a President’s access to his Facebook, which he created explicitly to be a public forum. But only for those of whom he personally approves.

Never mind that President Donald Trump plainly has never intended to obstruct the peaceful transition of power, but merely to continue his fight to ensure only those votes legally cast and counted are counted. That he plainly expected that to demonstrate his reelection rather than confirm his loss is neither here nor there. And it certainly doesn’t compare in the slightest to the refusal to accept the outcome of the 2016 election, and the Left’s and Progressive-Democratic Party’s active and four-year-long attempts to overthrow the President duly elected that year. That was an effort Zuckerberg and his minions at Facebook not only whole heartedly approved, but they actively supported and participated in, going to the point of censoring the President’s speech.

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Sound Money and the PRC

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In a Letter to The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, one writer had this on the idea of the People’s Republic of China being a competitor with its renminbi as global reserve currency and its bond market as debt safe haven:

Credible money paired with reduced government spending have long been pillars of conservative rhetoric stateside, and with good reason.

Indeed. However, what the writer elided are the capital risk the PRC poses with its history of limiting or barring repatriation of profit, the economic risk from the PRC’s requirement that foreign companies give up their technologies and intellectual properties to domestic companies as a condition of doing business in the PRC, and the political risk of the PRC’s requirement that companies supply its intelligence community with any information that community “requests.”

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Communications Security

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Now it appears that DoJ also was compromised—at least a little bit—by the SolarWinds hack. DoJ says its classified systems weren’t affected, but some unclassified email systems were.

There’s this bit, though, that doesn’t appear to be getting sufficient attention.

Even unclassified email accounts, though, can contain sensitive information about investigations and potentially national security related issues, said Chris Painter, a former senior official at the Justice and State departments who worked on cybersecurity issues. “A lot of DOJ work happens on unclassified systems.”

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Hard to Tell the Difference

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In the aftermath of Wednesday afternoon’s events, the Progressive-Democrats already are blaming their political opponents rather than the thugs who assaulted the Capital Building. And calling for Republican heads to roll.

Ex-HUD Secretary Julian Castro:

@tedcruz is guilty of treason and must resign from the United States Senate.

Here’s Carrie Lam, Hong Kong Chief Executive:

[T]he opposition’s goal of objecting to every policy initiative of the government may fall into the category of subverting state power.

Hard to tell the difference.

So much for Progressive-Democrats’ calls for unity.

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It’s Not Our Money

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That’s the position of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D). On the heels of the Progressive-Democrats winning both of Georgia’s Senate seats, giving control of the Senate to the Progressive-Democratic Party, he had this to say:

Washington has…literally have taken billions of dollars from us, and that was a function of the Senate and the president, and they are both gone. And today, Washington theft ends and compensation for the victims of the crimes of the past four years begins. New Yorkers have been crime victims by the theft of the federal government.
We want a return of the state’s property that was stolen by Washington over the past four years. They wouldn’t pay us state and local funding, even though this state has a $15 billion deficit….

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Surrender?

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Recall that the New York Stock Exchange, pursuant to an Executive Order regarding US investors and People’s Republic of China’s PLA-owned or -controlled companies, had begun the process of delisting China Telecom Corp Ltd, China Mobile Ltd, and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd.

Now the NYSE has walked that back and decided not to proceed with the delisting. Exchange management have chosen to not provide any details or rationale for their, other than that their decision follows “further consultation” with federal regulators. The Exchange’s full statement can be read here; it’s carefully uninformative.

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Who Has the Power?

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The People’s Republic of China is reaching deep into Hong Kong to arrest—now more than 50—people who had the effrontery of running in opposition parties for the city’s legislative body or otherwise demurring from the city’s Chief Executive policies and those of the central government in Beijing.

Carrie Lam’s rationalization (paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal) of the arrests and of the law passed in order to effect the arrests is dispositive regarding the role of the people and of government in Hong Kong and in the PRC.

[T]he opposition’s goal of objecting to every policy initiative of the government may fall into the category of subverting state power.

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The Stock Market

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Much is made of the market drop last spring pursuant to the government’s decision to close down our economy in response to the apparent (apparent because we were operating on vastly incomplete data, much of which was being deliberately falsified by the People’s Republic of China). Much is made, too, of the market recovery later in the spring as our economy was permitted by government to begin reopening.

Readers of this blog know that I view the market as economically strongly tied to the underlying economy, but only loosely tied to it temporarily.

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Miami as Financial Center

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Financial firms are starting to figure it out: in addition to a better climate and (much) friendlier tax regime, Miami is the place to be for them. I have a thought on one bit of that maybe-migration, the opening statement:

This city has long pitched itself as an attractive location for finance and tech firms, with its tax advantages, flight connections to New York and cosmopolitan flair. Its efforts appear to be paying off.

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An Audit Commission

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A group of Senators are planning to join a (large) group of Representatives to object, tomorrow, to a few States’ Electoral College slates being accepted unless they get agreement to an audit commission, modeled on a 19th century audit commission created for the same purpose that consisted of five each of Representatives, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, that will conduct a 10-day audit of elections in the objected-to States.

Naturally, Progressive-Democrats in both houses of Congress together with the NLMSM are up in arms, to the point of hysteria about the move.

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