Oh, Yes It Is

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The Wall Street Journal titled one of its Wednesday editorials about Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat governor and putative Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Vice President Tim Walz with this amazingly ignorant subheadline:

His military record isn’t a good reason to oppose his candidacy.

The editors’ rationalization:

Before his political career, Mr Walz rose to the highest enlisted rank of Command Sergeant Major. He retired in May 2005, shortly before the unit was notified in July 2005 that it would be deployed to Iraq. Fox News reports that the Pentagon says Mr Walz put in his retirement request several months earlier, though it’s fair to ask if he was aware of the possible Iraq deployment.
His retirement timing wasn’t ideal, leaving his leadership position when his unit was headed into a war zone.

After all, the editors nattered,

But if he had been deemed essential to the operation, the Guard could have declined to approve it.

Yes, Walz was well aware of his unit’s pending deployment to an active combat zone; it was under a Warning Order to prepare for that deployment when Walz put in his “retirement” papers. Walz’ timing “wasn’t ideal” for his unit, but it was well-timed to get him out of serving a dangerous assignment.

Associated with Walz’ abandonment of his unit, he had signed up and begun taking courses for a promotion to Command Sergeant Major. He was provisionally promoted to that rank on his commitment to the course. Taking the course also carried with it a commitment to serve for two more years at that rank and in a position commensurate with that rank. Failure to honor the commitment, or to complete the course, carried with it a consequence that he would be demoted/returned to his lower rank of Master Sergeant—which Walz also knew; he had to sign paperwork acknowledging that.

Walz quit his unit while it was under orders to prepare for a combat zone deployment; he was reduced in rank, and he was allowed to retire. Yet his Web page still claims he was a Command Sergeant Major when he retired. That’s a straight-up lie. When he put in his papers, reneging on that two-year commitment, he was reduced in rank to his prior, permanent rank of Master Sergeant. His service as a Command Sergeant Major was only provisional, and contingent on his honoring his commitment. The editors disingenuously claim there’s no doubt he had reached the higher position while active. No: he achieved that rank only provisionally, lost it on his reneging on his commitment, and was discharged at the lower, permanent rank.

Walz has also been lying about his having served “in war.” That may have been a deceptive boast, though a minor one, scribbled the editors. The closest Walz came to serving “in war” was during our fighting in Afghanistan—he had a six-month tour 2,500 miles behind the lines in the comfortable offices of the base in Italy to which he’d been assigned. Again, no: a lie of that magnitude is no mere minor deceptive boast—it’s a despicable lie that cheapens and insults the service of so many who have actually served in war and especially those who’ve been wounded, maimed, mentally scarred during that service.

Then there’s that editorial foolishness that the Guard could have retained him had he been essential. Men whose lives are on the line deserve a leader who’s committed to them and to the mission to which their unit—and supposedly Walz—are assigned. The Guard correctly assessed Walz’ lack of commitment to his duties, correctly recognized that Walz considered his personal political career more important than the lives of the men and women whom he would be been leading in a combat zone. The Guard was correct to release this…NCO…who would have been worse than merely a Beetle Bailey with senior sergeant chevrons. Beetle Bailey at least was an honest shirker, come to that.

The United States deserves a Vice President who is committed to us citizens and who has the courage and morality to keep that commitment when things get tough, whether for our nation or for the Vice President personally. That’s not who Walz is.

Foolishnesses

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There were two by Bank of Japan managers in the Wall Street Journal lede regarding the BoJ’s interest rate moves.

A week after Japan’s top central banker shook up global markets with comments about raising interest rates, one of his deputies walked them back Wednesday and promised not to raise rates when markets are unstable.

The lesser of the two foolishnesses is that walkback of the BoJ’s statement that it was about to raise interest rates. The increase was both correct and necessary sooner rather than later. The deputy never should have been authorized to walk that commitment back. The BoJ simply should have stopped talking about the raise, having said it was coming. It should have simply done the raise at the appointed time.

The larger foolishness, though, was that subsequent commitment. It’s a promise that no one in the BoJ has any hope of keeping, or the BoJ will never raise interest rates. Stock markets are always unstable.

The stock market’s equilibria—moving sideways for a time—are unstable; it takes no particular event or perceived event to bump the market into a rise or a drop. Rises in the market are not stable; it takes no particular event or perceived event to bump the market into a short- or intermediate- or long-term fall—or into another supposedly stable sideways move. Falls in the market are not stable; it takes no particular event or perceived event to bump the market into a short- or intermediate- or long-term rise—or into another supposedly stable sideways move.

Timing the market is a money losing move; even when central bankers try it. All timing does is mitigate losses, at the expense of long-term gain, but even that presupposes some measure of stability. Long-term gain sacrifice as the price to pay for mitigating losses often is useful for those individuals who must preserve the wealth they have—they’re retired, for instance, and have no other income—but sacrificing long-term gain is a bad move for a nation, whose citizens need long-term growth for the sake of their own and future generations.

If central banks want market stability, such as may be available within a band of inflation around a target rate, they must generate that more-or-less availability by setting their nation’s interest rates at levels historically consistent with their nation’s inflation goals and then leave those rates alone and live with the natural volatility of a free market.

“Debate Kamala Harris, Mr Trump”

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That’s the headline of William McGurn’s Monday editorial, and his piece goes on at some length on that theme. It’s unfortunate to see such a piece from the usually astute McGurn.

In fact, former President and Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has already offered to debate the Progressive-Democrat Harris. He’s proposed a specific date, 4 September; proposed Fox News‘ Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum moderate it; and that the debate operate under substantially the same rules as the originally scheduled and now no longer existent debate with Joe Biden—just with a couple of additions: the debate with Harris that Trump has proposed would occur in a town hall venue, with a live audience present.

Harris is skittering away from that as fast as she can.

McGurn should call on Harris to accept the offered debate.

They’re At It Again

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Never mind Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s mantra of “building [America] from the middle out and the bottom up. Here, in a nutshell, is Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ proposed economic policy:

Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency[.]

Biden’s execution of his mantra favored wealthy special interests, vis., green lobbyists, buyers of expensive battery cars and solar panels, and on and on.

Harris has dropped all pretense of carrying a single copper penny about the poor, which has been all too typical of the Democratic Party and its evolution, today’s Progressive-Democratic Party. They yap about the poor, and then they do nothing.

It Needn’t, Though

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The Wall Street Journal headline makes a prediction, and the subheadline adds to it:

Market Selloff Upends Fed Rate-Cut Calculus
A further slowdown in the labor market could lead to a larger half-point rate cut next month

It needn’t, though, and if Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his Board of Governors make such a move, they’ll be ignoring history.

Inflation is right next door to the Fed’s goal of 2%\yr; the delta between today’s inflation and that target is in the region of noise around the signal.

The stock market is down a bit, even if sharply: for all the steepness of the drop over the last few days, it’s still only down 6-ish percent, not even a correction level.  The market also is irrelevant.

Historically—and history did not begin with the dot com bubble burst—Fed benchmark interest rates that have been consistent with 2% inflation have been in the 5% region. That’s where the Fed is now, and that’s where our economy’s inflation is now.

But wait—unemployment has risen to 4.3%. I say, so what. That level, and the increase over the prior month and especially the past year, plus, certainly bear watching. However, the increase is off historic lows for unemployment, and the present level remains consistent with full employment, which is another of the Fed’s statutory goals.

It’s time for the Fed—for Powell and his BoG members—to say so on both matters, and to say they’re now going to sit down, be quiet, and let market forces—this time, meaning private economy forces—do their trick unfettered by artificially, and arbitrarily, set government-managed interest rates. Who wins then? Our private economy, with both stable pricing and stable business cost of money—interest rates.

Other major winners would include the stereotypical widows and orphans, and old folks, and anyone else who depends in significant part on fixed income, which is to say interest-driven, instruments.

I repeat myself, but this bears repeating.