Market Performance

Posted on 17 July 2020 by eehines

Great Britain has decided to bar the People’s Republic of China’s telecom company, Huawei, from participating in the British build-out of their 5G network.

The PRC isn’t happy. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian:

Whether the UK will provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese businesses offers a telling clue to how the post-Brexit British market will perform and how secure China’s investment will be in that country. So, we will be closely following the situation.

I certainly hope it’s a telling clue, given that PRC companies are extensions of that government’s intelligence gathering facility.

This is a preview of Market Performance. Read the full post (166 words, estimated 40 secs reading time)

“Tax Us”

Posted on 15 July 2020 by eehines

Some members of the rich class have formed a group and extended a demand that governments should tax all members of their clique.

Over 80 men and women worth seven figures from the US, UK, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, and the Netherlands calling themselves the “Millionaires for Humanity” have signed an open letter asking their governments to “raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently.

The Americans in that crowd first must prove they mean it by committing—with publicly available means for verifying that they’re honoring that commitment over the succeeding years—to making donations to the US Treasury of the amounts they’d pay under this “tax us” plan.

This is a preview of “Tax Us”. Read the full post (163 words, estimated 39 secs reading time)

Markets

Posted on 10 July 2020 by eehines

Zimbabwe, in attempt to protect its currency—already a close neighbor of worthless—has decided to close its stock exchange.

If there is no market for the currency, then it has little value in terms of purchasing power. If there is no convertibility of the currency into other currencies, then there is both high risk in holding the currency and reduced interest in holding it. And so reduced purchasing power.

If the currency has little value and limited convertibility—or either alone—there is little interest in investing in the country or in simply buying its goods or selling foreign goods in—especially if the investments must be done in the domestic currency.

This is a preview of Markets. Read the full post (278 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

Distractions

Posted on 9 July 2020 by eehines

Much is being made of the cybersecurity threat, the national security threat, that the People’s Republic of China’s Huawei represents. For instance, Senator Ben Sasse (R, NE) has said it’s good for the British government to be removing Huawei from the core of the British Internet.

Senator Mark Warner (D, VA):

Huawei has been and will continue to be a national security threat….

Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) on the Brits’ initial decision to allow Huawei into their Internet infrastructure:

[t]he Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will now have a foothold to conduct pervasive espionage on British society.

This is a preview of Distractions. Read the full post (194 words, estimated 47 secs reading time)

New Case Rates and Death Rates

Posted on 7 July 2020 by eehines

Current data indicate a reduction in new (read: confirmed) cases of Wuhan Virus—45,000 cases on Independence Day vs 50,000 cases the day prior. Fun with statistics: that’s a 10% drop—wow.

It is promising, but a single datum isn’t very dispositive.

What really interested me, though, is this, also presented in the article at the link:

In contrast to the surge in positive diagnoses, the death rate has slowed mostly to the hundreds a day in recent weeks, from a peak of more than 2,000 daily during several weeks in April.

And:

This is a preview of New Case Rates and Death Rates. Read the full post (268 words, estimated 1:04 mins reading time)

Revolution

Posted on 7 July 2020 by eehines

On the eve of the 2008 Presidential election, then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama (D) bragged

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

In 2015, then-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D) insisted

[D]eep seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.

Current Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is declaring via tweet

Joe Biden @JoeBiden · 14h
We’re going to beat Donald Trump. And when we do, we won’t just rebuild this nation — we’ll transform it.

This is a preview of Revolution. Read the full post (282 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

A Judicial Error

Posted on 3 July 2020 by eehines

The Supreme Court has ordered a restructuring of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: its single director, removable only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office, among other things, was an unconstitutional abridgment of Executive Branch authority.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, said that the

setup meant the CFPB’s director was unaccountable to the executive branch, creating an unconstitutional diminishment of presidential power.
“The CFPB’s single-director structure contravenes this carefully calibrated system by vesting significant governmental power in the hands of a single individual accountable to no one[.]”

And then,

This is a preview of A Judicial Error. Read the full post (250 words, estimated 1:00 mins reading time)

An Efficient Labor Market

Posted on 3 July 2020 by eehines

A writer, published in Wall Street Journal‘s Letters, responded to the idea that emphasis on education credentials over actual experience averred that the emphasis isn’t at all misplaced.

It’s more likely that there is a limited number of high-wage jobs available and that the market has efficiently set the wage based on the supply/demand curves.

This is a remarkably ill-informed claim, assuming as it does that we actually have an efficient market in labor.

Such a market cannot exist, though, in an environment where unions have monopoly power over labor in the industries in which they operate, nor can it exist in an economy with such widespread minimum wage mandates.

This is a preview of An Efficient Labor Market. Read the full post (159 words, estimated 38 secs reading time)

Becoming Happy

Posted on 1 July 2020 by eehines

It’s what Thomas Jefferson said a while ago:

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

If the people become happy, though, they—we—would have little need for so large a government. And that would put a lot of bureaucrats, and most importantly, politicians out of business.

That is what today’s Progressive-Democrats and too many establishment Republicans fear, even above fearing failing our nation—being unnecessary.

This is a preview of Becoming Happy. Read the full post (115 words, estimated 28 secs reading time)

Statehood for DC?

Posted on 29 June 2020 by eehines

That’s the House Progressive-Democrats’ plan. They voted on the thing last Friday.

One of the rationalizations for the move is this, from the District of Columbia’s “shadow senator” Paul Strauss:

DC [he’s cited as saying], created in July 1790, pays more federal taxes than any other non-voting territory and does not receive proportional services for their population, which is larger than those of Wyoming and Vermont.
“We are essentially a donor state,” he said.

That’s not an argument for statehood, though. It’s an argument for ending the transfers of citizens’ and their business’ tax monies from one State/territory/District to another other than in times of regional emergency.

This is a preview of Statehood for DC?. Read the full post (305 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

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Tag Archives: economics