Tag Archives: markets

Trump and a Chinese Idiom

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Walter Russell Mead’s Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed opened with this subheadline:

For him [President Donald Trump (R)], extreme volatility and risk are not a problem but an opportunity.

Here’s an old and hoary Chinese idiom:

危機

These characters, 危 + 機 in their combination translate to Crisis, and the term is composed of characters meaning Danger + Opportunity

Mead’s piece expands on his theme of President Donald Trump’s (R) use of volatility and risk, but that’s just another way of saying, in Western diction, that Chinese idiom. The only difference between the two is whether the deviation is imposed from the outside or it’s created by deliberately deviating.

That idiom, and the Western rephrasing of volatility and risk, are essentially correct. Gains are not made without taking the underlying risks of deviating from the status quo. Great gains are possible only with making great deviations. Both Crisis and Volatility and Risk are those opportunities from great deviations.

Those who fear crisis or volatility and risk to the point of paralysis seek to have the rest of us similarly paralyzed lest they be left behind.

A Useful Test

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In their Wall Street Journal Tuesday op-ed, Michael O’Hanlon and Marta Wosinska, Brookings Institution Senior Fellows, pointed out that shotgunning moves (vis., universal tariffs on everything a target nation or group of nations exports to us and broadly barring exports to those same targets) as a means of altering the several links to the supply chains our economy needs to make the goods we need along with altering those links our economy wants to make the things we want. They then offered a three part test to better target those supply chain links that are most important and most time critical to us and our security.

  • First, a supply chain warrants special focus when its disruption would quickly threaten lives, core defense missions, or essential economic functions.
  • Second, when substitutes or workarounds can’t be instituted in time to mitigate the disruption.
  • Third, when surge capacity can’t be built on a reasonable timeline.

This approach, as they emphasize, acknowledges that developing resilience is costly and helps ensure that scarce capital goes to the most vital choke points. In fine, it targets links for better allocation of our non-tree-sprouting spending money

This is a good test, and it’s applicable in another way than purely domestically. It needs to be applied in reverse, also. What are the analogous critical choke points in our enemies’ supply chains? Applying the test to those would let us better target our enemies’ ability to wage and sustain war against us, our friends, and our allies.

“News” Media Arrogance Personified

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The lede demonstrates this “news” reader and opinionator Katie Couric’s personal arrogance in presenting what she’s pleased to call “journalism.”:

Katie Couric spoke out against “bothsidesism” in news coverage and insisted people don’t want “just the facts” in the current media environment.

Yes, we do. We want, even though “news”…presenters…don’t want us to hear, all the facts, even though Couric’s presenters prefer to provide only those that suit the presenters’ predetermined narrative. We object strongly to censored presentations, a censorship and bias that’s revealed by what facts are withheld as much as by what facts are selected for reporting.

We don’t mind biased, opinionated commentary, but we expect it to be in carefully labeled opinion pieces, not opinions masqueraded as fact in what is alleged to be news reporting. And, we expect even opinionated commentary to be informed by logic and facts, not hype or hyperbole. Couric again:

So what I try to do, and what we try to do, is help people stay abreast of everything that’s happening, which is increasingly difficult given the velocity of things that are thrown at us primarily by this administration. But try to understand and give them some perspective and context and help explain in some cases why people need to be aware and concerned about some of the things that are happening in this country.

Pick one. You can’t help us “stay abreast of everything that’s happening” when you insist on no ” bothsidesism,” when you insist on only presenting one side. [T]ry to understand and give [us] some perspective and context and help explain?

This is Couric insulting our intelligence. If she had the integrity to present all of the facts, we’d be able to understand for ourselves, to see for ourselves the perspective. We’re not stupid, as she so plainly says we are. Especially when she says she tries to give us some context when, with her own words, she withholds context by presenting only those facts she’s carefully selected for presentation. That contradiction is especially insulting to our intelligence.

And there’s Couric’s precious self-importance, her velocity of things that are thrown at us as though she and her cronies are the audience of any administration’s, much less the current one’s, actions. Couldn’t be that us citizens are the audience.

This is why the so-called news media—both reporting and opinionating—are so distrusted by so many of us.

Automobile Technology for Drivers

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Demetria Gallegos, for The Wall Street Journal, asked a number of readers what they liked and didn’t like about the technologies in the cars they drive. She didn’t ask me, so here are my Goods, Wants, and Needs Improvements, based on my years with my 2023 Ford Escape SEL. If I don’t mention something it’s either because I’m satisfied with it as far as it goes, or I missed it.

What I think is good:

  • GPS Navigation. I had this on an earlier Fusion Hybrid, but it couldn’t tell whether I was on a main highway or on that highway’s frontage road; apparently the system was based on maps built from satellite 10m postings. The nav system in my Escape is much more accurate, seemingly using the finally much more ubiquitous 1m postings.
  • The sound system. I have very good AM/FM selection and reception, and I have the capability of selecting, instead, a DVD player (up from a CD player in that Fusion) or my own playlists from a thumb drive.
  • Heated seats. Mrs Hines’ third son was not raised up to be cold.
  • I get cruise control on the left side of my steering wheel and limited sound system and cell phone control on the right side. Very limited driver display controls.

What I want:

  • A Head Up Display. Some cars have these, but they’re jokes. What I want is a HUD that gives me my current speed, fuel state, power left on my battery (for those vehicles—not my Escape—that are mild hybrids. Plug-ins are not a player in my book), time/miles to my destination, time/distance to my next turn point and direction of turn, if I’ve loaded a destination. These nav data are on my dashboard GPS display, but a HUD lets me keep my eyes on the road and traffic. Also for the HUD would be my range rate to the vehicle in front of me

What badly needs improvement:

  • Better HOTAS. I should have control over the driver displays that let me select what driver displays I want visible—display by display rather than the Ford-defined clusters that I get, and I want to be able to put my driver displays where I want them. I should have HUD display controls in my HOTAS, too.
  • Dashboard display that includes the GPS Nav. Get rid of the touch screen aspect, and give me back my buttons, rockers, and toggle switches. It’s not possible to work a touch screen control without taking my eyes off the road and the traffic; it’s a stroll in the park to work physical controls by touch
  • Route editing. I can pick and choose among software-generated routes to a destination—, no toll roads, fastest route, avoid construction. But it’s deucedly cumbersome to modify a route at the turn point level. Since I’m doing this while parked, this would be an exception to my no touch screen. Google maps lets me, on my laptop, modify a route by dragging a point on a route to another place on the map and get an adjusted route. Let me do that on the displayed nav route.
  • More intuitive, somewhat more conversational voice commands. I shouldn’t have to memorize a long list of arcane menu and word sequences, especially for those commands I might want to execute but I don’t use often enough to have memorized the incantation words.
  • Better collision warning. I don’t need to hear about an impending collision after it’s too late for me to react, or after the alleged collision has been resolved—a car in front of me that’s slowing to make a turn, with the collision warning going off as he’s halfway through his turn and I still haven’t closed on him appreciably. Alternatively, get rid of the collision warning system altogether.
  • Better backup camera markings. The route projection lines are…optimistic. The route projection lines take me wide of my actual route. On the other hand, the red bar of my red/yellow/green proximity bars when I’m backing toward an obstacle are pessimistic. In any event, nothing beats my Mark I Eyeball while I’m backing, or changing lanes, come to that.

No Government Bailout

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Not even by city governments, and not even for this.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors noted that

The New York Housing Conference, a nonprofit that promotes so-called affordable housing, warns in a new report that landlords will need $1 billion in government aid to avoid default. “A significant number of affordable housing buildings in New York City are experiencing operating deficits, where rents are not covering expenses,” the report says.

The buildings are publicly financed, and their costs are skyrocketing—costs ranging from insurance to maintenance to unpaid rents.

This is the problem with government paying for stuff, no matter how glitteringly wonderful the intent might seem.

The city government, the State government, the Federal government—none of them—should be forking over any more of the taxpayers’ money for this sort of thing. The best way to solve this kind of shortfall does not include throwing ever more money into the ever expanding maw of city resident dependency.

Instead, cut the buildings’ costs: get out of the way of rent collections, greatly reduce insurance regulations, property taxes (even public housing must pay these), zoning requirements. Lower sales taxes that drive up the cost of maintenance supplies. Let the market determine wage rates, not bureaucrats snug in their government job sinecures.