Tag Archives: markets

State’s Obligations

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These are the flip side of the 10th Amendment States Rights mantra that State government personnel are starting to tout.  And that makes State governors’ and legislators’ objections to the Trump administration’s moves to clip the intrusive wings regarding investment advice to retail investors and who should be permitted/required to give it a bit ridiculous.

[T]he Obama Labor Department’s fiduciary rule requires brokers to act in the best interests of retirement savers rather than sell products that are merely suitable and potentially more lucrative for the brokers.

Never mind that this would tacitly limit a retail investor’s investment options, limiting him to too-conservative alternatives, and price many out of the investment advice market.  Big Brother knows better.

Individual States are fully capable of enacting their own fiduciary rules, as Nevada and Connecticut have done, for better or worse for their citizens, and as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California are considering doing, as is their right, and obligation to the extent they seriously see such a thing as a public good and not just a shower look good, under the 10th Amendment.

I think such overregulation is idiotic, as well as insulting to American citizens.  We don’t need Government looking over our shoulder or telling us what to do and not to do in every aspect of our lives.  But let’s find out.

Patchwork regulation if the States are left to their own devices?  So what?  Let the 50 laboratories of democracy try out their various ideas.  We Americans can vote with our dollars as well as our feet regarding which experiments work and which don’t.

Republicans and Obamacare

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Too many now are begging for surrender on repeal and replace.

[F]ew congressional Republicans have signaled they are ready to let the health-care market deteriorate while their constituents are still battling higher premiums and fewer insurers to choose from on the individual marketplace.

This means those Republicans are signaling that they don’t have the stomach to repeal Obamacare at all, which would be the ultimate deterioration of it.

This is a betrayal of their constituents along two dimensions: the cynical destruction of their promise to repeal and replace, and their decision to continue inflicting Obamacare with its steadily increasing premiums and fewer insurers to choose from on their constituents.

President Donald Trump’s move to just let Obamacare die on the vine and hope for something better to rise out of the sewage is just as foolish and immoral.  Republicans need to remember what they promised and who sent them to Congress to honor their promise and get back to work on repeal and replace.  On that score, Trump is entirely correct, even if the doable path is stages as originally proposed last winter or via another path proposed by Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Bill Cassidy (R, LA) whose bill (as an interim step, I say) would “take ACA funding and distribute it to the states through block grants.”

Voters should remember this pending abject failure in the upcoming primary elections.

Sale of a Stock Exchange

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Good idea?

The Chicago Stock Exchange wants to sell itself to Chongqing Casin Enterprise Group, a Chinese conglomerate whose parent is CHX Holdings Inc.  Never mind that this would be a camel’s nose of the People’s Republic of China into our financial system and expose it to PRC hacking, disruption, theft, etc, etc, etc.

Fortunately, a collection of Congressmen persuaded the SEC to indefinitely delay the sale and purchase.  Unfortunately, the deal hasn’t been killed altogether.

Casin…says it is independent of the Chinese government.

Of course it is. In a nation that is increasing its autocratic control over its economy and the businesses in it.  Sure.

Contra such blandishments, there aren’t any businesses in the PRC that aren’t under government control, whether those businesses are owned by the government or the CPC or operate outside formal ownership: mainland Chinese businesses have government apparatchiks, “advisors,” and CPC monitors in their management staffs.

CHX…says its policies will prevent confidential data from being shared with the new Chinese owners.

And we believe them. In a nation that rules by law instead of being a nation under rule of law, a nation that changes its laws for the convenience of those persons in power, CHX would never alter—or simply ignore—”policy;” it would never steal confidential data.

Sure.

No, not a good idea.  Not this time.  Not this buyer.  Not a good idea at all.

My New Book Is Out

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Titled A Conservative’s View of the Conduct of Just Wars, it’s available in Kindle format here.  It presents this Conservative’s view of the proper conduct of a just war: when it’s appropriate to join one, how it should be fought once joined (regardless of how or why it was joined), and importantly, what should be done with the nation that unjustly attacked.

Since St Augustine of Hippo’s exegeses of the early 5th century, Western thinkers have attempted to define Just War in their recognition that war is a part of the human condition. Through this, they hoped to limit the onset and scope of war and its damage to those innocently caught in it.

Many Just War theories center on the idea that human lives are God’s to take. Thus, war as a human endeavor begins inherently immoral and unjust, and it’s the war fighters’ responsibility to make the case that their war—this war, this time—is just and then to fight it justly.  My argument proceeds from that point.

Unfortunately, Just War arguments generally stop short of war’s true completion. The war is entered, it’s fought, it’s won or lost. But then…what? Just War theories until very recently haven’t asked that question, much less essayed an answer.

Is that all there is, though? Is a conflict over just because the enemy has been utterly defeated or a peace treaty signed? No, the conflict simply slides into a post-war recovery effort by the victor which may or may not include the loser.

In truth, peace by itself cannot be a just end of war; mere restoration of quietude is not a proper goal of victory. Nor can mere victory be the goal of war. True victory, victory in a just war must entail the restoration or creation of justice and freedom—of both, since neither can exist without the other.

Given justice in entering the war, the defender then must fight to a conclusion that not only redresses the wrong inflicted by the war’s attacker but also maximizes the probability that the aggressor will not—cannot—aggress again for a reasonably foreseeable future. Notice the implication: this requires the defender to fight to total, unconditioned victory.

Congress Has 12 Days

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There are 12 days left after their 5 September return from vacation, driven by the Obamacare requirement for health plan providers to commit by 17 September to selling their health plans for the next year or withdrawing, for Congress to pass a potful of legislation.

Two proposals regarding Obamacare are in the offing.  One would shore up the funds transfer of Federal dollars to those providers who are losing money in ObamaMart, and the other instead would send that money as grants to the States to help them generate their own health coverage plan programs.  This one also would eliminate the Individual Mandate.

Also looming is the debt funding deadline that necessitates raising the debt ceiling to pay currently committed-to bills.

Also: an immigration bill that rationalizes our immigration policy is in conference.  It severely restricts green card issuance (which is foolish IMNSHO), but it has the beneficial effect of that rationalization.

Also: an infrastructure restoral bill is under construction.

Also: bills to withdraw counterproductive, if not outright mendacious, Federal rules and rulings in the EPA, DoEd, Labor, etc that were intended to destroy whole industries (can you say, “coal,” boys and girls?), cancel rule of law on campuses, much too excessively favor unions over management (NLRB), and on and on.

Twelve days of Christmas?  Or is the Grinch coming? [/snark]  Not all of those necessaries have that 12-day deadline, but all of them need to be done quickly, since Congressmen—of both parties and in both houses of Congress—are too (how to put this delicately) chicken to do anything substantive in an election year.  Even were they around in DC doing their jobs instead of hiding out on their various campaign trails.