Tag Archives: markets

“We Cannot Erase the Last Four Years”

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That’s Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D, MD) lament as he closed the Progressive-Democrats’ case on the floor of the House during Wednesday’s impeachment “debate.”

We cannot erase the last four years.

Though the Progressive-Democrats tried every day of those four years. They and their Obama Executive Branch bureaucrats spied on the Trump campaign and trumped up charges against General Michael Flynn, false charges it took all this time to clear.

They and their Democratic National Committee commissioned a salacious and false dossier in an effort to besmirch a President and to serve as the foundation of an investigation that culminated in finding that President Donald Trump had done nothing wrong.

They and their FBI agent-assistants lied to courts in order to get subpoenas and warrants to “investigate” Trump’s team.

They ran a sham impeachment.

They obstructed financial aid to Americans fiscally harmed by government shutdowns ostensibly due to the Wuhan Virus situation—done as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) admitted after the election was done solely for the purpose of interfering with Trump’s reelection.

Here’s what Hoyer and his Progressive-Democrats want to erase.

A major tax rate reduction for American businesses and a major income tax rate reduction for Americans. This kept his campaign promise.

Unemployment endured by blacks, Hispanics, women reduced to historic lows. This kept his campaign promise.

Income inequality reduced to multi-decade lows—by previously unemployed minority citizens actually getting jobs while the rich got no better off. This kept his campaign promise.

Historic support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities by increasing Federal funding support for those schools and making that support multi-year. This kept his campaign promise.

An improved trade deal with Mexico and Canada to replace NAFTA. This kept his campaign promise.

Working toward improving and strengthening NATO by getting the European NATO nations to increase their financial and equipment commitments to NATO—commitments that those nations had voluntarily committed years ago but welched on subsequently. This kept his campaign promise.

Bringing American soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan—for good or ill, but this kept his campaign promise.

Overtly and concretely facing the People’s Republic of China over that nation’s trade, technology, intellectual property depredations. This kept his campaign promise.

Overtly and concretely facing the People’s Republic of China over that nation’s seizure of the South China Sea and the islands and resources therein, and its attempts to seize the East China Sea. This kept his campaign promise.

Strengthened our ties with the Republic of China. This kept his campaign promise.

Strengthened our ties with Japan. This kept his campaign promise.

Improved our defense arrangement with the Republic of Korea. This kept his campaign promise.

Attempted serious diplomacy with northern Korea vis-à-vis that nation’s nuclear weapons program. This kept his campaign promise.

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, an accord that our compliance with would seriously damage our economy while strengthening, in relative terms, the PRC’s and so increasing its leverage over our Asian allies and over us. This kept his campaign promise.

Withdrawing from the JCPOA, which authorized Iran to freely develop nuclear weapons as soon as it expired. This kept his campaign promise.

Strengthening our physical border with Mexico, thereby strongly reducing illegal entry into our nation by illegal aliens. This kept his campaign promise.

Reducing Federal regulations that interfere with American business development and growth. This kept his campaign promise.

Reducing regulatory barriers to our hydrocarbon-based energy industry, thereby making us a net energy exporter and virtually eliminating our dependence on foreign energy. This kept his campaign promise.

I’m sure there are more; this short list is just the high points.

This is the economic, social, and political strengthening of the last four years that Hoyer and his Progressive-Democrats want so desperately to erase.

American Energy

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…independence today. Tomorrow, American energy dependence.

Bloomberg is reporting that the US didn’t import any oil at all from Saudi Arabia last week, the first time in 35 years. That’s part of a longer term trend in declining Saudi oil imports over the last six years, especially. See the graph just below.

This trend is a result of the US technology advance of fracking which both drove down the cost of getting the oil (and natural gas) out of the ground and drastically increasing our own oil and gas production—virtually eliminating our dependence on foreign oil and gas and making us net exporters of both.

However.

Watch for American energy independence to (re)degrade into energy dependence on foreign nations under the Biden administration.

Watch that dependence made doubly vulnerable as the Biden administration reduces funding for our national defense, including particularly our Navy, so that we will be less able to defend the shipping lanes carrying that foreign energy to us.

The People’s Republic of China, beginning under the Obama régime, already is in a position to shut off the shipping lanes carrying trillions of dollars of goods, including crude, to us through the South China Sea, and they’re building/acquiring naval bases for the PLA on the west coast of Africa and creating “economic” ties with island nations on the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea, and on the north coast of South America. And Biden’s softness toward the PLC is well-known.

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.”

The absence of these risks in the US also is an important aspect of conservative economic and political thought—and not just rhetoric.

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.

I have to wonder: is this in response to the PRC’s threat to take the necessary countermeasures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies? Or is it an attempt to duck away from those threatened countermeasures rather than fighting a battle that needs to be won?

The foregoing was written Tuesday. Now the NYSE has reversed itself again:

it received “new specific guidance” from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Tuesday, which listed the three companies’ American depositary receipts as being covered by Mr. Trump’s order.

Which raises an additional question: who’s actually in charge at the NYSE, since the new specific guidance should not have been necessary.

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.

I’m not sure that Miami needs to tout New York as being within easy reach. It should begin noting that it’s within easy reach of New York. There’s no need for Wall Street to remain in a city as anti-business, anti-financial success, as badly run generally as New York City, or as badly run and high-tax as is the State of New York.

Miami should encourage all of them to come on down to Brickell. The water’s better than fine.