Tag Archives: markets

Another Example…

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…of the racist and sexist bigotry of the Biden administration.

The Biden administration’s Department of Agriculture has begun making disaster relief funding contingent on the race and sex of the disaster sufferer.

[T]he Biden administration has taken roughly $25 billion in disaster and pandemic aid approved by Congress for farmers in eight programs and devised a system to make awards based on race, gender, or other “socially disadvantaged” traits.

Texas farmers have filed suit to block this USDA move, noting that the

USDA does this by first defining farmers who are black/African-American, American Indian, Alaskan native, Hispanic, Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, or a woman as “socially disadvantaged.” Then, it provides farmers who qualify as socially disadvantaged more money for the same loss than those it deems non-underserved, along with other preferential treatment[.]

An unbigoted Biden administration never would have done this in the first place. The farmer’s lawsuit shouldn’t be necessary, and it wouldn’t be, absent this administration’s naked racism and sexism.

Again, I Ask

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The subheadline of a Wall Street Journal editorial concerning Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s pushing Ukraine to stop hitting inside Russia, particularly Russia’s oil refineries, says it al.

The White House fears attacks on refineries inside Russia could raise global prices.

In the body of the editorial:

…the Biden Administration had urged Ukraine to halt its campaign targeting Russian refineries and warned that “the drone strikes risk driving up global oil prices and provoking retaliation.”

That’s Biden’s tacit admission of two things: the currently in place oil sanctions against Russia aren’t working—else Ukraine’s successes would severely impact Putin’s ability to get fuel to his barbarians inside Ukraine, which we should be able to expect even Biden to consider good, but those successes would have no effect on oil prices outside Russia.

The other Biden admission is that he doesn’t want the sanctions to work.

Again I ask: whose side is Biden on?

Market Imperatives

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Ford has said that it will delay the rollout of its wholly battery-powered three-row electric vehicles, its new model SUVs, from 2025 to 2027. That’s not because of development or production problems, either.

The additional time will allow for the consumer market for three-row EVs to further develop and enable Ford to take advantage of emerging battery technology, with the goal to provide customers increased durability and better value.

“Allowing the consumer market to develop further”—in other words, consumers don’t want these battery SUVs, and Ford isn’t intent on producing and not selling them, until customers actually want them. Which they don’t, never minding Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s æther-borne claim to the contrary.

Those silly consumers—they just don’t know what’s good for them.

A Thought on Interest Rates

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The Wall Street Journal is speculating on when the Fed might start lowering its benchmark interest rates, speculating further that the Fed might be worrying about whether it’s time and whether leaving its rates where they are might spark a recession. (I was one of those worrying about a recession starting up over the last year or year-and-a-half, and still, but maybe the Fed’s worry is as overblown as mine.)

Early in the article, the WSJ has this:

The central bank will keep its benchmark interest-rate target at a range of 5.25% to 5.5%, a 23-year high….

I’m not sure that’s a useful baseline. The first 20, or so, years of that period are when the Fed was artificially suppressing interest rates.

5.25%-5.5% benchmark rates actually are, long-term, reasonably consistent with a 2% inflation rate.

Maybe it’s time for the Fed to cry “Enough” and go back to the sidelines. Nothing more is needed; let the market fluctuate as it will. Rates already are within the historical fluctuation range that didn’t need Fed interference intervention.

The PRC Wants Us Out Of There

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The People’s Republic of China wants our technology and hardware out of that nation in its drive for self-sufficiency.

The 2022 Chinese government directive expands a drive that is muscling US technology out of the country—an effort some refer to as “Delete A,” for Delete America.
Document 79 was so sensitive that high-ranking officials and executives were only shown the order and weren’t allowed to make copies, people familiar with the matter said. It requires state-owned companies in finance, energy and other sectors to replace foreign software in their IT systems by 2027.

This is something we should be doing regarding PRC products in the US. Their surveillance cameras on US military bases, which our Pentagon procurement agents actively bought demonstrates the danger here, as does PRC espionage equipment on the ship-to-shore cranes in our ports are demonstrating today.

I agree with the PRC’s move. We should be out of the PRC, and that includes us no longer using PRC facilities to build stuff or the components for stuff. We need to relocate all of our PRC usages to other, non-enemy nations.

Beyond that, we need to stop importing PRC products altogether.