Tag Archives: political economy

More EU Bad Faith

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Finance operations, a key industry for Great Britain but not so much for the European Union, is being excluded from existing Brexit transition negotiations. That much is on the Brits as well as the EU, but the EU is abusing the mutual error.

In anticipation,

European regulators have demanded banks base certain operations currently conducted in London in the EU post-Brexit. … The EU last week committed to rules governing derivatives that will prevent London-based traders at EU banks from continuing business seamlessly after Brexit is completed on New Year’s Eve.

Derivatives trading is a significant fraction of the Brits’ financial industry, and the new rules prevent even London-based branches of EU banks from trading with UK-regulated firms unless those transactions occur in other jurisdictions recognized by both sides.

As Tim Cant, a London-based Partner at Ashurst Group, notes,

This is part of a wider strategy of moving finance into the EU[.]

It’s also part of the EU’s wider strategy of punishing Great Britain for its effrontery and of warning the more uppity remaining member nations to not even think about doing such a dastardly thing as leaving their Betters in Brussels.

Dominate

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Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has what should be a resounding warning of the threat to our freedom represented by the People’s Republic of China in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.

Beijing intends to dominate the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily, and technologically.

With particular reference to the US, dominate is a euphemism. The PRC intends political domination, also (as the example Ratcliffe supplies involving PRC pressure on an American Congressman illustrates), all of which is to say they intend to conquer the US, whether it formally occupies us or not.

The PRC already is dictating policy to nominally American entertainment and news companies, and it has gotten companies like Alphabet to refuse to do business with our Defense establishment in critical areas like artificial intelligence while enthusiastically doing business with the PRC government on…artificial intelligence.

The PRC has gotten Alphabet to censure search results in the PRC and Facebook and Twitter to censure communications in the PRC while getting Alphabet, Facebook, and Twitter to enthusiastically censure American citizens’ communications here in the US.

The PRC’s Confucius Centers at our colleges and universities actively indoctrinate students into the wonders of PRC communism while threatening those institutions’ management teams with removal of significant funding if they dare interfere.

This all is prior to and supportive of Ratcliffe’s characterization of the PRC economic war against us as rob, replicate, and replace.

This is a struggle for the United States’ existence as an independent polity.

Unfortunately, dangerously, with Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s overt friendliness with the PRC and his disdain for the threat—they’re not a patch on our jeans, guys, and China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man…. They’re not bad folks, folks … They’re not competition for us—it’s not at all certain that Biden would take Ratcliffe’s warning at all seriously, were he to be inaugurated.

And that’s not including his son Hunter’s…cozy relationship…with members of the PRC government.

Exodus

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The California exodus, including Silicon Valley, seems to be gathering steam. Now Hewlett Packard Enterprise, one of the founding members of Silicon Valley, is decamping for another State, in its case, to Texas. It seems the going out from Silicon Valley also is gathering steam.

HPE disclosed its plan to relocate as it posted fourth-quarter earnings after a difficult year that generated a full-year loss, highlighting its need to lower costs.

And

HPE said it would see cost savings primarily because of cheaper real estate in Texas. Hiring is also generally cheaper and less competitive than in California.

Pop quiz:

Which party has been in charge of California the last several years? You get three guesses.

The first two guesses don’t count.

NASDAQ is in the Quota Business

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The stock exchange has proposed a rule—and it’s actually serious about it, if you can imagine that—regarding business governance that must be satisfied if a business is to be considered by the Know Betters of the exchange fit for listing on its exchange.

The second largest exchange in the world has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to impose a quota system on the boards of its listed companies. The new rule would mandate that corporate boards have a minimum of one woman director and one who is a minority or LGBTQ.

So: a black lesbian–a three-fer.

It would be not just an idiotic rule, it would be immoral. It also would be coarsely unfair to the board member. Did she get the job because she was qualified, or did she get it because she filled three squares? She’d always be faced with that stigma.

It’s also a naked interference in the way a business governs itself, which is far outside a stock exchange’s DOC.

Maybe it’s time for NASDAQ’s several hundred companies to take themselves off the exchange.

Alternatively…

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President Donald Trump, recall, is moving to reclassify Federal senior-level civil service employees into a new category (Schedule F for those following along) that would facilitate their hiring and firing outside the existing Federal employment rules that generally serve to keep those employees on the job regardless of their performance quality. That protection tends to obviate the hiring part by reducing the number and availability of slots into which to hire: they’re already (and still) occupied.

That last—ability to hire—is little talked about, as the focus, especially by public unions, has been on job protection rather than job performance.

I said all that to point out all this. One of the beefs about making it easier to fire senior civil servants is this:

Without the existing protections, civil servants in policy-making roles could be replaced by less experienced and knowledgeable staff who more closely subscribe to the administration’s political goals, public-employee advocates said.

What these self-serving advocates omit to say is that, alternatively, civil servants in policy-making roles could be replaced by just as experienced and just as knowledgeable, if not more so, staff. The new staff’s experience, too, would necessarily be broader, as they’d be coming in from outside instead of continuing the hot house echo room (not to mix metaphors or anything) mind set resulting from an extended career buried in the civil service. That increased breadth of experience is dispositive.

Even more dispositive, though, is that more closely subscribe to the administration’s political goals part. Federal employees exist to carry out the administration’s policies and goals, not their own. If they can’t keep up with changing administrations, or choose not to, they’re unfit for continuation.

Full stop.

Oh, and here’s a hint on the breadth of the problem that wants correction [emphasis added]:

The Office of Management and Budget, which played a lead role in crafting the [reclassification] order, submitted its own preliminary list last week, recommending that 425 positions at the office—more than 80% of the entire staff—be categorized as Schedule F[.]