Risk Tradeoffs

Economic business risks, that is.

Companies in the US and Europe are buying back bonds to reduce the cash piles they built up earlier this year, signaling expectations for more stable economic times ahead.

“The world still isn’t perfect, but there’s more visibility. A lot of companies who have overfunded, they sat there after a few months and said we don’t actually need all of this money,” said Frazer Ross, a regional head for Deutsche Bank’s investment-grade debt syndicate. “It’s like they took out an insurance policy, but now it’s too costly.”

Shrinking their cash cushion exposes those companies to downturn risk or market—loss of customers—risk in the near term, but debt always is more expensive than no debt. Reducing their debt strengthens companies in the middle- and longer-term, both from reduced cost outlays in the form of interest (and principle) payments and by strengthening those companies’ credit ratings in the event they need to borrow against a later market or business downturn or to acquire capital for increased R&D or capital refurbishment or expansion.

In general, increasing short-term risk—according to deliberate planning—in favor of reducing longer-term risk is a good move.

These guys obviously are seeing the light beyond the end of the tunnel.

Some Jobs Data

…from Stephen Moore via his Fox News op-ed. They compare the job creation performance of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) and then-Vice President and current Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s eight-year administration with the three years of performance of President Donald Trump’s administration prior to the current Wuhan Virus situation.

Manufacturing
Obama: -192,000—that’s jobs lost
Trump: 475,000—that’s jobs gained

Mining
Obama: -112,000
Trump: 63,000

Construction
Obama: 280,000
Trump: 746,000

Biden wants to “help” this growth along by dumping $4 trillion of new taxes and rescinded current tax cuts on our economy, on our jobs engine.

Biden wants to potentiate his tax “help” with vast new regulation.

Biden wants to add further to his “help” program by trashing our economy’s ability to generate reliable and cheap energy and replacing that sector with the Green New Deal that the new center left of his Party insists on emplacing.

Our economy can’t afford Biden’s help.

The Biden Tax Plan

…will be a disaster for our economy.  Here are some examples of the damage Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s tax plan will inflict.

Earnings reductions are directly translatable into jobs reductions—higher unemployment.

And this bit of cynicism from “a campaign employee” that’s all too typical of Biden himself:

There is no reason that an economic plan that asks everyone to pay their fair share while doing more to reach full-employment quicker with more jobs and stronger growth should not help everyone from essential workers to investors.

Notice that: the campaign, along with Biden and his—I am the Democratic Party—Party, steadfastly refuse to say what their fair share is, besides more.

“All Stakeholders”

Progressive-Democrats, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) demand absolute acceptance of and fealty to their position and elimination of any other position. The meek meekly surrender to that.

Activists blast the institution as immoral, whether because of capitalism, racism or something else. Leaders of the institution, hoping to calm passions, concede the moral point. But instead of buying political absolution, they undermine their authority and give the left more ammunition to assail them.
That has been pattern at universities, artistic groups and media companies….

Now she, and they, are after private enterprise.

Last year the [Business Roundtable] delighted liberals by ostentatiously revising its mission statement from serving shareholders to include “all stakeholders.” That’s innocuous if all they meant was trying to do right by employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate in the course of also trying to make money for shareholders.

It’s also not good enough. Warren has proposed legislation—and if the Progressive-Democrats get control of the Senate, she’ll succeed in ramming it through—that would eliminate the rights of the business’ owners, those shareholders.

Warren’s legislation would require that 40% of seats on major corporate boards be chosen by employees, which would typically mean union leaders. The companies would have to get approval of 75% of shareholders to make political contributions, which could handicap them in future anti-business campaigns. They could be sued for not pursuing the goals of local nonprofits or Black Lives Matter. Politics would control the purposes of corporate capital.

Her legislation dovetails nicely with Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s promise of union jobs—and he promises only union jobs—together with his promise to do away with right-to-work laws.

That’s not all. Warren put an op-ed into Fast Company in which she required that the

Roundtable must fully commit to the principles they set out in the 2019 ‘Statement,’ act on them, and publicly report on their progress in the coming year.

This is the autocratic government favoring only the Party preferred among us—the only stakeholders of note—to which we can look forward if Biden is elected.

Nice business you got there. Be too bad if something was to happen to it.

Arms Control

In the current arms control negotiations, the Trump administration proposed

that a future treaty cover all Russia, Chinese, and US warheads and include more-intrusive verification

Russia, through its Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, rejected the proposal out of hand.

Since Russia has shown itself not serious about arms control, perhaps we should engage in a new bout of arms control via rapid arms development and buildup. That won’t produce prompt results, but it will result in a new and stricter arms control régime just as surely as the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative build up did with the Soviet Union.

A modification of a Reagan doctrine: we can afford it; they can’t.