Daily Archives: 30 December 2015

A Japanese Apology

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Following Japan’s apology to the Republic of Korea over “comfort women,” the People’s Republic of China is demanding the same for itself.

The problem is this. When one nation repeatedly and incessantly demands an apology from another, the apology-demander can never take the apology as anything other than the result of an exercise of power over the apology-giver, no matter the sincerity of the apology. This is especially true in the present case, with the PRC cavalierly dismissing the Japanese apology to the RoK as American puppetry.

The apology-demander can never view the apology as anything other than a lie, square filler that it is. That renders the apology less than a waste of time for the apology-giver; the apology is reduced to a surrender of sovereignty (even if a small amount)—an act of puppetry—to the apology-demander.

Japan would do well to ignore the PRC’s incessant demands and only after the matter has died down for some considerable time make an apology, unbidden. If one is warranted.

The Fed and Uncertainty

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In a Fox Business piece concerning the impact of future Federal Reserve Bank interest rate hikes on the stock market, this remark stands out for me.

[C]onventional wisdom holds that the more skillful Fed officials are at telegraphing their upcoming rate hikes, the less volatile markets will be once those hikes are announced.

That’s true enough as far as it goes, but the interesting bit is that the more skillful Fed officials are at telegraphing phrase.

Ordinarily, there’s no skill at all involved in making a simple, straightforward statement. One such could be we’ll raise interest rates by these increments, according to this schedule. Those milestones will be adjusted in this way by these factors that we will observe in real time.

That sort of clear, direct statement only takes skill when the speaker is a member of an organization which has institutionalized obfuscation.