Monthly Archives: August 2016

This is Dumb

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And it adds to the national security threat our nation faces; unfortunately, though, it’s of a piece with President Barack Obama’s (D) forcing the US to retreat from the world stage [emphasis added].

A senior US military official says an advanced US missile defense system that is to be deployed in South Korea only targets North Korea, not China.

Vice Adm James D Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system will never be used against China.

Whatever possesses men who know (or should know) better to take cards off the table when facing our enemies?  Whatever possesses men who know (or should know) better to assure our enemies that there are certain things we will not do in defense of ourselves or our friends and allies, no matter what those enemies do to us or our friends and allies?

No.  Say, rather, that we will use this system and others like it against any nation or any other entity that launches on us or on our friends or allies.

Money and the EU

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Joseph Stiglitz, writing in The Guardian, had some thoughts on this.  Noting the economic situation in the eurozone since the Panic of 2008 (my term, not his):

[T]he unemployment rate in the eurozone reached 10% in 2009 as well, and has been stuck in double digits ever since. On average, more than one out of five young people in the labour force are unemployed, but in the worst-hit crisis countries, almost one out of two looking for work can’t find jobs. Dry statistics about youth unemployment carry in them the dashed dreams and aspirations of millions of young Europeans, many of whom have worked and studied hard. They tell us about families split apart, as those who can leave emigrate from their country in search of work. They presage a European future with lower growth and living standards, perhaps for decades to come.

These economic facts have, in turn, deep political ramifications.

Thus

…there is one underlying mistake: the creation of the single currency, the euro. Or, more precisely, the creation of a single currency without establishing a set of institutions that enabled a region of Europe’s diversity to function effectively.

The hope was this:

Advocates of the euro rightly argue that it was not just an economic project…. More importantly, it was a political project; it was supposed to enhance the political integration of Europe, bringing the people and countries closer together….

Unfortunately, Stiglitz understates the magnitude of the error.

[F]or a single currency to work over a region with enormous economic and political diversity is not easy. A single currency entails a fixed exchange rate among the countries, and a single interest rate. Even if these are set to reflect the circumstances in the majority of member countries, given the economic diversity, there needs to be an array of institutions that can help those nations for which the policies are not well suited. Europe failed to create these institutions.

And so on.

However.  There cannot be a single set of institutions that enabled a region of Europe’s diversity to function effectively; Europe is too diverse in political, social, even purpose of money philosophies for that to be possible.  What’s necessary is a few smaller, differing currency zones connected by a free trade zone.

No, He Doesn’t

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Howard Kurtz has joined the frenzy in his cynical piece titled Trump fuels a media furor (again) with Second Amendment comments on Clinton, this time over Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s remark, concerning Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s naked attack on the 2nd Amendment, that 2nd Amendment supporters would exercise their considerable political power to protect this fundamental American right.

This is what Trump actually said.

If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.

This is the heart of Kurtz’ claim:

Donald Trump has talked himself into big trouble—and this time it’s not the fault of what he calls the “dishonest media.”

The media’s frenzied claim that Trump is inciting violence is truly breathtaking.  It also takes a truly sick mind—or a wholly dishonest one—to manufacture violence out of a prediction of strong political repercussion.

Kurtz then asked,

I don’t believe Donald Trump wants to incite violence against Hillary Clinton. But does he bear responsibility for an aside, or a joke, that many people heard that way?

And yet here is Kurtz carefully keeping exactly that distortion alive as though it were a legitimate interpretation.  This interpretation is manufactured entirely out of whole cloth by a media Kurtz himself has already called out as in the bag for Clinton.  The only people who “heard” Trump’s remark as a call for violence are Democrats who want to make personal political hay, no matter how much they have to twist facts to harvest it, and a press that has dishonestly chosen to take sides in a political contest that is for us voters alone to decide.

And as Kurtz ironically noted

This uproar is going to dominate the next few days, all but drowning out Trump’s message (and is drowning out the new controversy over emails showing favor-seeking between the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s State Department).

Of course it is.  That’s the point of the press’ manufacture.  The decision to distort and then to hype the distortion is entirely the press’.  Just as it’s entirely the press’ choice to spike Democratic Party Ohio Senate candidate Ted Strickland’s yukking it up over how nice it was that Justice Antonin Scalia had died.  Or to conveniently forget about then-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s remark about doing things “the Chicago way,” and about bringing guns to a knife fight.  Nobody has stuck a gun in the press’ ear and made them do any of that.

Does Trump bear responsibility for the behavior of a mendacious media?

Of course not.  Apparently Kurtz doesn’t believe his own press.

No Connection

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There were no ties between Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her State Department on the one hand and the Clinton Foundation run by ex-President Bill Clinton, daughter, and…his wife Hillary.  That’s the claim by no lesser lights than Bill and Hillary.

Thus, neither

In an exchange from April 2009, a longtime aide to Mr Clinton told three of Mrs Clinton’s top advisers that it was “important to take care of” a particular person, whose name has been redacted from the document. That person had written the aide, Doug Band, under the subject line “A favor…” to thank him for the “opportunity to go on the Haiti trip,” which the person called “eye-opening.” Mr Band was a chief adviser in helping Mr Clinton launch the Clinton Foundation after leaving the White House.

nor

Huma Abedin, a longtime confidante of Mrs Clinton who is now working for her campaign, replied to Mr Band: “We have all had him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.” Mr Band responded: “Great.” Mr Band was an important figure in helping Mr Clinton set up his post-presidential career and has since co-founded a New York company called Teneo Holdings.

While at the State Department, Ms Abedin received a special designation that allowed her to work at the agency while also doing outside work. During that period, she held two other positions, at the Clinton Foundation and at Teneo.

nor

In a separate exchange, Mr Band asked Ms Abedin and Cheryl Mills, another top aide to Mrs Clinton, to set up a meeting between a State Department official and a top donor to the Clinton Foundation.

“We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon,” Mr Band wrote in April 2009. “As you know, he’s key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”

Mr Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, has donated between $1 million and $5 million to the foundation, according to its disclosures.

mean anything at all.

There’s no connection.  Mm, mm.  From that, of course we don’t need to wonder about the content of those meetings, or trips, or favors, nor should we worry about what Federal goodies were given to folks like these.

Nah.  Not at all.

Central Banks’ Negative Interest Rates are Stimulative?

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Maybe not.  Not if this small businesswoman in Germany proves typical.  Heike Hofmann sells fruits and vegetables in a small city in northwestern Germany.

When Ms Hofmann heard the ECB was knocking rates below zero in June 2014, she considered it “madness” and promptly cut her spending, set aside more money and bought gold. “I now need to save more than before to have enough to retire,” says Ms. Hofmann, 54 years old.

Of course.  When she’s retired, she’ll be in no position to participate very much in risky investments; most of her income beyond the German retirement payment system will need to come from fixed income investments.  That fixed income will come in the form of dividend-paying instruments and…interest-paying debt instruments.

And there’s this low-wage worker in Sweden:

Lasse Bohman, a 63-year old newsstand worker from Stockholm, said the concept of negative interest rates is “weird” and makes him want to save more for retirement rather than spend. “I am just going to keep on putting money in the bank,” he says, or “put it under the mattress at home.”

Never mind that to get to retirement, current workers need to save more at the lower rates of return that result from Central Bank-driven negative interest rates (or even artificially low, but positive, rates).

Hmm….