Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Yet More and Bigger Spending

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The House Problem Solvers Caucus, with 29 Progressive-Democrats and 29 Republicans, are proposing their own “infrastructure” bill—to the tune of $1.25 trillion dollars, more than double the Senate Republicans’ original proposal of some $570 billion (and which, in their own abject meekness, they exploded into a nearly trillion dollar supplication).

The Republicans in this “problem solver” gang are engaged in their own surrender to the spending and taxing Party.

Of course President Joe Biden (D) and his Congressional Party leadership aren’t negotiating in good faith—they don’t need to. They can hold out for everything in their original demand because they know they’ll get it.

The Biden Oil Price Spike

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President Joe Biden (D) has killed the Keystone XL Pipeline, is blocking oil production from Federal lands, killed oil production in northern Alaska, is working to kill fracking altogether, is working to kill American oil (and natural gas) production, and has given the go ahead to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. In sum, he’s actively working to kill American energy independence.

All of that is driving up American citizens’ energy costs, and that is reflected in the market’s anticipation of spiking oil costs. Here are a couple of graphs illustrating that. They illustrate the expectation that oil will soon cost $100/barrel, after several years of $50-$65/barrel. The first presents the spike since the start of the year in the number of West Texas Intermediate $100/barrel futures contracts against a current $70 price.

This graph reflects the price of a $100/barrel call option on WTI for delivery in December this year and next.

The expectation of actual market pricing of $100 is rising, also, sharply enough to drive up the price of the option.

This is what expert traders (some of whom are trading on the trends themselves and not on underlying oil prices, to be sure) are seeing as the future price of oil for our citizens. Even if oil settles out at its current price of $70 or just a little higher (and the anticipations turn out to be overstated), this current price represents a sharp increase over the last several years, when Government wasn’t moving so zealously to restrict our nation’s oil supply.

This is what Biden has wrought for our nation’s energy supply and cost of energy.

An Inappropriate Judicial Question

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The Apple-Epic trial has gone to the jury (in this case, the judge, the matter being a bench trial). This case centers on the level of commissions Apple charges app developers for marketing their apps in Apple’s App Store and whether those app developers can, under Apple’s rules, market their products/collect revenue for their products through other venues as well as the App Store—vis., in-app advertising.

In the course of the trial, the presiding judge—the “bench”—US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, has asked an inappropriate question.

…confronted Mr Cook [Apple CEO] with survey data that, she said, indicated that 39% of developers were either very dissatisfied or somewhat dissatisfied with Apple’s distribution services. “How is that acceptable?” she asked.

There is much to decry about Apple’s business practices, particularly with its App Store.

In particular, one would think those survey results to be unacceptable, to developers, users, even to Apple.

However.

The question is a business matter, solely among Apple, its customer/developers, and the market in general. It is not at all a judicial matter, and it is completely out of place and inappropriate for a judge to ask in a courtroom.

The Desperation of Green Subsidies

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There’s this graph, via Power Line, that illustrates the impact of subsidies—here the production tax credit (PTC) for wind power in particular—and their expiration, on wind energy production facility investment and installation.

Those green bars (because Power Line has a sense of irony) represent the new wind-energy systems installed the year after the PTC was allowed to expire.

Wind power, among “green” energy production systems, just isn’t ready for market.

Unpleasant Signals

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Recall Russian President Vladimir Putin’s promise to send “unpleasant” signals to the US because President Joe Biden hasn’t yet kowtowed sufficiently to him—Washington was not showing a readiness to discuss all issues at a bilateral summit next month [now this month] is how The Jerusalem Post dryly put it at the end of May.

The comments by Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, came a day after US President Joe Biden said that he would press Russian President Vladimir Putin to respect human rights when the two leaders meet in June.

Having embarrassed Biden—and our nation—quietly with the Colonial Pipeline/Nord Stream 2 fiasco, Putin now is bent on embarrassing Biden—and us—more publicly.

JBS Meats was the recent target of a “ransomware” attack that caused JBS to shut down some servers and interrupt meat production in Australia and the US.

Now, a couple of Cox Media Group television stations, one in Florida, the other in Pennsylvania, have been hit by a cyber attack, forcing them both off the air. Cox expects to have them back on the air “soon.”

I expect more signaling in the coming days. And I worry, given what Biden gave away in the aftermath of Colonial, what he’ll give away in response to these signals behind closed doors in Geneva when he meets with Putin in a week.