Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

A Nutshell

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On the matter of the House voting up the US Mexico Canada Agreement, the trade agreement agreed among the US, Canada, and Mexico to replace NAFTA, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D, VA) had this to say:

Given his behavior, I don’t see some great groundswell of support for this on our side of our aisle. I’m a free trader and I’m in no rush to approve this agreement.

That is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s hysterical anti-Trumpism in a nutshell. Party opposes the USMCA over Trump’s behavior; its opposition does not consider the merits or lack of merits in the agreement.

Never mind that Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said his government will proceed with ratifying the USMCA despite President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexico over the latter’s “migrant” flow failures.

Another Hollywood Culture War Campaign

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[Robert, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company] Iger told Reuters [last] week that it would be “very difficult” for Disney to continue filming its movie and television content in Georgia if a new state abortion law takes effect.

This is the same Bob Iger whose company enthusiastically operates a theme park and peddles movies in the People’s Republic of China, which government spies on its citizens with, among other things, facial recognition software and which government has locked up millions of PRC citizens—Muslim Uighurs, for the most part, but not exclusively—in “reeducation” camps reminiscent of the worst of Mao’s camps.

Since neither Iger nor Disney has any concern for the lives of aborted babies or for the principles of freedom generally, it will be far more than very difficult (no quotes necessary) for me to patronize any Disney movies, parks, or other product or service.

It will be impossible for me to do so.

Venezuela is not Grenada

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That, there, is a true fact. The University of Georgia’s Emeritus Professor (of Agricultural and Applied Economics) Glenn Ames used that as an argument for why the US ought not invade Venezuela in his Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal.  After all, he wrote,

Venezuela is a large, complex country politically, not a tiny island in the Caribbean.

Also a true fact.  But then he went astray, here and on a couple of other points.  For one, our military is not the disjointed, uncoordinated collection of disparate forces that went into Grenada; it’s much better integrated, and it has demonstrated that improvement many times since.

The Venezuelan military is indebted to President Nicolás Maduro for their perks and subsidies. They are not going to give them up easily.

This badly overstates the case. The Venezuelan military leadership is indebted to Maduro.  The field-grade officers and especially the junior officers and soldiers have no such “loyalty;” they are not going to fight seriously in support of that “leadership”—which steals from their paychecks as much as they do from the civilian citizens of Venezuela.

Cubans and others are embedded in Venezuela’s security apparatus.

As Cubans were in Grenada, and they folded rapidly in the face even of that confused operation.

That Venezuela is not Grenada also is an irrelevant fact.

Some Graphs

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is extremely proud of the economy he and his BFF and mentor ex-President Barack Obama (D) created for us.  Here are some graphs generated by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis that illustrate the magnificence of their creation, via The Gateway Pundit.

The X-axis is hard to read (right-clicking on the image and selecting View Image brings up a bigger image), but the right-most vertical gray band is the Panic of 2008, and the time frame following that includes the bulk of the Obama-Biden administration.

Notice a few things in particular, about which Biden has the most loudly bragged.  The Federal debt spiked hard from the Obama bailout, and it continued to run up hard.

Health care costs ran up hard after the passage of his Big F*ing Deal Obamacare, and continued to rise after that, albeit at a lower rate.

Labor Force participation fell during the Panic, and then fell even harder for years during the Obama-Biden years after the Panic’s end.

Worker share of our economy fell some during the Panic, and then it fell hard, and stayed down, during the Obama-Biden years after the Panic’s end.

Median family income fell during the Panic, then it fell harder, and stayed down, during the Obama-Biden years after the Panic’s end.

Run on that accomplishment, Joe. I double dog dare you.

The Problem from the Fed

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…has been exposed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President.  In a Wall Street Journal piece about the Federal Reserve Bank and the PRC/US trade war, Tom Barkin said this about the Fed’s purpose, and he was serious:

Confidence, especially business confidence, is fragile. It’s our job as policy makers to try to support it.

Um, no. The only policy the Fed should be making is in satisfaction of its mandate: to maintain stable pricing and full employment. Full stop.

The Fed has no business interfering with/influencing businesses—and no need: confidence will come from those stable prices and full employment.

It’s too bad that the Fed so badly misunderstands its role.