Category Archives: markets

Some Climate Thoughts

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Here are the comments of a number of those pushing climate change/global warming/global cooling without regard to whether humans play any sort of significant role in…whatever it is.

Stephen Schneider:

On the one hand we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts.  On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well.  …  So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.

Ottmar Edenhofer:

One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.  This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole….  We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy[.]

Christiana Figueres:

This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution[.]

Timothy Wirth:

We’ve got to ride the global warming issue.  Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing.…

In sum: lie, it’s for a good cause.

A British Exit from the EU

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There’s an aspect of so what to the question: what would actually change if the Brits vote to go their own way in a few weeks?  One set of answers involves British influence on the continent or within the EU.

[I]f the British do vote for Brexit and then have to trade with the EU, the UK would in fact find itself isolated with very little influence over regulatory standards in the single market.

Great Britain already has very little influence over those regulatory standards: look, for instance, at the hue and cry from the rest of the EU over how the British comport themselves, and regulate others, in London’s financial markets.  Also, from outside, the British would be utterly free to set their own market regulatory standards without interference or “help” from their Continental betters.

It’s the same with welfare programs and immigration generally.  Although the British do fare quite a bit better here—as part of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s pre-British exit (Prexit?) negotiations with the EU, he won concessions (not enough, some would say) regarding the amount of British welfare payments would be paid to migrant (not immigrant) workers and their stay-at-home (country) families.  But the French already are up in arms over English impertinence at not letting immigrant/refugees to flow across the channel quickly enough to suit France.

Neither of those problems would be any worse with a British exit, and the British would be in absolute control over them were they to go their own way.

The upshot looks as though there is, indeed, a what to the so what—and it favors a British exit from the EU.  Which, in addition to giving Great Britain a great deal more flexibility and complete national sovereignty, would restore the British to their historical role of power broker among hegemon wannabes on the continent.

That last isn’t all bad for the British or for the continent.

What Hath Obamacare Wrought

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The Wall Street Journal provided an amazing graphic in its Wednesday edition.ObamacarePremiumIncreasesEven accounting for bad estimating by the health coverage plan companies, this is a clear illustration of the depth of President Barack Obama’s (D) lie when he said insurance costs would go down by roughly $2,500 per year.

It’s also going to get worse: a number of programs intended to buffer these providers against such increase needs expire in 2017, including “risk corridors,” which then will be funded solely by health coverage providers’ own wealth redistribution “premiums” paid into the program by profit-making providers for the sake of money-losing providers.

Because One Size Fits All

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This time it’s the trivium of expiration dates on the food we buy in our grocery stores.

That can of soup in your pantry says “Best by June 2018.” The cereal box on the shelf above it says “Use by October 2016.” The salsa in your fridge says “Sell by June 6, 2016.”  And the quart of milk next to it simply says “May 22, 2016.”

Among the dates found on labels across the US are “production” or “pack” dates of manufacture, “sell by” dates, “best if used by” dates, “use by” dates, “freeze by” dates and even “enjoy by” dates.

And

Two Democrats in Congress—Senator Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) and Congressman Chellie Pingree (D, ME)—are just as confused as you are, and they hope to do something about it before their terms expire.

Wait—what?  Is any rational adult human being really confused about those dates?  Does anyone really not understand these expiration dates?

The States of our Republic set their own rules, but those two Progressive-Democrats don’t want variation across States; they don’t want the citizens of individual States to set their own rules: these worthies of the Federal government Know Better.  And they don’t like our choices.

After all, too many choices, too much variation makes Progressives uncomfortable.

Blumenthal and Pingree are expected to introduce bills in the Senate and House this week to establish a national standard for date labeling that would provide consumers throughout the US with consistent information on when a product begins to lose quality and when it is no longer safe to eat.

Because these two are easily confused, everyone else must be, too.  They’re projecting, again.

Elections have consequences.

British Sovereignty and British Exit from the EU

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Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, has a paper out claiming that Great Britain’s perceived need to go out from the EU in order to preserve its sovereignty is “misguided.”

It’s possible to see the misguided perception of Chatham House from the Executive Summary of its paper.

  • The question of sovereignty lies at the heart of the UK’s upcoming EU referendum. …
  • This ignores the fact that successive British governments have chosen to pool aspects of the country’s sovereign power in the EU in order to achieve national objectives that they could not have achieved on their own, such as creating the single market, enlarging the EU, constraining Iran’s nuclear programme, and helping to design an ambitious EU climate change strategy.

And yet creating a (European) single market or enlarging the EU have nothing at all to do with British sovereignty, even were these things on the whole useful to Great Britain.  In many respects the former would be, but it can be accomplished as well with the Brits outside.  And, of course, joining an extra-national organization and one that is granted authority over (some of) a nation’s domestic affairs can only come at the expense of the nation’s sovereignty.

Then, too, the EU has done nothing to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, weapons or peaceful.  The “agreement” that President Barack Obama (D) got with Iran—over France’s strong objections and over Great Britain’s tepid objections—has instead formalized Iran’s ability to develop and field nuclear weapons.

The EU’s climate change strategy, ambitious or not, can only work to the detriment of Great Britain, damaging as that strategy is to the national economies of the EU constituents, especially given that there is very little human involvement in climate change, for all the economic benefits accruing to climate change pseudo-scientists.

  • Apart from EU immigration, the British government still determines the vast majority of policy over every issue of greatest concern to British voters—including health, education, pensions, welfare, monetary policy, defence and border security. The arguments for leaving also ignore the fact that the UK controls more than 98 per cent of its public expenditure.

Apart from EU immigration….  No sovereignty question here.  Mm, mm.  Nor is that 2% of public expenditure dictated by that extra-national body.  Nossir.

  • The British economy has prospered in the EU. The UK boasts higher economic growth and lower unemployment than most major developed economies. …

Carefully elided in this is that Great Britain is not in the eurozone.  How much better could the Brits’ economy be were they completely gone from the EU?  Hopefully, we’ll find out.

  • [T]he UK would be excluded from the process of EU rule-writing, making it a less attractive location for foreign investment.

This doesn’t follow at all.  Great Britain also would be free to write its own rules, making it a far more attractive location, absent the EU’s heavily bureaucratized system, a system that’s also heavily anti-competitive.

And so on.  But RTWT.