Category Archives: markets

The Left is On the Move

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…especially their political arm, the Progressive-Democratic Party.

President Joe Biden (D) has signed an Executive Order requiring all vehicle sales in the US to be electrically powered. Biden will masquerade his EO as “nonbinding.”

Sure. If he and his cronies in Congress didn’t intend for it to be binding, Biden would use his bully pulpit as President to stump for electrification of our vehicles. Instead, he’s going the cudgel route, covered by his velvet.

If he and his cronies in Congress didn’t intend for the EO to be binding, those cronies wouldn’t be pushing—via reconciliation, yet—their “green” mandates into law. They would, instead, use their own bully pulpits to stump for their “green” ideas. Instead, they’re going their naked cudgel—reconciliation—route to ram through their diktats.

Biden’s EO also is supposedly supported by the likes of General Motors, Ford Motor, and Stellantis (nee Fiat Chrysler). Given the nature of our current Progressive-Democrat-controlled government, the idea that these companies’ support is voluntary is…risible.

This is the Progressive-Democrat-controlled government telling American private companies what they must produce.

This is fascism on the move.

Back Rent

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On the day the moratorium on rent paying, enacted during the Wuhan Virus situation, expired, the aggregated back rent owed as a result of that moratorium amounts to some $15 billion.

There is broad concern for the renters who owe the money, and that’s appropriate as far as it goes. But the concern doesn’t go far enough. What’s lacking is any concern regarding the other side of that coin: to whom all that money is owed.

“To whom” are the landlords, most of whom are mom and pop businesses and individual moms or pops who own a house, or two, that they rent out. Those $15 billion are owed to far fewer landlords than they are owed by renters.

Absent the rent payments, those small-time landlords are unable to pay their own mortgages on the rental properties for which they’re responsible, and in many cases, without that income they’re unable to pay their mortgages on their own homes.

Where’s the concern for them? Where’s the help for them?

The silence deafens.

It’d Be All Right

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The USPS is planning on raising their first class mail rates to 58¢ from the current 55¢ and raising the rates on their other mail classes by 6.8%-8.8%.

This is another example of price-fixing by the Federal government. Maybe the increases are legitimate, maybe they’re not. But we can’t tell because market forces aren’t at work here, only government bureaucrats’ impressions are at work.

It’d be all right if we privatized all of mail delivery. Let a free, competitive market determine prices. Recognize the ubiquitousness of email, texting, Skype, Zoom, etc, etc, etc as competing communications techniques, and let a privatized snail mail system compete in that same free market.

It’s doable; our Constitution only says that

The Congress shall have Power…To establish Post Offices and Post Roads

It doesn’t require Congress actually establish Post Offices, much less have the Federal government run them. The establishment (and operation) are easily done by letting free enterprise do them.

All it takes is the political will to do so.

PRC Regulation of US-Listed PRC Companies

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The Cyberspace Administration of China is moving to extend its regulation of PRC companies to include those listed on American exchanges. That’s all well and good; the US looks to regulate American companies that are listed on foreign exchanges.

However.

All companies domiciled or headquartered in the People’s Republic of China became, formally, arms of the PRC’s intelligence community under that nation’s 2017 intelligence law.

No PRC company should be allowed to list on an American exchange, and those currently listed should be delisted.

Beyond that, no PRC company should be allowed to acquire, or gain a stake of any size in, any American company, nor should any PRC company be allowed to partner in any way with any American company.

The risks to the safety of intellectual property, the technology risks, the national security risks are simply too great.

Too Weak

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Nike’s CEO, John Donahoe, has given his company’s game away. Recall that, earlier this year he claimed dismay over the People’s Republic of China government’s, and the Communist Party of China’s, abuse, slavery, and overt genocide against the Uighurs.

We are concerned about reports of forced labor in, and connected to, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Nike does not source products from the XUAR and we have confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region.

Even that weak statement turns out to have been just pretense, virtue-signaling for his American audience, which is doubly dishonest just for that.

Now, via an earnings call, he

called the sportswear apparel giant a “brand of China” this week, following a fiasco it was involved in earlier this year over concerns about human rights abuses committed by the communist government.

And

…we are a brand of China and for China[.]

With that call, Donahoe announced his utter rejection of everything for which the US, the nation with the economic, political, and moral environment that enabled his Nike to flourish, stands.

With that call, Donahoe has announced his complete acceptance of abuse, slavery, genocide by the nation he prefers to call home.

Reasons enough to not do business with Nike.