Category Archives: political economy

How Long Can Russia Hold Out?

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What’s behind the oil price plunge and the associated stock index plunge?

Russia refused a Saudi Arabia deal to cut oil production during the current drop in demand for oil by an additional 1.5 billion barrels per day. This would have been on top of the 1.7 billion barrel per day cut begun some weeks ago in response to reduced oil demand driven by reducing Asian and European economic activity.

That reduced demand has been exacerbated by the coronavirus’ panic-driven impediment to overall economic activity.

In response to the Russians’ refusal the Saudis cut their price of oil by $6-$8 dollars and have said they’d increase their oil production by some 2.3 million barrels per day. In essence, the OPEC-agreed limits on oil output are completely withdrawn.

This has added stress to the Russian economy.

…the Russian ruble ha[d] its worst day since 2014, down more than 8% against the dollar.
…
Russian authorities on Monday pledged to use their $150 billion sovereign-wealth fund to support the economy and said the nation’s budget can withstand low crude prices for a decade.

But at what cost, what trade-offs? Given Russia’s financial commitments/needs to support its occupations of Ukraine and Georgia, its drive to build up its military, its cyber attacks against Ukraine, the Baltic States, and elsewhere around the world, it’s part in the joint development, with the People’s Republic of China, of Siberian resources, and on and on, for how long can Russia’s monetary reserves last, really? How long until Russia starts printing roubles, and triggering dangerous inflation?

And: do we have the stomach for lasting longer and doing better than Russia?

A British Proposal

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In contrast with UK-EU negotiations, begun earlier this week, these are the high points of Great Britain’s suggestion of what a US-UK trade deal would look like.

  • reduce or remove tariffs for UK exports…US has indicated its intention to seek to reduce or remove UK tariffs on US exports in a UK-US FTA
  • customs procedures at the border are as facilitative as possible makes importing and exporting easier
  • address subsidies which have the potential to distort trade. Provisions for fair, effective and transparent competition rules could underpin liberalisation of trade between the UK and the US
  • a UK-US FTA as an opportunity to build on our global leadership in this area to develop a world-class [Intellectual Property] chapter

These form the core of an actual free trade agreement, one that is much better than the restrictive, anti-competition, anti-business straitjacket in which the EU wants to trap Great Britain and in which it wants to keep remaining member nations trapped.

The proposal itself can be seen in its entirety here.

Question for the Future

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My wife put it to me re the Progressive-Democratic Party: Stipulate arguendo that Trump is reelected (regardless of the [Progressive-Democrats’] nominee). Who’s their bench for 4 years from now? Amy? Pete? ?????

It’s true enough, there is no next generation in Party; they’re going to have to skip one to get to anyone even remotely viable.  Who do they have?

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) is all they have in their next generation, but she’s a one-hoss shay that’s starting to fall apart.

Pete Buttigieg would seem to be the front-runner in that skipped-to generation, but he’s just not capable. Too many demographics don’t trust him: black voters because he’s been worthless, even counterproductive, in his own small city; veterans because he’s bragged too much about his soft tour in Afghanistan (as such tours go), spending his free time on roof tops smoking and getting into his laptop instead of looking for ways to further his unit’s mission; moderates of any stripe because his economic and social safety net ideas are destructive of the things that actually would support the least among us.

Robert Francis O’Rourke is in the mix—and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to make him the head of a Gun Confiscation program in a Biden administration. And he is born to it.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) will be old enough for 2024 and beyond elections, but she won’t be mature enough. Her social welfare, climate, and economic ideas are just plain crazy.

Ro Khanna (D, CA) will happily parrot the Party line, including the new Party-centric position of free stuff for everyone, and that’s certainly sufficient to qualify him for Party standard bearer. He virtue signals with the best of them, too, but none of that is enough for anything serious. And he doesn’t have the fire in the belly required to go past the safety of his California district.

I tend to favor an Ocasio-Cortez-O’Rourke ticket, though: their ideas need to be dragged out into the open and clearly, sharply debated as the only way to put those foolishnesses to rest.

Tight Schedule

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Negotiations are in progress on the nature of the, primarily economic, relationship between Great Britain and the European Union now that the former has taken its leave of and independence from the former. The relationship being negotiated is primarily economic; although, law enforcement, judicial cooperation, foreign policy, security, and defense are under discussion, also.  The functional deadline for these negotiations is 31 December 2020, after which the Brits have said they’re done, deal or no deal.

Ten rounds of meetings are scheduled every three weeks from Monday, March 2, until October when a deal is desired.

Following which enacting legislation would need to be passed by both sides in order to bring the deal to life. “Most experts” think this is a tight schedule.

It need not be, though: the putative tightness of this schedule is directly and strictly a function of the degree of intransigence that will be exhibited by the EU’s negotiators.  I hold out no great expectations here; the EU has been operating in bad faith, using its position to discourage other dissatisfied nations from going out from the Union, ever since the Brits voted for sovereignty.

In this current round of negotiations, too, the Brits appear more serious than the EU.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatened to accelerate [the schedule] further last week, saying the UK would end talks as early as June if negotiations had failed to progress by then.

It needn’t be a tight schedule, nor need it be “tightened” further. Again, that’s up to the continental Europeans.

Sadly, the EU’s intransigence is demonstrated in a couple of areas:

  • EU wants the UK to enact EU regulations and laws regarding business subsidies, labor law, the environment
  • EU wants its Common Fisheries Policy to apply in British territorial waters, especially British coastal waters

Nor is the matter of EU labor movement entirely settled; the EU still hopes for free access—essentially waiver of British national borders—for EU workers to British territory.

These run directly counter to Great Britain’s national sovereignty; of course, the continental Europeans know this full well. It’s why they demand these accessions.

Paying Their Fair Share

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Progressive-Democrats, including their Presidential candidates, are fond of saying the Evil Rich aren’t paying their fair share in taxes; they should pay more.  Those same Progressive-Democrats also carefully decline to say what that fair share should be, other than their “more.”

Here’s a graph of what those Evil Rich do pay, compared with the income those same Evil Rich earn, courtesy of the Center of the American Experiment:

Notice that. That’s even after those Evil Rich have taken all the adjustments to their top line income that our tax code allows them to take, including the Progressive-Democrats’ much disliked preferential tax treatment for capital gains and interest income.

The graph shows the rates for the top 50%.  The top 10% pays a skosh over 70% of all income taxes paid Uncle Sugar, while earning only a bit under 48% of the private sector’s income.

Ninety per cent, seventy per cent—in what way are these not the Evil Rich’s fair share, much less more than their fair share?  Especially compared to those bottom 50% who earn a bit over 10% of the private sector’s income, but pay only 3%?

The Progressive-Democrats won’t say. The only conclusion is that they consider the fair share to be “all of it.”