False Entries

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DA Alvin Bragg’s indictment accuses the defendant [former President Donald Trump (R)] of the crime of FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS IN THE FIRST DEGREE in thirty-four counts.

Thirty-four counts of made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise…, all of them centered on voucher entries into a Detail General Ledger, and check stubs and invoices kept…somewhere.

Thirty-four counts of intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof…. leading into the sentences claiming those false entries. But nowhere does Bragg say who he thinks was the target of the “defraud,” nor does he say what that “another crime” is. Absent a defraud victim, there is no defrauding. By withholding what that other crime is, Bragg is denying the defendant his opportunity—his right—to answer the charge of that other crime.

False entries. Maybe—maybe—three real counts, but cut apart and expanded in 34 of them.

Withholding what that “another crime,” though, 34 times…. How about: false indictment.

 

Bragg’s charging document, the output of his grand jury, can be read here.

Data Protections

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A couple of Letter writers in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section had concerns about a potential ban of People’s Republic of China-domiciled ByteDance’s TikTok.

I disagree with their concerns.

A TikTok ban isn’t the solution. It won’t protect our data privacy, it won’t protect children from the dangers of the internet, and it is a blatant violation of First Amendment rights.

No one is masquerading banning TikTok as the solution; that’s a strawman argument. Much more needs to be done to protect our data privacy and our children—and our intellectual and technology property—but banning TikTok is a useful step. Nor is banning it a violation of anyone’s 1st Amendment rights. No one’s speech would be barred, only a tool of the PRC would be barred.

TikTok can be an effective tool for fighting corruption within the government itself.

Not when it’s controlled by the PRC government.

…a communication tool that millions of Americans use….

Congratulations to this writer: he has successfully identified the breadth of the threat, just as TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, (accidentally) did when he pointed out the 150 million American users of TikTok.

One More “Be Like Europe” Plea

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Expat (Paris) James Lieber and Temple University law teacher Peter Spiro want American expats to have their own quasi-State, to have territorial delegates in Congress á la DC, Puerto Rico, et al., and be directly represented in our Congress, albeit those delegates wouldn’t have any votes.

No. Expats already have direct representation, should they choose to exercise it by, you know, voting. They’re represented by their representatives and senators in their home district and State. Nor are expats’ votes any more diluted than are the votes of their fellow citizens still resident here at home.

In the end, too, the expats are that of their own volition; no one is making them live abroad.

Lieber’s and Spiro’s argument that Italy, France, and Portugal do things differently, and therefor so should we, is just cynically disingenuous. We are not Italy, France, or Portugal, nor are we any other European nation or nation elsewhere in the world; we’re unique, and that’s on purpose.

It’s only necessary to peruse our Constitution and compare it with the constitutions of those other nations, along with the histories behind them, to see both the differences and the reasons for them.

“Ladies” is a Microaggression

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A highly qualified educator was offered a position as Superintendent of Easthampton Schools, in Massachusetts. Then he committed the unpardonable and heinous crime of addressing, in an email, the school board’s Chairwoman Cynthia Kwiecinski and Executive Assistant Suzanne Colby as “Ladies.”

Those ladies promptly rescinded the board’s offer as a result of that courtesy. It seems that simple, courteous salutations of respect are now microaggressions in those…persons’…fetid imaginations.

[The unhired educator Vito] Perrone said Kwiecinski told him that using “ladies” as a greeting was hostile and derogatory and that “the fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem,'” he told the [Daily Hampshire] Gazette, adding that she also reprimanded him for using “ladies” as a microaggression.

Perrone’s reaction:

I was shocked. I grew up in a time when “ladies” and “gentlemen” was a sign of respect. I didn’t intend to insult anyone.

Nor did he insult anyone, or at least anyone worth taking seriously. The only ones insulted here are two folks in authority who spend their energy looking for ways to be offended rather than on ways to better educate the children of Easthampton.

Perrone dodged a bullet when that job offer was rescinded; Kwiecinski and Colby demonstrated very clearly the Precious and wrongly focused environment into which he almost stumbled.

It’s Everybody Else’s Fault

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That’s the claim of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, as described in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal editorial. The editors are correct as far as they go, but I do have a quibble and a more serious disagreement with some of the things they said.

First my quibble:

Yet here we are with major banks failing, and the government having to bail out uninsured depositors and offer lifelines to protect bank assets that are underwater.

No, the government most certainly did not have to “bail out” uninsured depositors or offer lifelines to other banks. The Biden administration, through Yellen, chose to do those things. By doing so, though, they set the ugly precedent of bailing out everyone else in all other banks without regard to whether those depositors are FDIC insured and without regard to the risks other banks may or may not be running, the Biden-Yellen blather to the contrary not withstanding. By doing so, Biden and Yellen have indemnified uninsured depositors and careless bankers from risk, laying that risk off onto us taxpayers instead.

My more serious disagreement:

The main culprit [regarding Silicon Valley Bank and the deposit runs at midsize banks] was duration risk from the failure to properly hedge against rising interest rates…. …. There’s no excuse for the examiners at the San Francisco Federal Reserve not to have acted on the problem as the West coast bank regulator.

Again, no. There’s certainly room to decry the failure of the SF Fed regulators to regulate, and those worthies should be terminated for cause over their negligence.

However, the first, proximate, and last responsibility for SVB’s failure and those other banks’ problems lies with the managers of those institutions. Interest rate risk, which underlies duration risk, is the risk taken when buying a debt instrument: when market interest rates rise, the debt instrument’s market price falls, and that reduces the value of the debt instruments already bought—for instance, the long Treasury bonds SVB’s managers had bought in satisfaction of its reserve requirements. Any first year economics student learns that, if he hadn’t already learned it in high school.

Duration risk, which matches long term debt assets with short term debt obligations (or not…) is something that same first-year economics student learns later in that same semester. And it’s something about which any first-year Finance student learns early in the first semester.

It was those managers’ decision to ignore those risks, or their careless laziness in not bothering to deal with those risks, or some combination of the two, that lay at the heart of the failure of the one and the problems of the others. The San Francisco Fed’s failure to act was only a (actually quite minor, given where the primary responsibility, and initiative, lies) contributing factor.