Tag Archives: economics

Sanctions on Turkey?

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That’s the question being asked regarding Turkey’s decision to buy—and subsequently to take delivery on—Russia’s AS-400 anti-aircraft missile system and the impact that has, or should have, on our alliance with Turkey.

The question, though, assumes we have an alliance. Formally, one exists, but it’s in name only outside of NATO (and with Turkey cozying up to Russia, that one is in flux, too); Turkey has chosen functionally to walk away from any bilateral arrangement.

I think, though, the decision to cancel Turkey’s F-35 buy is sufficient. We don’t need to apply sanctions; we don’t need to have much of anything to do with Turkey, good or bad, outside our NATO obligations.

Turkey just isn’t that important to us.  It’s a convenient path into the Middle East, but even that is questionable.  Turkey, after all, refused to let us operate from there during the second invasion of Iraq, in contrast with Saudi Arabia’s and Kuwait’s active support.  That refusal complicated military matters and led to a longer fight than necessary, with higher casualties all around.

Testing

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Boeing is going to be unable to return its 737MAX to commercial flight before 2020; the current latest guess is January, and that’s likely to slip.

Fixing the Boeing Co 737 MAX’s hazardous flight-control software and completing other steps to start carrying passengers is likely to stretch into 2020, an increasing number of government and industry officials say, even as the company strives to get its jet back into service still this year.
The situation remains fluid, no firm timeline has been established and Boeing still has to satisfy US regulators that it has answered all outstanding safety questions.
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Boeing executives, FAA engineers, and international aviation regulators have steadily expanded their safety analyses to cover a growing list of issues spanning everything from emergency recovery procedures to potentially suspect electronic components.

That pretty much says it all.  Boeing needs to stop taking short cuts—legitimate as those might seem, and are in a variety of cases—and test this aircraft from the ground up as though every component in the control system were newly developed and never before tested.  “Every,” here, means physical components, electronic components, and software.  And pilots: their understanding of and interaction with the control systems, and with their training and operating manuals, needs to be evaluated de novo, also, as the Ethiopian crash suggests.

Too much of this stuff have not interacted with each other before in this particular aircraft, and even those components of subsystems and those subsystems themselves that have interacted within themselves have not, necessarily, interacted with other components and subsystems.

It would, in fact, be a good idea to do this from-the-ground-up retesting as a matter of routine whenever there’s a major software or hardware update to the aircraft.  Those updates create a nearly new aircraft, and accumulating changes in performance, however subtle or seemingly minor, can falsify a number of underlying assumptions and add up to large failures.

In the present case, the bit-by-bit testing is not saving much money, either.

Campaign Spending vs Intake

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates are spending more money than they’re collecting through campaign donations.

Eleven of the Democratic presidential campaigns, including former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper spent more than they raised in the most recent three months.
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How quickly the 24 Democratic contenders are burning through cash seven months ahead of the first primary caucuses and elections is as important as how much they are bringing in.

Of course, they have to in order to stay/get competitive in the race.

This is a microcosm of what we can expect from a Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated Congress and White House.

Because, of course there’s always a “reason” for the Federal government to spend more than its revenue collections.

Much Ado

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…is being made about the People’s Republic of China’s slowing economic growth rate.

The Chinese economy has suffered a loss of momentum in the second quarter, with the GDP falling to 6.2% from a 6.4% expansion in the first three months of the year, figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday.

This is the slowest growth rate in 27 years, goes the alarm.  That’s supposed to apply pressure to the PRC to start negotiating seriously with the US on trade.  In truth, it does add some pressure, but it’s necessary to keep in mind a couple of other things, too.

One is that slowing growth is, still, growth, and a 6.2% growth rate still is one of the highest economic growth rates in the world, albeit that rate comes against one of the lowest baselines in the world.

Another is that the PRC’s government, led by President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party of China henchmen, is willing to inflict more pain and economic (read: standard of living) damage on its people than are most Western governments on theirs.

The tariff pressure being applied to the PRC is both necessary and having serious effects. Producers are moving their sourcing from the PRC and shifting it to other nations around the Pacific, some to the US, others to Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and so on.  And that slowdown in growth rate is real and a continuing trend.

It’s just that the struggle to get the PRC to deal honestly with the rest of us in trade, intellectual property, and technology will not be over quickly, nor will any of us enjoy it.  But we must stay the course.

Another Venue for Private Education

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In a piece about Amazon.com’s decision to drop $700 million on retraining/educating its work force, The Wall Street Journal‘s editors closed with this forlorn hope:

And dare to dream, maybe colleges will cut their prices to compete with Amazon U.

Sad to say, it is a dream: colleges have no need to compete, and so have no interest in cutting prices, as long as the Federal and State governments keep throwing money at them.

Watch, instead, the hue and cry from the Left to develop in opposition to Amazon’s (and others—dare I hope?) schooling, just as they actively oppose existing competition in K-12, the charter and voucher schools that put to shame the public schools.