Tag Archives: political economy

Pulling Patriotic Products

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Harris Teeter, a supermarket chain, used to sell, among other things, products that were distinctly pro-American—things with slogans like “Give me liberty or give me death” and “America, love it or leave it.”

Then a customer complained about their presence on store shelves—they were insensitive, after all, in light of recent mass shootings. Apparently, being pro-American, being patriotic, is insensitive today. Never mind that slogans like these have been around for decades and all the way back to the runup to our Revolutionary War.

Harris Teeter promptly folded.

Thanks for reaching out. As soon as these items were brought to our attention we put a recall request into place and these items are being removed from all store locations.
We appreciate your concern[.]

Not to be outdone, another person complained to Kroger, a chain of supermarkets and department stores, about the presence on its shelves of coozies with Arms Change, Rights Don’t printed on them. Not to be outdone by Harris Teeter, Kroger promptly folded and pulled the coozies.

Harris Teeter and Kroger may think this is a sound business decision, but it’s likely they’ve badly misread their customer base. In any event, it’s certainly true that the recall is decidedly unpatriotic and amoral.

Maybe it’s time we Americans educated these two store chains about the nature of their customer base by no longer being their customers.

It’s a Weapon that should only Work Once

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Vladimir Putin is extending his murderously physical war on Ukraine into an economic war against Ukraine’s European nation supporters.

Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom PJSC throttled deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany this week….

And

Russian natural gas deliveries through a key pipeline to Europe will drop by around 40% this year, state-controlled energy giant Gazprom said Tuesday….

And

Slovakia’s state-owned gas importer SPP said it expected Thursday’s Russian gas deliveries to be reduced by about 30%, while Czech power utility CEZ said it had seen a similar fall….

And

France’s multinational utility corporation Engie said on Thursday that Russia has reduced gas shipments….

This should be a one-shot effort by Putin, and then his energy production should find no buyers outside of India and the People’s Republic of China—to which there are inadequate delivery routes for several years. The single shot aspect of this, though, requires the European nations to have courage and to move apace to find alternative sources—and there are a plethora of them. And then, Russia, which depends on exports of extractions rather than of manufactured goods would be…stuck. The Indian and PRC markets just aren’t all that.

Another Example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Racism

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This time, it’s in the housing market, via the Federal government-run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The plans released last week [by FHFA, which regulates Fannie and Freddie] might have been written by California Representative Maxine Waters (D). Central to Fannie’s plan are “Special Purpose Credit Programs” that increase access to credit and encourage “sustainable homeownership for Black consumers.”
One program would assist black borrowers with down payments. Most home-buyers are required to put down at least 20% of the cost of a new home to reduce the risks of default. Fannie’s plan would effectively require taxpayers to subsidize down payments for black borrowers.

It goes downhill from there.

Once again, Party explicitly favors one group of Americans while explicitly disfavoring another group of Americans—solely on the basis of race.

The Putin Producer Price Inflation

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More evidence of President Joe Biden’s (D) fantasy of a time travel weapon possessed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This time, the evidence is the Producer Price Index, as published by the US Labor Department and printed by The Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ‘s graph is constructed from data released by Labor. The monthly data in the graph are hard to read, but the WSJ‘s rendition allows mouse-over readings. What those readings illustrate is instructive.

In January 2021, when Biden took office, the year-on-year PPI was 1.6%. By the next month, it had risen to 3%. A year later, January 2022, the PPI had gone to 10.1% year-on-year. In February 2022—Putin didn’t invade Ukraine until the end of that month—the PPI was 10.4%. By May it was 10.8%.

My third-grade arithmetic says that fully 96% of the PPI’s increase had occurred before Putin’s invasion.

Plainly, for Biden’s blame-shifting assertions to be true, he has to be, once again, insisting that Putin’s regime has succeeded in developing time travel and is using it to wage economic war against us while he wages murderously killing war against Ukraine.

Oh, and one more thing. Given the lags inherent in economic forces as they move through a real-world economy, these producer-level data essentially baked in even the consumer inflation outcomes following Putin’s invasion. That shows even more clearly how fantastical Biden’s assertions are.

An Incoherent Biden Diktat

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It’s in the offing. This time, President Joe Biden is threatening to inflict his “emergency powers” on American oil producing companies if they don’t produce more oil.

President Biden may resort to using emergency powers if American oil companies don’t increase output at their refineries, the president told oil CEOs in a series of letters Wednesday.
Biden’s statement blames oil companies for running “historically high profit margins” even as Americans experience surging gas prices.

Never mind that they cannot just turn on the faucet and more oil comes out of the tap. It takes lots of money and quite a bit of time to reopen capped wells, and it takes even more money and lots of time to drill a new, producing well.

But Biden’s administration stands in the way of all of that, even as he threatens his diktat. His administration has already canceled large leases in Alaska. His administration has closed most Federal lands to further exploration, much less drilling. His administration is slow-walking new lease applications. His administration is slow-walking the permits needed actually to explore, and then the permits needed actually to drill, once a lease is approved.

His administration has closed major pipelines and is slow-walking construction of other pipelines so that even were a new well drilled or an existing one uncapped, the producers would have no way to deliver output to a refiner.

Given all of that, and with existing refiners already operating at near capacity, there’s no reason to open/build new refineries—they’d have no additional oil to refine.

Beyond that, there’s the matter of trust. Beyond the time and money it takes to (re)open a well, it takes more time—years—for those costs to be recouped and profit begun to be received from the proceeds of that well. Biden’s administration, though, cannot be trusted not to pull the rug out from under those oil companies and demand wells’ or pipelines’ closure once the current—Biden-created—gas price abates.

And this: oil companies’ “historically high profit margins” exist in part (not entirely) because they’re limited in where they can commit their revenues. They can’t spend them on exploration, drilling, producing, transporting, after all because of those Biden administration policies above.

Biden isn’t alone in this incoherence, though—this is typical of his Progressive-Democrat Cabinet and of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who dominate both houses of Congress. Nor is the incoherence limited to oil: there’s the environment and Party’s separate global warming mantra. See, too, our southern border, Party’s immigration “policy,” Biden’s foreign policy, defense attitude, and on and on.