Portland’s rioters were at it again Sunday, this time tearing down statues of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and smashing windows. And this:
One person could be heard saying, “F— all you colonizers. Every one of you that’s against Black Lives Matter can f— the f— off.”
This is the same BLM that Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden refuses to condemn, or even to gently criticize.
Keep it in mind as you vote.
Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commissioner for Trade, is demanding that we remove our WTO-sanctioned punitive tariffs on EU products, or he’ll start a trade/tariff war with us.
He isn’t even trying to be serious about trade. Leave aside the fact that the current tariffs have been explicitly approved by the WTO, and Dombrovskis’ own duplicity:
Of course, if the US is not withdrawing their tariffs we have no choice but to then introduce our tariffs[.]
Because it’s entirely appropriate for the EU to retaliate against WTO-approved punitive tariffs.
Consider, instead, the larger picture.
Trump has offered the EU, on more than one occasion, a completely tariff-free trade regime. The EU has refused even to discuss the matter.
Dombrovskis has this bit of cynicism, too:
But in any case, we will be engaging…and trying to bring the US administration back within the framework of multilateralism[.]
He—and the EU government for which he works—refuse the multilateralism of that no-tariff trade regime we’ve offered to the EU and each of its multilateral constituent member nations for which the EU governance speaks.
Here’s some science—the Great Barrington Declaration.
James Freeman, in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal column, opened with this:
This week dozens of esteemed medical experts with blue-chip academic credentials published a warning about the destructive policies adopted to address Covid-19. Since the Sunday publication of this Great Barrington Declaration more than a thousand biological scientists and more than 1,500 medical practitioners have added their names to the petition. Yet it’s been almost entirely ignored by the media outlets that spend much of their days presenting themselves as obedient to science.
The declaration says this, in part:
Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and deteriorating mental health—leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.
The declaration closes with its recommendation for how we should deal with the virus [emphasis added].
Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. …
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish….
Of course the Great Barrington Declaration and its Focused Protection proposal have been ignored by the media outlets. They’re also being ignored by Progressive-Democrats everywhere from Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer on down.
The Great Barrington Declaration is the wrong science to follow; it’s too politically inconvenient to settled narrative.
Here’s an interesting graph, produced by Oren Cass in American Affairs:
These are current dollars relative to current wages. Thus, the $13k total cost in 1985 was covered by a then-average $440 weekly wage, and the $54k total cost in 2018 was covered by that year’s $1,000 weekly wage.
Here are the underlying cost and wage data:
Notice which two costs ran up the hardest. Here’s a hint: health care exploded by a factor of 8; even college rose only by a factor of roughly 5; the others increased less than 3 times.
H/t Conrad Hackett, who has a colorized version of the graph.
Economic business risks, that is.
Companies in the US and Europe are buying back bonds to reduce the cash piles they built up earlier this year, signaling expectations for more stable economic times ahead.
…
“The world still isn’t perfect, but there’s more visibility. A lot of companies who have overfunded, they sat there after a few months and said we don’t actually need all of this money,” said Frazer Ross, a regional head for Deutsche Bank’s investment-grade debt syndicate. “It’s like they took out an insurance policy, but now it’s too costly.”
Shrinking their cash cushion exposes those companies to downturn risk or market—loss of customers—risk in the near term, but debt always is more expensive than no debt. Reducing their debt strengthens companies in the middle- and longer-term, both from reduced cost outlays in the form of interest (and principle) payments and by strengthening those companies’ credit ratings in the event they need to borrow against a later market or business downturn or to acquire capital for increased R&D or capital refurbishment or expansion.
In general, increasing short-term risk—according to deliberate planning—in favor of reducing longer-term risk is a good move.
These guys obviously are seeing the light beyond the end of the tunnel.