Tag Archives: political economy

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.

A Thought on Huawei

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John Hemmings made some interesting and critical points about the “security” (my metaphoric quotes) of Huawei equipment.  In doing so, he cited a study by Finite State, a cyber-security organization that looks deeply into the Internet of Things and resulting vulnerabilities—an IoT of which Huawei is aiming to be a central part (as well as a central part of national communications and defense systems and of governments).  Finite State’s analysis investigated “more than 1.5 million files embedded in 9,936 firmware images supporting 558 different products within [Huawei’s] enterprise networking product lines.”

Hemmings’ points center on these:

  • In virtually all categories we studied, we found Huawei devices to be less secure than comparable devices from other vendors.
  • On average, Huawei devices had 102 known vulnerabilities inside their firmware, primarily due to the use of vulnerable open-source and third-party components.
  • Out of all the firmware images analyzed, 55% had at least one potential backdoor.
  • On dozens of occasions, Huawei engineers disguised known unsafe functions (such as memcpy) as the “safe” version (memcpy_s) by creating wrapper functions with the “safe” name but none of the safety checks.
  • Across 356 firmware images, there are several million calls into unsafe functions. Huawei engineers choose the “safe” option of these functions less than 17% of the time, despite the fact that these functions improve security and have existed for over a decade.
  • Huawei devices had…2-8x more potential 0-day vulnerabilities than the other devices.
  • Vulnerabilities in both the routers and the fixed access network remained beyond 2012 and were also present in Vodafone’s businesses in the U.K., Germany, Spain and Portugal.

Those vulnerabilities? Given how enthusiastically Huawei’s representatives tout the superiority of their equipment, and given that fourth bullet, I suggest that those vulnerabilities also are known to Huawei’s men and put there deliberately.

And that last bullet: Vodafone had identified those “vulnerabilities” to Huawei in 2011 and received assurances from Huawei that they’d be removed.  Those security holes remained far past 2012.  And still remain as far as I can tell.

This is why Huawei has no legitimate place in any organization outside of the People’s Republic of China, nor should it have access to any technology of any nation or business outside of the PRC.

But Huawei’s CEO, Ren Zhengfei, and CFO, Meng Wanzhou, and men of the PRC’s government, like President Xi Jinping, deny all of this. And Ren is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men.

A Continued Power Grab

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The People’s Republic of China objects to the sale of defensive weapons to the Republic of China.

China will sanction US firms that participate in arms sales to Taiwan [The Wall Street Journal‘s conflation of the island with the nation that sits on the island], after Washington approved sales of $2.2 billion in tanks, missiles and related military hardware, Beijing said.

The PRC’s Foreign Ministry has justified the threat with this:

the arms sales “harmed China’s sovereignty and national security”

Of course, it does no harm to the PRC’ sovereignty to sell weapons to a sovereign nation.  Of course it does no harm to the PRC’s national security to sell defensive weapons to a sovereign nation that’s so much smaller than the PRC.

All the sale does is increase a sovereign nation’s ability to defend itself against the aggression, the threats of invasion, which the PRC has so repeatedly leveled against that sovereign nation.  If the PRC has no such aggressive intent, it has nothing to fear from the sale.

The PRC’s moves would be nonsensical, did they not amount to such a cynical and naked and continued grab for power.