Tag Archives: political economy

Another VA Failure

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An ex-Army scout and Iraq War veteran tried at two separate Veterans Administration clinics to get treatment for his PTSD. Does he actually have PTSD? I’m spring-loaded to believe so, but I don’t know. And neither does this veteran, unless he’s been previously diagnosed. The problem is that he can’t get that treatment, or even a diagnosis and so effective treatment for what medical problem he might really have.

“The VA isn’t taking new patients.” He got that at both of the Georgia clinics he tried. If you follow the link to the video he recorded, the relevant action starts at around 6:45.

The VA isn’t taking new patients. How does that work? It doesn’t work.

VA spokesman James Hutton gave out the usual VA nonsense:

VA staff should have established a full understanding of Mr Dorsey’s medical situation and determined if an appointment was available for him at another location or if he was eligible for the Choice Program and could be seen outside of VA. The message Mr Dorsey was given, as seen on the video, is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Of course the message Dorsey was given is entirely acceptable and fully tolerated by the VA. It’s still going on. Years after the VA’s mistreatment of our veterans was first exposed. Dorsey has indicated that VA Chief of Staff Rob Nabors has “reached out to him and is trying to help resolve his issue.” Great. We’ll see if Nabors, or anyone at the VA delivers. But that’s small potatoes. This sort of thing is far too widespread to be effectively handled by onesies and twosies.

It’s time to disband the VA altogether and use the VA budget as vouchers to our veterans so they can go to the doctors, clinics, and hospitals of their choice—doctors, clinics, and hospitals that actually do, you know, medical work for, umm, patients.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Free Speech

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Not directly, because this Oregon law predates Kennedy’s Obergefell ruling, but this is the inevitable outcome of his ruling on free speech.

Aaron and Melissa Klein, bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, lost in an Oregon court and have been ordered to pay $135,000 in “emotional damages” to the couple for whom they refused the baking. Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough, who found for the victimhood couple, ordered the fine, but nothing further.

However, Brad Avakian, Oregon’s Labor Commissioner and Политический Руководитель, and for whom this Administrative Judge works, overruled the omission. On hearing that the Kleins had assured Oregonians in an interview with the Family Research Council that they intended to pursue the matter, he ordered them to speak no further. He gagged them.

So much for freedom of speech in Oregon. So much for freedom of religion in Oregon. Look for this sort of thing to accelerate in the wake of Kennedy’s ruling.

People’s Republic of China’s Stock Market Drop

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The PRC’s Shanghai Composite Index, which is an index of the stocks that trade on that country’s major stock exchange, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, has fallen by some 28% in the last week. This is the second time since 2007 that this index has fallen this far (in 2007 it dropped by roughly 2/3 over the course of 13 months beginning in October 2007). In response, the PRC has decided to close the market to IPOs until the central planners in Beijing decide conditions are suitable for IPOs.

This central planning foolishness got me wondering. How big a deal is the Shanghai Stock Exchange for the PRC’s economy?

The total value of the PRC’s stock market was around $4.2 trillion in 2014, per Bloomberg Business. The PRC’s Purchasing Power Parity GDP for 2014 was around $19 trillion. Thus, the value traded in its markets was roughly 22% of GDP.

In contrast, the dollar volume on the New York Stock Exchange last Thursday (2 Jul) was some $63.5 million. Expanding that (very naively) to a trading year of 220 days during which stocks are traded out of a 365-day year (weekends and holidays, after all), the annual dollar volume for the NYSE runs to a skosh under $14 trillion. The US PPP GDP for 2014 was $17.7 trillion. The value of the NYSE’s stock trading was a bit under 80% of our GDP.

It’s certainly true that 22% of GDP or the raw value of $4.2 trillion are hefty numbers. But at only 22%, the central planners, in addition to chasing chimeras with their assumption they actually can control in any significant degree any economy, are chasing a relatively minor chimera with their IPO moves. But, then, like central planners everywhere, they think they Know Better than mere investors. Even when the Know Betters are monstrously wrong.

Europe and Greece

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Peter Müller and René Pfister have a piece up in Spiegel Online International concerning German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s handling of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and of the Greek financial crisis. Müller and Pfister’s central thesis is that Merkel has mishandled the situation, and rather apocryphally, they suggest that any resulting failure of the euro will be the fault of Merkel’s policy regarding Greece.

Müller and Pfister are operating from the false premise that, beyond Merkel’s supposed mishandling of Greece and of Greece itself, the euro is fundamentally sound.

This is false. If the euro fails, it will not be because of Merkel’s policy regarding the Greek problem (I won’t call it a crisis, since it’s that only for Greece, and not at all for the rest of the eurozone) didn’t work, or even because of Greek-eurozone mutual intransigence. Any failure of the euro will flow from its poor construction.

On what basis can anyone think that a currency cobbled together from nations with as radically differing philosophies regarding the purpose of money or the role of government in society as is extant between, say, a Greece and a Germany or a Netherlands would have any durability at all?

Europe would be far better off well into the intermediate and nearby distant future were it set up as three or four smaller currency unions, each with much more homogeneous philosophies, and those currency unions then operating within a pan-Europe free trade zone.

They Disagreed with Me!?

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“[Juncker] said we were ready to front-load EU funds at the disposal of Greece for the future and the Greek government didn’t take the offer, which convinced them that [the Greeks] weren’t interested in an agreement and it was ideological,” an MEP who was in the room told Politico after the meeting.

How dare they not immediately take our deal!? How dare they put patriotism against the wishes of their creditors!?

“He said, ‘We were so close, in fact, we were so close that it was just €60 million that we were arguing over.”

Then, Mr Juncker, why didn’t you cede the €60 million point, if it was such a trivial thing?

Even The Washington Post is looking at this with clearer eyes.