Tag Archives: politics

The Fed’s Rule by Fiat

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Federal Reserve officials strongly signaled they will be toughening big-bank capital requirements even further than they have since the 2008 crisis, a move that will further increase pressure on the largest US banks to consider shrinking.

Fed governors Daniel Tarullo and Jerome Powell, in separate public comments Thursday, said the Fed will require eight of the largest US banks to maintain even more capital to pass the central bank’s annual “stress tests.”

Notice that they’re acting by rule and moving sharply away from their knitting, which is to concern themselves with maintaining price stability and full employment.  With this rule, they’re nakedly broadening their interference in the free market place.

Here’s Tarullo:

“Effectively this will be a significant increase in capital,” Mr Tarullo said on Bloomberg television.  He recently said in an interview that he expected big banks to have to change their size, organization, or business model in response to the Fed’s regulatory moves.

Never mind that a business’ size, organization, or business model are solely the decision of the business’ owners—private citizen shareholders—and not the interest of any government in a truly free market economy.

Here’s Powell:

“I have not reached any conclusion that a particular bank needs to be broken up or anything like that,” he said.  The point is to “raise capital requirements to the point at which it becomes a question that banks have to ask themselves.”

This is disingenuous.  When it’s government rather than owners forcing the question onto a business, it’s government dictating the answer.  Especially when using this sort of tool for the forcing.  Capital requirements and associated risk handling are solely the decision of the business’ owners—private citizen shareholders—and not the interest of any government in a truly free market economy.  Assessment of the outcomes of those decisions are solely the province of the business’ owners, customers, and a free market; they are no concern of government.

Of course these two and their fellow Fed Governors know this.  The move, though, is consonant with the Left’s general move toward ever larger government with ever larger intrusions into private affairs, driven by their ideology that Government is the answer, and where it fails the proper corrective action is to increase Government.

False Premises

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Here’s one.

The differences between China and the US over the South China Sea issue have become a matter of concern and even anxiety.  But some of the perceptions in the US and elsewhere about China’s policy and intentions in the area are misplaced.  A pressing task is to understand the facts and China’s intentions correctly so as to avoid real danger and consequences as a result of misinterpretation and miscalculation.

No, this is false.  The pressing task is to make clear to the People’s Republic of China, and to the nations rimming the South China Sea, the facts and intentions of the US.

One problem with false premises is that they contribute to timidity, in outcome if not directly.

The issues in the South China Sea revolve around territorial and maritime jurisdiction.  China believes it is doing nothing more than maintaining and defending legitimate territorial claims and maritime rights.

And they’re getting away with those illegitimate claims, their Nine-Dash Line-based seizure and occupation of the South China Sea, at the direct expense of those littoral nations, our friends and allies, potential friends and allies, and our credibility and very operational capability in that Sea.  That Sea that hosts shipping lanes that carry, annually, world trade worth trillions of dollars in goods and basic resources, including trillions of dollars that underlie the economies of Japan and the Philippines, as well as our own.

On Donald Trump’s San Jose Rally

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San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo had a thought.

The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with.

“At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” Liccardo said.

A typical Democrat attitude: it’s always someone else’s fault.

No, Liccardo, it was your city’s residents’ conscious decision to protest Trump’s rally—an entirely appropriate thing to do—and it was your city’s residents’ conscious decision to then turn violent and physically attack Trump supporters as they left the rally, and it was your city’s residents’ conscious decision to steal those supporters’ property and destroy it.

…Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground.

And it was your own conscious decision to hold the police back while your residents carried out their violent attacks and vandalism.

Police stood their ground at first but after about 90 minutes moved into the remaining crowd to break it up and make arrests.

This is what we can look forward to under a Clinton presidency.

Of Course She Does

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Recall the blatant dishonesty of Department of Justice lawyers.

Now Attorney General Loretta Lynch has chosen to fight District Judge Andrew Hanen’s order that her lawyers actually undergo documented ethics training—training that any pre-law pupil might undergo.

In filings Tuesday, the department said the order would “far exceed the bounds of appropriate remedies” and would cost the department millions.

Because requiring lawyers to understand the ethics of their profession is unreasonable for a DoJ lawyer.  Sure.

The Department of Justice responded in the court filing Tuesday, saying that it “emphatically” disagrees with the judge’s ruling, claiming that none of its lawyers intended to deceive.

Now Lynch is adding to the deliberate lies.  Of course her lawyers intended to deceive when they made representations to Hanen’s court that they knew were inaccurate or false.  Words are a lawyer’s stock in trade.  Lynch’s lawyers knew exactly what they were saying at the time they said those things, and they said them anyway.

The filing requests Hanen’s order be put on hold so federal lawyers can review.

No need to put Hanen’s order on hold.  It can be part of the lawyers’ ethics training plan.

In Tuesday’s filing, the DOJ estimated that the ethics training mandated would cost upwards of $7.8 million.

The convenience of the government is not relevant to whether the government’s lawyers should be sanctioned or to the nature of the sanction.  Inconvenience, in fact, is a necessary part of sanctioning.  On the other hand, to the extent this is an unreasonable cost for the government to bear, it would be entirely reasonable to require the misbehaving lawyers pay for their own training.

Compounding matters, the sanctions imposed by this Court…unjustifiably impose irreparable injury on…thousands of innocent third parties[.]

This is plain nonsense.  The only damage done thousands of innocent third parties was done by Lynch’s dishonest lawyers.  As this concerns Lynch’s beef that Hanen’s order is inappropriate, Lynch’s involvement of thousands of innocent third parties is nothing but a cynically dragged red herring.

How dare a mere judge question the Department of Justice?  Why, the nerve of that man.

Lies of the Democrats

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Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman John Podesta:

What she thought would be a convenient way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues—by using one email account for both her work related and personal emails….

Which we know to be a lie, and that was confirmed in testimony by Clinton’s senior aid Cheryl Mills was compelled to provide (compelled because she didn’t have the integrity to testify voluntarily, as Clinton’s “promise” of full disclosure and transparency pressed her to do) to Judicial Watch:

Mills also testified under oath that the server existed before Clinton became secretary of state in 2009.

“President Clinton had established a server for the purposes of his own staff office, and…her email was subsequently put on that,” Mills said….

Podesta also had this on behalf of Clinton:

She believed she was following the practices of other Secretaries and senior officials.

That was another lie:

The IG report released last week found Clinton did not seek permission to use her personal account for official business as secretary of state—and would not have been approved to do so had she asked.

And

[T]he report stated that Condoleezza Rice did not use personal email for government business.  It said Colin Powell used personal email to connect with people outside the department—but he did not have a private server.

And here’s another lie:

Had Secretary Clinton known of any concerns about her email setup at the time, she would have taken steps to address them[.]

However,

The IG report also found that repeated warnings about cybersecurity were ignored and that staffers who expressed their concerns were told “never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”

And this [emphasis added]:

Clinton consistently has claimed nothing she sent or received was marked classified at the time. While technically correct, this distinction also appears misleading.  A January 2009 non-disclosure agreement signed by Clinton confirms her understanding that “classified information is marked or unmarked.”

Rather, it is the content and source that determine classification.

Elections have consequences.