Tag Archives: politics

Cent Wise and Euro Foolish

Posted on by
Reply

Barron’s has an example, centered on Europe’s very own Wuhan Virus situation.

The EU economy shrank last year by 6.3%, according to the latest EU forecast, published on Thursday. That amounts to about €877 billion ($1.1 trillion) of lost gross domestic product last year. Or about €17 billion a week.
Compared with this, the total bill of vaccines procured until now by the EU—based on contracts signed, and vaccine prices confidential in principle but tweeted last December by the Belgian health minister—would amount to €20.5 billion.

The finally agreed vaccine bill amounts to a bare day-and-a-half over a week’s lost GDP—and how many lives.

While Barron’s writes its own price-is-no-object foolishness—When dealing with the pandemic, vaccines are quite literally priceless—the EU plainly wasted ‘way too much time, money, and lives, quibbling over relative pennies.

An outcome of the European Union’s foolishness:

20% of the UK population has already received at least a shot of one of the three [EU- and British-]approved inoculations—the Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-Oxford, and Moderna vaccines. More than 13% of Americans are in a similar situation—but barely more than 4% of Europeans[.]

What’re You Going to Do, Joe?

Posted on by
Reply

Iran has begun accumulating the immediate precursor to weapons grade uranium metal.

…report was given by UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency to its members and states Iran had on Monday produced a small amount of uranium metal, after importing new equipment into a nuclear facility that is under IAEA inspection[.]

To be sure,

The material produced was a small amount of natural uranium metal…meaning it wasn’t enriched. To use uranium metal for a nuclear weapon’s core, Iran would need around half a kilogram, or slightly more than one pound, of highly enriched uranium metal….

However. There’s always a however.

This is the big step, in difficulty right below getting uranium out of the yellow cake in the first place. Now it’s a simple, if tedious, matter of combining the uranium metal with fluorine to get a gaseous salt, and passing the gas through several centrifuge cycles to get to a weapons grade level of enrichment.

It’s your move, President Biden. Israel’s existence is in the balance. As are those of cities across Europe and the US. We’re waiting.

Another Example

Posted on by
Reply

…of the folly of doing business with companies domiciled inside the People’s Republic of China.

The particular company is Ant, a financial institution that PRC regulators lately decided its owner Jack Ma was getting too impudent regarding government actions—was getting too big for his britches—so the regulators blocked Ant from going public unless and until it massively reorganized and at least to significant extent downsized.

Now let’s back up in time a little bit.

In 2018, an exclusive group of global private-equity firms and mutual-fund managers including Silver Lake, Warburg Pincus LLC, Carlyle Group Inc, and T Rowe Price Group Inc took part in a coveted fundraising by Ant that raised $14 billion and minted the financial-technology giant as the world’s most valuable startup.
More than $10 billion of the money came from international investors, which bought shares in an offshore shell company set up by Ant to raise funds in US dollars. The unusual arrangement came about because in order to secure a payment license to operate Alipay, its highly popular mobile app, Ant had to be domiciled in mainland China. But that also limited the company’s ability to raise funds directly from foreign investors.

That’s the why. Now the what.

The global investors agreed to terms that were highly favorable to Ant, and which limited their ability to cash out if the company didn’t end up going public, according to people familiar with the matter. Ant also didn’t provide a listing time frame or guarantee investors a return while it stayed private, the people added.
The foreign investors didn’t receive any voting rights in Ant…. None was given a seat on Ant’s board.

They can’t recoup their investment; they didn’t even get a say in the governance of the company. Just “Here’s a boatload of money. Y’all have a gud time, y’hear?”

Now that was an exceedingly dumb thing for those investors, supposedly experienced in investing, in international finance, and in investing in PRC businesses, to agree. But the larger thing is demonstrated by the PRC government men’s behavior: investing in a PRC business, or investing inside the PRC, is exceedingly dumb.

A High School Debate

Posted on by
Reply

The impeachment charge against former President Donald Trump that is before the Senate is one of incitement and causing the riotous invasion of the Capital Building.

The argument led by main House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin (D, MD) is centered on Trump’s claims of election fraud. This has nothing to do with the actual charge, and the change of subject is something that any high school debater would recognize and not be suckered by.

Alan Dershowitz, who is no high school debater, but who is a tremendously successful—because he’s tremendously effective—lawyer, also recognized Raskin’s and his colleagues’ trick, and he has warned Trump’s Senate impeachment trial lawyers—who aren’t as good as a high school debater if their Tuesday afternoon performance is any indication—not to fall for that weak trick.

There are two reasons for Raskin’s move. One is that he and his fellow Progressive-Democrats think that we ordinary Americans—their real audience—are slack-jawed, drooling idiots and will fall for this shenanigan. He also thinks Trump’s lawyers are just as stupid and incompetent.

The other reason is that Raskin and his fellows know they have no case; there was nothing in Trump’s rhetoric that would have caused anyone to riot. (Raskin, et al., also are insulting the intelligence and initiative of the rioters, but that’s for another time.) Lacking a case, they’re bent on raising a smokescreen with misdirection and obfuscation.

Trump’s lawyers need to stick to the subject at hand—the actual charge in the article of impeachment—and show the foolishness of the Progressive-Democrats’ case. They must raise themselves above the cheap tricks of teenage argument.

A Clue Bat

Posted on by
Reply

…just struck. Colorado’s Progressive-Democrats want to censure their US Senator John Hickenlooper (D, CO) for the crime of voting to keep illegal aliens from receiving Wuhan Virus situation stimulus checks.

(Apparently, censure is becoming a thing as, just in the last month or so, Republicans moved to censure Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R, WY), Senator Ben Sasse (R, NE), and a brief low key effort was made to substitute censure for impeachment regarding ex-President Donald Trump.)

That’s not the item of interest here, though. The real clue to Progressive-Democrat intentions with their no-border, no-vetting, come-one-come-all immigration policy is this statement regarding censuring Hickenlooper by State Senator Julie Gonzales (D):

Usually politicians don’t slam the door shut on Latino voters so abruptly[.]

And a confirming clue:

Background below. The party platform opposes laws that make immigrants ineligible for assistance. https://t.co/kysMhSRxNi— Justin Wingerter (@JustinWingerter) February 8, 2021

Illegal aliens are immigrants—and these same illegal aliens are voters.

Be very heads up.