Tag Archives: politics

Interest Rate Foolishness

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Mario Draghi, in his last act as European Central Bank MFWIC, has lowered ECB benchmark interest rates and set the central bank on a long-term campaign of bond-buying.  His…idea…is to stimulate inflation and push the inflation rate to more normal levels.

Couple things about this.  The Wall Street Journal thinks this commits Draghi’s successor to this foolishness for the long term.  Of course, it does not.  His successor can undo this business when he takes office.  The difficulty will be solely within that successor’s political courage.

The larger problem though, is this. Interest rates are inherently inflationary.  While lowering the cost of money—especially to the point of negative interest rates—encourages borrowing and spending the borrowed money, it does little to nothing to inflation.  This is the case especially for a polity as dependent on international trade—whether within the EU or with nations outside the EU—as is the EU and its member nations.

Lower interest rates devalue the euro relative to non-EU nations, which drives up the cost of importing goods and services necessary to domestic production and sales.  Domestic prices won’t rise as much, even with the increased demand represented by the spending increases encouraged the lower (domestic) cost of money.

The ECB’s pre-emptive move was aimed at insulating the eurozone’s wobbling economy from a global slowdown and trade tensions.

The move won’t work any better today than similar moves have the last several years. Just as would be optimal in the US, if the ECB wants a stable, healthy, growing economy in the EU, it needs to set its benchmark interest rates at levels historically consistent with the inflation rate that has been optimal for the EU economy, and then sit down and be quiet.

Unfortunately, European bureaucrats and politicians are even more addicted to doing something than are our own.

Especially when the best something to do is nothing.

Intransigence

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that if he’s reelected later this month, he’ll begin annexing territories in the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea.  Naturally, the Palestine Liberation Organization and its European Union apologists are in a snoot over it. An anonymously presented EU spokesperson says

The policy of settlement construction and expansion…is illegal under international law and its continuation, and actions taken in this context, undermine the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace[.]

The PLO’s Hanan Ashrawi says that

Netanyahu exposed his “real political agenda of superimposing ‘greater Israel’ on all of historical Palestine [and] carrying out an ethnic cleansing agenda.”

And so on.

Yet, this is what Palestinian intransigence, along with the steady drumbeat of the PLO’s Hamas terrorism, lately enhanced by Iran’s Hezbollah attacks from within Syria, have pushed Israel into.  The Israelis have nothing to lose with this move, and there is nothing possible to gain from continuing the past policies of failure.

Coaching

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Recall then-judge Aaron Persky, the judge who thought a college swimmer’s future well-being was more important than the fate of the unconscious girl he raped. Recall further that he thought the rape was so inconsequential that he functionally condoned it with a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of six whole months in jail—reduced to three months because of the rapist’s “good behavior” in jail.

Persky lost a subsequent recall election, held because of his coddling of the rapist.

This is, also, the same…judge…who tried to freeload off the public, tried to get them to pay the legal costs he incurred from the steady stream of frivolous lawsuits he instigated in an effort to block that recall election from happening.

Now Persky has been hired by San Jose, CA’s, Lynbrook High School to coach the school’s girls junior varsity tennis team.

The judge who thinks it’s OK to rape unconscious college girls is going to coach high school girls….

After I wrote this, the Fremont Union High School District, which oversees Lynbrook, and Lynbrook had a change of heart.

Lynbrook High School held a meeting Monday with the parents of JV and varsity girls’ tennis teams in response to the community’s concerns over Persky’s employment.

Then FUHSD fired Persky.

We believe this outcome is in the best interest of our students and school community. The District will begin the search for a new coach immediately….

This is a better outcome. It would have been best, though, had Persky never been hired into this position in the first place. The school and its female athletes never should have been jerked around like this.

But neither should Persky have been.  His attitude toward young women shouldn’t be used to justify treating him like he treats others. We should be better than that.

Regulatory Capture

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America’s automotive companies want ever stricter emissions standards.  Or so says Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund.

This, of course, is nonsense.

If car companies truly want stricter emission standards, they can do so without the cover of a government mandate.  Nothing is stopping them from setting and meeting their own stricter standards.  This is, after all, a (largely) free market economy, and it’s at the heart of a (largely) free nation.  Car companies can make their own decisions without Big Brother’s instruction.

Unless, of course, they have a different agenda.  Like, for instance, writing the regulations in a way to protect them from competition from upstart (as in impudent) companies that might have better products or better consumer appeal, or both. That’s classic regulatory capture.

Or, maybe it’s a path to writing the regulations in a way that beats the EDF climatista drum but that has little or nothing to do with producing quality, efficient, cost-effective cars that consumers actually want.

Unions for Socialism

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That’s the situation in Oregon, the new front-runner for socialism in the US, surpassing even California.

[T]he Oregon AFL-CIO wants voters to limit self-checkout kiosks in grocery stores.

The State’s Attorney General still has to sign off on the union’s ballot measure, ironically titled the Grocery Store Service and Community Protection Act, but that’s a formality in a State that favors Antifa violence over law and order and actual protection of communities.

The union claims—and it’s serious—that

self-service checkouts add “to social isolation and related negative health consequences” for shoppers.

And

…contribute to retail workers feeling devalued….

Because, the union insists, Oregon’s citizens are such snowflakes, so easily triggered.  Such infantilization of grown, adult human beings ought to be insulting to the people of Oregon, consumers and workers alike.  We’ll find out whether they’re insulted, though, from how they vote in 2020 when the measure is on the ballot.

If the good citizens of Oregon do show their tenderness by voting up the measure, we can look forward to the unions demanding sackers in stores be featherbedded.  Make-work is, after all, how the socialists keep their populations (more or less) employed.  And how the Precious find comfort.