Tag Archives: regulation

The Federal Reserve Bank and Presidential Pressure

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“A string of central bankers,” the entire Precious lot of them, at last weekend’s IMF conference expressed their concerns over the independence of our Federal Reserve Bank System and the members of its Board of Governors.  They think the BoG is being unduly pressured by President Donald Trump because he demurs—enthusiastically—from the interest rate regime they’re setting.

I have to ask, though: what pressure? Trump has certainly spoken zealously and forcefully about what he thinks the Fed ought to do, but he’s made no threats.  He’s just argued.

For others to say Fed personnel feel pressured and the Fed’s independence is threatened is to insult the Fed personnel involved and further, to Congressmen—who in their aggregate are the only ones who can impact the Fed’s independence.

All a President can do is force the resignation of this or that Fed governor (following which, the Senate would have to approve any replacement).  If a Fed man feels pressured by rhetoric or by the thought of not being a Governor anymore, he either puts too much ego in having that particular job, or he’s too timid. Either of those makes him unfit for the job in the first place.

A Recognition

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At last, the racism inherent in affirmative action is starting to be recognized.

Civil rights officials at the US Education Department are requiring the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center medical school to cease factoring race into admissions decisions, putting other institutions of higher education on notice that their continued use of affirmative action policies will draw federal scrutiny.

The rest of the Texas Tech University System has already eliminated the use of racist (and sexist) affirmative action policies in its admissions process.

There’ll continue to be resistance, though, in the “academic” community.  Here’s Peter McDonough, Vice President and General Counsel for the American Council on Education

We do worry that a college or university may interpret a report of a resolution…as saying, “If you take race or ethnicity into account, you can be investigated.”

I certainly hope so.  Neither racism nor the bigotry of ethnicity preference—nor sexism—has any place in American society, much less as a selection criterion for anything.

Next up: completing this evolution by formally and explicitly ridding affirmative action of its inherent sexism.

Then, to saucer and blow this travesty, we need the Supreme Court to stop dithering, recognize that ex-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s 20 years are long expired, and eliminate all vestiges of the use of race, or sex, or ethnicity, or any other non-merit-related discriminant from affirmative action programs.

Regulating State Tax Incentives

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There Ought to be a Law was the title of an old Reader’s Digest humor column: every little pet peeve came in for a jokingly recommended law barring it.  Because More Government is always the solution.

Barton Swaim, in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, actually takes that seriously, and he wants to apply it to the idea of States and cities offering businesses tax incentives to get them to build in those jurisdictions.  He wants the Federal government to…regulate…what those State and local jurisdictions can do to entice businesses.

He’s even holding up the European Union as a paragon in this venue.

The European Union imposes significant restrictions on how much member states or regional governments can offer companies to entice them to expand or relocate.

This is the same EU, keep in mind, that is constantly trying to bully low-tax member nations to charge more and higher taxes, rather than encouraging high-tax member nations to lower and lessen theirs.

Never mind that, though.

Why couldn’t Congress impose a simplified version of this principle on state and local governments?

It’s true enough that many of those incentive deals the States and locals turn out to be lousy from the States’ and locals’ perspective.  Why, then, shouldn’t the Federal government dictate to the States and local governments what those bodies should do with their own citizens’ and residents’ money? For their own good, you see.  Besides, isn’t it the Federal government’s money, anyway, and not those citizens’ and residents’?

Be more like Europe, and be more infested with central diktats than we already are. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Because, after all, States (and the local jurisdictions within them), to paraphrase John Jay, have the same relationship to the Federal government that counties have to the States: mere political jurisdictions set up to facilitate enforcement of Federal laws.

Federal republic be damned.

Sure.

Backwards

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A 9th Circuit District Judge has said that illegal aliens claiming to seek asylum in the US cannot be sent back to Mexico to wait for their day in court.  The judge’s ruling held, in essence, that

…the administration lacked a legal basis under current law for adopting the policy. He also found the policy ran afoul of the US’ legal obligations not to remove people to a country where their lives or freedom are threatened.

This is wrong on both counts. The whole point of Executive Actions of any sort is to fill a gap in “current law” and so to accomplish something that a President determines needs doing.  The laws authorizing such things explicitly authorize a President to fill such gaps.  Certainly, a President cannot create new law; his Orders, Proclamations, and so on, must fit within the existing legal system—and, not being law, they can be undone by subsequent Presidents via the same mechanisms.

What’s required is a law that prevents this or that policy from being adopted by Executive Action, and that law does not exist.  This Federal judge is legislating from the bench, and that’s a violation of his oath of office.

The other wrong is the judge’s claim that moving purported asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait for their case to be heard is moving them to a nation where their lives or freedom are threatened.  This is simply nonsense. Mexico has offered these folks asylum in Mexico, and that nation has gone further: it’s offered them job opportunities so they can earn their way while they wait—or in the event they choose to stay.  Mexico is a far safer nation than any of the three Caravan Triangle nations whence most of these purported asylum seekers began their trek.  Indeed, the judge’s ruling on this aspect misreads the law.  Claimants must make their claims on the basis of the country they’re leaving, not the country from which they originated.  That’s Mexico, not Honduras, or El Salvador, or Guatemala.

There’s one other factor here, too.  These folks should have no case when their claims do come up in court.  They can’t possibly be seeking asylum when they’ve already been offered precisely that from the nation they’re trying to leave to enter the US, and rejected it.

Protection

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Facebook’s MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg wants the Federal government to regulate the industry in which Facebook plays such a significant role. As cited by The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg claims that

such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.

He closed his op-ed, originally published in WaPo and the Irish news outlet Independent with this gem:

People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves….

People shouldn’t have to rely on Government to dictate to private enterprise, and those enterprises’ leaders and managers need not be told what to do by the men of Government.  It’s entirely appropriate for people to expect “individual companies” to behave honestly and honorably—to address these issues to customers’ satisfaction without Government involvement.  After all, the managers of those companies are grown, adult human beings who clearly understand the difference between right and wrong.  And we customers clearly can withhold our custom from misbehaving businesses; we need no Government instruction for that, or Government protection from those misbehaviors.

Zuckerberg knows full well what regulations are necessary for the purpose.  Which means he knows full well the internal controls he needs to implement—wholly voluntarily and without Government intervention, or even prodding—to achieve those regulatory goals.

Instructively, Zuckerberg is not alone.  Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Google honcho Sundar Pichai agree with him: they also want Government to impose “stricter privacy rules.”

In the end, though Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai aren’t interested in protecting consumers, much less their own—as Zuckerberg and Pichai have demonstrated repeatedly with Facebook’s and Google’s cavalier attitude toward customer’s privacy and control over personal data, and Cook’s willingness to work with the People’s Republic of China’s government to invade that nation’s citizen privacy in the name of government censorship.

No, all Zuckerberg (along with his fellow protectee wannbes) want is protection of their companies from competitors—even though their very size and market share afford all of that that they need.