Tag Archives: regulation

The PRC’s Economic Malaise

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Andrew Browne had some thoughts in a recent Wall Street Journal article. PRC’s Premier, Li Keqiang, wanted to do some serious revamping of the nation’s economic structure and deemphasize a massively overbuilt industrial capacity, shifting the economy more toward consumer production and consumer spending. His words—”This is not nail-clipping; it’s like taking a knife to one’s own flesh”—were reminiscent of his predecessor’s actions. Zhu Rongji eliminated 30 million jobs in an actual overhaul attempt in the ’90s.

Thirty million jobs. That sounds like a lot, but with a workforce of roughly 800 million and roughly 95% employment (because, of course), those 30 million represent just 4% of the workers overall. That’s a sharp cut, but as job cuts go during downturns, it’s not that sharp.

But even that much was too much for Li. Or rather for PRC President Xi Jinping.

[H]igh-level economic policy-making and its practical implementation, once the preserve of the State Council headed by the premier, have increasingly fallen into the hands of Communist Party committees led by President Xi Jinping.

And

…Xi’s political preoccupations: to strengthen the party…to root out challenges to the régime, and to avoid social instability that could in any way threaten the party’s hold on power. If that means delaying unpopular economic adjustments, so be it.

“The party’s hold on power:” read that as Xi’s hold on power, say I. And the people of the People’s Republic can go hang.

The Fox Investigating the Hen House Leak, Revisited

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I mentioned Fox Business News‘ reporting on the FAA’s carefully biased “outreach” plan for increasing “diversity” in its air traffic controller employee base nearly a year ago, and I concluded that brief mention with the seemingly cynical remark, “Stand by for another whitewash.”

Now, it seems the whitewash is well in hand. DoT conducted its investigation, and there’s no word on its outcome. The FAA conducted its investigation; it

concluded an internal investigation which cleared the NBCFAE and Snow of doing anything wrong. In a statement sent to members of Congress last month the FAA claimed its Office of Security and Hazardous Materials Safety (ASH) had conducted an investigation into the allegations of cheating and favoritism. The FAA claims it was a thorough investigation which reviewed relevant audio recordings and documents. The statement says, “ASH found no specific information or evidence supporting claims that Human Resources employees improperly provided an advantage to ATCS applicants affiliated with the NBCFAE….”

The NBCFAE, recall, is the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees, one of whose members, Moranda Reilly (among others),

received emails in December 2013 and a recorded message from NBCFAE officer and air traffic controller Shelton Snow.   Reilly says the emails included buzzwords that, “…would help identify us. Key words the system would pick up. It was a kind of a way for our resumes to be picked and chosen. We were told not to share this information with anybody outside NBCFAE.”

Now, in an attempted final response to a FOIA request for those and related emails pursuant to a related law suit, the FAA has filed a motion with the Federal court presiding claiming it is

unable to recover missing and “corrupted” emails….

The FAA reached its conclusion of no wrong-doing, no carefully constructed bias in its air traffic controller applicant selection, by the FAA knowing these critical data weren’t being used in its investigation.

The “missing and unrecoverable” status of that evidence seems awfully convenient.

The PRC’s Currency

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The PRC’s Premier Li Keqiang and its People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan had some words about this at last weekend’s G-20 conference.

China emerged from the weekend Group of 20 meeting with a new measure of trust from major trading partners that it won’t significantly devalue the yuan.

Zhou was quite explicit.

There is no basis for persistent [yuan] depreciation from the perspective of economic fundamentals[.]

What this means, too, is that from within its centrally managed economy, the government is defining “economic fundamentals,” and so the government also has no intention of allowing the currency to float; it’ll continue to manage that value for government purposes in every respect.

Global Warming, Again

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A guest essayist at Watts Up With That has an interesting article. Here’s the closing paragraph (as usual, RTWT):

In summary, approximately 81% of the warming in the last century may have resulted from all anthropogenic influences, as suggested by figure 4 [see the article]. This includes water vapor, CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and land use changes to the albedo and thermal mass. CO2 may account for as much as 52% to 56% of the contribution from anthropogenic drivers (See Figs. 1 & 2). Fossil fuel-CO2 represents less than 75% of anthropogenic CO2. If we were successful in completely phasing out fossil fuels over the next 100 years, we would have a reduction of 50% in average CO2 emissions. If the Earth is warming at a nominal rate of 1°C per 100 years from all influences, then we can hope, at best, for a reduction in temperature increase of 20% (0.54×0.75×0.50) or 0.20°C. That is to say, if the world were to phase out fossil fuels in the next 100 years the warming would be 0.80 degrees instead of 1.00°C! Unfortunately, eliminating fossil fuel use will probably not be successful in significantly reducing future temperature increases, even if it can be accomplished.

A whole two tenths of a Centigrade degree, out of a climatista-expected entire one Centigrade degree. Imagine that.

Don’t Let the Door

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…hit you in the fanny on the way out.

A University of Texas Dean [Fritz Steiner, Dean of the Texas School of Architecture] said Thursday he’s leaving the school to pursue a different job in large part because of the new Texas law that will allow concealed firearms in public college classrooms.

And

Steiner said he’s not anti-guns, but doesn’t want them in the halls of higher education. Texas faculty have worried allowing guns could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and frank discussions in classrooms.

Because he and his special snowflakes are zealously opposed to opposing, even merely differing, opinions, and they project their own response techniques to disagreements onto others. After all, academic freedom and frank discussions mean “do it my way” and “think like I do.” Just look at all the faculty-supported “safe spaces” and “free speech zones” Academia have sprouted all over our colleges and universities. See, also, the Melissa Clicks of academe. That Click ultimately was fired for her abuses is newsworthy only because of the unusualness of such abuses being recognized.