I'm still collecting my thoughts about President Trump's speech from the Oval Office on March 11 with regard to coronavirus. The whole point of speaking from the Oval Office is that a President gets a solemn backdrop -- like a captain on the bridge, or a King in his 'throne room.' The throne room is only rarely used for this purpose, and the rarity of course helps underline the importance of the pronouncements made in this way. On March 11th, though, Trump went off the rails. VOX has the full text: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/11/21176001/trump-coronavirus-speech-travel-ban-transcript The key conceit of the speech is that the US under Trump's wise leadership had shut the virus out on the western flank, by limiting immigration from China, and that it would now simply have to perform the same magic on our eastern flank, limiting immigration from Europe. Here's the key bit. "To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all t...
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Years ago I read a novel that took a Big Picture view of the history of England, with an especial focus on the area around Salisbury. It went VERY far back it time, and carried its story forward to the age of Margaret Thatcher. One of those novels in which you're all worked up about some character, only to turn a page and realize that character is dead and you're now reading about his grandchildren. I've forgotten the name of the novel -- or the author -- but it doesn't really matter. What does seem to me to matter is the beginning of this novel. A glacier melts. The melting causes a flood. The flood cuts a channel, cutting England off from Europe and destroying existing paths of migration. I wonder if those cave people excitedly yelled "Brexit!"
At this time of year I ask myself what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news. Here are the twelve stores that especially caught my attention and that in retrospect I recommend to yours. I'll make no effort to rank their importance against one another, so I will order them simply by month. January: Brick and mortar retail. A bankruptcy court judge offered Lambert, the man behind the chief institutional owner of Sears, another chance at avoiding the liquidation of that august institution. (Update -- Lambert would get that chance, but wouldn't make it stick. By end of year liquidation was well advanced.) February : Space exploration for profit. The Dutch organization, Mars One, entered bankruptcy. Why do I elevate that fact to the unutterable prestige suggested by putting it on this list? Because it suggests the narrowness of the line that now separates reasonable business plans from fantasy/fraud. Mars One had planned to cr...
A lot of hopes have been invested for decades now in the idea of a "Tobin tax." The idea, first formulated by Yale University economist James Tobin in 1972, is that a government can tax short-term, round trip transactions from one currency to another. That is, speculators might transfer their US dollars into UK pounds and, shortly thereafter, their pounds back into US dollars. That would be done, and is done, as a way of profiting off expected changes in the relative value of the currencies concerned: it is betting. Tobin's view was that such betting is destabilizing and it ought to be discouraged: thus the tax. Further, Tobin worked up this proposal soon after Nixon had destroyed the older Bretton Woods system. There was a great deal of concern over what would replace it, how the financial world was going to get along if every currency simply floats against any other, with no agreed up measuring/reference point. The idea seemed to die a quiet death. It was resur...
At this time of year I ask myself what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news. Here are the twelve stories, by month, that especially caught my attention and that in retrospect I recommend to yours. I'll make no effort to rank their importance against one another, so I will simply order them by month. January: Multilateral Trade Agreement. The Trans-Pacific Partnership reconstituted itself despite the US withdrawal, in an agreement announced on the 23d. This is a fine example of a broader and (for the US) an unfortunate trend. The US is locking itself out of free trade areas. To the extent free trade does work to stimulate economic productivity, the US is withdrawing from that. February: Offshore natural gas. A dispute between Cyprus and Turkey over offshore drilling rights for natural gas nearly became a war as the Turkish navy obstructed a drilling vessel. This, too, I take as a token of a broader develo...
In the US, politically conscious folk have been so absorbed of late in our own national soap operas --about the Putin-Trump relationship, about an open Supreme Court seat, about real or alleged discussions of the 25th amendment, about the political implications of the latest version of A Star is Born , about the midterm Congressional elections -- so much on our plates that we may have lost track of what is going on in the Mother Country. Some fascinating and dramatic developments are underway there, as the effectuation of the Brexit vote of 2016 comes to a head. I'll simply offer you some pertinent links today. If all goes according the schedule, Great Britain will cease to be part of the European Union in March 2019. What if you want to move some products across the Channel in April? How will this matter to you then? That remains surprisingly unsettled. The underlying idea in the minds of many of those who supported a "Leave" vote was that Britain could adopt ...
This is alarming: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/24/universities-mccarthyism-mp-demands-list-brexit-chris-heaton-harris The government of the UK is committed to the exit from a broader entity, the EU. I believe on the basis of my own limited study of the matter, that that is a rational decision. Also, it is the decision mandated by a referendum. Well and good. But ... The Guardian reports that a high ranking MP in the ruling party has sent letters to honchos in the country's universities asking them what they are teaching about the subject of Brexit and asking for a list of lecturers' names. THERE IS NO LEGITIMATE REASON FOR A GOVERNMENT TO ASK. Bryan Leiter discussed this on his blog, and drew an intriguing email from a well known political philosopher, Thom Brooks, dean of Durham Law School. Brooks wrote: Lists of courses can be readily found online and most department websites carry information about individual staff interests. The MP, Chr...
When the US was obsessing about the then-still-not-exactly President Trump and his tweets about Congressman John Lewis, I tuned it out, and tuned in instead to the politics of the Mother Country. The Bank of England's Governor Mark Carney on Jan. 15 said that the country's consumer spending has held up well since the Brexit referendum, a fact that seems to have surprised him. Consumers are "entirely looking through Brexit-related uncertainties." Stiff upper lips and all that? More important, Prime Minister May gave an important address about the direction her government will take in executing the UK's exit from the EU. There have been talk of a so-called "soft Brexit," which would presumably entail retaining many of the benefits of membership in the EU while throwing off the liabilities. The leaders of other European nations had made clear their displeasure at that idea, and there developed a consensus that it wasn't going to happen. May ackn...
I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news. Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme, and in the list below I'll spell out and boldface the theme. Yet the theme itself isn't the story. January: Collective bargaining. The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Jan. 11th about public sector unions, mandatory fees, and the economics of the free-rider problem. In the spring, after Scalia's death, it splits 4-4 on the subject. February: Economics of crude oil. Iran takes a stand-offish posture toward the efforts of other oil-producing nations to cut production, wants to get itself back to pre-sanctions levels. March: Smartphones and privacy. The face-off on iPhone encryption and the demands of the FBI go before the U.S. Congress as this month begins. Later in the month, FBI backs away, says it may have found another way. ...
The headline of this post is the title of a new book by David Buchan and Malcolm Keay. The subtitle is "Toward an Energy Union?". The general theme of the book is that the EU's reforms on energy related issues have so far been inadequate. They have been too optimistic about the consequences of market liberalization and have underestimated the costs that would be associated with cuts in emissions. The authors spend a fair amount of time on the issue of feed-in tariffs (FIT). These are the deals that member states are willing to offer alternative electricity generators, including for example homeowners who might simply have solar panels on their roof. The payments are determined by technology, and in essence by politics, so kilowatts are not treated as fungible. Though of course once it gets into the grid, a kilowatt is a kilowatt and is indifferent to where it came from. Feed-in tariffs have proven very popular. Every nation state that creates them finds that it ha...