Monthly Archives: August 2017

The path to Venezuela on a planetary scale

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A very interesting article well worth the read – Dilbert Cartoon on Climate Change Prompts Rebuttal from Yale – but it was these comments that caught my eye. It begins with this.

Never forget what a sixties SDS radical once said: “The issue is NEVER the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” In other words, the cause of a political action – whether civil rights or women’s rights – is never the real cause; women, blacks and other “victims” are only instruments in the larger cause, which is power. Exact same situation with “climate change.” The goal is to smash Western Christian capitalist civilization and liberty. Just look at the “advanced” atheist-collectivist model in China, where you can barely see your hand in front of your face due to pollution in some cities. They don’t give a crap about “the people” OR the climate. The collectivist masterminds just want iron, totalitarian state control.

There is then this question.

I don’t think there’s any political conspiracy behind mainstream climate science. Who are these “collectivist masterminds” that you refer to in this comment?

And this is the reply.

Here are just two examples: Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC’s fourth summary report released in 2007 candidly expressed the priority. Speaking in 2010, he advised, “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
Or, as U.N. climate chief Christina Figueres pointedly remarked, the true aim of the U.N.’s 2014 Paris climate conference was “to change the [capitalist] economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

Google the “Degrowth” movement. The goal is to have the entire planet (under the benevolent guidance of masterminds to whom all this does NOT apply) living in chicken coops, walking to public transportation or biking, freezing in winter, broiling in summer, defecating without toilets, strictly vegan, etc., etc. It’s all about depriving YOU of liberty and the hope of EVER accumulating any wealth. In other words, North Korea for everyone (but the masterminds). Sound familiar?

Actually Venezuela on a planetary scale but you get the point.

These are not unrelated stories

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First this: President Trump Launching Section 301 Trade Infringement Investigation: “This is only the beginning”….

During an afternoon announcement with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, President Trump announced the launch of section 301 trade investigations into China’s business practices for theft of U.S. technology and violations of U.S. intellectual property rights.

Perhaps the most overlooked portion of the remarks from President Trump happened as he sat down to sign the Presidential Memorandum authorizing the official investigation:

…This is only the beginning folks. This is only the beginning…

For approximately 30 years China has been engaged in a unidirectional trade war against the United States of America; facilitated and enabled by both Democrats and Republicans who have been purchased by multinational and corporate lobbyists to block any effort to defend our U.S. interests. The biggest victims have been U.S. middle-class workers.

And then this: NORTH KOREA’S KIM JONG UN SAYS WILL WATCH US BIT LONGER BEFORE ACTING

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un received a report from his army on its plans to strike the area around Guam and said he will watch the actions of the United States for a while longer before making a decision, the North’s official news agency said on Tuesday.

“The United States, which was the first to bring numerous strategic nuclear equipment near us, should first make the right decision and show through actions if they wish to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and prevent a dangerous military clash,” Kim was cited as saying in the report by KCNA.

The North’s leader ordered the army should always be fire-ready should he make a decision for action, the report said.

And it ain’t over yet, except perhaps for Kim.

The Economist discusses Say’s Law

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From the latest Economist: Say’s law: supply creates its own demand. Even before I have begun to read what is written, let me point out that Say didn’t invent “Say’s” Law nor did he understand it properly. And to begin with Keynes’s garbled form of words, “supply creates its own demand”, does not bode well. But at least the title in the magazine itself, “Glutology”, gives me some small hope. So now onto the article.
_______

Good but not great. Getting there but not there yet. And without any doubt, the author has read my books and articles, as how could they not have been consulted since I am the only one who has been writing in defence of Say’s Law for these past 30-40 years or so. Sowell and Hutt in the 1970s and not much since. This, then, is the bit that I thought took the issue forward and out of the dreary Keynesian depths such discussions have usually been mired in.

To grasp Say’s point requires two intellectual jumps. The first is to see past money, which can obscure what is really going on in an economy. The second is to jump from micro to macro, from a worm’s eye view of individual plants and specific customers to a panoramic view of the economy as a whole.

These are both such fixed points of classical theory that without them there is a great deal that cannot be understood, with Say’s Law almost the least of it. Classical economics brings money only after the real relationships have been understood. It does absolutely bring in money, which has an enormous power to distort all economic relationships, but money comes in only at the end. Second, Say’s Law is about macroeconomics only. There is always lots of monetary purchasing power sloshing around unrelated to value adding activity so to get to the basic idea you cannot introduce money until you see what is happening beneath. It thus says that the aggregate demand for output is determined by the aggregate supply of output.

Now let me get into explaining what goes wrong after that.

First, in the very next para the author brings in money and, moreover, does so within a microeconomic setting, instantaneously breaking both rules!

Firms, like coal plants and cotton mills, sell their products for money. But in order to obtain that money, their customers must themselves have previously sold something of value. Thus, before they can become a source of demand, customers must themselves have been a source of supply.

There we are looking at money and in a micro setting. The thread has been completely lost.

Second, there is this which again completely misstates the point.

Today, many people scoff at Say’s law even before they have fully appreciated it. That is a pity. He was wrong to say that economy-wide shortfalls of demand do not happen.

Unless you start with the assumption that classical economists chose to ignore the frequent and devastating occurrence of recessions, it is absurd to think they equated the existence of recession with a deficiency of demand as we now do. That is specifically what Say’s Law was meant to deny. The best short statement on Say’s Law is from David Ricardo in a letter to Malthus in 1820: “men err in their productions, there is no deficiency of demand”. There are lots of reasons for recessions, just not this one.

The odd and dismal part of all this is that classical economists understood the operation of an economy better than our moderns, who have been blinded by Keynesian theory. If you would like a succinct and very clear statement on the correct meaning of Say’s Law, let me suggest the chapter on “Supply and Demand” in J.E. Cairnes 1874 Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded. Our economies are being ruined by faulty economic theories. If you would like to know why, you should read Cairnes and then perhaps my own Say’s Law and the Keynesian Revolution: How Macroeconomic Theory Lost its Way . And let me emphasise that the subtitle really is the point.

An excess supply of economic illiteracy

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Economic illiteracy is a common fault among our political classes. Two stories off the front page of The Australian this morning. First this: NBN chief Bill Morrow asks who will by [sic] the $49bn debt. As if you have to ask:

Australians face a stark choice in how to pay for the $49 billion National Broadband Network — it will either be funded by consumers who use the network or ultimately by the taxpayer via subsidies and writedowns.

NBN chief executive Bill Morrow, writing today in The Australian, raises fundamental questions about how to pay for the federal government-owned network.

He says a “land grab’’ by retailers as they try to gain market share while the NBN is rolled out has driven down internet plan prices to a level that may not reflect the costs consumers are willing to pay in a rational market. “We need to ask whether this is a faulty commercial model where cost recovery isn’t possible or is it an over-heated retail market with a price-centric marketing strategy that needs to change?’’

It’s all Labor except that our economically challenged PM also didn’t get it when he might have done something useful when he was Minister of Communications. And to go with that we now have this: Regulation needed to keep lid on power bills: Victorian report.

A damning review of Victoria’s privatised energy market has called for the reintroduction of price regulation to drive down household power bills and put a ceiling on spiralling electricity costs.

The eight-month independent review found that, after 15 years, market deregulation had failed Victorians and led to significantly higher household power bills.

Left out is the small matter of the Hazelwood power station closure. It shouldn’t be that hard to understand the supply half of supply and demand, but apparently it is.

Desperate for bad news

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The first three articles on Lucianne.com at the moment. It’s a different world where the left, the media and #NeverTrump keep looking for something. And there will be something some day, but for these people the only good news is what is bad news to the rest of us.

Trump refuses to take
call from Venezuela’s Maduro
Washington Times, by Dave Boyer    Original Article
Posted By: LittleHoodedMonk– 8/12/2017 10:15:33 AM     Post Reply
President Trump rebuffed the offer of a phone call from the president of Venezuela late Friday night, after Mr. Trump warned that he is considering military options to address civil and political unrest in the South American country. “President Trump will gladly speak with the leader of Venezuela as soon as democracy is restored in that country,” the White House said. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro requested a phone call with Mr. Trump after Mr. Trump made a surprise statement late Friday that he’s considering unspecified military action to address what the administration is calling a “dictatorship.”
Donald Trump Wins Round
One with North Korea
Breitbart Big Government, by Joel B. Pollak    Original Article
Posted By: earlybird– 8/12/2017 10:06:22 AM     Post Reply
The mainstream media are aghast at President Donald Trump’s comments on North Korea as he promises “fire and fury” and warns that American military solutions are “locked and loaded.” The political elite, and the foreign policy establishment, oscillate between bitter scorn and sheer panic at his tactics. But one does not have to be convinced of Trump’s rhetorical genius to note that he has already re-framed the conflict in a way that is advantageous to the U.S. First, Trump has radically changed the costs of a potential conflict, for both sides. The dominant paradigm of nuclear face-offs is mutually assured destruction (MAD),
In Trump Era, U.S. Corporations
See Best Earnings in 13 Years
Breitbart Big Government, by Warner Todd Huston    Original Article
Posted By: earlybird– 8/12/2017 10:01:59 AM     Post Reply
As President Trump’s administration enters the last half of its first year, U.S. corporations are experiencing their best earnings in 13 years, a report finds. Bloomberg reports that U.S. corporate profits in the second quarter “have beaten estimates at more than three-quarters of the Standard & Poor’s 500 member companies. In every sector, at least half of the companies have surpassed or met expectations, with many also getting a boost from a sinking U.S. dollar.” “Growth was particularly strong in key regions of North America and Europe, where we grew sales greater than twice GDP, as well as throughout Asia-Pacific,” Dow Chief

World events do keep rolling along

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I wonder if any of those folks discussing North Korea have factored in NK’s development of nuclear weapons, its development of a nuclear weapons delivery systems, and the threats being made by North Korea to attack the United States or perhaps Guam or even Japan. You would not know it from this latest piece in The Oz which is representative of the lame journalism of our present day.

What does look clear is that the US will not attack first, that it is putting pressure on China to rein in its ally and that, for the first time in a while, we have an American president who intends to defend the West. To which this may be added which ought to have been clear from the start: US has been conducting back-channel talks with North Korea for months taken from the American ABC.

Despite the bombastic rhetoric exchanged between North Korean and American leaders this week, the Trump administration has been quietly engaged in back-channel diplomacy with North Korea for several months, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

The ongoing talks, which were first reported by The Associated Press, included discussions about U.S.-North Korean relations and Americans imprisoned in North Korea, the source said.

The case of American student Otto Warmbier, who died following his release from North Korea, was included in those talks.

And beyond the rest, it seems PDT would like to prevent Venezuela from becoming another Cuba, no doubt partly out of sympathy for the Venezuelans themselves, but also because of the unsavoury friendships such regimes seem to develop. But you do have to worry about just how idiotic reporting on Venezuela has been. This, just now, from our ABC:

Hugo Chavez launched a socialist revolution after he was elected in 1998, but under successor Nicolas Maduro, the oil-rich country has become a failing state.

Their ignorance is so fantastic it is truly hard to fathom.

No missile defences for Australia says the PM

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What sense is this?

Mr Turnbull rejected a push for Australia to install a missile defence shield to protect against an attack, saying he had received advice that it would not be helpful against North Korea’s long range missiles.

OK, so if the Norks find it too hard to attack Japan or Guam which do have missile defences however leaky they may be, Sydney seems pretty good as a place for them to show they really mean it. Does Malcolm never get anything important right? And then there’s this:

Opposition leader Bill Shorten said it was the “bellicose and provocative actions” of the North Korean dictatorship, and not Mr Trump’s rhetoric, which was of “big concern”.

“I and the government share the same concerns and the same views, and Australians should be reassured that on this matter of North Korea and our national security, the politics of Labor and Liberal are working absolutely together,” the Opposition Leader said.

“What we all need to do is be concentrating on encouraging North Korea to de-escalate. I think there is an important role for China to play here and of course we rely upon leadership from the United States. There are other nations which are much more affected than Australia, including of course the Republic of Korea and Japan, and neighbouring nations to North Korea.”

Good sense for a change. If they came up with a credible policy on stopping the boats, how much difference would it make who took over after the next election?

AND FURTHERMORE: This is a further follow-up at The Oz and these are the top comments which do seem to follow a single theme, possibly because the article is titled, “North Korea crisis: Trump’s ‘fury’ leaves Beijing with few options”. It is via The WSJ.

If any country has been lacking leadership on this issue, it is China. They have been letting the rabid dog get bigger and more paranoid on its border, while blaming the US for this issue. Garbage. Beijing has never fully implemented sanctions, always kept its powder dry … but now reality is slapping Xu in the face. China, you can’t keep avoiding your responsibilities forever.

Joan 1 hour ago
The most frightening part about all this is Trump is not only trying to protect the world from NK, which has been allowed to build its arsenal by previous Governments who have appeased and looked the other way, but now instead of supporting him, the media are not prepared to offer any support. They need to decide if they support western democracy or not.

@Joan – Joan, I never thought I’d see the day when the US wouldn’t support their President in a time of grave danger. Despicable.

Karl 2 hours ago
What did Obama do to stop it? Obama did nothing and he therefore allowed for N/Korea to develop and expand their nuclear program. And now is somehow Trump’s fault? How?

@Karl Becuse Trump is right wing anglo saxon: of course it’s his fault.

Massive China could have dealt with puny North Korea years ago if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to – simple as that. It is enjoying seeing the USA squirm while it expands its territorial ambitions in what is euphemistically called the “South China Sea”.

I find some solace in the fact that China finds itself in a difficult, uncomfortable position. This is all of their own making and I am pretty sure it is going to get a whole lot more uncomfortable for them as Trump ratchets up the pressure.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses North Korea as a stalking horse and plays a perfidious role.

China is 100% responsible for this situation, maybe Trump will force them to take this seriously.

Until China provides proof that they are trying to curb the sabre-rattling of tyrant Kim instead of secretly egging him on to provoke the USA, we cannot trust China in this mixed international chess game. Come on China – show us that you are truly follow your creed of “harmony”. We know you have the means to put little Kim back in his box.

50+ years of diplomacy with NK did not achieve much. They are now more dangerous then ever and if we are to believe intelligence they have the capacity (or soon) to launch nuclear attacks. The last two countries/leaders who threatened the West were Saddam Hussein/Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi/Libya. Both leaders are now dead and their countries are in chaos. The same will happen to North Korea IF they continue their path of madness. It’s interesting how our media (especially the ABC again) seems to think that Trump is the real problem, not Kim Jong-Un. Have they really not learned anything from the disaster Obama?

For a decade China did next to nothing to curb North Korea, possibly enjoying Obama’s impotence while progressing their illegal annexation of the South China Sea. Now the unintended consequences of their short term policies have come home to roost. What good will more talking do given that the diplomatic process has resulted in North Korea successfully developing the nuclear and missile technology it aspired to? That particular horse has bolted. They say that violence is the last resort of the incompetent. It therefore necessarily follows that incompetence is the province of diplomats. History is replete with examples of the fact that sanctions do not work. Prime examples of failed sanctions are the League of Nations imposing sanctions against Italy to make it pull out of Abyssinia and the US imposed sanctions on Japan following the invasion of China. North Korea joins those two in the list of epic failures. All I can say is that now maybe China WILL do something. Otherwise they are thinking too much of status money and getting as much as they can from the world and other countries.

China had played just as much a role in the predicament we’re in today, as have the other world leaders. If they had done what they were supposed to do for all these years, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.

Hey China you hold all the cards with regard to North Korea and you have done nothing, you and you alone can bring down Kim and the world knows it, so stop this little old me crap and fix it, Trump has every right to say enough is enough, as North Korea has been pulling this stunt for to long and the US patience has run out

Where did the technology and expertise come from? Stonewalling is a cultural characteristic of the Chinese and Trump is bypassing it.

Trump has changed the game by not being seen as a patsy. China now sees North Korea as a risk to its influence in the area, so is motivated to manage Kim better, but struggling to do it. All strategies have risks, but a risk averse short term strategy can lead to the highest risk outcome. Trump recognises that, and seems to be playing the threatening Bad Guy whilst Tillerson works the Good Guy in the background. Seems a lot smarter to me than the Obama appeasement and let them build their bombs strategy.

China has always supported the NK administration. There is no wsy they could have obtained nuclear missile capability without the chinese. The wall street journal is disingenous to report chinese concerns about trump rhetoric when they know he does not want war. It is also trite to say vhina is more concerned about domestic issues when they have been purposely tramping on international law in the south china sea. North korea is merely following the chinese disdain for the international community.

Seems to me that China should have taken more seriously the threat by North Korea many years ago. They had the trade and diplomatic ties to have averted Kim from this course of action but appear to have done little. Perhaps they thought that the US would continue to be led by weak apologists like Obama and the Clintons. Now China faces the prospect of a radioactive cloud after North Korea is vaporised, or more likely, a long-term US presence on its doorstep.

The Western world is very rare in human history

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Let me start with this observation by another Canadian:

“Americans and other Westerners who want their families to enjoy the blessings of life in a free society should understand that the life we’ve led since 1945 in the Western world is very rare in human history. Our children are unlikely to enjoy anything so placid, and may well spend their adult years in an ugly and savage world unless we decide that who and what we are is worth defending.” Mark Steyn

If you want to know what he means just look round you with the blinkers off. That’s why I love these open border lunatics with their smug assurances about everyone else until it happens to them. To wit: CAQ calls for tighter borders, hardline approach to asylum seekers: Coalition Avenir Québec Leader François Legault says Quebec border has become ‘virtual sieve’.

Legault said that Quebecers’ tolerance toward refugees is waning as asylum seekers head to the border in droves.

“The attitude of generosity and solidarity on behalf of Quebecers toward refugees is shaken,” he said. “And if political officials don’t change their attitude, we can expect a backlash.” . . .

“A number of Quebecers — for example, such as those who wait hours at the border to enter their own country — are shocked to see that migrants are entering in large numbers, by flouting the law, as if there is no border,” he said. . . .

A mayoral candidate in Quebec City’s autumn municipal race has also come forward with concerns similar to the CAQ’s about accommodating and accepting migrants.

While several temporary shelters have been opened in Montreal to deal with the surge of migrants crossing illegally into Canada, Québec 21 Leader Jean-François Gosselin said he won’t allow his own city to become a sanctuary city if he is elected to office.

“The crisis that Montreal is currently experiencing cannot be repeated here,” he said.

Montreal became part of the sanctuary city movement, which aims to provide undocumented people with provisions and protection, in February.

And for a bit more of the same: A Surge of Migrants Crossing Into Quebec Tests Canada’s Welcome. Meantime, you can judge the adequacy of the Canadian government by listening to its PM discuss Korea.

https://youtu.be/xkSIdKMd9vE

Feel better now?

Aren’t they afraid that Kim Jong Un also has the nuclear codes?

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How to deal with the North Korean threat is the major international issue of our time. I was happy to see The Oz feature it this morning but this is hardly going along with the intensity of the Cuban Missile Crisis which you young ones out there may not have been around for. But it unfolded over a series of days as the top international news story everywhere even though other than Castro himself, no one was threatening to send nuclear missiles towards the US other than as an abstract possibility. With NK, we are dealing with a madman who is being used by others as a means to erode American power which is the counterweight to their increasing their own, and he really does have them and he really does threaten to attack someone, somewhere and possibly very soon. But where’s the focus – online right now the top story at The Oz has become, “ABC staff warned on same-sex marriage coverage” which is surely not the priority issue with all this going on to our north. The only story related at Drudge on NK at the moment is this one from the Washington Post: With ‘fire and fury,’ Trump revives fears about his possession of nuclear codes. From which:

When President Donald Trump went off script Tuesday to deliver a startling threat to North Korea – “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” – it was as if the nation relived the most lurid themes of the 2016 campaign in one chilling moment.

Last fall, Hillary Clinton’s campaign used as one of its final weapons a TV ad featuring a longtime nuclear missile launch officer who warned against voting for Trump: “I prayed that call would never come. Self-control may be all that keeps these missiles from firing.”

Then, quick-fire, a series of clips of Trump on the stump: “I would bomb the s— out of them.” “I want to be unpredictable.” “I love war.”

“The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death,” Bruce Blair, the retired launch officer, says in the ad. “It should scare everyone.

The Democrats are useless in any of this and you will get no insight into any of it by reading the views of graduate journalists with a three-year arts degree. Moreover, a nuclear standoff is not something any political leader in the world has had any experience with. But if you are scared of Trump, you should be even more frightened by this: Obama administration knew about North Korea’s miniaturized nukes.

Tuesday’s bombshell Washington Post story that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has determined North Korea is capable of constructing miniaturized nuclear weapons that could be used as warheads for missiles – possibly ICBMs – left out a crucial fact: DIA actually concluded this in 2013. The Post also failed to mention that the Obama administration tried to downplay and discredit this report at the time. . . .

Americans need to recognize as they ponder the increasingly dangerous North Korea situation that the Obama administration not only refused to do anything about this crisis but tried to downplay and conceal intelligence from the American people and Congress on how serious it was.

The reasons why you should never elect a government of the left are near endless, but this is the sort of thing that should sit near the top of the list. But when all is said and done, the question remains, what is to be done?