Streetwise Professor

I have no need to demonstrate my anti-Putin bona fides, but I just roll my eyes at the hysterical response to his intervention in Syria, and today’s launch of Russian bombing operations.  There is much shrieking about the fact that the Russians say they are bombing Isis, but in fact launched a raid on Homs where Isis was not present.

The Russian response is, basically: “Hey, they all look alike to us.” There is much truth to that.

This is not that complicated:

1. Russia is intervening to save Assad from imminent defeat, and to protect its ports in Syria.
2. Isis is not the most immediate threat to either Assad or the Russian facilities.
3. Therefore, Russia will focus on non-Isis targets, while claiming to be fighting Isis.

This is really not that much different than the Turks using Isis as a pretext to attack their real enemy, the PKK.

Yes, this campaign will help Assad, and Assad is an evil bastard. But the Islamists that are dominating the anti-Assad forces are evil bastards too. Many are Al Qaeda offshoots, and others are indistinguishable from Al Qaeda in their ideology and agenda. Or from Isis, for that matter. They are Sunni supremacist Islamists. And wouldn’t you know, we are fighting Sunni supremacist Islamists around the world, and have been for going on 15 years.

There are no good guys in Syria. Stop pretending there are: there is considerable reason to doubt there ever were. And any differences between Isis and the non-Isis Islamists the Russians are bombing are trivial. They do all pretty much look (and act) alike. And what’s more, pretty much everyone in the West looks the same to them: they all think your head would look just splendid mounted on a spike in the front yard.

And yes, Assad’s forces will slaughter his foes if they win. But Assad’s foes will slaughter Assad’s supporters if they win. Syria is a charnel house being fought over by demons.  There is a symmetry of evil.

It is particularly rich that those who are shrieking about Russian involvement say that it will radicalize Sunnis.

Um, where are these people been? Since like 700AD, let alone since 2001 or 2011? Radicalization is a done deal, and the most that the Russians can do is gild that lily.

Moreover, I actually find myself agreeing with some in the administration here. If you truly believe that Syria is a pointless slaughter that we should avoid at all costs (and I believe that is the case today), why would you oppose Putin jumping in? The administration believes (rightly) that we have no current military options that would generate results that even remotely justify the costs: the military realities are exactly the same for Putin. Yes, he will likely secure a rump Syria with its shambolic Russian port facilities (which is more than we could gain). But his airpower is going to be no more decisive than ours, and he is putting himself at risk of getting sucked in more deeply in ways that will cost him blood and treasure that he can’t afford.

As I said before: don’t interrupt an enemy while he is making a mistake.

As for the US, Russian involvement is leading some to advocate getting more heavily involved ourselves. Another military adage is: don’t reinforce failure. Failure is the charitable way of describing US policy in Syria. Don’t reinforce it. Let it go. It’s past our ability to save, or even palliate. It’s done. Both sides.

Let Putin find out the hard way.

Following the commodities markets today was like drinking from a fire hose. Many big stories, with “up” and “down” being the operative words. Alcoa split up. Shell announcing that it was giving up on its Arctic plans after its controversial test well failed to find commercially viable reserves. Oil price down around 3 percent, etc.

But the biggest news items were Glencore’s continuing downward spiral, and ESMA’s release of its technical recommendations for application of MiFID to non-financial firms, including commodity firms.

Glencore’s stock was down hard at the open, and at one point was down 31 percent. It’s CDS are now trading up-front (always a bad sign), and the spread widened from an already big 550 bp to 757 bp. At conventional recovery rates, this gives a (risk neutralized) probability of default of better than 50 percent. The Biggest Loser was Glencore’s CEO, Ivan Glasenberg, AKA, Ex-Glencore Billionaire.

The CDS are now trading wider than when Glencore had it s last near-death experience at the height of the financial crisis. Arguably the firm’s situation is worse now. It cannot attribute its woes to stressed financial market conditions generally, in which pretty much everyone saw spreads blow out to one degree or another. This is unique to it and the mining sector. It is a verdict on the firm/sector.

Moreover, in 2008 the firm was private, and Glasenberg and the other owners were able to stanch the bleeding by injecting additional capital into the firm. The ominous thing for Ivan et al now is that they tried that again a couple of weeks ago (along with announcing other measures to reduce debt and conserve cash) and it only bought a temporary respite before the blood started gushing again.

Moreover-and this is crucial-Glencore 2015 is a very different creature than Glencore 2008. It was more of a pure trader then: it is a mining firm with a big trading arm now. This means that its exposure to flat prices (of coal and copper in particular) is much bigger now. In fact, most commodity firms saw little drop off in profits in 2008-2009, and several saw profits increase. The fundamentals facing trading firms in 2008-2009 were not nearly as bad as the fundamentals facing mining firms today. That’s because their flat price exposures weren’t large, and margins and volumes (which drive trading profits) are not as sensitive to macro conditions as flat prices. Given the lack of any prospects for a rebound in flat prices, Glencore’s prospects for a recovery are muted.

Some tout Glasenberg et al’s trading acumen. But it is one thing to be able to sniff out arbs/relative mispricings and structure clever trades to exploit them. (Or to hold one’s nose while doing deals with dodgy regimes around the world.) It is something altogether different to predict where prices are going to go. Glencore made a bet on China, and now that bet is not looking good. At all.

In a nutshell, this is pretty much out of Glencore’s hands. It is along for the ride.

The irony here is that Glasenberg sold the Xstrata merger and the new business model as a way of using the less cyclical profitability of the trading venture as a way of dampening the cyclicality of the mining operation. As it is developing, an extremely adverse cyclical downturn in the mining operation is impairing the viability of the trading operation. How the trading operation can flourish within a financially distressed corporation is an open question. Maybe the company will have to pull an Alcoa, and separate the trading from the mining operations, to keep the latter from dragging down the former.

A key takeaway here relates to the other story I mentioned: ESMA’s release of its recommendations regarding the application of MiFID to non-financials. The objective is to mitigate systemic risk. I was always skeptical that commodity traders posed any such risk (and have been making that argument for 3+ years), and so far the Glencore meltdown is supporting that skepticism. There has been no evidence of spillovers/contagion from Glencore to financial institutions, or to the broader market, a la Lehman.

But ESMA has proposed Technical Standards that would impose the full panoply of CRD-IV capital requirements on commodity traders (and other non-financial firms) that cannot avail themselves of an exemption (on which I will say more momentarily).

As the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (“MiFID II”) slouches towards its destiny in Brussels, one of the last items on the agenda is capital requirements for commodity traders. It appears that the entity responsible for providing technical advice to the European Commission, European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”–my God when it comes to acronyms the US military has nothing on the EU) is like the proverbial poor carpenter who owns only a hammer, so that everything looks like a nail. Or in ESMA’s case, that every firm that intermediates looks like a bank, and must be regulated accordingly, including through capital requirements. Thus, firms that serve as intermediaries in physical commodities are likely to be subject to the same type of capital requirements as firms that engage in financial intermediation, like banks, and be forced to hold a higher proportion of equity in their capital structures than they currently do.

This raises the question: what “market failure” (to use a shorthand that I dislike but which gets at the basic idea) justifies the regulation of the capital structures of firms?

One can make the case for banks and some other financial intermediaries. Banks have fragile capital structures because they engage in liquidity and maturity transformations that make them vulnerable to runs. Runs on a particular institution can impose costs on other institutions, and the resulting financial crises can have devastating effects on the broader economy. The effects on the broader economy occur because financially impaired banks cannot produce their most valuable output, credit, and contractions of credit can cause a broad downturn. Banks don’t internalize these effects, and thus may choose capital structures that are too fragile. Capital requirements can ameliorate this externality.

Commodity trading firms intermediate, but they are totally different than banks. I set out the reasons in detail in this white paper (sponsored by Trafigura*-with bonus video!). A few of the key points. Commodity trading firms (“CTFs”-hey, I can play the acronym game too!) aren’t too big to fail because they aren’t that big, by comparison to banks in particular. More importantly, they don’t have fragile capital structures because although CTFs transform commodities in space, time, and form, they don’t engage in financial transformations in maturity or liquidity like banks do. They aren’t even that highly leveraged, in comparison to European banks in particular. Further, whereas a bank can’t produce its main product (credit) if it is financially distressed, the human and physical assets of a commodity trading firm can continue to transform commodities even if the firm is financially distressed: it can operate under insolvency protection or its assets can be spun off to another firm.

This is not to say commodity trading firms can’t go bust. They can: we might see that in a big way if Glencore’s travails worsen. It is to say the fallout will be limited to their creditors and shareholders, and will not be the catalyst for a financial crisis.

Consequently, there is no justification for regulating the capital structures of these entities. But Europe, in its wisdom, apparently thinks otherwise.

The numbers are big. Based on public data from 2010-2012 for five big European energy companies with trading arms alone, I estimate that the additional equity required is in the vicinity of $120 billion with a “b”. Smaller entities will take smaller hits, but it will add up and probably put the final number in the $150 billion-$200 billion range. Some Swiss entities won’t be hit directly on their main trading businesses, but they have derivatives affiliates in the UK that will be. They might decide that the weather is better elsewhere.

The big driver in the number is the Operational Risk category, which is based off 15 percent of revenues averaged over the last three years. This number is big for commodity traders because they buy and sell a lot, which generates revenues that typically dwarf their incomes (because margins are on the order of 1-2 percent).

Operational risk is a catch-all category that encompasses things other than price and credit risks, such as rogue trader risk (of which there was an example just this week), a systems failure that results in a loss, etc. Yes bigger firms with bigger revenues are likely to have bigger operational losses, but these risks don’t scale with commodity firm revenues.

I have been told that there is whispering in Brussels against these numbers, because they are based on revenues derived when oil was north of $100/bbl. At lower prices, the operational risk charge will be smaller.

Thanks for proving my point, you whisperers! Please speak up, so everyone can hear!

Operational risks are more related to the scale of the physical business (e.g., the number of barrels traded)  which is much more stable than the price of oil. So a revenue-based operational risk charge expands and contracts like an accordion with the price of commodities, but the operational risk that the charge is supposed to absorb doesn’t fluctuate nearly so much. Given the costs of increasing equity, it is likely that firms will hold equity based on high commodity price-based revenues, leading to equity capitalization that is excessive in most environments. (Well, since the regulation generates no meaningful benefits, any requirement is excessive, but it will be extremely excessive given the way it is set up.)

You might say: “Who cares?” After all, in a Modigliani-Miller world, capital structure is irrelevant. Requiring firms to issue more equity and less debt doesn’t impose costs.

Yes. In a Modigliani-Miller world, which, like the Coase world, points out the things that must be true for the irrelevance result to hold. A theoretical world, in other words, not the real world we live in.

Firms care about capital structure because in a world with economic frictions capital structure can generate or destroy value. Imposing a capital structure that firms would not freely choose therefore imposes costs.

Firms affected by the new regs will adjust on many margins. Some will decamp from Europe, for other locales like Singapore. Others who cannot be so footloose will restructure their businesses to mitigate the impact. For instance, they might try to restructure to ring fence the trading activities that are subject to MiFID. Their ability to do so will depend on whether the Commission makes physical forwards subject to the regulation. Again, since these firms did not choose these locations or structures in the absence of the regulation, these changes will involve an increase in cost and a destruction in value, with no corresponding benefit that offsets this cost even  in part.

Privately held firms may face the biggest conundrum. There is a good reason for private ownership: it aligns the incentives of owners and managers because the managers are the owners. This is a more feasible option for commodity firms than large entities in other industries because commodity price risks can be laid off to the broader financial market using derivatives hedges. The downside of private ownership is that it limits access to public capital markets for equity funding. Clever financing policies (e.g., the issuance of very long term debt that provides long term funding without a loss of control) can finesse this problem, but requiring a big boost in equity would likely force firms either to contract their balance sheets and reduce their size (again, creating an economic cost because these firms will be artificially small), or go public, and incur increased agency costs (because of a poorer alignment of incentives).

In brief, application of bank-like capital requirements on commodity traders would be all pain, no gain. The efficiency of commodity intermediation would decline. This will harm producers (who get lower prices) and consumers (who pay higher prices) because middlemen’s margins must rise to cover the higher costs caused by the burdensome regulation of their capital structures. This will not be offset by any reduction in systemic risk.

There’s an early post-WWII SciFi novel titled Day of the Triffids, in which a plague of blindness leads to the rise of an aggressive species of plant. Well, MiFID rhymes with triffid, and Day of the MiFID would be a candidate for a sequel. Why? Because blindness about the realities of commodity trading is allowing an aggressive variety of plant (Brussels bureaucrats-believe me, the metaphor fits!) to wreak havoc on the poor folk who trade, produce, and consume commodities.

Well played, Europe! Well played!

* For those whose intellect cannot conceive of any other reason than personal gain to explain an individual’s opinion, do remember that I arrived at most of the conclusions contained in the white paper when I was retained to analyze the systemic risk of commodity traders by a bank trade association that very much wanted me to conclude the opposite, and who therefore spiked the study. But the truth gets out eventually.

This should be a very winnable year for the Republicans. Hillary has more baggage than the hold of the Titanic, and her campaign is careening towards many icebergs to boot: the email fiasco in particular metastasizes daily, with her spokes-drones daily cast in the role of Nixon’s Ron Ziegler, intoning that one previous explanation after another is no longer operative. Waiting in the wings are a socialist loon, Bernie Sanders, and a hair-plugged political lifer loon, Slow Joe Biden. Nominating a non-insane person would result in a near shoeshoo-in for the Republicans.

But that would be too easy. There is a group of single issue ideologues, mainly social conservatives, whose insistence on ideological purity could doom us to further years of a Democrat in the White House. The glee of these people at the resignation of John Boehner as Speaker of the House illustrates the mindset, and the problem. These are people the Republicans can’t win without (because they tend to stay at home with their panties in a bunch if they don’t get their way) but can’t win with (because they alienate people who might be inclined to favor Republicans on other issues, such as fiscal matters, defense, taxes, immigration, and Obamacare).

I am hardly a Boehner enthusiast (or a McConnell one either). He has been uninspiring, and Obama has outmaneuvered him time and again. But I recognize that Boehner is in a difficult position, especially given the media imbalance between Democrats (and the Obama administration especially) and Republicans. But that too is symptomatic of the baleful effects of social conservatives: they provide an unending stream of bulletin board material for the media. If those who have rebelled against Boehner get their wish, and have one of their own supplant him in the leadership, the media-and Obama, and Hillary-will get their wish too.

Think about that. Right now Obama and the rest of the Democrats are probably buying popcorn by the gross to munch while watching the Republicans commit ritual suicide. They probably can’t believe their luck in the draw of political enemies.

Politics is the art of the possible. Consider the example of Lincoln, much reviled in his time, and revealingly much reviled today by many of those who were baying for Boehner’s scalp. The radicals and the ultras were scathing in their criticism of Lincoln for his temporizing on the issues of slavery, and eventually Reconstruction. But if Lincoln had run on the Radical Republican platform in 1864, he would have not been re-elected, and the South would likely have prevailed in seceding, or negotiated a return to the Union on terms that preserved slavery: either way, the slavery that the Radicals so hated would have endured. If  he had run on an avowedly abolitionist platform in 1860, he would not have been elected, and again, the result would have been years of continued bondage.

Lincoln attempted to keep together a fractious coalition in a period of unequaled political stress. He made compromises that drove the radicals wild. But their preferred path was impossible. Indulging them would have driven the bulk of the country into the arms of the reactionaries. The abolitionist/radical nightmare would have continued unabated had they won the internecine Republican  civil war within  a Civil War.

That’s the way it is in a democracy, and in any political system, really. The electorate is a constraint. The tension of leadership is to lead-that is, not merely to capitulate to popular whims-while not getting so far out in front that the electorate rejects you.

The vast bulk of the electorate is not about to join the socialcons in a kamikaze charge, especially on social issues like abortion or even immigration. But by insisting on ideological purity on these issues, these people will empower the left, which will move the country further away from the socialcons’ desired state of affairs, not closer.

To invoke Lincoln’s Civil War antagonist, Jefferson Davis, who said that the Confederacy’s epitaph should be “Died of a Theory”: the ideological and theological theories being advanced by the Rigid Right will will kill any Republican chances at the presidency in 2016, and likely beyond.

The beyond part is realistic, and particularly disturbing. It is realistic because there are many examples of ideological purists putting their dominance of a party and forcing its adherence to their ideology over electoral success. You have to look no further for an example than the UK, where in the aftermath of a stunning electoral defeat, the Labour Party decided not to understand and accommodate the majority. Instead, it indulged its inner Bolshevik, and elected as leader a hardcore leftist (Jeremy Corbyn) who would have been extreme in the 20s, or the pre-Thatcher 70s. Those who are left can take smug comfort in their purity, and are indeed reveling in their intra-party triumph, but shouldn’t be planning on moving into 10 Downing Street anytime soon.

Those who are pushing Trump (though it is beyond me how any social conservative could seriously consider him a fellow traveler), or Cruz, or Huckabee, and who will sit out the election if a Rubio, Fiorina, or Bush are nominated better place a high value on making sure that their purity of theory and ideology is unsullied by compromise, for that’s all that they will have to console them. Politically and legally the country will move further away from them, not closer, because they will extend the Democrats’ hold on the White House.

The perfect is the enemy of the good, especially in politics. The problem is, some people are too self-righteous to figure that out.

I had an acid flashback moment when I read this:

Biotechnology stocks took a sharp dive Monday after Hillary Clinton said she would propose a plan to counteract “price gouging” by drug makers.

Ms. Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, was responding to New York Times article published Sunday that told of a price increase for a drug used to treat a life-threatening parasitic infection. The cost of the drug was recently increase from $13.50 a tablet to $750, the story said.

Why? Because Hillary wreaked havoc on pharmaceutical stock prices 23 years ago, when Bill was running for President. Indeed, this is more than a matter of academic interest to me, because I played a role in the fallout from that. In 1993, I wrote a study, titled “Political Rhetoric and Stock Price Volatility,” that contributed to one of the early Clinton scandals. For you see, while blasting pharma companies, Hillary was also invested in a hedge fund that shorted health care stocks, and I documented using standard event study methodology that her speeches led to economically and statistically significant declines in pharmaceutical company stock prices.

In large part as a result of the study, Hillary was subjected to an official ethics inquiry. Her friend-and arguably more-Vince Foster was working on this and other nascent Hillary scandals when he put a bullet in his brain on the ramparts of Fort Marcy. On a more personal note, the study was the direct cause of the end of my employment at the University of Michigan Business School.

For details about the official fallout of this long-ago and long-forgotten study, see footnote 3 and the associated text in the Senate Whitewater Report. For how this played out for me, see this old SWP post. (As an aside, Sara Ellison and Wally Mullin expanded on my study in an article that was published in the JLE.)

As for Hillary, I think an inquiry into her investment holdings is warranted. Given the sleaze of the Clinton Foundation, and her disdain for the rules that little people follow as illustrated by the Home Brew Server, I would not be in the least surprised if the (once, and hopefully not future) Wicked Witch of the West Wing has been less than punctilious in the separation of her financial and political interests.

In my humble opinion, too many people are way overthinking what Putin is doing in Syria. It seems pretty straightforward. A long-time Soviet and Russian client was on the verge of collapse: the loss of Idlib earlier this month, after a long battle which ground inexorably against Assad, represented a major blow. Syria is Russia’s only outpost in the Middle East, and is also important to Iran, with which Russia cooperates because they share a common enemy: the US. Absent Russian intervention, Assad’s destruction appeared imminent.

Meaning that this is more of a rearguard action, defending the rump of the Syrian state, than an offensive thrust. And it is a reaction to events, not a part of some grand geopolitical strategy.

Some get this.

Donbas is a precedent. Direct Russian military intervention only occurred last August when it seemed that the Ukrainian army was on the verge of crushing the rebels. Once the situation stabilized, Putin seemed-and still seems-to be willing to accept a stalemate.

As for the military effect, the major resources committed appear to be aircraft, and ground units to protect them and their bases. The US campaign against ISIS shows that air power alone is unlikely to be decisive. The Russians have Assad’s army to work with, but it is battered and demoralized after four years of war, and even with air support is unlikely to be capable of sustained offensive action. It is probably on a par with the Iraqi army in terms of combat effectiveness (and may be worse), and past months have shown that even with US (and some Iraqi) air support, the Iraqi army can’t wage offensive warfare. I seriously doubt the Syrian army can either, even with additional Russian air support. Thus, the most likely outcome of the Russian intervention is to stave off Assad’s defeat and perpetuate the stalemate.

There is much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in Washington and Europe, but since they haven’t done anything in the past four years and had no plans of doing anything serious going forward, this reaction is decidedly overwrought.

The administration persists in its pathetic insistence that Assad must go. Today Kerry repeated this demand, but said Assad’s departure doesn’t have to happen on day one or month one. What about century one? That seems feasible.

The US wants to negotiate Assad’s departure, and somehow thinks it can enlist Russia in this effort. That is utterly delusional, especially now that Russia has upped its commitment to Assad. It is also delusional because by making it clear that the US will not do anything serious to combat Assad (especially since that would anger its new BFF, Iran). Our negotiation leverage is therefore bupkis. Therefore, it is better for Kerry and Obama to keep quiet, and let the world think that they are neutered losers, rather than speak up and remove all doubt.

The biggest loser in this is Israel. Iran cares about Syria primarily because it is its bridge to Hezbollah. Israel has periodically launched air attacks in Syria to prevent the movement of advanced weapons (especially anti-aircraft missiles) to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Russian presence complicates Israel’s problem greatly. But of course, this is probably a feature not a bug from Obama’s perspective.

The puzzle is Turkey. Turkey wants to see Assad’s destruction, and is perfectly fine with replacing him with Islamist radicals. Russian intervention reduces the odds of Assad’s defeat, and this is a defeat for Turkey. I have no idea how someone as erratic  as Erdogan will respond. One response will likely be greater covert support for the jihadists fighting Assad.

In sum, Putin’s actions in Syria will perpetuate a grim status quo, rather than cause a dramatic change in the strategic situation in the Middle East.  What happens going forward depends in large part on developments on the ground. If the current level of intervention is insufficient to slow the crumbling of the Assad regime, how much further will Putin be willing to go? His resources are constrained. As I wrote earlier, he faces daunting logistic difficulties in mounting a bigger intervention.

Regardless, we (in the US) are cast in the role of spectators: as Anthony Cordesman notes (perhaps stating the obvious), at present the US has no realistic military options in Syria. Obama made that choice four years ago, and reiterated his choice in 2013. Putin is now making his choice, and will have to live with the consequences: his options are no more palatable that the US’s (though he does have a coherent objective, which the US does not have and never had). We should leave him to it.

One way to identify a scientific paradigm in crisis is an attempt by its adherents to crush those who dissent. These efforts become all the more frantic, the more advanced the crisis becomes.

We may be witnessing such a moment now. Jumping on a proposal made by Senator Sheldon Whitehorse (D-CO) in a WaPo oped, a group of noted climate scientists have signed a letter addressed to the Attorney General supporting a RICO investigation of those individuals and organizations who are climate change skeptics and deniers. Whitehorse compared those who dispute the climate change consensus to the tobacco scientists who disputed the cancer-smoking link, who were RICO targets in the early-2000s.

This is a perversion of science in the name of science. Certainty, faith, and conformity are the domain of religion: Skepticism and doubt are the domain of science. Skepticism is perhaps the preeminent scientific virtue: certitude is the leading scientific sin.

Indeed, the sociology of modern institutionalized science, with its dependence on government funding, tends to produce excessive consensus, and is rife with mechanisms that suppress challenge. Skepticism and doubt need defending and nurturing, not stigmatizing and outright repression.

The whole climate change debate is framed in a logically fallacious way because it is posed as a false choice: is anthropogenic climate change true or false? I believe that it is true, but that is a trivial answer to a trivial question. The more interesting questions involve the magnitude of the effect, and the costs of alternative means of mitigation or adjustment, and on these issues there is much room to be skeptical about the much vaunted consensus.

The consensus is based on models. Very large, complicated models of coupled, complex systems. I know enough about models to know that one should always be skeptical of them. One should be particularly skeptical of large models. And one should be especially skeptical of models of coupled complex systems (non-linear) with myriad feedbacks. By their very nature, such systems defy modeling, especially where computation is involved because computational tractability almost always involves linearizing the non-linear.

Climate models are all these things, so doubt and skepticism are more than warranted: they are mandatory. Climate is filled with poorly understood feedbacks and processes that are handled-if they are handled at all-by crude parameterizations (a polite way of saying SWAG: scientific wild assed guess). Furthermore, their empirical validity is doubtful, at best. The longstanding inability to predict the behavior of the tropical troposphere is one example, but even more tellingly, the failure to predict the recent temperature plateau is a massive empirical failure.

Alarm bells should also be triggered by the repeated fiddling with historical temperature data. Especially since that fiddling always seems to work in one direction: past temperatures are pushed downwards to increase the upward trend.

A confident science would relish the challenges of skeptics, secure in the knowledge that it will prevail because theory and evidence are on its side. A frightened and insecure science-especially one dominated by scientists fearing for their funding and their academic sinecures-responds by attempting to throttle those who criticize it. That’s what we are seeing now, with these efforts aided and abetted by politicians and journalists (e.g., jackholes like Jake Tapper-who would be a jakehole, I guess-and his performance in Wednesday’s GOP debate).

It is particularly risible to see scientists who dominate journals, dominate the peer review process, dominate the funding review process, dominate the universities and research departments, and who secure the lion’s share of government funding, whine about the dread threat posed by a few (and they emphasize that they are few) dissenters from the consensus. The constellation of organizations and funders that support the climate change consensus dwarfs that which the scientists and Whitehorse claim threatens science and truth. The letter reeks of projection by the signers. It’s very Russian.

Again, a confident science, a correct science, in control of all the commanding heights of the modern scientific establishment, should have nothing to fear. But we see the elephant quaking before the mouse, demanding that it be squashed.

But it is perhaps the fact that they have a lot to lose that explains the ferocity of the response to anyone who threatens them.

The endorsement by politicians of inquisitorial means is to be expected. That’s how they roll. The endorsement by scientists of inquisitorial means to be applied to other scientists is an abomination.

Update: When not applied to its original targets, the mafia, RICO is almost always a tool of government extortion and intimidation. I am reminded in particular of the Giuliani prosecutions of Michael Milken in the 1980s. Even in criminal cases it is almost always a perversion of justice. To invoke it in a scientific dispute is beyond outrageous.

Cast your eyes around the world, and they are likely to land on a scene of conflict and chaos. In the Middle East, obviously, from pillar (Libya) to post (the Persian Gulf). In the center of Eurasia (Ukraine). In the South China Sea and the DMZ. The world situation has not been this fraught since the 1930s.

If you are like me, you crave an explanation. You could do far worse than start with Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. Huntington’s article and subsequent book of the same title unleashed a storm of furious criticism when it came out in 1993. But standing 22 years later, Huntington looks prescient, and many of his critics look like utter fools.

The best evidence of this is to look at the antagonists in the most important cockpits of conflicts.

Start with Ukraine. Putin has explicitly invoked the idea of “a Russian world” and has justified his actions in Ukraine and elsewhere as a legitimate defense of Russian people, language, and culture from the assaults of his enemies, especially in the West. Putin and other Russians tirelessly invoke contrasts between Russian civilization and European civilization in particular.

Putin and Russians generally think they are in a Clash of Civilizations.

Next consider China. China’s leadership too views China as a great civilization that was oppressed by others (Westerners, Japanese), and which is now assuming its proper place in the world. They express a clear cultural-civilizational-chauvinism. If anything, the Chinese people are even more aggressively chauvinistic than their leaders.

The Chinese leadership and people think they are in a Clash of Civilizations.

And of course, there is Islam. That Islam believes that it is in a civilizational war with just about everybody, but in particular the West, needs no explication. Yes, there is an intramural civil war within Islam, between Sunnis and Shia, but (a) this is complicated by a civilizational clash between Arab and Persian, and (b) this conflict is in no small part a battle over who will lead the clash of Islam with the infidels.

The jihadis and the mullahs and vast numbers of Muslims generally believe they are in a Clash of Civilizations.

Who doesn’t believe it? The skeptics and doubters reside mainly in one civilization: the Western.

Indeed, Huntington’s harshest critics resided (and reside) in the West. They are, in the main, progressives, which, like top quarks, come in left-handed (mainly those who self-identify as progressives) and right-handed (e.g., neocons as epitomized by Francis Fukuyama) varieties. Despite their differences in specific policies, they share a dialectical view that history progresses in one direction, and that it is relentlessly moving to a final state, and that in the end, humanity as a whole will converge to this state. The left progs’ final state is socialist/statist: the right progs’ final state is liberal and democratic.

Obama is clearly a progressive, so understood. His most consistent trope in responding to conflict, with Putin or the Islamists, is to say that history will leave them behind; that they are swimming against the tide of history. Obama said this to Putin about Ukraine: he just said it about Syria: he has said it about Isis. His policy towards Iran is predicated on the belief that once Iran is readmitted in into the community of nations, it will become a Normal Country, and discard its Islamist civilizational mission.

So part of the failure of many of those in the West to believe in the Clash of Civilizations is rooted in a worldview that such conflicts are an atavism that will disappear as the world converges to-progresses to-some homogenous end state in which all existing differences are dissolved.

But that’s not the only part. Another part is a paradox of Western civilization. The West’s distinguishing characteristics include skepticism, criticism and doubt. That very skepticism, criticism and doubt have led many (especially on the left, but also many on the right) to conclude that Western civilization is flawed, corrupt, defective, and certainly not superior to any other civilization, and hence not worth fighting for. Thus, the self-criticism that defines Western civilization prevents many in it from fighting for it. In this respect too, Obama is an exemplar.

A big part of the reason the past few years have seen a waxing of the Clash is precisely that the leader of the leader of Western civilization has declined to fight for it, due to a rather strange combination of fatalism (history will progress and nations will converge due to fundamental historical forces) and a belief that its civilization has no right to assert itself, because of its inherent flaws. This is in contrast to the American role post-1945, which self-confidently (on the whole, with exceptions like post-Vietnam) believed in the superiority of Western (and specifically American) civilization, and exerted its power (economic, social, cultural, and often military) to create and maintain a rough order even at the fault lines of civilizational conflict (notably the Middle East, but also between Europe and Russia, and between China and the rest of Asia).

So one way to understand the mess that the world is in now is to take Huntington’s idea of enduring antagonisms and frictions between competing and incompatible civilizations, and add the retreat of the one power that largely kept those antagonisms and frictions under control.

We are arguably in the midst of a new world war, though one that is fortunately, for now anyways, not as cataclysmic as the two that preceded it. But it is a different type of world war not only because of its lower intensity, but because it is not a war between two dominant blocs. Instead, it is a multipolar war with at least four major civilizations jostling at various points around the globe. This multipolarity makes the struggle less predictable, and far more confusing. It will only become more so unless the West, and in particular the US, realizes the nature of the ongoing conflict, and reengages accordingly.

A phrase often attributed to Trotsky (probably wrongly) seems apt here: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Rephrased: you may not be interested in a Clash of Civilizations, but a Clash of Civilizations is interested in you. If we don’t awaken to that reality, we are destined to be the losers in that clash.

The last few days have seen a frenzy of outrage at Russia’s reinforcement of Assad in Syria, including the deployment of naval infantry at some bases in the country. As someone with a solid nine years of writing to establish my anti-Putin cred, I can still say that I don’t see what the fuss is about.

Russia has long propped up Assad. This latest activity is a continuation of that policy, and is driven by Assad’s deteriorating position. Since Assad is going down, Putin feels compelled to step up.

The intervention is limited. The very fact that naval infantry is involved indicates its limited nature. Dismissing Michael Weiss’s hyperventilating about these being Putin’s “Dirty War Forces”, and focusing on military realities, Russian naval infantry has little combat power, and very little offensive capability. It can seize and defend ports and airfields, and carry out some commando-type direct action operations. And that’s about it. A low-endurance, low-firepower, light force not suited for grinding ground combat in a large theater like Syria. It is there to defend ports and airfields that will be used for resupply and perhaps to intensify the air campaign against the anti-Assad forces.

The targets will in the main not be Isis. Other jihadi groups pose a more serious threat to Assad, and that is who he (and the Russians) will focus on. Indeed, by complicating air operations, Russian presence will impede the US campaign (such as it is) against Isis.

The main reason for the outrage at the Russian action is that it aids Assad, and Assad is a very bad man.

Yes, he is. And the time to do something about him is long past. Four years past. Three years at the low end. But Obama and the rest of the west harrumphed and said that Assad must go, but did nothing. Red lines were drawn, and trespassed, with no consequence. Since then, the war in Syria has descended into an apocalyptic battle between Assad and a mind-numbing array of psychotic, murderous jihadi groups: Assad’s enemies are very, very bad men too. (Even if Assad’s overthrow had been engineered in 2011 or early 2012, it is doubtful that any good would have come with it, given Obama’s and Europe’s neuralgia to securing the peace in the aftermath of the toppling of a dictator. See, for instance, Libya.)

Now it is too late to do anything to stem the holocaust. Regardless of who “wins”, the aftermath will be a bacchanal of sectarian slaughter.  And since stalemate is the most likely outcome, no one will win, and a bacchanal of grinding slaughter will occur anyways.

When questioned about Russia’s intervention, Obama recycled one of his tiresome memes, this one in the Putin-is-swimming-against-the-tide-of-history vein. He said the Russian effort is doomed to failure. This meme is quite convenient in that it relieves him of  any responsibility to do anything: history will take care of it! Given that at this time there is nothing that can really be done to prevent Syria’s descent into the abyss, and based on form, whatever Obama does is likely to make it worse, this is probably a good thing.

That aside, the issue becomes how do you define failure? With sufficient commitment of resources, Putin can likely ensure that Assad can maintain a rump state on the Syrian coast, and provide Putin a foothold in the Middle East. That’s enough for Putin.

As for vanquishing jihadi groups, let alone Isis, Putin couldn’t care less. Putin can realistically achieve his ambitions, and if he does, it is unlikely to have any material impact on US interests.  The effort is not doomed to failure, understood from Putin’s perspective, and the US should be rather indifferent to whether it succeeds or not.

Indeed, since Russian involvement is unlikely to have any effect on the magnitude of the Syrian catastrophe, but will be a drain on already strained Russian resources, it could well be a plus for the US. Why should we care if Putin perpetuates his Syrian ulcer? Indeed, a cynical realpolitik type would probably conclude that we should stand aside and let an already struggling Putin throw his scarce resources into a battle where stalemate is the best that can be achieved. As Napoleon said: “Don’t interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” A Putin stuck in a Syrian quagmire is less able to make mischief elsewhere.

Seriously, if perpetuating Assad’s rule over a wrecked Syria is victory, what would defeat look like? If that’s how Putin wants to fritter away his limited capabilities, so be it. It won’t make the carnage in Syria any worse, and doesn’t injure US interests. Let Vlad have his victory, and hope he pays dearly for it.

Germany has opened the floodgates for refugees-and others impersonating refugees-into the country, and into Europe. It is a colossal blunder that will not end well, and which reflects Germany’s political defects.

Merkel’s motives are rooted in German historical neuroses and romanticism. Germany is at pains to prove that it has overcome its Nazi and racist past. As one German historian put it:

“We want to prove that we are good people. Even if no one wants to be reminded of this, the good that we do has to be seen in relation to the crimes that we initiated,” Arnulf Baring, a conservative German historian, wrote in the Bild tabloid this week.

Furthermore, Merkel and others in German (especially in the governing and culture classes) have a romantic view of refugees, more likely to see them as waifs (like the drowned boy in the photograph that marked, and arguably contributed to, the inflection point in the refugee crisis) and women fleeing war.

Other Germans advance more pragmatic justifications: Germany is aging and in demographic decline, and needs a new supply of labor to replacing the retiring and the dying. (Many in Sweden, also very open to the refugees, make the same argument.)

All of these reasons are daft, and ignore much grittier realities. Expiating past guilt seldom results in current good. Further, the romantic view of the migrants is at odds with the reality. They are disproportionately young and male, which is to be expected: young men are more able to withstand the rigors of the trek from Syria (or Eritrea or wherever), and often have little to hold them at home. Indeed, those with the fewest attachments are likely to be misfits, meaning that the migrants are being sampled disproportionately from the less desirable part of the distribution.

Furthermore, they are likely to be fertile ground for recruiting by Islamist radicals. Already German security services are leaking that Islamist recruiters are descending on refugee centers. Germany, which already has an Islamist problem (and has had so for years: witness Mohammed Atta), has just made it that much worse.

As for the labor argument, it is a damning indictment of EU labor markets and labor mobility (and capital and goods markets for that matter). It is not as if Europe as a whole lacks idle labor, and a well-functioning labor market with mobility would match those unemployed and underemployed Europeans (e.g., young Spaniards–or Greeks!) with German employers. If the grandiose European project were in fact working, Germany wouldn’t have to import gastarbeiters qua refugees to replace its retiring workers.

Moreover, this argument reflects an ignorance of, and arguably a disdain for, Germans working in factories and services. Labor is not an undifferentiated mass. Germans are much more productive than the refugees are, and are likely to be, for generations to come. Education, skills, and yes, cultural attributes mean that the refugees are a poor substitute for German labor. Looking at it in a completely mercenary way, those who think that the refugees are going to be productive enough to be taxed enough to support a growing population of pensioners are deluding themselves.

Merkel’s actions also betray the elitism and undemocratic tendencies that characterize the EU generally and Germany in particular. This was not a decision taken after any democratic deliberation whatsoever, and many Germans are decidedly unhappy about it, especially in Bavaria and the Rhineland. (The security services are furious too: why else would they leak so soon about Islamist recruiting?)

And if many Germans are unhappy about Merkel being charitable to refugees at their expense, smaller European nations are furious because the immigrant wave will hit them as well. Denmark-long a thorn in Germany’s side-hit back immediately, stopping passenger rail traffic and closing major freeways into Germany in order to stem the immigrant tide.

German statements that other European countries should accept refugees because Germany’s resources are not unlimited add insult to injury. “Hey Germany, salve your conscience on your own Euro, not ours.” This is particularly rankling given that Germany is far richer than many of the countries it wants to take more refugees, and given that many of these countries believe that the Euro has enriched Germany at their expense. But the German leaders have a tin ear on these issues, and are apparently oblivious that this reinforces every negative perception about them and their dominance of Europe.

The EU is doing its part as well, including issuing a diktat to nonmembers Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland that they accept asylum seekers. Or else:

[The EC]  notes all four countries will have to accept Dublin “and its development without exception.” They will have no say or input in amending Dublin, nor will they have any say on the Commission’s relocation plan.

“They do not take part in the adoption of any acts amending or building upon the Dublin acquis”, it says.

This is going to end very badly. It will impose a substantial economic burden on Germany (and other European nations) in the near to medium term with little or no long term benefit to compensate. It will exacerbate Europe’s jihadi problem. It will reinforce already strong beliefs that the EU is remote, dictatorial, and indifferent to popular concerns. It will drive many moderate Germans (and moderate Europeans) into the arms of the far right because they will (correctly) believe that the governing class is indifferent to the impact of the wave of immigrants on them, and will dismiss their concerns–when they are not insulting them for being racists because they don’t accept the migrants with open arms.

They don’t want to pay for Angela Merkel et al‘s masturbatory do-goodism. They are willing to help, but don’t want to be inundated by alienated and culturally alien immigrants; they want a reasonable, measured response that takes their economic and security concerns into account; and they don’t want to be dictated to by their self-appointed betters. But it looks like none of that is going to happen. It is more likely that the exact opposite will. There will be a price to be paid for that. And it is likely to be a steep one, both in Euros and in social and political peace.