Vladimir Putin held his annual marathon phone-in session last week. Although Vova was taking the calls, he was the one who was clearly phoning it in. By all accounts his performance was bored and listless, and largely unresponsive to the economic and environmental (as in garbage disposal) concerns expressed by many callers.
Putin’s answers to questions regarding declining living standards bordered on the pathetic, and definitely revealed he has no answers and can offer no serious succor. The best he could do is to tell Russians that things aren’t as bad today as they were in the 90s.
If the key to success is setting low expectations, Putin certainly succeeded! Perhaps the only current world leader who is doing worse than Russia’s in the 90s is Maduro.
As for explanations, the best Putin could offer was sanctions, and low oil prices. The sanctions excuse is somewhat amusing, given that Putin had previously claimed that sanctions not only wouldn’t hurt/weren’t hurting Russia, they would actually rejuvenate the Russian economy by encouraging the development of import-substituting industries. Insofar as oil prices are concerned, Putin’s answer only underlines the failure of Russia under his watch to develop outside the resource extraction sectors.
None of this should be surprising, and I have predicted such a trajectory. Maximum Leaders get old. They get tired. They get bored. They run out of new ideas and don’t have the energy or inclination to generate them. They begin to prefer a quiet life and to abhor change and innovation. Even they get captured by vested interests who strongly favor maintaining the status quo. Moreover, authoritarian leaders like Putin inevitably become progressively more isolated and out-of-touch because they are surrounded by sycophants, and deprived of feedback from elections, a free press, and open debate.
We are witnessing the senescence of Putin, and Putinism. The most grave concern–for Russians mainly, but for the rest of the world too–is that another inherent feature of authoritarian systems like the one in Russia is that the current leader has no interest in creating a system of succession: indeed, he has an interest in NOT creating one. As he continues to age, or if he dies suddenly, the battle to succeed him will intensify, and inevitably destabilize Russia (with spillover effects around the world).
This brings to mind two closing thoughts.
First, if you think Putin is bad, you should shudder at the type who will prevail in the struggle to succeed him. (Such person will almost certainly emerge from the shadows of the security services or their allies, and you will likely not have heard of him.)
Second, for years Putin’s political hole card has been “I have given you stability.” But ironically, his creation of an increasingly ossified system creates the conditions for a resurgence of instability–perhaps as bad as the 90s–upon his demise, or even his enfeeblement.
So it is more accurate to say that Putin has perhaps delayed instability, and guaranteed that the instability will be all the more intense when it inevitably reappears.
I ask for very few things in life, because I am a firm believer in unintended consequences, as summarized by the adage: “Be careful what you ask for–you might get it.”
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should have heeded this adage when he asked for–and got–a rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election. I guarantee he hadn’t bargained for the way his wish was granted–a humiliating loss to CHP (pronounced “jay hey pay”) candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu.
İmamoğlu had won by a mere 14,000 votes in the 31 March election that Erdoğan claimed was tainted by fraud (in a first where the opposition allegedly won by fraud, rather than the party in control): he won by over 700,000 votes today. Meaning that by insisting on a mulligan, Erdoğan succeeded in increasing his opponent’s margin of victory by a factor of a mere 50. That takes talent!
There is rejoicing in the streets of İstanbul, and elsewhere in Turkey, especially in places like İzmir. But there is no joy in Mudville, er, the massive (as in 3.2 million square feet) presidential palace in Ankara, which is symbolic of Erdoğan’s sultanic pretensions. So far, over 8 hours after the polls closed, he has been silent. Only his hapless and comically uncharismatic candidate in İstanbul, former prime minister Binali Yildirim, has made a monotone concession speech.
Erdoğan has straddled Turkish politics like a colossus for almost 20 years. This is his first major defeat, which raises questions about his future.
In the near term, İmamoğlu’s control of government in İstanbul will allow him to uncover and publicize the massive corruption of AKP/Erdoğan rule there. Further, money the the lifeblood of politics, and the CHP victory will allow it to sharply reduce the flow of this lifeblood to AKP’s pockets.
Over the longer run, there is now a credible personality to oppose Erdoğan. The national CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (who was almost lynched by an AKP mob near Ankara recently) is not a threat, for many reasons. He is deemed an elitist, and worse, he is Alevi, a religious group that is scorned by most Turks.
İmamoğlu’s biography has eerie parallels to Erdoğan’s. Both are from the Black Sea region who moved into national politics in İstanbul. Erdoğan gained considerable sympathy as a result of his jailing 20 years ago: denying İmamoğlu victory in March gained him considerable sympathy too. Both figures have a common touch. Unlike many in the CHP, İmamoğlu is not viewed as a hard-core secularist, or anti-Islam. Indeed, his name denotes a Muslim heritage. (An ardent secular Turk I know says he is glad that is not HIS name.)
Meaning that Erdoğan like faces the biggest political threat in his life, and it comes at a time when Turkey’s economy is teetering, and its international position is fraught.
Top at the very long list of Erdoğan’s foreign policy headaches is his testy (to say the least) relationship with the US. Matters are coming to a head here, with Erdoğan swearing that Turkey will cross a US red line, and buy S-400 SAMs from Russia.
I have been wondering for some weeks whether Erdoğan’s chest thumping on this issue has been driven by his need to look tough before a largely anti-US Turkish electorate in the runup to the rerun of the İstanbul election, and that he would back down once the results are in. He has backed down before after claiming he would never concede to Trump (on the issues of the American missionary and the NSA employee imprisoned in Turkey). It’s hard to know how the crushing defeat will affect his calculations. Will he realize that in his weakened domestic situation he can’t afford to confront the US? Or will he figure that he can’t afford to look weak now?
I don’t know, but I do know that as consummate a domestic politician as Erdoğan has been, internationally he has been a disaster for Turkey. Turkey has alienated the US and Europe, has bungled in Syria, and is at odds with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Turkey literally has no friends or allies now, except for Qatar, which is itself isolated in the Arab world. Given this record, I think it is highly likely that Erdoğan will make the wrong choice.
We should see within days. He is to meet Trump at the G-20 this week. Perhaps Trump will offer him a face-saving way out of the dilemma he has put himself in. Whether Erdoğan is wise enough to take it is another matter.
To huge fanfare, Facebook announced the impending release of a new cryptocurrency, “Libra.” Except it isn’t–a crypto, that is. Whereas real cryptocurrencies are decentralized, anonymous, unpermissioned, and lack trusted intermediaries, Libra is centralized, permissioned, non-anomymous and chock-full o’ intermediaries in addition to Facebook. It doesn’t really utilize a blockchain either.
First, when it comes to finance, there is little (if anything) new under the sun, and that is clearly true of Libra. The Alphaville stories provide several historical precedents, to which I’ll just add another. It is basically like pre-National Bank Act banking system in which banks issued bank notes that circulated as hand-to-hand media of exchange, and which were theoretically convertible into currency (gold prior to the Civil War) on demand. Libra is functionally equivalent to such bank notes, with the main distinction that it is represented by bytes rather than pieces of paper.
Facebook attempts to allay concerns about such a system by requiring 100 percent backing by bank deposits or low-default-risk government bonds, but as historical experience (some as recent as 2008) demonstrates, although such systems are less subject to runs than liabilities issued by entities that invest the proceeds in illiquid assets, they are not necessarily run-proof.
Furthermore, the economic model here isn’t that different from the 19th century bank model because the issuer can profit by investing the proceeds from the issue of the currency in interest bearing assets, and pocketing the interest. Those buying the currency forego interest income, and presumably are willing to do so because of it reduces the costs of engaging in various kinds of transactions.
This type of system faces different kinds of difficulties in low and high interest rate environments. In high rate environments, the opportunity cost of holding the currency is high, which leads to lower quantity demanded. In low rate environments, the revenue stream may be insufficient to cover the costs incurred by the intermediaries. This creates an incentive for asset substitution, i.e., to allow backing the currency with higher risk assets (with higher yields) thereby increasing insolvency and run risks.
I note in passing that low interest rates destroyed the traditional FCM model which relied on interest income from customer margins as a major revenue stream (as Facebook is proposing here). Ask John Corzine about that, and look to the experience of MF Global.
Why introduce this in a low interest rate environment? Maybe this is a kind of loss-leader strategy. The opportunity cost of holding Libra is low now (given low rates), so maybe a lot of people will buy in now. Even though the benefits to the issuers/intermediaries may be low now (because the interest income is low), they may be counting on customer stickiness once there is widespread adoption. That is, those who hold Libra when the cost of doing so is low may stick around even when the cost goes up substantially. That is, Facebook and its partners in this endeavor may be counting on some sort of switching cost or some behavioral irrationality to reduce the interest-rate sensitivity of demand for Libra.
Good luck with that. (For another example of nothing new under the sun, read up on disintermediation of traditional banks when interest bearing money market mutual funds came on the scene.)
I would also suggest that Libra has some disadvantages as a medium of exchange. For one thing, since assets will be held in multiple currencies, it creates currency risk for virtually everyone who uses it. For another, it involves additional cost to move from fiat into Libra and from Libra into fiat. This reduces the value of the Libra as a medium of exchange because of the resulting difference in cost in using it for within-network and off-network uses.
This last point relates to something else in the Libra white paper, namely, the claims that the currency will be a boon to the “unbanked.” This makes zero sense.
The reason that some people don’t have bank accounts is that the cost of servicing them (reflected in fees that banks charge) is above the willingness/ability of those people to pay for those services. There is no reason to believe that Libra reduces the cost of servicing the currently unbanked. Furthermore, the value of the services provided is likely to be lower, and substantially so because inter alia (a) the lack of brick an mortar facilities that low income people need for check cashing/depositing and cash depositing, (b) the restricted network of people with whom they can transact, and (c) currency risk. Relatedly, it’s hard to see how one can move funds into our out of Libra without having access to banking services. I see the unbanked rhetoric as mere SJW eyewash attempting to make this look like some progressive social project.
The arrogance of Facebook is also rather astounding. Again, this is not crypto–it is banking. Yet Facebook presumes that it can do this without the panoply of licenses that banks must have, and without being subject to the same kinds of regulation as banks.
Note the furious government reactions to this, not just in the US but in Europe. Zuckerberg et al were totally delusional if they expected anything different, especially in light of Facebooks serial privacy, free-speech, and antitrust controversies.
In sum, in my opinion Libra faces serious economic and political/regulatory obstacles. Having politicians and regulators hate you isn’t bad per se in my book–it can actually represent an endorsement! But the economics of this are incredibly dodgy. My skepticism is only increased by the misleading packaging (crypto! a boon to the unbanked!) and the congenitally misleading packager.
Just when I think politics could not get any more retarded, I’m proven wrong. The latest example being the meltdown freakout over Trump’s statement that he would listen to “dirt” on an opposing candidate passed on by a foreign source.
The mind boggles. Those melting down and freaking out are Democrats to the last he, she, and xe of them. (Mitt Romney et al are basically eunuchs who follow the lead of the Democrats who unmanned them, and whose approval they crave.) They are all die hard Hillary supporters.
This would be the Democratic Party that actively solicited compromising information on Trump and Trump campaign figures from the Ukrainian government. Last time I checked, Ukraine was not the 51st state. Or even the 58th.
This would be the Hillary Clinton whose campaign hired a foreigner to solicit foreigners–Russians, no less, rather than the benign Norwegians whom Trump referred to in his answer–to collect dirt on Trump.
And alleged information passed on by Alexander Downer (who speaks with a funny accent and so I’m pretty sure he’s a furriner) was apparently totally copacetic.
A consistent application of the standards implicit in the meltdown freakout would require those melting down and freaking out to demand the banning of the Democratic Party and Hillary’s incarceration.
Consistent application. Sometimes I crack myself up. If these people didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
A few other observations. Does truth matter? That is, should the information provided be ignored and even criminalized merely because it is from a foreign source, even if it is true?
Hypothetical. A source within the FSB provides documentation showing that while honeymooning in the USSR a certain candidate for president agreed to become a source for the KGB, and had in fact regularly provided information to the KGB and then the FSB in the past 30+ years. Is that information to be suppressed, merely because of the source? Isn’t it meddling in an election to keep this information secret? (Any reasonable definition of the word “meddling” would involve an action that affects the outcome of an election, and keeping information secret can impact the outcome just as much as its revelation. Which is precisely why candidates want to suppress compromising information.)
Indeed, some information can only come from foreign sources. So it’s better to accept an increased risk of electing someone who canoodled with foreigners, than to accept information that would disclose such canoodling, because the information came from the foreigners that s/he canoodled with?
The controversy over the DNC emails suggests that truth is not a relevant consideration. The veracity of those emails, and the damaging information in them, were never disputed. Yet their release was supposedly scandalous, and sufficient in the minds of many to rule them out of bounds for discussion.
Moving on. Isn’t the obsession with the foreign-ness of the source of the dirt, oh, I dunno, kinda nationalist? Isn’t it passing strange that people who are willing to accept the illegal immigration of every last Guatemalan to the US (transportation courtesy of a Mexican drug cartel) believe that it is utterly unacceptable for a campaign to accept information provided by a Norwegian or whoever who may never set foot on the fruited plain nor see the amber waves of grain? So citizenship should be totally irrelevant for residency and employment and receiving government benefits, but it is determinative when it comes to who can provide information on political candidates to rival political candidates?
That makes sense how, exactly?
Isn’t it also implicit in the obsessive focus on the citizenship of the provider of information that it’s totally OK for Americans to meddle in elections by passing on damaging information to opposing campaigns?
I could go on, but contemplating the outpouring of sanctimonious hypocrisy for too long makes my head hurt. Suffice it to say, the louder the scream, the more execrable the screamer.
The Supreme Court made something of a splash recently in its Apple v. Pepper antitrust decision, which some have interpreted as undermining the limitation in the Illinois Brick case that only direct purchasers can sue for antitrust damages. The majority decision claims that it is adhering to the “bright line” of Illinois Brick. Apple demonstrates, however, that any blanket limitation on who has antitrust standing can lead to perverse outcomes.
The facts in Apple are that Apple’s App Store is allegedly a monopoly that it can exploit to raise the price of apps sold through the store. Apple collected its fee (in the form of a commission) from app sellers, and collected no fee from buyers using the store. Apple claimed that app buyers have no standing to sue because they bought the apps from the app sellers, not Apple, meaning that they were indirect purchasers, and hence no standing to sue under Illinois Brick. A 5-4 majority decided otherwise.
The economics of this are straightforward. It is basically a version of tax incidence analysis, which says that the distribution of the burden of a tax is the same, regardless of whether the government collects the tax from sellers, or from buyers. In the present instance, the burden of Apple’s supercompetitive charge would be the same regardless of whether Apple charges app suppliers or consumers for access to the App Store.
That fact alone should raise alarms about the efficiency (and fairness) of a blanket denial of antitrust standing, depending on who is the “first purchaser” or who the putative monopolist charges the supercompetitive price.
A simple supply-demand diagram illustrates the point.
The blue line is the demand for apps. The red line is the supply of apps. The demand for the App Store is a derived demand: it is derived from the supply and demand for apps, and equals the vertical distance between the supply and demand curves. In the diagram, App Store Demand is the gray line. It is downward sloping, indicating that the App Store has market power. It chooses a quantity such that its marginal revenue (the yellow line) equals marginal cost (assumed to be zero).
Given the supply and demand for apps, the profit maximizing quantity is 25, which is half the competitive quantity of 50 (given by the intersection of the supply and demand curves). Apple collects 50 per app sold.
The only prices that clear the market involve consumers paying 75 per app, and sellers receiving 25 for app. This outcome can be obtained in several ways. Apple could charge suppliers a commission of 50, which they would pass on, collecting 75 from consumers and netting 25. Or, apple could charge buyers a fee of 50, which would mean that they would only pay developers 25 per unit for the 25 units they buy.
So who pays what and who gets what depends not a whit on whom Apple charges.
This means that prohibiting one or the other users of the App Store for suing for damages means that they will be uncompensated: the party that can sue can be either overcompensated, or perhaps undercompensated too.
In the example, the competitive price is 50, meaning that the buyers overpay by 25. If they can’t sue, they are SOL and suffer a loss greater than the overcharge (25) times the number of units (25). Their loss is greater because of the deadweight loss: there are 25 units that consumers would have bought absent the monopoly, but don’t purchase when it exists. This deadweight loss (the “welfare triangle”) is one-half times the units not consumed (25) times the markup paid by consumers (25).
If only the sellers have antitrust standing, because they pay Apple the 50/unit, they are overcompensated if they are awarded their unit sales (25) times the full Apple overcharge of 50. The 1250 in compensation exceeds their loss in surplus which is their share of the overcharge (25) times the units sold (25) plus the deadweight loss (25*25/2) (for a total of 937.5). If the sellers are awarded only their share of the overcharge (25) on the units they sell (25) they would be undercompensated like the buyers.
Therefore, since the losses due to monopoly power are shared between the App Store sellers and buyers, restricting compensation to only one of them results in undercompensation to the party that can’t sue for damages, and (depending on how the damages to the party with standing are calculated) can overcompensate or undercompensate the party with standing. This mismatch between harm and compensation potentially undermines the deterrent effect of private antitrust actions, and also means that the antitrust law has largely arbitrary distributive effects, especially since there is no necessary connection between who suffers the most harm and who has standing to sue: who suffers the most harm depends on supply and demand elasticities, and if unlike the simple analysis above demand is much less elastic than supply, consumers are harmed more.
This is likely an important consideration in Apple. It is basic econ (it drops out of the Slutsky equation) that demand tends to be inelastic for goods that represent a small fraction of a consumer’s expenditures: that’s likely the case for apps, which typically cost just a few bucks. Furthermore, given low entry barriers on the app developer side, I would surmise that the supply of apps is highly elastic. Inelastic demand and elastic supply means that consumers bear most of the overcharge. In this case, the misalignment between economic harm and standing to sue based on who pays the fee to Apple is likely acute.
The rationale for Illinois Brick is that parsing out harm when both buyers and sellers are damaged is just too damn hard, and costly. In the context of the simple example, knowing perfectly the distribution of losses from market power requires knowing the supply and demand curves. So fuggedaboutit, and just give everything to the one who writes the check to the monopolist, even though who writes the check has jack all to do with who actually pays the price.
Litigation costs are a legitimate consideration, but not the only consideration. Undermining the efficiency and distributive purposes of the antitrust laws is costly too.
Apple v. Pepper has the virtue of looking past the economically irrelevant issue of privity to the substantive economic effects of the alleged antitrust violation that is before the bar. The Apple majority claims that it is faithfully implementing Illinois Brick, but by looking at the economic substance the decision will prove, in my opinion, the camel’s nose under the tent that will substantially broaden the categories of market participant eligible for antitrust standing.
President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that led to the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A. It effectively strips the agency of its most critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which ones remain hidden.
The NYT writers (Barnes and Sanger) obviously think this is a bug, a defect, a horrible thing. But it is in fact the strongest feature of Trump’s gambit.
Information is power. Why should the CIA have this power? Who elected them? What is the Constitutional source of this power?
In fact, the US Constitution does not establish the CIA, or grant it independent powers. It is part of a co-equal branch of government that is established by the Constitution: the Executive. It is subordinate to the Chief Executive. It is a creature of the Chief Executive. It may disagree with the Chief Executive’s decision. Oh well. Tough shit. If the order is a legal one–and no one can dispute that the law establishes the POTUS as the ultimate classifying authority in the US government–it must obey or it is violating the law–including the highest law of the land.
Even liberals knew this, once upon a time. Indeed, back in the 1970s, a rogue CIA flouting presidential authority was a stock trope in movies, TV, and fiction (all dominated by liberals). The Pike and Church committees that went after the CIA post-Watergate–Democrat dominated.
But now, they are basically shills for the CIA, and willing to shred the Constitution when doing their shilling.
What the NYT is currently freaking out about–an attempt to make an overly powerful CIA accountable and subordinate to legal authority–is long past due. Hopefully this is the beginning of a concerted campaign to cut the CIA down to size, and the most important tool for doing that is to take back the control of information that it has arrogated to itself–and which its handmaidens in the media and the Democratic Party (again I repeat myself!) currently think is a great thing.
A related thought. Another argument the governing class is raising against the Trump/Barr declassification campaign is that Barr will declassify selectively, and the selective declassifications will present a misleading picture.
That’s easily fixed–declassify it all!
But I’m guessing that the governing class really doesn’t want that.
But here’s another point: the CIA is notorious for its long history of very, very selective leaks intended to advance its institutional interests and the agendas of its leadership. So cry me a fucking river if they get hoist on their own petard. Serves the bastards right.
That loud squealing you hear coming from points east is not the sound of 1000s of hogs being scalded: it is the collective scream of the governing class panicked at the Barr investigation, and in particular, at Trump’s instruction to the intelligence agencies that they declassify large amounts of material relating to the origins of the Russia investigation. Not surprisingly, among those protesting most strenuously, like the slimy, sanctimonious James Comey and the Neanderthal-browed (hell, Neanderthal period) John Brennan, are those in the gravest legal jeopardy.
In other words, the Deep State is in Deep Shit, and lashing out in response.
One of the attacks leveled at Trump and Barr is that this investigation will reveal the identity of a super-secret CIA source close to Putin.
Is that the best you all can do? Really?
First, color me skeptical that any such source exists.
Second, even assuming that he did exist . . . he has long since been compromised. Obviously.
Christopher Steele spread around the dossier in mid-2016 like a crack whore spreads around the clap (apologies to crack whores, and to the clap). Russian intelligence therefore would have known about it long before it made it onto Buzzfeed–or into the set-up “briefing” Comey gave Trump in January, 2017. Generously assuming the whole thing was (a) not a Russian disinformation operation in the first place, and (b) not a figment of Steele’s imagination, the dossier’s disclosure that an individual or individuals present at or better yet a participant in conversations with Putin and other high-level Russians (e.g., Sechin) was blabbing to western spooks (ex- or active) would have unleashed the leak investigation from hell, without the legal niceties that protect leakers in the US.
Any source would have been identified, and dealt with. Not necessarily with extreme prejudice: indeed that is an unlikely outcome. It would have been far more useful to turn said source to get information on the CIA and to spread disinformation.
Indeed, the CIA (were it even marginally competent) would have realized that the dossier had burned the source and made him not just useless, but dangerous to the CIA.
So spare me the wailing laments about outing a CIA mole in the Kremlin. If (and that’s a big if) the mole existed, he is no longer a useful intelligence asset to the US, nor can he be any more endangered than was 3 years ago.
Further, the whole “we’d love to tell you but then we have to kill you” pose is rather convenient, no? After all, if there was a super secret CIA squirrel in the Kremlin who could prove that Trump conspired with the Russians, wouldn’t The Resistance just be dying for that information to come out, and to be validated? After all, it would seal their case against their arch-enemy.
How stupid do they think we are, that we would believe that the identity of an already-burned source is so sacrosanct that they would sacrifice their vendetta against Trump (whom they claim is a mortal danger to national security) rather than reveal it?
Please. The strident protests actually undermine the veracity of collusion claims.
I have always been deeply ambivalent about the CIA. I recognize the need for an intelligence apparatus. I further recognize the need for secrecy for it to operate effectively. But I also recognize that this secrecy provides a cover for it to engage in nefarious actions intended to implement its own agendas, which are often malign. Secrecy also makes it almost impossible to hold it accountable for its litany of failures.
There is a colorable case that the Neanderthal and his minions engaged in numerous nefarious acts in 2016 and 2017. Getting to the bottom of that, and holding those responsible for any such acts accountable is far more important to the health of the Republic than protecting some putative source in Putin’s inner circle (who, if he existed, was hopelessly compromised years ago).
Let the investigation continue, the documents be declassified, and the chips fall where they may. The prospect of which is exactly why the hogs are squealing.
I promised I would write a post on the Australian power market when a suitable article came along, and that time has come.
Check out the logic. Australia closes its coal plants (highly efficient, reliable, and with a cheap source of fuel given Australia is a dominant coal producer), and replaces them with wind. Wind, being highly erratic, requires (given the closure of the coal plants) gas-fueled plants to offset the variability of wind output, and as a result gas is on the margin most hours in Australia. And Australian power prices are sky-high because . . . LNG exports reduce gas supplies in Australia, keeping the price of gas high.
Riiiggghhhttt.
You cannot make up this stuff.
No. It’s not the first two links in the process that are blamed–the ones that those who are whinging deliberately chose. Instead, it’s the last link, which was an inevitable result of the first two choices.
This is blame shifting on crack.
I should also note that those gas resources that supply exports would not have been developed absent the export market. They would not have been developed to supply the domestic market alone. So LNG exports are a scapegoat for a problem created by conscious decisions by the green left (i.e., the watermelons) to jam renewables down people’s throats.
It is particularly ironic that this article came out shortly before the Australian election, the results of which have caused a complete mental breakdown on the left. The Liberal Party (which is to the right, relatively speaking, Down Under) staged a surprising upset of the Labor Party, resulting in an unhinging comparable to that in the UK after Brexit or the US after Trump. I can’t tell you the number of tweets I read where people–adults, allegedly–confessed to crying uncontrollably.
I frolic in their salty tears.
The irony comes from the fact that the Labor Party is hard core in its support for yet more attempts to decarbonize Australia’s economy. Perhaps they should consider the possibility that a major reason for their rejection at the polls is the anger of many Australians at the consequences of previous climate-driven policies (including sky high electricity prices), and their wanting no more of such nonsense.
The shock on the left at the outcome shows that three years after Brexit and two-and-a-half years after Trump the leftist elites have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. It is no doubt another example of their perpetual bullshit loop in action. Leftist-friendly views dominate the media. Anyone expressing contrary views is attacked, which leads to self-censorship and preference falsification. So leftist opinions and sentiment dominate public discourse, convincing leftists that everybody agrees with them, except for a lunatic fringe. But in the privacy of the polling booth, people can express their true views, and perhaps do so with a relish, as this is an opportunity to stick it to those who shout them down. The result is shock and dismay on the left.
But they are as ever incapable of learning, instead just writing off their conquerors as cranks and extremists. As annoying as they are, I hope they don’t change. Because as long as they don’t change, they will continue to lose.
Australian conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s surprise come-from-behind win in national elections was fueled by a campaign that focused on fears that economic and climate policies pledged by center-left opponents would end the world’s longest growth streak.
. . . .
Climate change re-emerged as an election issue following a summer of wildfires, drought, floods and extreme temperatures. Voter support for policies aimed at addressing climate change was at the highest level since 2007. But, as in the U.S., divisions grew more stark as the issue gathered steam. Labor pledged to reduce emissions by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030, after Australia under the conservatives became the first developed nation to abolish a price on carbon in 2014. The party also promised a push on renewable energy and electric vehicles, offering detailed and transparent policies that opened its agenda to months of concerted attack from Mr. Morrison.
Given the track record (e.g., the high electricity prices that motivated this post), this was a target rich environment for Mr. Morrison and the Liberals. And it is evident that they put much steel on the target.
So every election night, all the broadcast and cable news networks project the winners. Most nights, it’s about a 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats, give or take. But when it comes to the winners of projection, the Democrats have it in a landslide.
Here are examples, just from the last week.
Hillary Clinton said if it were anybody other than Trump, they would be in jail. This from the woman who if she was anybody other than Hillary Clinton would have been jailed in the 80s, the 90s, and the 10s. I guess she rested up in the noughties.
Next item: the latest ongoing freakout is about Giuliani talking about going to Kyiv to encourage the Ukrainians to investigate then-VP Joe Biden’s pressuring the government there to get rid of a prosecutor that was investigating, among other things, a business that his son Hunter was involved with. How dare he (and Trump) attempt to get a foreign government to dig dirt on a political opponent!
Er. . . the DNC/Clinton campaign actively worked with the Ukrainian government to dig dirt on Trump in 2016. Some woman whose name comes right off the Taco Bell menu–Andrea Chalupa–was the liaison between the DNC and the Ukrainians.
We are now learning that the enterprising Hunter profited from private equity deals in China (with no previous experience in either private equity or China, let alone in both) weeks after accompanying his father to the country aboard Air Force Two. I’m sure his success in markets as difficult for foreigners and as different as Ukraine and China are a testament to Hunter’s awesome business skillz, rather than any family connections, right?
Compare this with the hyperventilating over Trumps failed attempts to do business in Russia. Beyond putting on a Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, I mean. But those attempts supposed mean that Putin OWNS Trump. Owns him, I say! But there is no quid pro quo involved when Joe makes the rain for his boy, right?
The Mueller report has done little to stem the hysteria in the most feverish quarters of The Swamp about Trump’s alleged collusion with the Russians to, among other things, dig dirt on Hillary. For instance, the egregious James Comey (more about him a future post!), for example, said last week that he still believes that “it’s possible Russia has leverage over Trump.”
Er . . . WTF was the Steele dossier, but an American presidential campaign hiring a foreigner (through two cutouts, no less) who colluded with foreigners (Russians, no less) to spread dirt on Trump?
Does anyone really doubt that Trump would love to have the FBI investigating his opponent during the campaign? Does anyone doubt that he would abuse his office in attempting to initiate or direct such an investigation?
Uhm . . . this is EXACTLY what her heroes–she is basically a polyp in Comey’s colon–did in 2016.
I could go on. And on. And on. But the basic point is that I don’t have to project the winner of projection. The results are already in. You can pretty much bank on this: whatever the Democrats say about Trump is true about them. In spades.
I’ve written often about the economic nightmare that are renewables, specifically wind and solar power. They are terribly inefficient because they are intermittent, and they are diffuse. The intermittency requires maintaining substantial backup capacity. Their diffuse nature means that they are incredibly land intensive. I should also add that renewable energy sources are not miraculously located where loads are. Indeed, they are often located far, far away from load, and therefore necessitate substantial investment in transmission.
This will make power more expensive, and is already constraining economic activity in Sweden. Moreover, it is raising the risk of blackouts.
So the Swedes may be replacing reliable carbon free electricity with electricity free electricity. That will be fun in the winters, eh?
Realistic people who believe that it is necessary to reduce carbon emissions understand that nuclear power is the efficient way to do so, and will become even more efficient with the development of new reactor technologies. It would be far more economical to invest in improvements in nukes than vast wind and solar projects.
But the Swedes appear to still be in the thrall of post-Three Mile Island hysteria (note that the decision to close the plants was made in 1980, a year after TMI) just as the Germans responded to post-Fukushima hysteria by deciding to close all their nukes.
That is, the energy policies of supposedly sophisticated societies are being driven by bugbears and bogeymen–a morbid obsession with CO2, and a view of nuclear power shaped by a nearly 40 year old Jane Fonda movie. This is leading them to force people to rely energy sources that are monstrously inefficient, making said people poorer. (Not to mention that a monomaniacal focus on CO2 leads them to overlook the total environmental impact of wind and solar, which is not a pretty picture.)
The Swedes are also leaders in a modern-day Children’s Crusade (that worked out great the first time, right?) to impose their climate bogeymen on the rest of the world. A rather unfortunate Swedish teenager is going around lecturing the world on the need for drastic action on CO2 now. This is an emotionally manipulative use of children as a substitute for actual argument and analysis and facts. Cynically, it exploits the reluctance of people to criticize children (even though they know nothing, or next to it), especially ones (in the words of the immortal Hank Hill) that ain’t right.
And behold what policies the Swedes want to visit on the rest of us. What they do in Sweden is their business, but they should keep their noses out of everyone else’s.
Makes me more glad than ever that my ancestors bugged out for Minnesota 140 odd years ago. But recent research suggests that they are to blame for Sweden’s current idiocies! I’ve long hypothesized that more independent souls are far more likely to emigrate, leaving the conformists behind. And recent research focusing on Scandinavia provides support for this hypothesis:
The researchers suggest the migration flows, which were small relative to the native population of America but equivalent to about 25 per cent of the total population of Scandinavia, changed the character of Norwegian and Swedish society by removing the most ambitious and independently-minded people.
So Scandinavia’s loss was America’s gain. And if their energy policies are any indication, they are still paying the price today.
