Streetwise Professor

Tim Newman has written numerous excellent posts of late, but the one that resonated most with me was this one from about a month ago, which in response to a reader’s question about what he admitted changing his mind about, he admitted to having misjudged the outcome in Iraq:

I supported the Iraq War for several reasons, one of which was I thought the Iraqis deserved the chance to be free of Saddam Hussein and run their country without him.  I genuinely thought they would seize the opportunity to demonstrate to the world that Arabic people are not incompatible with democracy and, so thankful that Saddam Hussein is gone, they would make a pretty decent effort to make things work.

Instead they tore each other apart and did everything they could to demonstrate that those who dismissed them as savages that needed a strongman to keep them in line were right all along.  I think this was probably the most depressing aspect of the whole shambolic affair.

. . . .

But the one issue I changed my mind on was that the US (or British) military should no longer be brought to bear for altruistic or humanitarian reasons.  It is rather depressing, but I am now a firm believer in the premise that a population generally deserves the government it gets.  No longer would I support a war that is not prosecuted for clear strategic reasons that are indisputably in the national interest.  So all those suffering under the jackboot of oppression?  Sorry, you’re on your own.  We tried our best and look where it got us.

If you get your “information” through Twitter, mainline print/online publications, or the netwits, you probably think that Trump’s newly appointed chief strategist Steve Bannon is the love child of Nathan Bedford Forrest* and Leni Riefenstahl. Racist. Anti-Semite. Master propagandist.

One should always be suspicious of such tendentious portraits, and that suspicion is especially warranted here. Spengler (David P. Goldman) wrote a furious and effective rebuttal of the attacks on Bannon which is worth a read, but do yourself a favor and read the man in his own words–and not the clip quotes attributed to him by his enemies on the left and among the #NeverTrump right. (One should be doubly suspicious when such disparate groups unite in an attack.)

In that 2014 speech and interview, Bannon comes off as bright, thoughtful, and articulate. Certainly he has strong views, but they are not the noxious brew that his attackers attribute to him. His main sensibility is religious. As for anti-Semitism, note that he stresses the Judeo-Christian tradition. He believes in capitalism, but he is not a “hard” libertarian or Objectivist. His brand of capitalism is of the Smith-Hayek-Friedman variety. He decries the devolution of capitalism in corporatism and crony capitalism. He attacks bailouts. He is stridently anti-jihadist. He is also a believer in national and cultural identity, and obviously a critic of globalism.

He spoke about Putin before Putin became a devil figure in the US campaign. His is a nuanced view. On the one hand, he slams Putin as a kleptocrat and ruler of an illegitimate form of capitalism–state capitalism. He also notes Putin’s deviousness and recognizes the threat he poses. But he does not exaggerate that threat, and appreciates that Putin has struck a chord among Russians by appealing to their patriotism and cultural identity.

He also discussed what is now referred to as the alt-right before it became a thing in the popular mind. He frankly admits that opposition movements like the Tea Party inevitably attract fringe elements, but believes in the end that these fringes don’t define these movements: they are free riders not drivers, and will eventually “boil off.” He is not uncritical of the European populist movements: “With all the baggage that those groups bring — and trust me, a lot of them bring a lot of baggage, both ethnically and racially — but we think that will all be worked through with time.” He draws distinctions between movements like UKIP or the Tea Party and continental European nationalist parties and groups, finding the latter more tinged with racism and anti-Semitism.

Reading the talk, and you will have an understanding of how Trump won. One of his key strategists had a very clear understanding of the discontent of the non-elites. He is genuinely sympathetic to the people that the left alternately scorns and claims to represent. All in all, Bannon clearly is not the man his enemies portray him to be. Methinks that the fury of their attacks reflects a deep fear that he is indeed a discerning thinker and able political strategist–and information warrior.

Spengler said that the attacks on Bannon are an example of the Big Lie. I take issue with that. What we are seeing with Bannon, and have seen and are seeing with Trump, is something different: it is the Lie Swarm.

The Big Lie is an effective propaganda tactic in a centralized, vertical media system dominated by a small number–and in totalitarian systems, basically one–of information channels. Radio or television with a small number of national stations either directly controlled by the state, or subject to substantial state pressure (e.g., the US in the days of the Fairness Doctrine). To oversimplify only a little: one message, one medium.

In the modern fractured information environment, with a proliferation of outlets and social media that allows free access to millions, coordinating on a single message is far more difficult in such a diffuse and fragmented system. But this technology is perfectly suited for unleashing a swarm of half-truths and lies that forms what can best be described as an emergent order. It is not consciously designed by anyone, but without central coordination design it does exhibit order and synergistic behaviors.

One swarm tactic that is becoming increasingly common is Six Degrees of Hitler/Putin/The KKK/etc. Target A has some connection to B who has some connection to C who has a connection with D who said something that could be interpreted as being vaguely fascist . . . so Hitler!

In some respects, it is harder to fight the Lie Swarm than it is the Big Lie in a society where there the media is not rigidly controlled. A single lie can be rebutted if the target of the lie has the ability to make the case and the access to enough eyeballs and ears to do so. It is almost impossible to swat every lie in the swarm, especially since the lies change and mutate from day to day, and since whenever you are in a position of rebutting a lie you tend to draw attention to it. But unrebutted lies are often as treated as facts, so if you don’t kill them all some damage is done.

Bannon, and especially Trump, are primary targets of the Lie Swarm, especially since Trump had the temerity to actually prevail in the election. Don’t get me wrong–there is much about Trump to criticize. But there has been a kind of Gresham’s Law at work here: the bad criticism has driven out the good. Screeching “racist!” “Anti-Semite!” “Fascist!” on the basis of the most twisted and biased interpretation of the flimsiest evidence has overwhelmed substantive argument.

And the Swarm really hasn’t figured out that their attack will do little to get Trump supporters to change their minds. If anything, it will do the opposite, because the “deplorables” know that they are being attacked and smeared as much as Bannon and Trump. Furthermore, the Swarm seems hell-bent on living out Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. Hillary’s whole campaign was based on personal attacks on Trump and his supporters, and she enlisted the Swarm in this endeavor.

And it backfired stupendously. Why should they expect that doubling down on it will work any better?

So I have mixed thoughts about this. On the one hand, the Lie Swarm’s infestation of the current public discourse is disgraceful and dispiriting. On the other hand, it has proved a spectacular failure in achieving its objective, so if they want to double down on it, why stop one’s enemies when they are making a mistake?

* For those not familiar with Civil War or Reconstruction history, Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. (It is beyond doubt that he was prominent in the KKK, but some dispute whether he was the Grand Wizard.) He also happened to be probably the only true military genius of the Civil War, in which he rose from private to Lieutenant General and earned (ironically) the sobriquet “Wizard of the Saddle.”

The Bashneft sale to Rosneft (which I wrote several posts about) is a done deal, but apparently there was some unfinished business. Namely, the business of  revenge.

On Monday Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev was detained for corruption. He allegedly took a $2 million bribe to “allow” the sale. Indeed, Bloomberg claims he was caught in the act:

Ulyukayev, 60, was detained on Monday “in the act” of receiving the cash, said Russia’s Investigative Committee. He was later charged with demanding the money from Rosneft PJSC to allow its purchase last month of the government’s 50 percent stake in regional oil producer Bashneft PJSC, the agency said in a statement. The economy minister denies any wrongdoing, his lawyer Timofei Gridnev told Business FM radio. Investigators moved that he be held under house arrest before he arrived for arraignment Tuesday at Moscow’s Basmanny Court.

Ah, Basmanny justice. Gotta love it.

This all seems quite bizarre. The Bashneft acquisition was clearly a source of intense conflict with the Russian government, with the government ministries–including Ulyukayev–initially expressing opposition. Then there was temporizing, with Putin seeming to come down on both sides of the issue. Then it was decided in Rosneft’s–that is, Igor Sechin’s–favor.

Presumably, Putin was the ultimate decider here. If so, Ulyukayev was in no position to “allow” anything. Maybe he had a chance to make his case, either directly to Putin, or indirectly via Medvedev. But once he lost, he would have been delusional to think he had any leverage over whether the deal would proceed.

Further, the timing is beyond strange. The deal was decided in September, and finalized on October 12, more than a month ago. So, did Ulyukayev give net 30 terms on the bribe? Net 60? Was it half now, half later? Is bribery really done on credit in Russia?

I would also venture that attempting to shake down Sechin and Rosneft is tantamount to suicide. Did Ulyukayev attempt such a risky thing? Did Sechin play along and then facilitate a sting by the Investigative Committee? Or was this a set-up job from the start?

One thing that is almost certainly true is that this is Sechin taking his revenge, and sending a message to others: look at what happens to those who cross me.

The Energy Ministry, under Novak, also opposed the deal initially. I wonder if he is sleeping well.

There are some comic elements to the story. Several stories breathlessly report a law enforcement leak saying that Ulyukayev’s phone had been tapped “for months.” Um, pretty sure it was tapped like forever.

Ulyukayev has a reputation as a “liberal” in Russia, and assorted Western dimwits expressed Shock! Shock! at his arrest. Prominent among these were Anders Aslund and my fellow professor and buddy Michael McFaul. I say dimwits for several reasons. First, is it news to them that the “liberals” in the Russian government are marginalized, and exist at the sufferance of people like Sechin who are in Putin’s inner circle? Second, are they so credulous as to believe that these liberals are untainted by corruption? Puh-lease. Ulyukayev appeared in the Panama Papers. Further, the “liberals” and “reformers” mainly go back to the Yeltsin period, and remember that  Yeltsin elevated Putin in exchange for foregoing any investigation or prosecution of the rife corruption of the Yeltsin administration. Ulyukayev was associated with Gaidar, who was also tied to corruption (although the publicly revealed instances were small beer by Russian standards).

There are no clean hands in Russia. This very fact is what usually keeps people in line, for they know the adage “for my friends, everything: for my enemies, the law!” Everybody is vulnerable to prosecution, because everybody is corrupt: actual prosecution is used sparingly, however, to punish those who have committed a political transgression.

Ulyukayev clearly committed such a transgression, and hence he finds himself in the dock.

There is no reason to be shocked by this. It merely confirms that people like Sechin are the real power. But this is apparently a revelation to alleged Russia experts.

Bashneft is the Hope Diamond of oil companies: it seems to bring bad luck to anyone who touches it. Ural Rakhimov, the son of the boss of Bashkortostan (where the company is located), who profited from the corruptly done privatization of the company in 2002, but who apparently fled Russia when the privatization and subsequent sale came under government scrutiny. Vladimir P. Yevtushenkov, who bought Bashneft from Rakhimov, but then wound up under house arrest for 92 days for allegations related to the privatization: he walked only after the government seized Bashneft shares from Yevtushenkov’s holding company before performing the re-privatization Kabuki that ended with the company being bought by Rosneft. And now Ulyukayev.

Will the skein of bad luck end with Rosneft and Sechin? That’s a good bet, but not a lock. Who knows what changes in power are in store, especially as Putin ages, or if there is some economic or political shock?

In the aftermath of the stunning election result, we are witnessing much wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. One common whinge is that the result is illegitimate because Hillary apparently won (barely) the national popular vote, but was trounced in the Electoral College vote. I will pass over some of the issues this raises (e.g., that campaign strategies would have been different had the election been a national referendum/plebiscite) to focus on the benefits of the Electoral College.

The Electoral College is a departure from majoritarianism, one of many that the Founders deliberately incorporated into the Constitution. Meaning that the real debate is not over this particular deviation from national majoritarianism, but whether there should be any such deviations at all.

Put me down as a deviant, because I strongly believe that pure majoritarianism is a disaster. The tyranny of the majority is a real concern. To get all geeky about it, the core is empty in pure majoritarian games: no stable coalitions can form, and the outcome is chaos and shifting alliances of Peters conspiring to rob Pauls. The dangers of this are particularly great when there are few checks on the power of the state to transfer property and power from one group to another. There is also much greater potential for conflict and a greater incentive to spend resources to win the popular vote because small changes in the popular vote lead to discontinuously large changes in the distribution of power–including the power to expropriate. The stakes are much bigger, especially in closely divided polities.

If you want to see an example of what happens when there are fewer checks on the majority, look at California. It is no accident that California is Whinge Central post 11/8/16. The state voted strongly for Clinton: I may exaggerate only slightly that the net-wits called California for Clinton within 30 seconds of the polls closing.

But as Victor Davis Hanson has movingly shown, there are two Californias. (Joel Kotkin has written in a similar vein.) The coastal region, with Silicone Valley and Silicon Valley. Urban, expensive, and wealthy–with large pockets of plutocratic wealth. It draws its wealth disproportionately from high rent industries–entertainment and software tech. But there is another California, the interior. It is far poorer, and far grittier. It is heavily agricultural, and agrarian. It wrests what wealth it has from the earth, with sweat and toil. The only rents are to the land.

This is reflected in the electoral map, which is a microcosm of the US. There is a blue California on the coasts, and a red California in the interior. Even some places with large numbers of Mexican immigrants (e.g., Kern County) went for Trump. But the coast was solid Clinton.

In terms of population as well as wealth, Coastal California dominates. This means that in terms of state legislation and government, the interior of California is largely disenfranchised, and the governing elites have little reason to take the interests of the interior into account. This problem is exacerbated by the heavy use of referendums in California. Referenda are a strongly majoritarian institution, which do have a purpose, namely, placing a check on minorities that can use government to advance their interests. But this comes at a cost of allowing majorities to run roughshod over minorities.

There were several referenda on the ballot in California on Tuesday. Most were advanced by the coastal majority and involved issues that can and should be decided on a local basis, but which a highly ideological majority wanted to force on everyone. One example is the gun control measures that passed. But the example that is most telling to me is the referendum which banned the use of plastic grocery bags.

This is an issue that is virtue signaling par excellence. Around the world (e.g., France) liberals have made the banning of plastic bags a major environmental issue, despite the fact that the environmental benefits of the ban are far more asserted than proven. In California in particular, most major coastal metropolises have banned plastic bags. Bully for them. But that was not enough for the coastal denizens: they had to force their preferences on the entire state.

As Tim Newman wrote several months ago in several excellent posts, the plastic bag ban imposes substantial inconvenience on many normal people, hits lower income people the hardest, and is basically yet another effort by the better thans to instruct the benighted proles:

And that was my point about the Soviet Union: the privileged imposing artificial material restrictions on society which hit those at the bottom hardest, all the while saying it is for their own good.

In summary, I’m not necessarily saying the ban on carrier bags is a bad thing.  I just take objection to people making the assumption that plastic use is in itself bad, alternatives better, and the ban good as if it these were self-evident truths; and the lifestyle preferences of the wealthy middle-classes being imposed on everyone else with nothing but condescending dismissal of the costs and inconvenience to those not so fortunate.

Exactly right.

In California, the coastal majority succeeded in imposing its will on a less wealthy minority. It did so with plastic bags (and bullets) by referendum: it does so on myriad other matters via the state legislature which it dominates. These elites are throwing a post-Trump temper tantrum–which has gone so far as for many to advocate California’s secession–precisely because the Electoral College has thwarted their ability to do the same in the US as a whole.

If you look at what California does to the political minority in the interior, you will see that the tyranny of the majority is a real thing. The majority doesn’t have to pay any heed to the rubes in the Central Valley–let them use canvas! The genius of the Electoral College is that it forces the popular majority to temper its ambitions and moderate its program in order to attract at least some support from–or at least, diminish the opposition from–other constituencies. The urban must make some accommodations to the rural and suburban. The coastal must make some concessions to flyover country.

This serves to reduce conflict between constituencies, and mitigates centrifugal and fissile forces in a large and extremely diverse nation. These are very good things. If you think that politics in the US is contentious and divisive now, you have no idea what it would be like without the Electoral College.

One of the left’s arguments against the Electoral College is that it was adopted in large part as an accommodation to the slave states. There is an element to truth in that, although it should be noted that small non-slave states (e.g., Connecticut) also supported it because they feared being ground under the heel of large states like New York and Virginia. But the role of slavery actually illustrates the politically and socially beneficial role of the institution.

Absent departures from majoritarianism like the Electoral College, it is unlikely that highly disparate regions like the North and the South could have come together to form a nation in the first place, or would have long avoided secession and armed conflict if they had. The Civil War occurred precisely when demographic and economic changes threatened to permit the majority North from imposing its will on the minority South. Anti-majoritarian institutions (not just the Electoral College, but the Senate) permitted a nation to be formed in the first place, and prevented secession and military conflict for over 70 years.

In the instance of slavery, the anti-majoritarian provisions of the Constitution protected an evil institution for decades.* But that fact does not mean that anti-majoritarian features are inherently bad. To the contrary. Pure majoritarianism can be oppressive, and that increases the potential for political division and conflict. The Electoral College requires a party to moderate its appetites and broaden its appeal. It does not eliminate conflict, but it does temper it. And it does so precisely because it constrains the ability of arrogant majorities to impose their will on diverse minorities. The Electoral College gives greater voice to minorities: without voice, the minorities are more likely to resort to exit or combat.

Which is exactly why the left in the US is currently freaking out about the Electoral College. Their hysteria is the best advertisement for this institution that I could possibly imagine.

* As a practical matter, a purely majoritarian Constitution, or a Constitution with fewer anti-majoritarian features, would not have shortened the life of slavery, and likely would have extended it. One possible result would have been that there was no United States, and the Southern states would have been free to perpetuate their institutions without interference. The Northern states would have had little or no incentive to interfere. (One strong economic motive for the North to fight secession was that the tariff system redistributed income from the South to the North, and secession undermined that. That provided an economic incentive for Massachusetts and New York to cohabit with South Carolina and Alabama, and to oppose their moving out.)

If through some miracle a nation embracing North and South had formed under a more majoritarian Constitution, it is highly likely that a more purely majoritarian system would have resulted in secession at a far earlier date, when the economic (especially industrial) and population balance was much closer, and the North probably would have been powerless to prevail over the South militarily. The Civil War came in a non-purely majoritarian system only when the economic imbalance between the sections became so pronounced that military advantage rested with the North, and even given that preponderance, it was barely able to prevail, and then only after epic bloodshed.

Thus, adopting the William Lloyd Garrison position that the Constitution was a bargain with the devil and the North would be morally purified by a separation with the South might have salved his conscience and those of other (primarily evangelical) abolitionists, it would not have freed one person from bondage, and may indeed have cursed many more to suffer from it for much longer.

Hillary Clinton made history last night. Just not quite the way she had expected. Rather than “shatter the glass ceiling” (gag), she was crushed as the roof caved in on a complacent, corrupt, and clueless establishment of which she was the exemplar. Donald Trump was the personification of the forces that defeated her and the “elite”, but pretty much only that: either by canny calculation or dumb luck he rode a deep current of popular discontent to achieve a stunning victory that saw at least five, and likely six, strongly Democratic states flip from D to R. The Democrats prevailed only in the leftist strongholds of the P-Coast, the Northeast, The Illinois Salient, and Governmentlandia (Virginia and Maryland). The rest of the country went red. Trump was the effect, not the cause. The vessel that floated on the tide, not the tide itself.

Blessed are ye who are long gamma. Those who have the flexibility and optionality to respond to uncertain developments are the winners here, for there will be uncertainty aplenty. The future with Hillary would have been drearily predictable: the future with Trump will be a wild ride.

Consider few representative areas.

The Supreme Court: Hillary would have chosen rigid leftist ideologues intent on remaking the country–not just its government and economy, but its social fabric. Trump? I have no clue, and either does anyone else. My guess that his court picks generally will be highly idiosyncratic with no unifying philosophical orientation–because Trump lacks one as well.

Government appointments: Hillary would tap from the Empire’s vast array of apparatchiks, most of whom would be statist to the core. The middle and lower level appointments would have teemed with the kinds of political cockroaches revealed in the light of the Podesta emails. As an outsider, Trump has no similar pool of bureaucrats-in-waiting. The transition process will likely be chaotic, and he will have to rely on a Republican establishment that he distrusts (and which distrusts him) to advance candidates. Again, the outcome is wildly unpredictable, and will probably result in a hodgepodge of appointments with no unifying ideology or philosophy, who will often work at cross purposes.

There will be new blood, which is a good thing: people from outside the ranks of the courtiers in DC and the coastal metropolises are desperately needed. These people will inevitably be high variance. But that is an inevitable part of the process of change.

Economic policy: Hillary would have continued the onslaught of regulations that has been producing an Amerisclerosis that rivals Eurosclerosis. Agencies like the EPA would have continued to propose and implement burdensome, growth-sapping regulations. She would have pushed the kinds of taxes on capital that are also inimical to growth (although her ability to get those through Congress would have been a very open question). Trump? He is an economic ignoramus, but it is likely that Congress will temper some of his wackier ideas. Further, he is open to reducing many of the regulatory monstrosities like those that the EPA has imposed, and to removing barriers to energy production and transportation. His tax ideas are unpredictable, but again they are not relentlessly hostile to investment and capital. And a big thing: there is an opportunity to fix Obamacare. Hillary would have fixed it by moving to single payer. There is an opportunity to move away from government control, not doubling down on it.

Regulatory policy and taxes will require cooperation with Congress. The relations between Trump and the Republican leadership are fraught, at best. Idiots like Max Boot are delusional if they think that a Republican House and Senate will give Trump carte blanche. But Trump views himself as a negotiator, and will no doubt engage in negotiations with Congress with zest. The outcome of those negotiations? Impossible to predict. Likely something best described by the old joke: “What is a giraffe? A horse designed by committee [or negotiation].” Again, tremendous uncertainty.

With respect to economic policy, personnel will matter here. Again, Hillary’s appointments to agencies like EPA, SEC, FERC, FTC, FCC, and CFTC would have been tediously predictable statists intent on extending government control over the economy. Trump’s appointments are much more likely to be a very mixed bag, leading to less predictable outcomes. I do think it is likely, however, that there will be many fewer regulatory control freaks. Thus, I expect that at the CFTC, for instance, a Trump commission will jettison economic inanities like Reg AT and position limits.

Foreign policy: Hillary has a strong interventionist, not to say warmongering, streak, and would have almost certainly been more aggressive in Syria than Obama has been, with very sobering consequences (including a substantially increased risk of confrontation with Russia). Trump’s predilections seem much less interventionist, but events, dear boy, events, can lead presidents to do things that they would prefer not to. And given Trump’s mercurial nature, how he will respond to events is wildly unpredictable.

He will have to deal with other major issues, notably China. He will approach these like a negotiator–including, I expect, large doses of bluff and bluster–and the outcomes of these negotiations will be even harder to predict than those of his negotiations with Congress. (One issue that could have both domestic and foreign policy effects is that I conjecture it is likely that the Sequester will die under Trump, whereas it would have continued with a divided government.)

It is clear, therefore, that Trump will disrupt the system, both domestically and internationally, whereas Hillary would have perpetuated it. And I am not unduly concerned about extreme disruptions, because the inherent complexity of the American system of government, the tension between Trump and Congress, and quite frankly, Trump’s limited attention span will temper his more extreme impulses.

Further, shaking up the system is a good thing, for the system is dysfunctional and corrupt. Hillary would have continued our relentless slouch to cryptosocialism and would have cemented the rule of a contemptible and remote establishment: the possibility of an upside is greater with Trump, even if by accident. Hillary would have delivered us sclerosis on purpose.

I would also suggest that a Hillary victory would have increased the likelihood of a bigger cataclysm in the future. She and her acolytes would have disdained and dismissed the forces that in the event propelled Trump to victory. She would have doubled down on the policies that have contributed to our present discontent. As a result, that discontent would have only increased, thereby increasing in turn the likelihood of an even bigger political spasm in the future.

To put things differently: with Trump, we will be on a roller coaster. With Hillary, we would have been on the luge.

I think Trump will be a transitional figure. Transitioning to what, I have no idea. But given the deeply dysfunctional nature of the status quo, transition holds out hope. Shaking up a decrepit and corrupt system creates the possibility for change. Creative Destruction is a possibility with Trump. With Hillary, no.

All this said, the Empire will strike back. It will wage a relentless war from its redoubts in the media, and to a lesser degree, the courts. Look at what the Remain crowd is doing in the UK in its attempt to undo its loss at the polls. That will happen here too: there will be a Thermidor, or at least an attempted one. And that battle will produce uncertainty.

And not all of the Empire’s minions are Democrats: the Republican establishment will fight Trump from within the citadel. This political warfare adds the prospect of even more uncertainty. Again, a reason to be long gamma.

I cannot say I predicted this, because I didn’t. I do think it is fair to say that I limned the outlines of what has transpired. This came in two parts. First, I noted that as with Brexit, this possibility was far more likely than elite opinion believed. A complacent elite sat smugly atop the volcano, blithely ignorant of the pressure of deep popular disdain pushing up the earth under their feet, disdain powered by the financial crisis, bloody and inconclusive wars, and an anemic economy. Talking only to one another, the elite received no feedback about what voters were thinking and feeling.  Existing in an echo chamber made them vulnerable to shock and surprise. Moreover, their contempt for those not in their class also led them to think that such feedback was irrelevant, because these little people didn’t matter. They knew better.

But the little people, largely without voice in the forums in which the elite communicate and interact, nursed their injuries, bided their time, and took their revenge.

Second, Hillary is a horrible person, and a horrible candidate–or should I say deplorable? Look at the vote totals vs. Obama in 2012. To say she underperformed is an extreme understatement. She underperformed because she had nothing new to offer, and indeed, the old conventional liberal stuff she was offering was long past its sell-by date. Add to that her horrible personal packaging (the corruption, the endless scandal, the inveterate lying) and she was crushed by an inarticulate political novice carrying more baggage than the cargo hold of an Airbus A380.

I did not have the courage of my convictions to predict that these two factors would result in a Trump victory. I thought Jacksonian America was too small to prevail. I too was in the thrall of conventional wisdom to some degree.

If you asked me to describe my mood, I would echo the title of a Semisonic song: Feeling strangely fine. Part of that feeling, I must admit somewhat guiltily, is due to schadenfreude: the hysteria of those whom I despise is quite enjoyable to witness. But part of it is that I think I am long gamma, and that the US is long gamma too. The old system and the old establishment have crushed American dynamism. Shaking up that system has more upside than downside, and whatever you think about Trump, you have to know he will shake things up.

I’ll close by quoting about the most un-Trump-like president I can think of: Eisenhower. “If you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it.” In other words, disrupt. Get out of the box. Don’t continue down the same endless path: try something new. The United States has been facing many insoluble problems, political, economic, strategic. The establishment had no clue at how to solve these problems, and their attempts to try the same things expecting different results put us on a slow road to ruin. Or maybe not so slow. A disruption was needed. An overthrow of the elite was imperative. Those things will in some respects enlarge our problems, by creating turmoil. But out of that enlargement there is the prospect of solutions–and yes, the prospect of catastrophe.

I don’t think that Trump himself will be the architect of those solutions. His role will be to tear down–he’s already done that to a considerable degree. Others will have to build up. Who that is, I don’t know. What construction will emerge, I don’t know. But there is far more upside now than there would have been with President Hillary Clinton. And that is reason to feel fine, strangely so or not

Streetwiseprofessor, August 2011:

WTI’s problems arise from the consequences of too much supply at the delivery point, which is a good problem for a contract to have.  The price signals are leading to the kind of response that will eliminate the supply overhang, leaving the WTI contract with prices that are highly interconnected with those of seaborne crude, and with enough deliverable supply to mitigate the potential for squeezes and other technical disruptions.

. . . .

Which means that those who are crowing about Brent today, and heaping scorn on WTI, will be begging for WTI’s problems in a few years.  For by then, WTI’s issues will be fixed, and it will be sitting astride a robust flow of oil tightly interconnected with the nexus of world oil trading.

Bloomberg, November 2016:

In the battle for supremacy between the world’s two largest oil exchanges, one of them is enjoying a turbo charge from the U.S. government.

Traders bought and sold an average of almost 1.1 billion barrels of West Texas Intermediate crude futures each day in 2016, a surge of 35 percent from a year earlier. The scale of the gain was partly because of the U.S. government lifting decades-old export limits last year, pushing barrels all over the world, according to CME Group Inc., whose Nymex exchange handles the contracts. By comparison, ICE Futures Europe’s Brent contract climbed by 13 percent.

WTI and Brent have been the oil industry’s two main futures contracts for decades. In the past, the American grade’s global popularity was restrained by the fact that exports were heavily restricted. Now, record U.S. shipments are heading overseas, meaning WTI’s appeal as a hedging instrument is rising, particularly in Asia, where CME has expanded its footprint.

“You have turbo-charged WTI as a truly waterborne global benchmark,” Derek Sammann global head of commodities and options products at CME Group, said in a phone interview regarding the lifting of the ban. “You’re seeing the global market reach out and use WTI — whether that’s traders in Europe, Asia and the U.S.”

This should surprise no one–but the conventional wisdom had largely written off WTI in 2011. Given that economic price signals were providing a strong incentive to invest in infrastructure to ease the bottleneck between the Midcon and the sea, it was inevitable that WTI would become reconnected with the waterborne market.

Once the physical bottleneck was eased, the only remaining bottleneck was the export ban. But whereas the export ban was costless prior to the shale boom (because it banned something that wasn’t happening anyways), it became very costly when US supply (especially of light, sweet crude) ballooned. As Peltzman, Becker and others pointed out long ago, politicians do take deadweight costs into account. In a situation like the US oil market, which pitted two large and concentrated interests (upstream producers and refiners) against one another, reducing deadweight costs probably made the difference (as the distributive politics were basically a push).  Thus, the export ban went the way of the dodo, and the tie between WTI and the seaborne market became all that much tighter.

This all means that it’s not quite right to say that CME’s WTI contract has been “turbocharged by the federal government.” Shale it what has turbocharged everything. The US government just accommodated policy to a new economic reality. It was along for the ride, as are CME and ICE.

ICE’s response was kind of amusing:

“ICE Brent Crude remains the leading global benchmark for oil,” the exchange said in an e-mailed response to questions. “With up to two-thirds of the world’s oil priced off the Brent complex, the Brent crude futures contract is a key hedging mechanism for oil market participants.”

Whatever it takes to get them through the day, I guess. Reading that brought to mind statements that LIFFE made about the loss of market share to Eurex in early-1998.

The fact is that there is hysteresis in the choice of the pricing benchmark. As exiting contracts mature and new contracts are entered, market participants will have an opportunity to revisit their choice of pricing benchmark. With the high volume and liquidity of WTI, and the increasingly tight connection between WTI and world oil flows, more participants will shift to WTI pricing.

Further, as I noted in the 2011 post (and several that preceded it) Brent’s structural problems are far more severe. Brent production is declining, and this decline will likely accelerate in a persistent low oil price environment: not only has shale boosted North American supply, it has contributed to the decline in North Sea supply. Brent’s pricing mechanism is already extremely baroque, and will only become more so as Platts scrambles to find more imaginative ways to tie the contract to new supply sources. It is not hard to imagine that in the medium term Brent will be Brent in name only.

Since WTI will likely rest on a strong and perhaps increasing supply base, Brent’s physical underpinning will become progressively shakier, and more Rube Goldberg-like. These different physical market trajectories will benefit WTI derivatives relative to Brent, and will also induce a shift towards using WTI as a benchmark in physical trades. Meaning that ICE is whistling past the graveyard. Or maybe they are just taking Satchel Paige’s advice: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” And in ICE Brent’s case, that’s definitely true, and the gap is closing quickly.

No. I have not lost my mind and decided to come out in support of Hillary. The reference in the post title is to Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign slogan, and Hillary epitomizes all of the worst of Nixon’s traits.

Nixon infamously said “if the president does it, it’s not illegal.” Hillary’s version of this is actually more ambitious: by deed, if not word, her credo is: “If Hillary does it, it’s not illegal.” The email saga is just the latest in a series of events going back almost 40 years (to her work on a Watergate committee, ironically) in which Hillary has acted as if the rules do not apply to her. Any rules. Any laws.

The Podesta emails reveal that even many of those around her were shocked and chagrined at her audacity to flouting the law and democratic and republican mores by operating a private server. But there was no adult who was willing to challenge her. Instead, everyone–and this arguably includes Obama, who corresponded (under an alias!) with her on her private email–enabled and excused her lawlessness.

One of Hillary’s rationalizations for her behavior is that everyone is out to get her–her paranoia is another Nixonesque trait. This most recent episode will only deepen that paranoia.

Which means that if Hillary is actually elected next Tuesday, the nation is in for a continuing series of these scandals. As president, her sense of entitlement and superiority to the law and paranoia will only only increase. In her mind, if Hillary does it, it’s not illegal, especially because she does it because otherwise her enemies (who are everywhere!) will destroy her.

Put differently, the woman is constitutionally unfit for any position of public trust, let alone the most powerful office in the land. Because of her constitutional unfitness, she is a walking (well, sometimes) Constitutional crisis.

The truly dispiriting thing about all this is that it is not news. The standard Clinton excuse for everything is “this is old news.” Well, Hillary’s defective character is very, very old news: the country has been on notice since at least 1993, and those paying attention knew about it well before that. Nonetheless, she was elected to the Senate from New York twice; appointed to the most senior cabinet position; nominated to run for president by the oldest political party in America; and is on the cusp of being elected president.

Hillary’s character failings are her responsibility alone. Tens of millions of people are responsible for the fact that she remains a carbuncle on the body politic. The most culpable are the alleged elite in this country, who plague us from their dens in DC, Manhattan, the Hamptons, Boston, and California. They are the main accessories in the degradation of the rule of law that is the result of the relentless rise of this woman who believes herself above the law.

One last thing. My comparison of Hillary to Nixon is terribly unfair to the latter. Hillary has none of the intelligence and strategic insight of Nixon. Hillary has ridden the coattails of her husband, whereas Nixon was as close to a self-made man as there has been in American politics in the 20th century. Most importantly, for all of his ethical and legal lapses, from time to time Nixon betrayed having a conscience: Hillary has exhibited no such weakness. (I think Obama knows this too. When the email scandal broke anew and Obama advised Hillary to “follow her conscience,” I think he was engaged in trolling on an epic scale.)

But this is the woman who, barring a staggering development in the most recent episode of the email saga, is likely to be the next president. God bless America. We’ll need it.

In July, FBI Director James Comey was a hero on the left. He made a contorted presentation of the law and the facts relating Hillary Clinton’s email in order to justify not recommending charging her with any crime. Yes, he said some very critical things about Hillary, but the end result was that she appeared to be out of legal jeopardy.

For her part, Hillary misrepresented what Comey had said, and claimed that he had found nothing discreditable about her conduct. That wasn’t true, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that this particular obstacle to her election appeared to have been cleared.

As a result, Comey was lionized on the left, and the Democrats attacked Republicans who criticized him. Donna Brazile, for instance, tweeted  link to a Washington Post article that claimed that Republican criticism of Comey was an attack on the rule of law.

But that was then! Now the left is in paroxysms of rage because yesterday–on a Friday afternoon, natch–Comey sent a letter to Congress claiming that new information found in the–get this–Anthony Weiner investigation had led him to re-open the Hillary investigation. Comey’s letter was equivocal and hedged, but the fact that 11 days before the election the email issue had risen from the dead (just in time for Halloween!) has unleashed leftist furies.

Hillary was informed of this new development while on her plane. She did not leave it for 25 minutes while it sat on the ground in Iowa. Maybe she was doing her best Keith Moon impersonation. You know she’s capable of it.

Yesterday and today the left has been out in full force, demonizing Comey for being a partisan hack attempting to throw the election to Trump. Yesterday I Tweeted in jest “Does the FBI work for the Russians?” because they have become the explanation for all of Hillary’s travails of late. (Joe McCarthy, call your office!) But some people apparently take this seriously. Like Howard Dean, who tweeted “Ironically, James Comey put himself on the same side as Putin.”

The absurdity just keeps on metastasizing.

And just how does this work, exactly? If Comey is a partisan hack intent on torpedoing Clinton and electing Trump, why would he twist himself into knots to exonerate her (well, at least put an end to any thought of charging her) in July? He could have well and truly put her in political peril then. Further, the accommodations he made to Clinton and her close staff were truly extraordinary, and would not have been extended to you or me or pretty much anybody other than Hillary. That’s hardly the kind of thing some partisan Javert would have done. This late in the day modified limited hangout is certainly not a welcome development to Hillary, but is not nearly as threatening as a recommendation to charge would have been in July.

So it is wildly implausible that Comey is attempting to swing the election. Washington being Washington, the most likely explanation for what Comey is doing is CYA. It’s what they do best on the banks of the Potomac.

There was no doubt tremendous discontent in the ranks at the way he handled the Hillary investigation. The (probably unexpected) discovery of information on Anthony Weiner’s and Huma Abedin’s devices would have come out eventually, and if Comey had sat on it until after the election there would have been a political explosion that would have cost him dearly. He also had to calculate that there was a high likelihood that some agent outraged at how the investigation had been handled would leak the new development, which would be the worst of both worlds for him: the information would be out, and it would look like he had tried to suppress it.

So I am guessing that Comey felt himself to be in the position of the weasel in a snare, and chewed off his leg to escape. Yeah, it’s not something he wanted to do, but given the alternatives, it was probably the best course of action available to him.

Just moments ago I read that the FBI did not have permission from Justice to actually read what they had discovered. Given its harrumphing today about how Comey violated department policy by taking actions that could affect an election, no doubt DoJ will not give such permission. And no doubt, Comey knew that they wouldn’t. He could therefore issue his CYA letter in the knowledge that its practical and legal ramifications would be very limited. Justice would stop the investigation dead in its tracks, meaning that no compromising information would be released before the election.

I therefore sadly conclude that this will mean little in the end. The most likely outcome is that Huma Abedin will be sacrificed to save the queen. But the queen will live. And James Comey will limp off into obscurity.

Back in the 1970s there was an entire genre in popular fiction, film, and television in which the CIA was the arch-villain, engaged in vast conspiracies to subvert free government at home or abroad. The stock personal villain in these works was invariably a tightly wrapped, bloodless, controlling, manipulative and often psychopathic CIA official.

At the time, I was not a big fan of these dramas. They were formulaic and seemed overwrought. But I am reconsidering that after the recent rise to public prominence of one Michael Morrel, the ex-deputy director of the CIA. Morrel is straight out of 1970s central casting–tightly wrapped, bloodless, controlling, manipulative and arguably psychopathic.

Morrel is hell-bent on getting the US involved neck-deep into the wars in Syria and Yemen, including doing things that would run the risk of a war with Russia. In August, he advocated killing Russians and Iranians in Syria, “to make them pay a price”:

“The Iranians were making us pay a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price.”

He went on to explain making them “pay the price” would mean killing Russians and Iranians, and said he wants to make Syrian president Bashar al-Assad uncomfortable.

“I want to go after those things that Assad sees as his personal power base. I want to scare Assad.”

This is all but an open call for the US to engage in assassinations of Russians, Iranians, and Syrians in Syria. Perhaps Mr. Morrel missed the part about this being illegal since the 1970s.

Today he advocated intervening on the Saudi side in the war with the Houthis in Yemen, including boarding Iranian vessels. So apparently Mr. Morrel is totally on board with the US being Saudi mercenaries.

This is what America has come to. From fighting against Hessian hirelings to achieve independence, to advocating serving as hirelings for terror funding oil ticks engaged in a pointless war that does not involve American interests in the slightest–and which also risks bringing the US into a broader regional conflict that could easily escalate.

Morrel has also been out front of the attack on Trump’s national security credentials, including making the allegation (based on his ipse dixit alone, of course) that Putin recruited Trump as an “unwitting agent” of Russia.

Just like the stock 70s CIA villain, Morrel obviously burns with ambition. He clearly wants to be Hillary’s CIA director and is willing to say anything to achieve that ambition. Of course, she already owes him, for Morrel was deeply involved in altering the Benghazi talking points in order to support her false version of events.

The thought of someone like Morrel as head of CIA is deeply disturbing. The thought that he likely reflects Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy instincts is doubly so. For getting involved deeply in Syria to overthrow Assad (and confronting the Russians to do so) and in Yemen to advance the Saudi proxy war against Iran are decidedly not in American interests, and would likely result in the waste of great amounts of American blood and treasure, for no strategic purpose whatsoever.

I have long said that you don’t have to worry just about the candidate that is elected to the presidency: you have to pay close attention to her or his camp followers who upon her/his election would be ensconced throughout the vast government bureaucracy, where they can do untold damage with little prospect of being held to account. Michael Morrel epitomizes these dangers. He is a soulless, power-obsessed little man who cavalierly muses about embroiling America in pointless wars, and risking superpower confrontation to do so. He is one of Hillary’s most prominent camp followers. Think of what other ones are currently slouching their way towards Jerusalem on the Potomac in her train.

Back when Glencore was in extremis last year, I noted that although the company could do some things on its own (e.g., sell assets, cut dividends, reduce debt) to address its problems, its fate was largely out of its hands. Further, its fate was contingent on what happened to commodity prices–coal and copper in particular–and those prices would depend first and foremost on China, and hence on Chinese policy and politics.

Those prognostications have proven largely correct. The company executed a good turnaround plan, but it has received a huge assist from China. China’s heavy-handed intervention to cut thermal and coking coal output has led to a dramatic spike in coal prices. Whereas the steady decline in those prices had weighed heavily on Glencore’s fortunes in 2014 and 2015, the rapid rise in those prices in 2016 has largely retrieved those fortunes. Thermal coal prices are up almost 100 percent since mid-year, and coking coal has risen 240 percent from its lows.

As a result, Glencore was just able to secure almost $100/ton for a thermal coal contract with a major Japanese buyer–up 50 percent from last year’s contract. It is anticipated that this is a harbinger for other major sales contracts.

The company will not capture the entire rally in prices, because it had hedged about 50 percent of its output for 2016. But that means 50 percent wasn’t hedged, and the price rise on those unhedged tons will provide a substantial profit for the company. (This dependence of the company on flat prices indicates that it is not so much a trader anymore, as an upstream producer married to a big trading operation.) (Given that hedges are presumably marked-to-market and collateralized, and hence require Glencore to make cash payments on its derivatives at the time prices rise, I wonder if the rally has created any cash flow issues due to mismatches in cash flows between physical coal sales and derivatives held as hedges.)

So Chinese policy has been Glencore’s best friend so far in 2016. But don’t get too excited. Now the Chinese are concerned that they might have overdone things. The government has just called an emergency meeting with 20 major coal producers to figure out how to raise output in order to lower prices:

China’s state planner has called another last-minute meeting to discuss with more than 20 coal mines more steps to boost supplies to electric utilities and tame a rally in thermal coal prices, according to two sources and local press.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has convened a meeting with 22 coal miners for Tuesday to discuss ways to guarantee supply during the winter while sticking to the government’s long-term goal of removing excess inefficient capacity, according to a document inviting companies to the meeting seen by Reuters.

What China giveth, China might taketh away.

All this policy to-and-fro has, of course is leading to speculation about Chinese government policy. This contributes to considerable price volatility, a classic example of policy-induced volatility, which is far more common that policies that reduce volatility.

Presumably this uncertainty will induce Glencore to try to lock in more customers (which is a form of hedging). It might also increase its paper hedging, because a policy U-turn in China (about which your guess and Glencore’s guess are as good as mine) is always a possibility, and could send prices plunging again.

So when I said last year that Glencore was hostage to coal prices, and hence to Chinese government policy–well, here’s the proof. It’s worked in the company’s favor so far, but given the competing interests (electricity generators, steel firms, banks, etc.) affected by commodity prices, a major policy adjustment is a real possibility. Glencore–and other major commodity producers, especially in coal and ferrous metals–remain hostages to Chinese policy and hence Chinese politics.