Streetwise Professor

@libertylynx suggested to me that the GOP is primarily responsible for the current unpopularity of capitalism in the US. I agree that this is largely the case. Here’s my first stab at an explanation.

At root it is due to a yawning gap between rhetoric and action. The GOP poses as the party of small government and free markets, but it is not, really. The disconnect was somewhat present during the Reagan administration, but it became progressively (pun alert!) more pronounced starting with Bush I, and particularly during the George W. Bush administration.

Bush II in particular was a big spender. Some of it was war-driven, but he was also profligate domestically. Perhaps most importantly, given the salience of housing to the 2008-2009 financial crisis which inflicted the most grievous blow to belief in the efficacy and efficiency of markets since the Great Depression, was that the Bush administration perpetuated the bias towards investment in housing exemplified by Fannie and Freddie. A truly market-oriented administration would have terminated Fannie and Freddie with extreme prejudice, but it grew apace during the Bush II administration. When combined with an expansive Fed and a flawed banking regulatory framework, the groundwork for a disaster was in place.

In many respects, this is similar to what happened during and after the Great Depression. That event was widely viewed as a failure of capitalism and the market system, when it was actually the result of a combination of bad Fed policy and a dysfunctional banking system that was the result of a political bargain that resulted in the proliferation of small unit banks that could not withstand a broad shock: see Friedman and Schwartz for an analysis of the former, and Calomiris and Haber for an examination of the latter.  The banking system that collapsed in the 1930s was a political artifact, and would have not developed the way that it did in the absence of a regulatory framework that was tailored to benefit very specific political constituencies.

The strong bias towards housing investment in the United States in the 1990s-2000s was also the result of a political bargain: alas, the same is true today, even despite the crisis. This political bargain was based on a coalition of politically connected firms (Fannie, Freddie, major banks, and construction) and populists. This bargain created incentives that led market participants to invest excessively in housing. When this came a cropper, the blame attached to those market participants who responded to incentives, rather than the political agents and political process that created those incentives.

In DC, Republicans talked a pro-market, small-government game, but did not govern that way. Republicans in Congress liked living a comfortable life in DC. They did not have a stomach for fighting the battle that a true pro-market, small government policy would have caused. They liked the sinecures of power too much to risk them, knowing in particular that pursuing such policies would unleash a storm of media criticism and make them unpopular with the bureaucrats and lobbyists who infest the place. So they made a few symbolic gestures, and spouted pro-free market, small government rhetoric, but really did nothing. The continued existence, let alone the growth, of Fannie and Freddie is testament to that.

When the storm hit in 2008, this came back to haunt them. More importantly, it came back to haunt the cause of free markets and smaller government. Since those giving lip service to those ideals were in charge when the storm hit, it was easy to blame the ideals, even though those spouting the rhetoric had done virtually nothing to advance them. Indeed, they had perpetuated, and in fact exacerbated, the market distortion that was the ultimate cause of the crisis. This presented a perfect opportunity for those in politics (the Democratic Party) and the media (an appendage of the Democratic Party) to attack the ideals that they despised.  It would have been better had the Republicans not pretended to be pro-market, as at least that would have limited some of the damage to popular beliefs and opinions about markets.

There are at least a couple of reasons for the Republican reluctance actually to fight the statist DC consensus, despite their rhetorical embrace of that fight.

One is the scars left by the struggles over the government shutdown in 1995-1996, and the impeachment battle that followed. Both fights were a distraction, and what’s worse, the Republicans handled both badly. They took a horrible beating in the media and elections–rightly so, in retrospect–and it got their minds right. The 1994 insurgents were supplanted by time servers and apparatchiks. Hasterts and Boehners and McConnells, and other assorted boneless wonders you’ve never even heard of. They were masters at the Kabuki performance of pretending to be pro-market and pro-smaller government, but really doing nothing to stem the tide.

The second reason is more fundamental, but in a way can explain the first. Politicians respond to incentives too. A good model for them is a pigeon in a Skinner Box. They soon learn to push the lever that results in the magical appearance of a food pellet, and not to push the lever that doesn’t.

Organized constituencies provide the food pellets in DC. There is no organized constituency for freer markets or substantially smaller government. There are constituencies for particular businesses and industries, and for government largesse. The benefits of free markets and smaller government are large, but diffuse. As Olson and Stigler and Becker and others showed long ago, diffuse and unorganized beneficiaries have little incentive or ability to influence policy. In contrast, particular businesses and industries do. Thus, careerist politicians intent on re-election and a comfortable life have little incentive to pursue market-oriented policies, but instead pursue policies that favor particular constituencies, including business constituencies.

Which means that even though many Republicans talk/talked about being pro-market, they are/were at most really pro-business. And there is a difference. A huge difference, as Adam Smith pointed out centuries ago, and Friedman repeated often decades ago. But that difference is not well-understood, which means that failures that occur when Republicans are in power tend to get blamed on the market system, or capitalism.

The S&L crisis of almost 30 years ago provides a good example. The S&L industry was the creation of law and regulation resulting from a political bargain: again see Calomiris and Haber. Inflation devastated the industry, and in response it called for elimination of restrictions on how S&Ls could invest. This was done in the name of deregulation and freeing markets, but the most important government interventions were left in place. In particular, deposit insurance remained, and government regulators refused to shut down insolvent thrifts. The mixture of freeing up the asset side of the balance sheet when (a) liabilities were insured, and (b) S&Ls had no equity, was toxic in the extreme. With insured liabilities and no equity, S&Ls had a tremendous incentive to add risk, and the deregulation of the asset side of the balance sheet gave them the ability to do so. They took on said risk, it ended badly, and taxpayers were on the hook for $200 billion or so as a result. Real money back then!

Was this a failure of deregulation, and a damning verdict on markets? I would say no: the fraught condition of the S&Ls was the product of previous government regulation and policy, and the perverse incentive to take on risk was inherent in another policy—deposit insurance. An organized political constituency (S&L operators) influenced Congress to loosen some regulations that made the perverse effects of the other regulations and policies even more acute.

In other words: they wanted to deregulate in the worst way, and they did. They did so because the deregulation was designed to benefit particular businesses, not to create a free market in banking. Pace the theory of the second best, elimination of something (restrictions on S&L investment) that would be an imperfection in the absence of other imperfections made things far worse when other imperfections (deposit insurance, forbearing regulators) remained in place.

But the narrative that came out of the S&L debacle was one of market failure, not government failure. Deregulation and markets took the blame, when what had really happened is that politicians responding to incentives (the importuning of an organized constituency) changed the laws in ways that created perverse incentives for business, and ultimately all this perversity begot something wretched indeed. The crisis was played out on Main Street, but its origins lay squarely on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The takeaway from all this is rather depressing. It means there is an inherent political bias against pro-market policies because markets, and the beneficiaries of markets, do not form an organized political force. The difficulty of voters to distinguish pro-business policies from pro-market rhetoric often used to advance them means that economic crises (the Great Depression, the S&L collapse, the 2008 Crisis) that are strongly rooted in government failure are blamed on markets instead, which perversely results in even more government intervention.

So this is why Republicans damage the cause of free markets and small government. They spout pro-market and small government rhetoric, but for reasons of political economy, really do little that actually advances free markets or reduce the size of government. But when some government policy creates incentives that lead to a bad market outcome, their rhetoric boomerangs on markets, not government.

The post-crisis years have been a period of slow growth and economic sclerosis. This is largely attributable to the explosion of regulation that has taken place since 2009. The narrative that helped spark this explosion is that markets failed. Alas, Republicans did much to advance that narrative, albeit inadvertently. But advance it they did, and the malign effects will be felt for decades to come.

In brief, Republican politicians may be subjectively pro-market and pro-capitalism, but objectively they have done grievous harm to markets and capitalism.

A couple of weeks ago the CFTC voted to revise its position limits regulation. My verdict: it makes the regulation less bad. Sort of like a strawberry tart, without so much rat in it.

The most important part of the revision is to permit exchanges and SEFs to recognize certain non-enumerated hedges as bona fide hedges that don’t count towards the position limit. In the original proposal, only eight hedges were enumerated, and only enumerated hedges were treated as bona fide hedges.

This drew substantial criticism from industry, particularly from end users, because the list of enumerated hedges was quite limited, and failed to incorporate many commonly utilized risk management strategies. Thus, more participants were at risk of being constrained by position limits, even though their purpose for trading was primarily to manage risk.

The CFTC’s fix was to permit market participants to apply annually to an exchange (“designated contract market”) or SEF for a non-enumerated bona fide hedge. The participant submits information about the hedging strategy to the exchange or SEF, which reviews it and determines whether it meets the criteria for bona fide hedges and grants an exemption for positions entered pursuant to this strategy.

This does help hedgers escape limits intended to constrain speculators. But the review process isn’t free. Moreover, the process of application and approval will take some time, which limits the flexibility of market participants. They have to foresee the kinds of strategies they would like to employ well in advance of actually implementing them.

At most this mitigates a harm, and at a cost. The speculative position limit provides no discernible benefit in terms of market stability or manipulation prevention (for which there are superior substitutes), but imposes a heavy compliance burden on all market users, even those who would almost certainly never be constrained by the limit. Moreover, the rule constrains risk transfer, thereby undermining one of the primary purposes of futures and swap markets. The bona fide hedging rule as originally proposed would have constrained risk transfer further, so basically expanding the universe of bona fide hedges removes a piece of rat or two from the tart. But it’s still appalling.

The revision also clarifies the definition of bona fide hedge, eliminating the “incidental test” and the “orderly trading requirement.” As currently proposed, to be a bona fide hedge, a position must reduce price risk. (I deliberately chose that particular link for reasons that I might be at liberty to share sometime.) That is, it cannot be used to manage other risks such as logistics or default risks. This is what the statute says, and was the way that the old regulation 1.3(z)(1) was written and interpreted.

Perhaps the most important result of this process is that it stands as a rebuke to Elizabeth Warren for the calumnies and slanders she heaped upon the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisor Committee, and me personally. One of the main complaints of participants in the EEMAC meetings was that the bona fide hedging rule as originally proposed was unduly restrictive. I dutifully recorded those complaints in the report that I wrote, which caused Senator Warren to lose it. (I cleaned that up. Reluctantly.) (The report is circulating in samizdat form. I will find a link and post.)

Well, apparently all of the Commissioners, including two strong supporters of the position limit rule, Massad and Bowen, found the criticisms persuasive and, to their credit, responded constructively to them. So, Liz, if supporting a broadening of bona fide position limits makes one an industry whore, that epithet applies to the Democratic appointees on the Commission. I presume you will take it up with them in your tempered, reasoned way.

But I note that Ms. Warren has been notably silent on the Commission’s action. Go figure.

It is now likely that the position limit rule will finally slouch its way into the rulebook. This is unfortunate. All that can be said is that due to this action it isn’t as bad as it could have been, and as bad as it is, it is nothing compared to the monstrosity that is being created in Europe.

One of the most disreputable tactics of those who sound alarms about anthropogenic climate change is to conscript any weather-related disaster to advance their cause. Case in point: the recent wildfires in and around Fort MacMurray, Alberta, Canada:

Experts say climate change is contributing to the wildfires raging across Canada, and the increasing frequency of such fires may overwhelm one of Earth’s most important ecosystems, the boreal forest.

In just over a week, an out of control blaze has charred more than 2,290 square kilometers (884 square miles) of land and forced the evacuation of 100,000 people from Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada.

Dominated by conifers like pine and spruce, the boreal forest sweeps across Canada, Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia making up about 30 percent of the world’s forest cover, and absorbing a big chunk of carbon from the atmosphere.

As crucial as the boreal forest is at reducing the impact of human-driven fossil fuel emissions, it is also increasingly fragile, and expected to become hotter, drier, and more prone to fires in the future.

“Western Canada, including in particular the region in Alberta containing Fort McMurray, has warmed quite a bit more than the global average,” said scientist Michael Mann, author of “Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change.”

With the Arctic region warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, climate model projections place central and western Canada in the “bullseye of enhanced warming,” he told AFP.

Michael Mann. Of course.

The past months have seen a strong El Nino which has caused anomalous weather throughout the world, and in the western hemisphere in particular. It has brought heavier than normal rains to some areas, and drought to others. My immediate suspicion was that El Nino contributed to the warm dry conditions, low snow pack, etc., that set the stage for the Alberta fires. And indeed, that’s the case.

It’s also necessary to put this in perspective. Even in normal years, there are fires in the boreal forests of Canada. Indeed, about 29,000 square kilometers burn in Canada each year. When I looked at the height of the fires, the Fort MacMurray fire had consumed about 2900 square kilometers, or about 10 percent of the annual average in Canada. This also represents about .015 percent of Canadian boreal forest area.

The fire got attention not so much because of its size, but because it occurred in a populated area (something of a rarity in that area), and one that happens to be a major oil producing center.

But the cause is too important to let facts interfere with the narrative. The fires were dramatic, and to the credulous it is plausible that global warming is to blame. So Mann et al could not let this opportunity pass.

Exploiting weather to raise alarms about climate is not the only disreputable tactic these people employ. Another is to attempt to intimidate through the legal process those who dare challenge their orthodoxy. This tactic has reached a new level in California, where a bill with the Orwellian title “California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016” has cleared committees in the state Senate:

“This bill explicitly authorizes district attorneys and the Attorney General to pursue UCL [Unfair Competition Law] claims alleging that a business or organization has directly or indirectly engaged in unfair competition with respect to scientific evidence regarding the existence, extent, or current or future impacts of anthropogenic induced climate change,” says the state Senate Rules Committee’s floor analysis.

What does “engage in unfair competition with respect to scientific evidence” even mean? As an industrial organization economist by training, and practice, I know that the concept of “unfair competition” is slippery at best even in a straightforward economic context, and (speaking of Orwellian) that unfair competition laws have been used primarily to stifle competition rather than promote it. How unfair competition concepts would even apply to scientific debate is beyond me.

But that’s not the point, is it? The point of this law is to utilize another law that has proved very convenient at squelching competitors in the name of competition in order to squelch debate about climate change and climate policy. This is antithetical to science yet is done in the name of science: it is also a perfect example of the thuggery that the warmists routinely resort to when they cannot prevail in an open discussion.

When writing about Dickens, Orwell said something that relates to this issue as well:

It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.

The smelly little orthodoxy epitomized by Michael Mann and Kemala Harris (the AG of CA, and soon to be Senator, who is a leader of the movement to prosecute climate change dissenters) indeed hates free intelligence, and free debate. And nineteenth century liberals, for that matter.

Have the progressives (particularly in California) who shriek about Peter Theil using the legal system to go after Gawker uttered a peep of protest against the employment of the far heavier hand of the state to silence debate about climate change? Not that I’ve heard. Free speech for me, but not for thee, is their motto.

Those who claim that science is undeniably on their side should have no fear of debate, and should not feel compelled to use coercion to stifle that debate. That they do means that they lack confidence in the truth of their message and their ability to persuade. It also means that they have a hearty disrespect for the ability of the American people to listen to and evaluate that debate with intelligence and fairness. In other words, what we are seeing in California is another example of a self-anointed elite that heartily disdains the hoi polloi, believing that it is their right and obligation to use any means necessary to impose their beliefs.

This is a recipe for social strife, especially since the climate change debate is by no means the only place where this attitude is regnant. This is precisely why battle is now raging between elitism and populism. Sad to say, that battle is likely to become even more intense in the coming months and years.

Venezuela is on the verge of economic collapse and social disintegration. Here’s the NYT’s diagnosis:

The growing economic crisis — fueled by low prices for oil, the country’s main export; a drought that has crippled Venezuela’s ability to generate hydroelectric power; and a long decline in manufacturing and agricultural production — has turned into an intensely political one for President Nicolás Maduro. This month, he declared a state of emergency, his second this year, and ordered military exercises, citing foreign threats.

Do you see what’s missing? Not a single mention of socialism, Chavism, Bolivarian socialism, etc.

Other countries have suffered similar shocks without descending into dystopian chaos like Venezuela. Many countries in South America, for instance (notably Columbia and Brazil), have suffered from the decline in commodity prices and the drought, and are doing poorly economically, but are not plagued by empty store shelves, myriad shuttered factories and stores, and the imminent threat of social violence. Brazil has suffered from a lack of hydropower due to the drought, but has imported LNG to keep the lights on. Venezuela can’t afford to.

Further, Venezuela’s descent into catastrophe started long ago, and serious problems were clearly manifest in 2014 and before when the price of oil was over $100/bbl and the drought had not reduced hydropower output.

Venezuela’s current crisis had its roots with Chavez’s triumph in the 2002-2003 general strike, and the subsequent firing of 18,000 PDVSA employees. In the years that followed, foreign investors were expropriated, as were domestic businesses, all in the name of socialism. The government has imposed price controls on an every widening array of goods. As shortages increased and inflation spiked, the government increased the scope of price controls and enforced them in a draconian way, including through the dispatching of red shirted goons to seize offending businesses.

The results of all this should have been eminently predictable: shortages and a collapse of economic activity. It is those policies that caused the “long decline in manufacturing and agricultural production.”

If the NYT read it’s own freaking archives, it might have realized that this problem was looming well before the oil price decline and the drought:

Venezuela is one of the world’s top oil producers at a time of soaring energy prices [hahaha], yet shortages of staples like milk, meat and toilet paper are a chronic part of life here, often turning grocery shopping into a hit or miss proposition.

Some residents arrange their calendars around the once-a-week deliveries made to government-subsidized stores like this one, lining up before dawn to buy a single frozen chicken before the stock runs out. Or a couple of bags of flour. Or a bottle of cooking oil. (Emphasis added.)

Mind well the date of the article: April 21, 2012. Four years ago. When the Brent price was about $118/bbl.

This title of the NYT piece is hilarious: “With Venezuelan Food Shortages, Some Blame Price Controls.”

Hey, NYT: by “some” do you mean people with an economics IQ of above 80? (A category which would exclude the editorial staff and most of the news room.)

What is happening in Venezuela is a perfect illustration of something that Adam Smith recognized 240 years ago. It takes perverse government policy to turn an adverse supply or demand shock into shortages and economic catastrophe:

Whoever examines with attention the history of the dearths and famines which have afflicted any part of Europe, during either the course of the present or that of the two preceding centuries, of several of which we have pretty exact accounts, will find, I believe, that a dearth never has arisen from any combination among the inland dealers in corn, nor from any other cause but a real scarcity, occasioned sometimes perhaps, and in some particular places, by the waste of war, but in by far the greatest number of cases by the fault of the seasons; and that a famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth. (Emphasis added.)

That is a perfect description of what is happening in Venezuela.

But various economic morons on the left (but I repeat myself) like Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, Sean Penn, and Danny Glover (to name just a few) have been cheering Chavism and Bolivarian socialism for attacking the inequalities spawned by capitalism red in tooth and claw. In a perverse way, it has indeed succeeded in reducing inequality–by making everyone largely equal in their abject misery.

Perhaps there is a silver lining to the food shortages. They reduce the need for toilet paper, which ran out long ago (due to price controls, naturally).

The New York Times prides itself on carrying all the news that’s fit to print. Apparently the news about the impact of price controls hasn’t reached it yet, even though observant folks picked up on it about the time of Diolcetian’s Edict on Prices, a mere 1715 years ago.

This economic cluelessness by the NYT is precisely why its criticism of me doesn’t bother me. Such boundless economic ignorance (which is shared by a vast swathe of its readers, including notably Elizabeth Warren) renders its criticism meaningless. Anyone so stupid, or so ideologically blinded, that they fail to recognize that Venezuela’s problems have everything to do with perverse government policy has nothing to say about economics that is worth paying the slightest heed.

Obama gave his long-awaited speech in Hiroshima yesterday. No, he did not apologize for Truman’s decision to drop the bomb. In many ways, what he says was actually worse.

Most of the speech was vapid banalities. War is bad. (Who knew?) War has been part of the human condition since the beginning of recorded history. (Really?)

Most of the rest was moral preening and the uttering of grandiose but completely empty and unrealistic solutions to the scourge of nuclear weapons. According to Obama, nothing short of a “moral revolution” is required.

What, pray tell, in the vast sweep of human history gives the faintest hope that such a “moral revolution” is remotely possible? Perhaps Obama has enlisted the help of invisible magic unicorns. Or angels.

Indeed, given Obama’s track record with gaseous speeches such as these, you might want to become a prepper, rent a backhoe, and start building your bomb shelter. For instance, Obama’s searching criticism of the history of the relationship between the West and the Muslim world, an his soaring call in his Cairo speech for a fundamental transformation–a revolution, if you will–in that relationship ushered in a period of even greater violence in the Muslim world, and a serious decline in the relationship between Islam and the West.

The Middle Eastern dystopia that slouched in the wake of Obama’s Cairo speech makes me shudder for what will follow in the aftermath of this one. Reading Obama’s Hiroshima speech in light of the dismal aftermath of his Cairo vaporings should lead the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to move the Doomsday Clock to within a few seconds of midnight.

As for why Obama’s speech was in some ways worse than an outright apology, it was an exercise in moral equivalence that did not distinguish between the combatants in WWII, but lumped them into one mass engaged in a conflict that was undistinguishable from the conflicts that mankind has waged since pre-historical times:

The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.

In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women, children, no different than us. Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death. There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.

The difference between WWII, and the War of Austrian Succession, say, let alone some unrecorded tribal conflict, is blindingly obvious, and that difference matters. Why people were “shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death” matters. And the responsibility matters, and it is indisputable that the responsibility for this ghastly record is by no means equally shared: it rests disproportionately on Germany and yes, Japan. To ignore these fundamental facts is unpardonable. To do so in the context of a speech at Hiroshima insinuates that the act that ended one part of the war was morally indistinguishable from the events that led up to it, and therefore obscures any moral line between those who initiated the conflict and carried it out with horrific brutality, and those who ended it.

Then there is this wretched paragraph:

The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.

This suggests in a very Hegelian/progressive way that the dropping of the atomic bomb was the result of some some inexorable technological process that had slipped human control. It is a statement about a historical process that is utterly ahistorical–more of Obama’s trademark historicism, in other words. It does not put the decision in the very specific historical context of the time. It suggests that the decision to drop the bomb was worse than the alternatives, but does so in a cowardly way because it does not address those alternatives and argue that they were better than dropping the bomb.

It also suggests that the man who made the decision was morally defective, and in need of some moral reformation. This is utterly unfair. Truman had a wrenching choice to make.  A decent successor to his office would recognize that, and give it proper deference. But Obama did not do this, and instead continued his tiresome role as a moral titan instructing lesser beings. All in all, an utterly appalling performance, but a totally unsurprising one.

Obama’s amnesia is, unfortunately, widely shared. American attitudes about Hiroshima and Nagasaki have changed dramatically since the war, and no doubt Obama’s implicit condemnation will be viewed favorably by large numbers of Americans, perhaps a majority. In some respects, this reflects the fact that in the experience of most Americans, the Japanese are a peaceful, quiet, diligent and inoffensive people: few are familiar with the bestiality of Japanese conduct from 1931 through August, 1945. Therefore, it is hard for many to comprehend how something as horrific as Hiroshima and Nagasaki could possibly be justified.

But to do this is to totally misunderstand the basic fact that modern Japan and modern Japanese are pacific, benign and enlightened precisely because of the bomb. Only the utter destruction of a militarist society that was enthusiastically supported by the vast bulk of the citizenry, and which spawned untold miseries across Asia, could have turned the Japanese into a pacific people. Nothing short of the bomb (or an invasion that would have led to more destruction and more death) would have scared the Japanese straight.

Although Obama did not apologize, many other commentators have used the occasion of Obama’s speech to regurgitate their condemnation of the dropping of the bomb and to suggest that an apology is the least that the US owes the Japanese, and the world. It would take me seventy years to go through the verbal sludge that has oozed forth in the last seven days, so I will limit myself to a brief discussion of the worst.

This piece was written by one Jeffrey Lewis, who styles himself in his Twitter bio as “one of the pointier heads in all of nuclear wonkdom.” It would be more accurate to say “one of the emptier heads in all of nuclear wonkdom.” Or at least I hope to God that’s the case, because we’re doomed if he isn’t. For Mr. Pointy Head wrote one of the most cosmically stupid lines I have read in my life:

The historical debate in the United States over Hiroshima, as best I can tell, began as a debate over responsibility for the Cold War.

It is the case that this has been a debate in the fever swamps of the left, who are sure that Truman dropped the bomb as the opening salvo of the Cold War, and that Stalin was the real target. But in the saner precincts of the United States (and even in those very rare academic precincts that can be considered sane) the historical debate began, and continues, as a debate over whether dropping the bomb was the best way to end WWII in the Pacific. The key issues in the debate were from the beginning and remain things like: Would moving away from unconditional surrender have led to an end of the war? How many casualties would the Allies have suffered if they had invaded? How many casualties would the Japanese have suffered if the Allies had invaded? How many Japanese would have died if the US had attempted to continue to firebomb and starve Japan into submission, instead of dropping the bomb? Would dropping the bomb on an uninhabited location, with Japanese witnesses, have convinced the Japanese to surrender?

But if you read Lewis’s piece, you’ll note that something is missing: World War Two! How anyone can discuss the dropping of the bomb and ignore altogether the Solomons, New Guinea, the Philippines (especially Manila), Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Kamikazes, Operations Downfall, Coronet and Olympic, western POWs, huge populations under brutal Japanese control in China and elsewhere in Asia, etc., etc., etc., boggles the mind. But no. In Lewis’s mind it’s all about the Cold War.

The closest that Lewis comes to recognizing the reality of the grim choice facing Truman is this smart-assed line: “And that’s why your granddad didn’t die on some god-forsaken beach code-named after a car.” Would that Paul Fussell or Eugene Sledge or other less literary veterans who were spared unspeakable horrors by the bomb were alive to put this little puke in his place.

Lewis is a product of the same leftist miasma that produced Barack Obama. I have little doubt that his views resonate with Obama, and that the President primarily chooses not to express such views as forthrightly as Lewis does out of political expediency, rather than out of conviction. But in truth, Obama said much the same in his remarks in Hiroshima. By orating about Hiroshima in soaring moral terms completely untethered to the horrific choices facing Harry Truman and the American military leadership, Obama slanders them and does a grave disservice to the truth.

Trump’s triumph is sending establishment Republicans (on Capitol Hill, ex-Bushies, and writers at publications like the National Review and Weekly Standard) into paroxysms of apoplexy. A recent example is a WaPo piece by ex-Bush speechwriter (and relentless self-promoter) Michael Gerson. It makes for nauseating reading, even if you are not a Trump acolyte (and I am not).

The gravamen of Gerson’s gripe:

What common views or traits unite the most visible Trump partisans? A group including Limbaugh and Christie is not defined primarily by ideology. Rather, the Trumpians share a disdain for “country-club” Republicans (though former House speaker John Boehner apparently likes Trump because they were golfing buddies). They tend to be white and middle-aged. They are filled with resentment.

Above all, they detest weakness in themselves and others. The country, in their view, has grown soft and feeble. Their opponents are losers, lacking in energy. Rather than despising bullying — as Ryan, Romney and all the Bushes do — they elevate it. The strong must take power, defy political correctness, humiliate and defeat their opponents, and reverse the nation’s slide toward mediocrity.

The most annoying part about this is that Gerson–like other Republican Trump critics–uses a line of attack that the left has used against Republicans forever to attack Trump: “they tend to be white and middle-aged. They are filled with resentment.” Every time–every bleeping time–the Republicans have won big in an election (e.g., 1994, 2014) the left has attempted to de-legitimize the victory by claiming it is nothing but the tantrum of privileged, middle-aged whites. (Remember Peter Jennings’ verdict on the Gingrich-led Republican insurgency of 1994?)

And gee, last time I checked, George W. Bush (for whom Gerson wrote) didn’t exactly assemble a New Rainbow Coalition.

What makes things even more irritating is that after regurgitating the standard leftist/Democrat attack on Republicans, many of the anti-Trump crowd also scream “he’s not a real conservative!” No, he probably isn’t, but please tell me just how is using the leftist stick to beat Trump conservative?

Gerson has one thing sort of right: “The great Republican crackup has begun.”

There is a Republican crackup. One problem with Gerson’s sentence is the tense. The crackup began some time ago, and has been ongoing. Gerson also fails to identify who is responsible for the crackup. If he were honest, he would have to quote Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

For the rise of Trump is the direct result of the abject failure of the Republican Party generally, and the Bush Dynasty in particular. For decades they have failed to articulate a coherent, principled, intellectually compelling, or popular governing vision, or a practical program to implement it. For decades they have failed to produce any appealing leaders or candidates.

They are the ones who created the vacuum that Trump has filled with his bombast and outsized personality. And how did they respond to his insurgency? Not with a positive vision. Not with a coherent, reasoned, and appealing alternative to address the issues that Trump (perhaps opportunistically, but clearly astutely) has run on, which obviously strike a deep chord with many who voted reliably Republican in the past.

But never count on this crowd for honesty, or searching self-appraisal. Instead, they have responded with insults–all the while attacking Trump for his insult comic style. They have responded with ad hominem and invective, not with a positive program that could appeal to Trump’s supporters.

And rather than recognize that the failure of their attacks to resonate is a damning verdict on their shortcomings, they respond with attacks on the voters with whom they have failed to connect. Their reactions are all variations on “the people have spoken. The bastards.”

Paul Johnson–as solid as a conservative as there is–is much more astute about these things than Gerson, or the NRO gang, or the whiners on Capitol Hill:

For these reasons it’s good news that Donald Trump is doing so well in the American political primaries. He is vulgar, abusive, nasty, rude, boorish and outrageous. He is also saying what he thinks and, more important, teaching Americans how to think for themselves again.

. . . .

No one could be a bigger contrast to the spineless, pusillanimous and underdeserving Barack Obama, who has never done a thing for himself and is entirely the creation of reverse discrimination. The fact that he was elected President–not once, but twice–shows how deep-set the rot is and how far along the road to national impotence the country has traveled.

Under Obama the U.S.–by far the richest and most productive nation on earth–has been outsmarted, outmaneuvered and made to appear a second-class power by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. America has presented itself as a victim of political and economic Alzheimer’s disease, a case of national debility and geopolitical collapse.

I’m not saying Trump is the cure. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s not. But I am sure that the #neverTrump crowd is a major part of the disease. The unprincipled and whiney way they have responded to his trouncing them is proof of that.

If Trump could actually send this lot into oblivion, he will have performed a valuable service. Perhaps then something better could take its place. I fear, however, that the establishment Republicans will survive a Trump defeat like cockroaches surviving a nuclear holocaust. Indeed, they are likely to mutate, and come back even more malign, saying “I told you so” over and over again, and seeing vindication in what in reality is a damning condemnation: Trump’s defeat would not be a victory for conservatism, or classical liberalism, but for the governing class and the dead hand of the state. I predict the establishment Republicans who survive in the dark, damp recesses of DC will be the New Bourbons, learning nothing, and forgetting nothing.

Because  if it happens, Trump’s defeat would not clear the way for a viable alternative to the perverse political correctness that Johnson attacks, or the prevalent liberalism that dominates current American politics. It would just represent a continuation of the American political devolution–especially on the right–of the last 30-odd years.  A devolution of which people like Michael Gerson are the poster children.

Since October of last year, China’s National Bureau of Statistics has not published detailed data on metals markets. And it’s not just metals:

Data on oil products such as liquefied petroleum gas, naphtha and fuel oil have been withdrawn. So too have regional figures for coal, steel and electricity output.

 

The ostensible reason is that statistics bureau personnel were selling data for personal gain.

If you believe that, I will sell you a large wall. It’s so big they say you can see it from space! Only one like it! I sell it to you for a song.

“Anti-corruption” is the cover/pretext that the Chinese government now uses to eliminate those who have fallen from political favor. The most likely explanation for the “anti-corruption” drive aimed at economic statistics agencies is not to eliminate politically inconvenient people: it is to eliminate politically inconvenient data.

The fraudulence of Chinese official economic statistics is well known. One of the challenges of creating false official statistics for aggregate numbers like GDP growth is making it consistent with data on specific industries or sectors. The divergence between GDP growth and electricity production, for instance, has often been remarked upon.

How to solve this problem? Stop producing the underlying sector/industry/product specific data. How to do that without giving away the real reason? Use the all-purpose excuse: fighting corruption.

This has an air of plausibility: after all, corruption is rife in China. But this really doesn’t pass the smell test, especially given the timing: note that the data embargo started when concerns about the Chinese economy became acute at the end of last year.

The Chinese are desperate to maintain the illusion of 6.7 percent growth, quarter in, quarter out. Maintaining that illusion has become harder and harder as questioning of the consistency of various data sources has become more insistent. Shutting off the flow of sector/industry/product data is a brute force way of dealing with that problem.

This is another signal of the real state of the Chinese economy. The government wouldn’t have jacked up the stimulus unless the true state of affairs was far more dire than official statistics suggest. The government wouldn’t be suppressing data from the primary goods sectors unless it was also giving the lie to the official line.

Bottom line: question everything relating to the economy in China right now. Be especially skeptical about anything done under the banner of fighting corruption. That banner should be a red flag warning that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to suppress inconvenient people, or inconvenient truths. If they say it’s about corruption, it’s really about something else.

A Navy SEAL was killed in Iraq a couple of days ago. And the administration has handled this with all of the mendacity we have come to expect.

First, there was just a vague announcement that an American serviceman had been killed. Then they acknowledged it was a SEAL, and that he died as a result of “direct fire” (meaning, he was shot, rather than being hit by a mortar, for instance). Then they tried to suggest that he was part of an advise and assist mission.

Now, finally, we get the real story. (I say that with the usual caveats necessary when dealing with this lot.) The SEAL, Charles Keating IV, grandson of the Charles Keating of Keating Five infamy, was part of a quick reaction force that flew in to rescue some Americans who were meeting with Peshmerga forces behind the lines when ISIS mounted a surprise attack. There was an intense hours-long firefight, during which PO1/SO1 Keating was killed.

Sounds like combat to me. But no. You don’t have the intellect to understand the nuance that this administration is capable of. Sayeth Obama spokesman Josh Earnest:

“This is an individual who is not in a combat mission, but he was in a dangerous place,” Earnest told a daily briefing. “And his position came under – under attack. He was armed, trained and prepared to defend himself.”

“Unfortunately, he was killed. And he was killed in combat, but that was not a part of his mission,” he continued. “His mission was specifically to offer advice and assistance to those Iraqi forces that were fighting for their own country.”

Oh! It’s all clear to me now!

That is beyond disgusting. The other day I wrote about Schrödinger’s Clearinghouse. Here we have, courtesy of the Obama administration, Schrödinger’s combat, which is infinitely worse. It both is and isn’t combat, simultaneously.

Unfortunately, in this case the box was opened, and SO1 Keating was dead.

And let’s cut the crap.  The job of SEALs generally, and quick reaction forces in particular, is to engage in combat. Army Special Forces do advising. SEALs do killing. Period. To say that “combat . . . was not a part of his mission” is a mendacious falsehood. Every word. Including  the “a.”

Belay that. Especially the “a.” It was the only part of his mission.

Seriously. Everything Earnest said is a lie. Every fucking thing.

Keating’s “position did not come under attack.” Keating was involved in a counterattack to retake a position ISIS had seized from the Peshmerga. Combat was part of his mission. He was not defending himself. He was involved in a counterattack. He quite definitely was not there to advise and assist. He was there as part of a QRF to save those offering “advice and assistance” to those Iraqi forces. And they aren’t even Iraqi forces, as the term should be understood. They are Kurdish Peshmerga, not Iraqi army troops.

How many lies can one man tell in five sentences? I count five. I’m sure he’ll do better next time. Maybe he’ll make to six or seven.

Obama prefers Schrödinger’s combat so that he can have it both ways. He can appear all butch and claim that he is taking the fight to ISIS, while at the same time claim that he is honoring his pledge not to commit ground forces to Iraq or Syria.

Let’s have some honesty. We can handle the truth. The administration owes the American people an honest  accounting of what is going on. No, not operational details. No, not an order of battle. But an indication of the scope and nature of the commitment, the size of the force, and its missions.

Let’s face facts here. The administration tried to hide the circumstances of SO1 Keating’s death for as long as possible. They went with the modified limited hangout until the Guardian got ahold of video of the battle, taken by a Peshmerga fighter.

This is not acceptable.

Nor is it acceptable that the supine press corps in DC, which is obsessed with Trump, and to a lesser degree Hillary and Bernie, lets the administration–and Obama personally–get away with this deliberate deception and evasion day after day after day. Obama has made one statement recently about commitment of US forces in the fight against ISIS. He usually lets SecDef Carter carry his water. If the White House gets questioned, Earnest handles the questions, lies through his grotesque pie hole, and the press is content to let the story die before the news cycle is over. There is more talk about Obama’s performance at the Throne Sniffers’ Dinner–excuse me, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner–than about his being MIA on the issue of the war against ISIS.

This is particularly disgusting given that the administration is taking its fifth anniversary victory lap over the killing of Osama. That’s history. Read a book about it. It doesn’t matter. What matters is happening on the ground–yes, the ground, where boots tread–in Iraq and Syria. The Most Transparent Administration in History (Most Ironic is more like it) owes us answers. Instead, we get the war reporting version of Schrödinger’s Cat.

Bloomberg’s Tracy Alloway and Jake Kawa wrote an expose on Zero Hedge last week. There was not a tremendous amount of new material here. I was disappointed that they didn’t have anything about Daniel Ivandjiiski’s father: I am convinced there is a Warsaw Pact intelligence connection there. The story focused on the revelations of an ex-Tyler Durden, Colin Lokey. Looked provided information that supports what I’d written almost five years ago, namely, that ZH is a Russian information operation:

Lokey, who said he wrote much of the site’s political content, claimed there was pressure to frame issues in a way he felt was disingenuous. “I tried to inject as much truth as I could into my posts, but there’s no room for it. “Russia=good. Obama=idiot. Bashar al-Assad=benevolent leader. John Kerry= dunce. Vladimir Putin=greatest leader in the history of statecraft,” Lokey wrote, describing his take on the website’s politics. Ivandjiiski countered that Lokey could write “anything and everything he wanted directly without anyone writing over it.”

The remaining Tyler Turkeys responded in their typically classy way. I am very proud to be featured in their lead:

Others, such as “academics who defend Wall Street to reap rewards” had taken on a different approach, accusing the website of being a “Russian information operation”, supporting pro-Russian interests, which allegedly involved KGB and even Putin ties, simply because we refused to follow the pro-US script. We are certainly ok with being the object of other’s conspiracy theories, in this case completely false ones since we have never been in contact with anyone in Russia, or the US, or any government for that matter. We have also never accepted a dollar of outside funding from either public or private organization – we have prided ourselves in our financial independence because we have been profitable since inception.

Hilarious. Hey guys: next time use my name!

And seriously. There’s a lot more behind what I wrote than “simply because we refused to follow the pro-US script.” Such a disingenuous non-responsive response is as much as a confirmation as I could imagine.

The Tylers continue to strike their pose as courageous battlers against the corrupt capitalism. Ironically, given that they recycle the laughable NYT bullshit story labeling me a tool of Wall Street, I have inflicted far more real pain on those that ZH claims to fight than they have. Whereas they are all talk, by my rough estimate I have contributed materially to cases in which banks, traders and others have paid in the mid-to-high nine figures to settle. The figure could realistically exceed ten figures in the near future.

After taking a swipe at me, the remaining Tylers turn their attention to Lokey. They quote extensively from his text messages (more class!) and label him as a drug addict and drug dealer, and claim that this discredits him as a source.

Um, he wrote for them for a year while he knowing about his past and his alleged instabilities. Doesn’t that kind of discredit what they published for a year?

Based on Lokey’s account, the Bloomberg piece describes ZH as the web equivalent of a sweat shop. This makes it highly unlikely that the remaining two named Durdens, Ivaandjiiski and Tim Backshall, carried the load prior to Lokey’s arrival. Thus, there are probably other ex-Durdens out there with tales to tell.

ZH is a dodgy operation. Bloomberg has turned over the rock a little. But there is much more to learn. Let’s hope Bloomberg, or someone else, turn over a few more.

Commodity prices on Chinese exchanges, especially for ferrous metals, have been skyrocketing in recent weeks. Rebar, iron ore and coking coal have been particularly active, but thermal coal and cotton have been jacked too.

In response, the Chinese authorities are cracking down on speculation.  Exchanges have raised margins in order to attempt to rein in trading. The government is making ominous statements about speculation and manipulation. And we know what can happen to speculators who fall afoul of the government.

Ironically, prices never appear to be just right, by the lights of the Chinese authorities. Last summer, and earlier this year, speculators were allegedly causing stock prices and commodity prices to be too low. Now they are causing commodity prices to be too high.

This is a case of the Chinese authorities playing Claude Rains in Casablanca, and ordering a roundup of the usual suspects. Speculators make convenient targets, and they appear to be the proximate cause: after all, their trades produce the rapidly rising prices.

But the speculators are merely the messengers. If the Chinese authorities want to find the real culprits, they need to look in the mirror, for the speculators are responding to the most recent lurch in Chinese economic policy.

Put simply, after the economic slowdown of the second half of 2015 (a slowdown masked by fraudulent official statistics, but evident nonetheless), the government pushed the panic button and fell back on its standard remedy: injecting a burst of credit.  Some estimates put the Chinese debt to GDP at 237 percent. Since GDP is likely also an overstated measure of national income, due to fraudulent statistics and the fact that the losses on past investments have not been recognized (in part because much of the credit is pumped  into zombie companies that should be bankrupt) this ratio understates the true burden of the debt.

The surge in credit is being extended in large part through extremely fragile and opaque shadow banking channels, but the risk is ending up on bank balance sheets. To engage in regulatory arbitrage of capital rules, banks are disguising loans as “investments” in trust companies and other non-bank intermediaries, who then turn around and lend to corporate borrowers.  Just call a loan a “receivable” and voila, no nasty non performing loan problems.

There is one very reasonable inference to draw from this palpably panicked resort to stimulus, and the fact that many companies in commodity intensive industries are in desperate financial straits and the government is loath to let them go under: today’s stimulus and the implied promise of more in the future whenever the economy stutters will increase the demand for primary commodities. The speculators are drawing this inference, and responding accordingly by bidding up the prices of steel, iron ore, and coal.

Some commentors, including some whom I respect, point out that the increase does not appear to be supported by fundamentals, because steel and coal output, and capacity utilization, appear to be flat. But the markets are forward looking, and the price rises are driven by expectations of a turnaround in these struggling sectors, rather than their current performance. Indeed, the flat performance is one of the factors that has spurred the government to action.

When the Chinese responded to the 2008-2009 crisis by engaging in a massive stimulus program, I said that they were creating a Michael Jackson economy, one that was kept going by artificial means, to the detriment of its long term health. The most recent economic slowdown has engendered a similar response. Its scale is not quite as massive as 2008-2009, but it’s just begun. Furthermore, the earlier stimulus utilized a good portion of the nation’s debt capacity, and even though smaller, the current stimulus risks exhausting that capacity and raising the risk of a banking or financial crisis. It is clear, moreover, each yuan of stimulus today generates a smaller increase in (officially measured) output. Thus, in my view, the current stimulus will only provide a temporary boost to the economy, and indeed, will only aggravate the deep underlying distortions that resulted from past attempts to control the economy. This will make the ultimate reckoning even more painful.

But the speculators realize that the stimulus will raise commodity demand for some time. They further recognize that the stimulus signals that the authorities are backsliding on their pledges to reorient the economy away from heavy industry and investment-driven growth, and this is bullish for primary materials demand going forward: the resort to credit stimulus today makes it more likely that the authorities will continue to resort to it in the future. So they are bidding up prices today based on those predictions.

In other words, as long as the Michael Jackson economy lives and stays hooked, its suppliers will profit.

So yet again, commodity markets and the speculators who trade on them are merely a lurid facade distracting attention from the underlying reality. And the reality in China is that the government cannot kick the stimulus habit. The government may scream about (and worse) the usual suspects, but it is the real cause of the dizzying rise in Chinese commodity prices, and the burst of speculation.