Category: Uncategorized

Financial nuke or dud?

There are dire warnings about a financial nuclear option in the dawning US-China trade war:

It took China just 11 hours to retaliate against the United States for proposing tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese products, but Chinese officials are holding back on taking aim at their largest American import: government debt.

In a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration’s plan for 25 percent duties on $50 billion of Chinese imports, China hit back with its own list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals. But officials signaled no interest for now in bringing their vast holdings of U.S. Treasuries to the fight.

China held around $1.17 trillion of Treasuries as of the end of January, making it the largest of America’s foreign creditors and the No. 2 overall owner of U.S. government bonds after the Federal Reserve. Any move by China to chop its Treasury portfolio could inflict significant harm on U.S. finances and global investors, driving bond yields higher and making it more costly to finance the federal government.

But a reader explains why the bond threat is toothless.

It’s hilarious reading Drudge headlines about how the Chinese owning US Treasuries is some kind of “nuclear option” for Beijing.

Presumably, China thinks it will somehow crash the value of its Treasury holdings by dumping it on the open market. This is somehow supposed to destroy the value of these bonds…or something. It’s almost as if no one understands how bonds actually work.

Bonds have an intrinsic value, the face value of the bonds which is the amount of money that is returned to bondholders when the bond matures.

This is the par value. If I sell a bond to you for $1,000, then I am obligated to return $1,000 to you plus interest when the bond matures. If I sell a $1,000 bond to you at an interest rate that is lower than the market rate, then I may only collect, say, $950 for the bond, but, at maturity, I am obligated to pay $1,000 back to you plus interest.

If you decide to sell the bond that I sold to you on the open market, then you may get a premium above the $1,000 or you may get a discount below $1,000, but the face value of the bond, the money owed, does not change. Upon maturity, $1,000 is owed to the bond holder.

The value of the bond may oscillate on the secondary market because of the risk of default or because interest rates have changed, but, absent the risk of default, the value of the bond is purely mathematical. Since US Treasuries have virtually zero risk of default, the value of the bond is simply the interest rate paid by the bond, vs. the interest rate of competing securities of similar risk vs. the duration. These can all be calculated in Excel using amortization tables.

There is nothing China can do to devalue US Treasuries by dumping their holdings. If they decide to sell for an artificially low price, then they are simply creating arbitrage opportunities for the buyers and frenzied trading will quickly bid back up the value of those bonds to their mathematically determined price.

See how important bonds and interest rates are in understanding the economy?

The financial trade media is heavily invested in arguing that there can be no winners in a trade war. But they are ignoring the fact that the trade war has been ongoing for decades and the USA has been continually surrendering.

They are also ignoring the uncomfortable fact that if comparative advantage were legitimate, the correct response to tariffs and other trade restrictions would be to do nothing. According to free trade theory, a country is economically better off if it enacts no trade restrictions regardless of what its trade partners do. The fact that various US trade partners are threatening retaliation for US tariffs is further evidence that, despite their free trade rhetoric, they do not genuinely believe in the concept. Nor should they, because it does not work as advertised.

A negative asset

What goes around comes around. The truth about the dysfunctional, downscale writer Kevin Williamson is that he deserves to die. Economically, he is a negative asset.

Conservative commentator Kevin Williamson was fired from The Atlantic, just weeks after being hired, the magazine told TheWrap.

“Kevin is a gifted writer, and he has been nothing but professional in all of our interactions. But I have come to the conclusion that The Atlantic is not the best fit for his talents, and so we are parting ways,” said editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in an email to staff on Thursday.

In his memo, obtained by TheWrap, Goldberg explained that Williamson was being terminated over his views on abortion, which have come to wide attention in recent days.

“Late yesterday afternoon, information came to our attention that has caused us to reconsider this relationship. Specifically, the subject of one of Kevin’s most controversial tweets was also a centerpiece of a podcast discussion in which Kevin explained his views on the subject of the death penalty and abortion,” wrote Goldberg.

Williamson even appears to have been fired despite lacking the courage to stand by his previous convictions. There was no “errant tweet”, as the podcast footage subsequently demonstrated. So, who led Jeffrey Goldberg to believe that there was? Did he come up with that on his own, or was that an excuse that was given to him?

While Goldberg himself once trumpeted Williamson’s hire from the National Review, the writer immediately drew outrage — particularly over a tweet in which he argued that women who had had an abortion should face the death penalty. Williamson defenders — and Goldberg himself — had argued that his career should not be judged on an errant tweet.

Some on the Right still don’t get it. The Left is not fixable. The time for worrying about “the heckler’s veto” is long past. There is no public square anymore because there is no common ground. The Left is fighting a cultural war by any means necessary, and even if you’re not willing to do the same, it is reprehensibly foolish to expect them to do otherwise, much less mend their ways for fear of handwringing moderate right-wingers following through on ominously implied threats which they are manifestly unwilling to even articulate.

And we are supposed to imagine what happens to us in light of Williamson’s rapid ejection from The Atlantic? Where have you been for the last ten years? We don’t have to imagine anything. We’ve already experienced it.

Marvel’s vision of the future

So, Wolverine is a woman. The President of the United States is a woman. And a superhero. And a Muslim. It just keeps getting better… check out who is the President in the ALL-NEW WOLVERINE #33. Needless to say, the Comics-SJWs just love it.

As to what we’re doing to take advantage of this nonsense, I’m pleased to be able to say that the first TWO issues of Alt★Hero are now illustrated, the first issue is colored, and we are rapidly approaching the print layout stage. So, here’s the question: do we maximize the potential audience by using the smaller format and selling the single issues for $2.99 or do we go out with the larger format at $3.99?

If you’re an Alt★Hero backer or if you’re intending to buy the single issues, please share your opinion. I go back and forth on this one. Keep in mind that the graphic novels will be in the larger format regardless. And backers will receive the digital editions for free, of course.

We will have another print release on Monday. Possibly two, as a matter of fact.

Another Twitter “suspension”

The Z-man is the latest to be kicked off Twitter:

My twitter account was suspended for violation of their rules. The specific violations were that I was threatening to post personal information about someone and that I was contemplating suicide. Neither of those things are true, but that does not matter in these issues. What I think happened is some anti-Semites, who support the deranged loon Paul Nehlen, took issue with me saying Nehlen is a nut. Soon after, a lunatic started spamming me on Twitter and then my account was permanently suspended by the twitter police.

I’m not all that upset about it. I have been thinking about cutting out social media from my internet life. I was never into Facebook. I never saw the point of it. I’m not that interesting and neither are my friends. If I need to see cat videos, I have a cat at home. I never really liked twitter all that much, but I figured it was a good way to promote the site. It was mostly just a time waster. The increase in traffic from my activity was pretty much zero. My readers know where to find me, so twitter added nothing and just took away.

I’m still up on Gab, but I’m done posting there. Frankly, I’m tired of “white nationalist” types that have made Gab their home. I probably have muted two times the number of people I follow. It’s a free country and I think those people have a right to speak their mind on-line, but I just don’t want to hear it or see it. I’ve reached my limit on that stuff. It’s like being chained to a lunatic. No matter how hard you try to ignore it, you can’t help but notice the lunatic. The solution is to divorce myself from the whole scene. Goodbye lunatics…

Apparently tcjfs was kicked off too. As for the rest of it, the reality is that very few people are cut out for blogging long term. If it doesn’t come to you naturally, then you’re going to burn out sooner or later.

As for the usual “Alt-Right is over” theme, that’s a uniquely American perspective that confuses political philosophy with political movement, ideas with groups, and understanding with branding. When the White House is denouncing and firing globalists, European nationalists are winning elections, and Big Social is enduring everything from Congressional summons to attacks by SJW gunwomen, and self-styled conservative opinion leaders are increasingly irrelevant, the Alt-Right is the exact opposite of over.

Remember, winning is a process, not a conclusion. And as for me, I’m still not tired.

I thought correlation was not causation

SJWs in the media are now trying to claim “globalist” is an anti-semitic term:

The term “globalist” has been used at the White House at least three times this week in reference to an outgoing Jewish Trump administration official, raising some eyebrows because the word is increasingly used in xenophobic and anti-Semitic contexts.

The word came up on Wednesday when a reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether a similar candidate will take the place of Gary Cohn, the outgoing director of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council.

“He was a noted free trader, a globalist. Will the president seek another globalist, another free trader?” Fox News reporter John Roberts asked.

This followed Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, using the word “globalist,” in quotation marks, to describe Cohn in a statement that was tweeted by his department on Tuesday….

For the anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi members of the so-called “alt-right” white supremacist movement, “globalist” is a euphemism for “Jew.” It refers to the longstanding conspiracy theory about an international Jewish cabal working to undermine the traditional white family and Western culture by pushing for immigration and diversity.

A glossary of extremist language published by The New York Times places “globalism” among terms like “alt-right,” “antifa” and “cuck.”

First, that is an interesting implication that the mainstream media is now aware that the real battle is between nationalism and globalism, and shows that it fears an increasingly nationalistic public’s reaction to those who openly advocate the latter. Second, it’s an astonishingly foolish way for any philosemite to try to defend globalism, as the following logical syllogism should suffice to demonstrate.

  • Major Premise: Globalists advocate evil.
  • Minor Premise: Globalist means Jew
  • Conclusion: Jews advocate evil.

This leads directly to the following syllogism.

  • Major Premise: All good men must oppose evil.
  • Minor Premise: Jews advocate evil
  • Conclusion: All good men must oppose Jews.
    • Restated: Anti-semitism is a moral obligation for all good men.

Now, unless you agree with the conclusions, you will have to identify which categorical proposition is false. Unless you are pro-globalism, the first minor premise has to be the false one.

This is astonishingly inept rhetoric, even for the Huffington Post. It never ceases to amaze me how the Left simply refuses to accept that words actually mean things and good people actually oppose certain forms of evil. While it may have worked for blacks (racism) and gays (homophobia), no one is going to drop their opposition to globalism, or stop identifying globalists as globalists, for fear of being called anti-semitic.

In any event, I look forward to the Post’s future articles on how “pedophile” and “satanist” and “Hitler” are also anti-semitic terms.

Why Trump is still popular

It’s really not hard to figure out. No one believes anything the media says anymore.

It’s not surprising that after little more than a year in office many people who voted for a president still support him. But it’s also surprising that a president who has been the object of more negative reporting than any in our history still enjoys something like the same middling base of support he had before taking office. Unless it’s the negative reporting that is the problem, which I suspect is very largely the case. You can only ask adults to participate in the fiction that a retweet of a wrestling GIF is a credible threat of violence against some nerd reporters at a cable station or delight in what you hope will be the failure of American trade policy before they decide to tune you out. Very largely this had already happened by Inauguration Day, but now the work of MSNBC and The New York Times and PolitiFact is complete. Millions of Americans do not know the difference between what is true and what is false and have decided that they do not much care either.

There was, I like fondly to imagine, a different course that might have been taken here. It is just possible, I suppose, that members of my profession could have exercised their reasoning faculties to decide what in the administration was good, what was bad, what was unremarkable or indistinguishable from what any modern president would do, what was painfully idiotic, what was, perhaps, evil. We chose not to exercise this responsibility. Instead we decided to indulge in our live-action roleplaying fantasies about being brave selfless journos taking on a mean demagogue because we love the Constitution so much.

The morons in the media may have the memory of goldfish, but those of us who still remember how they said Bill Clinton getting it on with an intern in the Oval Office was no big deal aren’t inclined to take their solemn declarations that the God-Emperor banging the occasional Playmate or porn star more than a decade ago is an imminent threat to the Constitution.

The media killed its own credibility. Now they are Fake News and everyone knows it, even those who pretend to believe them. As Glenn Reynolds says, their chief occupation is now deciding what facts they are going to try to hide from the American people.

Defend the border?

Against an invasion of millions of aliens? How unthinkable! How outrageous! The God-Emperor finally takes action to secure the southern border of the United States.

President Donald Trump is directing the National Guard to protect the southern border of the country, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Wednesday.

“It’s time to act,” Nielsen said, without specifying the number of troops that would be deployed though she said “it will be strong.” She added that details will be worked out with governors and that “we do hope that the deployment begins immediately.”

The move follows Trump’s warning Tuesday to Mexican leaders that he would abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement without assurances of help on securing the border.

And, inexplicably, the President’s approval rating has also been rising. But  how can this be? Doesn’t he know this violates the Ellis Island Amendment?

The God-Emperor understands that immigration is war. And if you don’t sink the ships, you will come to regret it.

UPDATE: See, all it takes is a little firm resolve from the White House.

A caravan of Central American migrants whose trek across Mexico infuriated President Donald Trump has decided not to travel to the US border, leaders said Tuesday.

The spirit of privacy

Facebook’s newfound commitment to data protection and privacy is mostly theoretical:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that new data privacy laws will only apply “in spirit” to more than three quarters of the company’s users.

Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will force the social network to comply with strict rules about the privacy of its European users. But Mr Zuckerberg failed to commit to rolling out the protections globally.

“We’re still nailing down details on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing,” Mr Zuckerberg said on Tuesday. With only 17 per cent of its 2.2 billion users residing within Europe, the vast majority of Facebook’s users will not benefit from the new rules.

But on the plus side, they’ve already scanned all your messages anyhow:

Facebook Inc. scans the links and images that people send each other on Facebook Messenger, and reads chats when they’re flagged to moderators, making sure the content abides by the company’s rules. If it doesn’t, it gets blocked or taken down.

The company confirmed the practice after an interview published earlier this week with Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg raised questions about Messenger’s practices and privacy. Zuckerberg told Vox’s Ezra Klein a story about receiving a phone call related to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Facebook had detected people trying to send sensational messages through the Messenger app, he said.

“In that case, our systems detect what’s going on,” Zuckerberg said. “We stop those messages from going through.”

Of course, it’s not as if Google isn’t doing exactly the same thing with Gmail and Microsoft isn’t doing the same thing with Skype. If it’s on the Internet, someone other than the intended target is reading it. Count on it.

Nothing they won’t ruin

The Man Behind the Curtain seeks a sex change for Indy:

Ready Player One director Steven Spielberg says it’s time for a woman to play Indiana Jones. The director says he knows putting a woman in the lead role of an Indiana Jones movie would upset fans, but believes it’s time the explorer ‘took a different form’.

A woman? Or a girl? No doubt Mr. Spielberg would find it very amusing to make Indy an 10-year-old girl. A promiscuous 10-year-old girl coming on to an older man. Perhaps he could be an older man who just happens to make movies starring lots of children.

After all, it wouldn’t be interesting if she was 16 or 17, right, Stephen?

YouTube restrictions inspired shooting

Well, that’s certainly ironic. YouTube’s executives would do well to reconsider their policy of discriminating against the videos they don’t like before another SJW snowflake takes violent exception to losing most of their audience courtesy of YouTube’s biased algorithms.

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit has confirmed the identity of the shooter who opened fire on YouTube’s campus in San Bruno Tuesday. Nasim Aghdam, 39, lived in Southern California and appears to have had a robust presence on YouTube.

In a video posted in January 2017, she says YouTube “discriminated and filtered” her content. In the video, Aghdam says her channel used to get lots of views but that after being “filtered” by the company, it received far fewer views.

In a video posted in January 2017, Nasim Aghdam says YouTube “discriminated and filtered” her content. In the video Aghdam says her channel used to get lots of views but that after being filtered by the company, it received fewer views.(Published Tuesday, April 3, 2018)

In one online rant, she complained that YouTube censored her content by imposing an age restriction on one of her workout videos because they were too racy.

I still think that building our own platforms is the preferred option. But I’m certainly not going to shed any tears if the SJWs turn on Big Social.

When Big Social picks winners and losers – and it most certainly does so in an arbitrary fashion – not all of the losers are going to take their unfair treatment well.