THE EURO’S SUGAR RUSH IS ENDING
The eurozone’s short-lived recovery is already losing steam as stimulus fades and deep problems resurface, raising fears of yet another false dawn and a potential deflation trap if there is any external shock over coming months.
Since the end of November, the euro has steadily risen against the dollar from a low of 1.05 to 1.14 today (5/11). But the sugar rush is coming to an end.
Industrial output fell in 1.3% Germany and 0.3% in France in March as manufacturing stalled, confounding expectations for robust expansion. The relapse in a string of countries suggests that flash estimates of 0.6% GDP growth in the first quarter were too optimistic and may have to be cut.
“The recovery is not gaining any traction. I am really quite worried about another spasm of the debt crisis over the summer,” said Lars Christensen from Markets and Money Advisory.
The eurozone has been basking in a sweet spot over the last year, with stimulus from cheap oil, a weaker euro, ECB bond purchases, and an end to fiscal austerity, all coming together in a "perfect positive storm". “If that can’t produce growth, nothing will,” says Nouriel Roubini from New York University.
Join the forum discussion on this postGLOBAL PICKPOCKETS
Well brought-up individuals are taught not to take things from other people’s pockets: “Thou shall not steal.” There are those who never learned the lesson — criminals, and many in the global political class.
The latest targets of the global looters are multinational corporations. During the last few years, there has been an effort by high-tax countries (many of which are rich) to establish global minimum corporate taxes and for international tax bureaucrats to determine how taxes on a company should be allocated among the jurisdictions in which it operates.
Even though the effort is cloaked as an issue of "tax fairness," it is really an effort of more powerful countries and their political classes to take away more from those who earned it and spend it on themselves and their friends.
This effort to tax companies more raises a series of questions.
First, is it wrong for corporate officers to try legally to minimize their company's tax bills? No, in fact, corporate officers have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders, employees and even their customers to minimize costs, including taxes.
Second, should corporations be taxed at all? Again, the answer is No. Here’s why.
TRUMPKINS, CLINTONISTAS, AND LEMMINGS
HALF-FULL REPORT 05/06/16
It’s hard to feel very “half full” in a week like this one, with conservative champion Ted Cruz vanquished by The Donald in an Indiana blow-out.
But let’s start with this. If at the beginning of the race anyone was more written off than Donald Trump, it was surely Ted Cruz, who was universally derided, indeed generally expected to tie the now-nominee for 17th out of 17. In reality, he came 2nd, and had he not withdrawn Tuesday there is still a good chance that at a contested convention, he might have ended up 1st.
That is remarkable for what it says about a Republican Party in which, just one year ago, Jeb Bush was not merely the prohibitive favorite but so thoroughly “inevitable” that even Mitt Romney chickened out of a race against him. GOP voters this year wiped out an entire generation of Republican leaders. Indeed, in the end, Ted lost in no small part because Trump successfully painted him as the last Establishment candidate, however nonsensical that was.
A YOUNGER AMERICA
[This is the speech I would have liked to have seen Ted Cruz give]
I want to talk today to the young people of America – to Americans who are young in age, to Americans who are still young at heart, and to Americans who want to feel young again.
I want a younger America, not an infantilized America.
An America young in spirit like it used to be and can be again, an America of opportunity and optimism – not an America old and tired in spirit, an America of opportunism and pessimism.
An infantilized America is what Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Socialists like Bernie Sanders, and Demagogues like Donald Trump want. All three preach the politics of subservience.
Hillary and Bernie want you to be subservient to the state. Donald wants you to be subservient to him. He has no politics other than Himself, no policies other than whatever will get people to worship him like Juan Perón or any other Banana Republic Dictator.
So let me ask you – do you want to be subservient or do you want to be free?
Which is it? If you want the former – well, be my guest, be a Clinton or Sanders or Trump acolyte.
If you want the latter, I ask your support in helping me getting rid of what I think is America’s Number One Problem.
NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS
I’ve written often about how the Lying Swine betrayed the fundamental principles of journalism to shill for Democrats. I’ve written recently about how (much of) the “conservative” media betrayed conservatism to shill for Donald Trump.
Where can a conservative go to find out what’s really going on?
If you’re reading this, you know the most important part of the answer.
CLIMATE LYSENKOISM
This past month, I received an email from a European friend (who has a doctorate in chemistry) saying: “Dear Richard: Now you are a member of this illustrious club! I am beginning to be afraid! What is going on?” It seems my name had been put on a “Global Warming Disinformation Database.”
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has invited more than a dozen state attorneys general to join him in investigating fossil fuel companies and their donations, because they raised questions about some of the “science” used by the global warming lobby. Al Gore joined him at the press conference.
What is going on is nothing more than modern-day Lysenkoism, named after Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, who had rejected Mendelian inheritance and the evolutionary theory of natural selection.
Lysenkoism is now used in a metaphorical way “to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.” This is precisely the case with Climate Alarmism.
AT LAST – GREENIES AS MOVIE VILLAINS
The Green religion is dying. You can see the evidence of this in the latest Gallup survey showing the number of Americans who identify as “Environmentalist” down to 42 percent (from 78 percent in 1991). But even more telling, I think, are the glimmers of anti-Green skepticism we’re now starting to see in movieland and on TV.
See, for example, Kingsman (2014) which cast Samuel L Jackson as an insane Malthusian bent on wiping out most of the human race for the good of the planet; and also Utopia (2013), the genius, black as your hat thriller about a similar “the Earth has a cancer; the cancer is man” type conspiracy.
Now there’s a Nordic Noir TV series I strongly recommend you watch – just out on DVD – called Follow The Money.
The Guardian hated it – which is a recommendation in itself. But what’s even better is the reason why I suspect the Guardian hated it: it couldn’t quite get its head around the fact that the bad guys aren’t in Big Oil or the Military Industrial Complex or some faceless corporation. Instead, the baddies work for a renewable energy company with the caring, sharing name Energreen.
THE FARMER AND THE SNAKE
A Farmer walked through his field one cold winter morning. On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold. The Farmer knew how deadly the Snake could be, and yet he picked it up and put it in his bosom to warm it back to life. The Snake soon revived, and when it had enough strength, bit the man who had been so kind to it. The bite was deadly and the Farmer felt that he must die. “Oh,” cried the Farmer with his last breath, “I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.”The Greatest Kindness Will Not Bind the Ungrateful.
The moral of this Aesopian fable from a mere 2500 years ago is that doing good to evil will only lead to more evil. Aiding those who kill only brings more death, not life. It is human nature to think that people will return good for good and evil for evil. This kind of thinking perversely leads some to assume that if they are being assaulted, then they must have done something to deserve it. This logic is routinely used to argue that Islamic terrorists are simply paying us back in the same coin.
HOW TO USE WRITING TO HELP TRAUMA AND TROUBLES
"When we're traumatized by something, there are things that we can do to be able to bounce back as best as we can. One of those things is writing.When I say "bounce back," I don't mean "just pretend that everything's okay." There are experiences that are so horrible that we really never completely bounce back from them. But there are things we can do that will make our situation worse, and things we can do that can make them better.Something that can make a trauma - or even just a troubling conflict or major life change - worse is to keep it a secret. It can be easy to keep it a secret if it is also something that we feel ashamed of. What I will show you is a good step to help you through that."