It was first said by Metternich about France. For nearly all of my life it has been said (at least by Americans) about the U. S. Now Jeffrey Snider is wondering whether when China sneezes, the world gets a cold. From his post at RealClearMarkets:

According to government figures, there was a tidal wave of borrowing especially among Chinese corporates. Consumers were ramped up and ready then all manner of businesses would pile right on the roaring recovery.

And it never happened. If you believed the financial media, it was a done deal. Had you consulted with markets – any of them apart from stocks – you’d have known the truth the entire time.

Not only did recovery fail to materialize, very quickly even the mainstream tone shifted back to the level of last year’s dull thuds. China’s recovery wasn’t just faltering, worse than that the economy and financial system have since been giving off all the appearances of another drop and in the near run.

China is being sucked into the global recession with everyone else rather than Beijing’s shifting coronavirus enlightenment redeeming the world (oh, the irony).

The balance of the post is devoted to the next “pundit” attempts to convince us that China will save the world. Mr. Snider says the whole world is “anti-progressing”.

If you’re wondering what the point of this post might be, I think that depending on any country to “save the world” is foolhardy. The most we should expect from the Chinese is to save the Chinese. The French will save the French, the Germans will save the Germans.

The only country I know of that works persistently against its own best interests is the United States. I suspect that’s because of the several competing and conflicting interests. Sometimes one prevails; sometimes another. However, we shouldn’t expect that to be a reliable strategy. It will eventually fail.

Since before Donald Trump was elected president, I have been critical of him. One of my criticisms has been that he didn’t understand the federal government and didn’t care that he didn’t. Of course that came back to bite him.

BTW don’t take that observation as a testament to my satisfaction with the federal government. IMO we’re in drastic need of a top-to-bottom housecleaning. I simply didn’t think that Donald Trump was capable of doing it and I think that has proven correct.

Now that he is under federal indictment I’ve been reading an enormous number of op-eds and editorials about it, many declaiming about the “rule of law” without understanding what that means. I’ve read both that the case against Mr. Trump is extraordinarily strong and the case against Mr. Trump is extraordinarily weak. I don’t think we’ll know until the text of the actual indictment is revealed.

If I were Mr. Trump’s lawyers I would be making a series of claims, for example that the statutes under which he has been indicted are unconstitutional, don’t apply to him, are vague, or that the Department of Justice doesn’t have jurisdiction.

The key point is that the law is what you can prove in court, what the court says it is, and what the jury will convict on rather than what you might want it to be.

You must surely know by now that President Donald Trump has been indicted on at least seven counts related to his retention of classified documents.

I do not rejoice in it. It does not horrify me. It does not surprise me.

We don’t know how this will unfold. Depending on events, it is possible that the case may end up before the Supreme Court.

We don’t know what its political impact will be. It may actually increase the likelihood that President Trump becomes the Republican Party candidate in 2024. Or it may eliminate that possibility. We just don’t know.

At RealClearPolicy Karina Lipsman writes about a proposed solution to the U. S. immigration problems:

For the first time in a decade, Representatives María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Veronica Escobar (D-TX) presented a bipartisan, sensible solution to the problems our country is facing. The introduction of their Dignity Act provides a complete solution to America’s immigration crisis, addressing the root causes of illegal immigration, providing dignity for undocumented immigrants living in the shadows, and ensuring that American workers are not left behind.

Like any sensible immigration legislation, the Dignity Act secures the border, mandates E-Verify, reforms the asylum system, protects Dreamers, and deals with undocumented immigrants compassionately. The Dignity Program allows undocumented immigrants to enter a new status where they can work and provide for their family while paying restitution to the American government and the taxpayer for a seven-year period. It also gives undocumented immigrants the opportunity to pursue U.S. citizenship if they so choose, conditional on both parties making good on their promise to secure the border first.

On the surface this looks promising but a lot can happen on its way to the House and Senate floors. I’d sure like to see a whip count on this bill. It appears to me to have a few inherent conflicts.

Here’s Karl Rove’s take on the 2024 election from his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

A May 24 Quinnipiac University poll put Mr. Biden ahead of Mr. Trump, 48% to 46%, among registered voters and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ahead of Mr. Biden, 47% to 46%. While these results point to a horse race in 2024, numbers deeper in the poll suggest Mr. Biden is in a precarious spot.

By 65% to 32%, registered voters think Mr. Biden is “too old to effectively serve another 4-year term.” This includes 69% of independents, 73% of whites with no college degree, 72% of men, 66% of voters 35 to 49 and 65% of those 50 to 64. Even 41% of Democrats agree, as do 47% of blacks, 75% of Hispanics, and 75% of voters under 35.

What over the next 18 months could improve these numbers? Democrats can’t keep Mr. Biden from constantly losing his train of thought or tripping over sandbags or stairs. Even if they could re-create his 2020 basement campaign, it wouldn’t change what voters already know.

Similarly, in the May 22 Fox News Poll, 64% said Mr. Biden wasn’t “a strong leader.” That stance is supported by 69% of whites, 65% of voters under 35, 75% of independents, 59% of Hispanics and 46% of blacks. Only 64% of Democrats believe their party’s nominee is a strong leader.

After 2½ years in office, what could alter that opinion before the election? Maybe an inspired response to a national crisis? It’s more likely Democrats and the country will get another year and a half of watching an increasingly feeble president.

This suggests that it will be essential for Team Biden to irradiate his GOP opponent to eke out a victory. As Mr. Biden often quotes his father, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.” A Trump-led Republican Party will mimic the Democratic smash-mouth playbook. None of this is good for America, which needs its national confidence restored, not further eroded.

I don’t think the Democrats have that much to worry about. Mr. Trump is self-irradiating.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal take note in a recent development in Illinois:

Progressives are on the march in Illinois, and they want to make sure their new policies can’t be overturned in state court. Solution: Pass a law that requires any constitutional challenge to a state law, rule or executive order to be filed in only two counties.

Yes, that’s really happening, thanks to Illinois Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s brainstorm. Democrats in Springfield passed it, and on Tuesday Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed it. The bill means any constitutional challenge to the Democratic agenda can only be heard in Cook and Sangamon counties. Cook includes Chicago, and Sangamon surrounds the capital of Springfield.

In case you’re wondering those are the two Illinois countries probably most sympathetic with the governor’s agenda. The editors continue:

The measure’s proponents were transparent in saying the change is meant to prevent conservative “venue shopping,” a tool pioneered by progressives and trial lawyers when seeking venues favorable to jackpot justice. In the case of conservatives, any choice of where to file would be to seek judicial brakes on the Democrats’ legislative steamroller.

Mr. Raoul’s spokesman says the change is appropriate because “inconsistent court decisions about important public issues have repeatedly caused confusion.” Yes, but that’s how the judicial system is meant to work. Conflicting lower-court decisions are resolved through appeals.

Mr. Pritzker’s infamous plan to end cash bail was rejected by Kankakee County Judge Thomas Cunnington, who ruled the law unconstitutional in December. It’s now on appeal at the state Supreme Court. Mr. Pritzker is expected to sign more than 500 bills this summer, according to Capitol News Illinois, and he wants to neuter the courts.

What (sort of) amuses me about this is that very same people who have argued that having to travel to do what you want to do it an intolerable burden are now arguing the opposite.

One of the things you get accustomed to living in the Midwest is that things can go on for days, weeks, or months here and it barely receives a mention in the national news. However, if something happens that affects New York or Los Angeles, it becomes front page news. Today’s example of this is the smoke cloud from the Canadian wildfires. Here’s a snippet of a report by Dylan Stableford, Rebecca Corey and Caitlin Dickson at Yahoo:

Smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to trigger air quality alerts in U.S. states, with health officials warning people, especially those in sensitive groups, such as children, the elderly or with respiratory conditions, to limit their time outdoors.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop Thursday on all flights bound for New York City’s LaGuardia airport due to poor visibility. The Air Quality Index spiked to “hazardous” levels in Philadelphia, where everyone was urged to stay inside.

Here in Illinois we’ve been experiencing this for weeks. Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post and many other outlets have reported it. I’m just linking to Yahoo because it was the first one I found and it’s not gated.

Some are attributing the Canadian wildfires to anthropogenic climate change. If that’s the case it’s pretty far down the chain of causality. Smoke clouds are caused by fires which are caused by human action (setting the fires, for example) and natural causes, e.g. lightning strikes. There have been forest fires as long as there have been forests and there will continue to be forest fires as long as there are forests.

In this particular instance a factor contributing to the fires may be land management which brings me to the topic of this post. Environmentalists come in multiple flavors. One sort of environmentalist believes in action, sometimes drastic action—rebuilding everything, to head off environmental cataclysm caused by human action. Another sort believes in leaving as much of the natural environment pristine as possible. If it’s not obvious that those two flavors are at cross purposes, let me give you an example. It has been estimated that the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by the Canadian wildfires to date this year exceed the amount released by jet aircraft in the U. S. in a year. The first sort would argue in favor of managing forests better to reduce the amount of undergrowth and thereby reduce wildfire spread. The second sort would oppose such stewardship.

At present the problem is that both of those two flavors are winning and the result is worse than if either view prevailed.

I found this article at The Debrief by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal interesting and entertaining but I honestly don’t know what to make of it. It’s about a whistleblower complaint about vehicles and technology of non-human origin that has allegedly been kept secret from Congress and the rest of us:

A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.

The information, he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time.

Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, with knowledge of these programs through their work in various agencies, have independently provided similar, corroborating information, both on and off the record.

It’s not that I believe that the only intelligence in the universe is human intelligence. I don’t or, more precisely, I think it would be astonishing if it were.

It’s that I’m skeptical of the ability of the U. S. government to keep secrets. Furthermore, if there are vehicles of non-human origin that have landed or crashed on U. S. territory, there are also such vehicles that have landed or crashed on Canadian, Russian, Chinese, Brazilian, etc. territory and I’d need to believe that all of the above are keeping things secret successfully.

So, for example, this:

Dr. Garry Nolan, a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University and a renowned inventor and entrepreneur with more than three hundred published papers, has started over half a dozen companies based on technologies out of his laboratory. Nolan has previously applied some of those technologies to the analysis of exotic materials, publishing the first peer-reviewed paper examining such materials.

“Human civilization was utterly transformed by something as small as a grain of silicon or germanium—creating the underpinning of the integrated circuits that underly computation and now even artificial intelligence,” Nolan said.

I find the conventional history of the development of semiconductors a lot more credible.

The piece that most caught my attention this morning was Jane Shaw Stroup’s post at the American Institute for Economic Research. It’s about economists’ futile search for an explanation of why and how economies grow. It’s hard to excerpt but here’s a snippet:

The elevation out of poverty did not come about because of “take-off” or “balanced growth” or any such thing. As Connors, Gwartney, and Montesinos make clear, cost-reducing innovations—from the container ship to the internet—created a transportation-communication revolution that boosted the volume and extent of trade around the world.

Trade itself increases wealth, but more trade had other effects as well: It led to greater labor specialization, rewarded entrepreneurship and good business management, and pressured governments to adopt better policies.

And it even led to a “virtuous cycle of economic development.” As wages increased, families had fewer children (the opportunity cost of bringing them up had risen). This meant that a higher proportion of the population was in the prime working ages and had greater interest in developing human capital through education and skills training. These improvements built upon themselves.

Waayyy back when I was taking economics classes (I don’t remember whether it was Intro to Econ or Intro to Microeconomics) the prof said something that stuck with me: “We don’t know how to create growth but we do know how to produce shortages”. As the linked post illustrates things have not changed much in the more than half century that has elapsed since then.

Actually, in fairness we do know more. We know that public debt overhang slows economic growth. Suffice it to say that isn’t free trade or free markets more generally or government subsidies.

In the interest of science let me harness Occam’s Razor to the task and propose the simplest possible explanation: energy production makes economies grow. Not only does that explain why England’s economy and the U. S. economy grew when they did it also explains why African economies (for example) have grown so slowly. Consider Nigeria’s per capita energy production and per capita GDP. If I had the time and the energy I’d plot them against one another.