When I first encountered the peculiarities of retail accounting, I was introduced to the term “shrinkage”, the euphemism for theft, damage, etc. of merchandise.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal are noticing shrinkage, too:

The shares of Dick’s Sporting Goods, Foot Locker and other retailers are selling off this week as companies report lower earnings amid softer consumer spending. But retail executives are also pointing to another trend shrinking profits: Theft.

Second-quarter earnings were dented by “higher inventory shrink, organized retail crime and theft in general, an increasingly serious issue impacting many retailers,” Dick’s CEO Lauren Hobart said on an earnings call Tuesday. Dick’s CFO added that “the number of incidents and the organized retail crime impact came in significantly higher than we anticipated.”

Foot Locker executives likewise noted on Wednesday that inventory “shrink” has been increasing. Target CEO Brian Cornell last week said that “shrink” remained “well above the sustainable level where we expect to operate over time,” and that the company was facing “an unacceptable amount of retail theft and organized retail crime.” Home Depot execs last week also flagged “pressure from shrink” on earnings. As did Walmart execs. “Shrink has increased a bit this year. It increased last year,” its CFO noted, adding that “shrink” was “uneven” across the country. “There needs to be action taken to help protect people from crime, including theft,” said CEO Doug McMillon.

I found “sustainable level where we expect to operate over time” an interesting choice of words. It suggests that if the present level of organized retail theft continues, it will accelerate the transition to online that has been proceeding for the last 25 years, accelerate it even. That will only be good for online retailers and will especially hurt cities and the people who live in them, particularly people in the poorer neighborhoods.

What I expect to emerge from this are calls for the enforcement of sales taxes on all online retailers, whether they have a local nexus or not.

I realize that just about everybody assumes that Putin had Prigozhin killed. He might have but what strikes me is the long list of people who wanted him dead. Did anyone not want him dead?

I think that for reasonability deniability if no other reason that it’s more likely that Sergei Shoigu of the Russian Ministry of Defense had Prigozhin’s aircraft shot down. IMO he was more of a threat to Shoigu than he was to Putin.

Update

I continue to hear all sorts of theories about the downing of the aircraft. The most convincing argument that I have heard against Putin having been behind it is that if Putin had wanted him dead he would have been killed earlier and in a less messy fashion. The wildest idea I have heard is that NOONE was on the plane; it was controlled remotely and destroyed to throw Western intelligence into a frenzy. If that was the objective, mission accomplished.

I wanted to commend this piece by Norman Davies at The Spectator on the complex history of Poland and Ukraine to your attention. Conflicts among Poland, Ukraine, and Russia have been going on for at least a millennium. Each country has its own view of that history. Reading the article probably won’t clear anything up for you but it may illustrate how complicated the situation is.

I don’t defend the Russian invasion of Ukraine but I also don’t want the Ukrainians to be exterminated or a nuclear war and that’s the direction we’re heading in if this goes on.

My mostly futile efforts have been targeted at explaining the Russian point of view not defending it. Here’s my probably equally futile attempt at proposing a compromise resolution to the conflict. Ukraine should renounce any claim to Crimea and allow Donetsk and Luhansk provinces their independence , something to which it committed some time ago. NATO should guarantee both this new Ukraine’s independence and the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Nobody will like that resolution but IMO it has an outside chance of ending the carnage.

This morning when I went to the console of The Glittering Eye I was greeted by a notification to update one of the plug-ins I use for this blog. I did so and it disabled access to the console. After going through some shenanigans I determined that there was an error in the updated plug-in which has since been fixed.

Posting will continue as usual.

Here’s the TL;DR version of Noah Smith’s excellent and chart-filled post on the economy of China:

So anyway, this is my simple story for why China’s economy slowed down so early in its development and then experienced a crash in the early 2020s. Export-led and FDI-led growth can’t go on forever, and when they run out, it’s better to divert capital toward building a well-balanced economy of high-tech manufacturing and services than to shower it on property developers and shadow banks. Pivoting to real estate will come back to bite an economy eventually. For all the talk of China’s “100-year plans” and whatnot, they fell into a pothole that was right in front of their feet.

The real story is going to be more complicated than that, but if you want a quick-and-dirty explanation of why China’s crash is on everyone’s minds right now, I think the story of the pivot to real estate is probably the best simple story you can tell.

I’m not 100% convinced by that although he does make some good observations about demographic change and having picked the low-hanging fruit. I can’t help but think that the CCP had decided that basing its economy more on consumer spending threatened its hold on the country.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group who marched his troops on Moscow not long ago, has apparently been killed in a plane crash. Associated Press reports:

MOSCOW (AP) — A private jet crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board.

Prigozhin’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in late June. The Kremlin said the founder of the Wagner private military company, which fought alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, would be exiled to Belarus.

But the mercenary chief has since reportedly popped up in Russia, leading to further questions about his future.

A plane carrying three pilots and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass. It was not clear if Prigozhin was among those on board, though Russia’s civilian aviation regulator, Rosaviatsia, said he was on the manifest.

That’s quite a coincidence.

Here’s Ved Shinde’s assessment of India’s view of a “multipolar world” at Geopolitical Monitor:

It is in the last decade that India’s strategic illusions are clearing. China has secured its position as India’s primary challenge. A series of clashes at the Himalayan border and Beijing’s growing influence in South Asia have convinced Delhi that Beijing is its primary preoccupation. China’s all-weather partnership with Pakistan, economic undercutting of India, and expansive maritime ambitions have created suspicions about China’s long-term motivations in Delhi.

Now when India calls for a “multipolar world,” it makes it abundantly clear that a multipolar Asia is a necessary prerequisite for a multipolar world. In essence, the Asian order is fragmented. The phenomenal rise of China does not mean that Beijing can act like the local mafia. Asia is a playground of contestation, with various emerging and middle powers quietly protective of their identity and sovereignty. The U.S. and India are working together to uphold this reality and ensure stability.

Delhi has also realized that the U.S. is essential for its economic growth. American capital and technology are crucial for India’s transformation. India’s fate in the upcoming decades is inextricably tied to the United States, with or without China as its neighbor.

I find that puzzling. Is that actually how India is behaving? Also how is the balancing act he describes possible? In a multipolar world is India place solidly at the U. S.’s side or not?

I see India in pursuit of its own sphere of influence in Asia more than Mr. Shinde seems to. And what about the episodic border conflicts between China and India? To my eye they constitute the same course on land that China is pursuing in the Yellow Sea.

While I agree with Danielle Allen’s argument for what she calls “democracy renovation” in the Washington Post, I think she’s operating under some false premises. So, for example, I agree that constitutional democracy is a good system:

Human beings thrive when they can steer their own lives — both in their private lives and by acting together in the public sphere. Constitutional democracy is the only form of government that makes this possible for all. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s the best that’s humanly imaginable.

and I agree that our democracy needs “renovation”:

The constitutional democracy set up in the 18th century started from the idea that power could be reserved to some (mainly White, male holders of property, with some exceptions) while nonetheless being deployed for the good of all. This proposition is false. The only way to ensure that a political system serves the good of all is to ensure that power is shared by all. We’re still learning how to build a political system that genuinely supports fully inclusive power-sharing.

even if I’m not entirely in agreement with her assessment of the direction of reform:

Some of these I’ve written about already; some will be explored in columns to come. Employing unified all-comers preliminaries in place of party primaries, and having those preliminaries move four or five finalists forward to a final round where there is an instant runoff using ranked-choice voting; increasing the size of the House of Representatives; eradicating news deserts; ensuring full voter access; and embedding citizen deliberation in our representative system.

but, basically, I think I disagree with some of her assumptions. For example, why does she assume that “all-comers preliminaries” followed by instant runoffs using ranked-choice voting will render the system more democratic? The exact opposite seems to have transpired where it has been tried, e.g. California. What actually seems to have happened is that it has strengthened the position of the most extreme minorities.

Why does she ignore the role of party politics in her exposition? It receives short shrift. She treats the determination of who is allowed to vote as a given. I would only point out that expanding the franchise has not resulted in greater participation. Quite the opposite. At the very least we should consider raising the legal voting age to 25. Proposals that are being bruited about do the opposite. I find her assumptions about our legal system troubling. And, finally, why not direct democracy? To my eye, every argument against direct democracy, primarily that relatively few have the time or inclination to devote enough attention to governing pertains equally to representative democracy at the federal level, at least as it operates at present. Our elected representatives don’t spend most of their time performing constituent service, legislating, engaging in oversight, etc. They spend most of their time raising money for re-election.

However, rather than bickering about the pros and cons of direct democracy, I would prefer that we turn our attention to renovating our political parties. Our parties are ossified and authoritarian. As presently constructed your preferences or even those of your elected representative make little difference. I would suggest the following reforms:

• Term limits
• Failing term limits party leadership should be determined by lot. Determination based on seniority should be prohibited by constitutional amendment if necessary
• The authority of House Speaker and Senate majority leader should be strictly curtailed. Any member should have the authority to propose legislation which must be brought to the floor, propose amendments, etc. That’s the way it was until relatively recently.

I’m open to other reforms but I believe those are long overdue.

I should mention that although I agree with her proposal to increase the size of the House no foreseeable enlargement would be sufficient. We might also consider increasing the number of states by requiring states to be divvied up once they reach a certain population. Or abolishing the Senate entirely. With the popular election of the Senate a century ago it serves little useful purpose.

The editors of the Washington Post are not ready to join Team Compromise over Ukraine:

Nearly half a million casualties, including almost 200,000 dead — that is the staggering toll to date of the slaughter by which history will remember Russian President Vladimir Putin’s lawless invasion of Ukraine. The estimates, by U.S. officials, are a running count as the war reaches its 18th month this week. The numbers will surely climb.

No end to the carnage is in sight, and calls for a negotiated solution are wishful thinking at this point. As Mr. Putin invests in Russia’s war economy, he shows no signs of giving up his fantasy of Russian neo-imperial glory. That hard truth leaves the United States and its European allies with few appealing options, especially as Ukraine’s grinding military offensive, launched in early June, remains far short of its goal: to evict Russia’s forces. Deeply entrenched in a miles-deep maze of defensive lines behind some of the most heavily mined terrain on Earth, the occupiers retain control of roughly 18 percent of Ukrainian territory.

According to a recent Post report, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Kyiv is unlikely to achieve its main objective this year: breaking south through enemy lines and reaching the Sea of Azov. The idea was to sever the occupied corridor through Ukraine that connects Russia to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized illegally in 2014.

Washington’s intelligence assessments have been wrong in the past, specifically by overestimating the proficiency of Russia’s military and the competence of its political leadership, and by underestimating Ukraine’s resolve and resourcefulness on the battlefield. Reports from the front lines and from Russian military bloggers suggest that Ukrainian morale remains high and that badly led, poorly supplied Russian troops are increasingly desperate. Kyiv’s forces continue to make modest gains despite the daunting challenge of advancing against Russia’s massively fortified positions.

Still, the raw disparities of scale in this fight are not going to disappear. Russia’s huge advantages in population and weapons-making capacity are bolstered by Mr. Putin’s decision to mobilize the nation’s industrial might to sustain an indefinite war. The Kremlin, having intensified its propaganda and crackdown on political dissent, has all but eliminated public expressions of antiwar views. The war could continue for years — waxing, waning or frozen.

concluding with a warning:

Mr. Putin’s only hope for victory lies in ending Western aid for Ukraine, a goal he hopes Donald Trump would advance if he is elected to a second presidential term. History’s clear lesson is that rewarding such a dictator’s aggression will only invite more of the same. Part of laying the groundwork for a sustained commitment to Ukraine will be for Western leaders to explain to their voters why it is necessary.

They blame Ukraine’s lack of progress on tardy military supplies from the U. S. and other G7 countries. I see no way that the G7 can simultaneously increase their rate of production of armaments while meeting goals for reducing carbon emissions. Most progress to date has been accomplished by offshoring their heavy industry to China which has been counterproductive to that aim.

Even were the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, and Italy to provide arms to Ukraine at the pace and in the quantity desired it would not replenish the scarcest supply: Ukrainians. The longer the war goes on the more likely is outright Russian victory. I wish the editors had presented their plan for countering that reality.