In his offering at RealClearMarkets this morning Jeffrey Snider is more than usually scatological. Suffice it to say that he is highly critical of Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, Jay Powell, and Haruhiko Kuroda (long-time governor of the Bank of Japan). In the process he uses up every synonym for “excrement” that he (or I) can think of. Here’s a nice, sanitary excerpt:

Only two rate hikes in to what is supposed to be a prolonged and ultra-aggressive inflation-fighting campaign, a bottle of elixir we’re told to take ultra-seriously for its purported otherworldly properties, instead the market is more and more disavowing the fairy tale for the growing reek of monetary reality.

We have markets experiencing dangerous “volatility” – ironically, the media spins it as if the rate hikes are the cause! – combined with growing real money shortfalls and the dastardly imbalances they conjure. That’s the thing about getting covered in it; having been lied to and suffered the smelly consequences before, the faintest whiff of a repeat sends you running for the exits no matter how confident the officially encouraging talk comes at everyone.

Eurodollar futures have been experiencing inversion for nearly six months already, inversion that has spread in breadth as well as depth. It began, like always, including 2006 or more recently 2018, in the far-off contracts. Before too long, the inverted futures prices weren’t so far off.

Putting these into chromo-graphic terms of specifically this market’s color scheme, thankfully no brown, the curve distortion began in the blues and has worked inward from there; infecting next the greens before taking down the reds. The latter was a huge warning over how traders were already defying Fed hawks as the entire series of rate hikes had fallen under serious doubt.

If they’d kept his ashes Milton Friedman would be frapping in his urn.

You might hear some familiar chords in the take of the editors of the Wall Street Journal. After agreeing in principle with gun reform:

We aren’t opposed to sensible gun regulation if it is politically possible and might prevent such killings. So-called red-flag laws that give police the ability to deny guns to people who may pose a risk to the community have been useful in some cases. But they are hard to enforce, as we recently learned in Buffalo. New York state has a red-flag statute, and Payton Gendron was even referred for mental counseling. He still got a gun.

noting the shortcomings of that strategy they conclude:

The recent proliferation of mass shootings suggests a deeper malady than gun laws can fix. Firearm laws were few and weak before the 1970s. Yet only in recent decades have young men entered schools and supermarkets for the purpose of killing the innocent. That a teenager could look at a nine-year-old, aim a gun, and pull the trigger signals some larger social and cultural breakdown.

It also suggests that society may have to adapt by rethinking our hands-off attitudes to antisocial behavior and mental illness. Security at schools and churches will need to be enhanced. Big Data may help law enforcement identify potential risks, and we may need to give them freer rein to intervene in borderline cases. A return to more social sanction and intervention for antisocial behavior would also help the vulnerable and lost who most need help.

The modern welfare state is adept at writing checks, but not much else. Today’s young killers aren’t motivated by material deprivation. They are typically from middle-class families with access to smartphones and X-boxes. Their deficit is social and spiritual. The rise of family dysfunction and the decline of mediating institutions such as churches and social clubs have consequences.

This cultural erosion will take years to repair, but a good start would be to admit that it plays a role in the increasing acts of insensate violence. It would also help if someone brave enough to mention the problem—recall Joe Lieberman and Tipper Gore —isn’t derided as a cultural dinosaur.

As I said to my wife in the wake of the first reports of the shootings in Uvalde, the key to ending such tragedies isn’t by trying to make them impossible but to make them unthinkable. Guns are tools not toys or status symbols. They shouldn’t be romanticized and their use shouldn’t be glorified.

Admitting that there are social and cultural problems are key. Blaming the problem on those darned gun nuts may help you let off steam but it only addresses a tiny part of the problem. The diminution of all institutions other than the state, e.g. clubs, churches, marriage, the family, is part of the problem. Indeed, assuming more laws will correct the problem is part of the problem. It reminds me of Mussolini’s dictum: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Something else that should be considered is that if you want more laws, you necessarily want more law enforcement, and that in turn means more discrimination against blacks.

In general I agree with the suggestions for gun control made by Nicholas Kristof in his most recent New York Times column. They include

• Raising the minimum age for gun ownership to 21 nationwide
• Bar purchases by those with recent convictions for drug or alcohol abuse, violence, or stalking
• Bar purchases by those under a domestic violence protection order
• Universal background checks

but then he goes off the deep end by comparing the U. S. with highly homogeneous countries with high levels of social cohesion, e.g. New Zealand and Japan.

Why are those appropriate comparisons? Only because they have the very lowest levels of gun violence. He might consider that the high homogeneity and social cohesion result in low levels of gun violence not to mention a greater willingness to limit gun ownership.

Why not compare the U. S. with Mexico or Brazil? Why not with South Africa or Nigeria? The United States has 4.96 homicides per 100,000 population. Mexico’s is 29.07; Brazil’s 27.38; Nigeria’s 34.52; South Africa’s 36.40.

The homicide rate for non-Hispanic whites in the U. S. is 2.6; Hispanics 4.9; non-Hispanic blacks 20.9. However, as I have previously pointed out the homicide rate among rural blacks in the U. S. is significantly lower than that among urban blacks. That’s almost the opposite of the gun ownership patterns or, said another way, there is a stronger correlation between race/ethnicity and homicide than between gun ownership and homicide.

So by all means let’s reform our laws on gun ownership but let’s not stop there, deluded into believing that gun ownership tells the whole story. There are cultural, social, and mental health factors as well and those are at least as urgent if not more so.

I agree with Democrat William A. Galston’s observations in his Wall Street Journal column that the facts in the infant formula shortage constitute a prima facie case for bad governance which can (and should) be remedied:

In a modern society, citizens can’t possibly be aware of—let alone monitor—all the complex processes that affect their lives, so we ask government to do this on our behalf.

I’m going to interrupt Mr. Galston right there. A lot of those “complex processes” are created by the federal government. He goes on:

We grant government a substantial measure of discretionary authority, and in return we expect officials to scan the horizon for potentially harmful developments.

I’m sorry but I’m going to interrupt him again. In 1995 the Federal Register, the compendium of all federal regulations was about 1,300 pages in length. Now (a mere 27 years later) it’s more than 81,000 pages long. Not only is being aware of federal regulations beyond the ability of ordinary citizens, it’s beyond the ability of the very bureaucrats whom Mr. Galston thinks we can rely on. Continuing:

We cannot expect them to divine an imponderable future, but we do expect them to understand the reasonably foreseeable consequences of events—and of their response to them.

This brings us, first, to the Food and Drug Administration. On Oct. 21, 2021, the FDA received a report from a whistleblower who raised serious concerns about conditions at an Abbott Laboratory plant that produces infant formula. It took the agency about two months to interview the whistleblower, another month to inspect the plant, and more than two additional weeks until Abbott issued a recall notice and shut the plant. Members of Congress from both parties are raising tough questions about this dilatory pace.

The consequences of the plant shutdown were foreseeable. The infant formula market is highly concentrated, with two firms accounting for more than 80% of all domestic production. Abbott is the single largest producer, and the plant that shut down accounts for about 20% of the total. Common sense suggests that when you abruptly remove a fifth of supply from the market, shortages are inevitable.

Compounding the problem, foreign firms couldn’t fill the gap. Regulatory barriers and steep tariffs ensure that 98% of all infant formula consumed in the U.S. is produced in the U.S., which is good news for American producers but not for American consumers.

Another interruption. “Regulatory barriers and steep tariffs” aren’t the only reasons that foreign firms can’t “fill the gap”. Total capacity is another reason that doesn’t receive enough attention. The U. S. is a very big country—four times the size of Germany, five times the size of France, and almost ten times the size of Canada. We can’t expect other countries to be our backstops. Continuing:

I’m not the only one wondering why we have tariffs as high as 17.5% on formula produced in the European Union, or why our regulations exclude imports from countries whose food safety standards are at least as strict as our own.

Three months ago, most Americans were unaware of these facts about the infant formula industry, but it stretches credulity to believe that the White House wasn’t. When the Abbott plant shut down, alarm bells should have gone off at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and planning should have begun to avert the inevitable shortages. Judging by the scramble of the past 10 days, whatever plans there were didn’t get very far.

If regulatory roadblocks had been softened in a timely manner, for example, the U.S. could have imported enough infant formula to mitigate the impact of the plant closing. Instead, the president has had to use the military to conduct an emergency airlift from overseas. If formula from the EU is safe for U.S. consumers today, it was safe three months ago—and probably three years ago.

You might recognize that point as one I’ve made here early on.

I also agree with all of his proposals for remediation:

This is also an opportunity to make other changes, starting with tariffs and regulations and extending to some unnecessary rigidities in the Women, Infants, and Children programs, which help cover the cost of formula for those who can’t afford it. The government should find a better balance between efficiency in normal operations and resilience in times of stress. More broadly, it is time to reconsider a longstanding proposal—backed by everyone from the Government Accountability Office to the Trump administration—to break up the FDA into two agencies, one dealing exclusively with food safety, the other with drugs. Numerous GAO reports have shown that the U.S. food safety system is fragmented across different departments and agencies with overlapping responsibilities and that a single food safety agency would improve effectiveness and efficiency of food safety regulation. The odds are that such an agency would have responded to the infant formula crisis more alertly than did the FDA.

There are lots of reasons for the enormous growth in federal regulations. Yes, the U. S. is a big country but it’s not 50 times bigger today than it was 27 years ago. One of the reasons is the use of personal computers and word processors. I’m not the first person to point it out but novels are longer today than they were a century ago (except for the occasional War and Peace) because it’s easier to produce longer works than it used to be. But another reason is the natural inclination of bureaucracies to extend their own mandates. Left to their own devices they will continue to expand without limit and Congress has been reluctant to impose enough limits on them. And, finally, there is a view abroad in the land, frequently on the part of those who know little about how governments actually work, that all problems can and should be solved by governments.

As to my second question once again, left to their own devices bureaucrats will not behave in a timely or responsible manner. Their objective, inevitably, will be to avoid responsibility and bold, decisive action is the opposite of that. In addition their is no downside risk to delay or just plain inaction.

We need serious civil service reform urgently. We need to amend shield laws or remove them entirely, only defending civil servants when they are operating explicitly within the law.

Finally, a modest proposal. Maybe we should abandon the age-old dictum ignorantia juris non excusat. Maybe it’s time for ignorance of the law to be a legitimate excuse.

I couldn’t help but get the giggle when I read the remarks of the editors of the Wall Street Journal:

Delaying a tax increase is Democrats’ idea of a tax cut. But Democrats worried they wouldn’t get political credit for this act of political beneficence so they required gas stations to post “clearly visible” signs, at least four by eight inches, stating in bold print that “As of July 1, 2022, the State of Illinois has suspended the inflation adjustment to the motor fuel tax through December 31, 2022.”

Gas stations that fail to post the signs are guilty of a petty offense and could be fined $500 a day—this in a state where shoplifters often go unprosecuted. Democrats weren’t shy about their political motive.

During a legislative hearing, Democratic state Rep. Michael Zalewski stated the signs would remind “pumping Illinoisans that . . . as a result of the work of the General Assembly the [cost of living] adjustment has not gone into effect” and that as drivers pump gas, “their gaze will fix upon the pump and maybe they’ll read about the good things we did.”

Last week gas-station owners sued the state for violating their speech rights under the Illinois and U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit says the law requires gas retailers “to choose between making a political statement they do not wish to make to their customers or the general public on behalf of the State of Illinois” or face criminal penalties.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that government can’t compel corporations to carry political messages with which they disagree. Courts have also ruled that governments can mandate that businesses disclose ostensibly factual information only for limited purposes, such as preventing fraud and protecting public safety. The Illinois law does neither and has no public-interest rationale.

I haven’t seen the details of the case but I would be protesting it on the basis of unjust takings, the 1st, and the 3rd Amendment. I have no idea whether their suit will prevail in an Illinois court.

But such authoritarian Stalinist tactics are just so Illinois. Incumbents will go to all lengths to ensure re-election. I doubt that anybody voted for them so they could force gas station owners to post campaign posters but I also presume that their voters won’t vote against them for it, either.

On May 20, 1988 Laurie Dann walked into Hubbard Woods Elementary School and shot five children, killing one and wounding four others. One of those wounded succumbed later. That wasn’t on the South Side of Chicago. It was in Hubbard Woods on the North Shore—one of the richest places in the state.

Since that day no schoolchild in any school anywhere in the United States could feel safe.

In the aftermath of the horrific murders in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas there is an enormous amount of breast-beating, pontificating, and bloviating going on. I don’t object to limitations on gun ownership. If you believe that even a total ban on private ownership of firearms would prevent events like the one that happened in Texas from occurring again, it is incumbent on you to explain how any law can prevent people from using guns possessed illegally from using them illegally.

On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and shot and killed 26 people. Newtown wasn’t in inner city Newark. It was and is a prosperous community.

What do Laurie Dann, Adam Lanza, and Salvador Ramos, the perpetrator of the Uvalde shooting, have in common? They had guns but that wasn’t all. There had been copious warning signs in both the cases of Laurie Dann and Adam Lanza and they were both seriously mentally ill. I have little doubt that the same will be found regarding Salvador Ramos.

Both Laurie Dann and Adam Lanza took their own lives. It has been pointed out by thinkers throughout the ages that suicide is the ultimate evil, an attack on the whole world, destroying the world as it were. I don’t believe that “suicide by cop” is any different and the murder of innocents certainly demonstrates an inclination towards violence, destroying the world.

I hope the demands for action following the murders in Uvalde don’t start and stop with gun control. I hope they extend to thinking differently about mental illness and, in particular, turn to “red flag laws”. In his reaction piece to the murders David French calls for enacting such laws:

I know the objections. I know that red flag laws implicate a core constitutional right. I also know that poorly drafted laws are subject to abuse. But our constitutional structure permits emergency and temporary deprivations of even core liberty interests upon sufficient showing of need, with sufficient due process. Restraining orders and other forms of domestic violence prevention orders can often block parents and spouses even from their own families upon a showing of imminent threat.

I don’t yet know the identity, history, or motivations of the Uvalde shooter. A red flag law may not have helped, but this dreadful moment should remind us of all the dreadful moments that came before. It should remind us that there is a policy that can save lives. Dear legislatures, pass red flag laws. Now. Give families and police a chance to remove guns from the people who tell us they’re dangerous.

In his reaction piece Alex Pareene laments:

Anyway, 19 little kids are dead, and I don’t expect anything meaningful will be done to prevent the next 19 little kids from getting killed. I know most of the complex logistical, legal, cultural, and political reasons why our system is incapable of preventing this. I leave those explanations to other authors. I ask instead what anyone with power in this country—a group that has intentionally excluded young people from its ranks—plans to do about those reasons. And I invite the reader to think about the implications of the fact that those people with power cannot answer my question with anything remotely credible. What are you going to do about the fact that we all know you can’t do anything?

I think there’s one more thing that we need to do. We need to reduce the amount of anger that’s out there. One of the ways of doing that is by dialing down the level of anger in our discourse. I’m open to other suggestions but as anger rises more generally I think we will inevitably see more lashing out.

Career diplomat James F. Jeffrey explains in this op-ed at Al Monitor why the Biden Administration needs a new Middle East policy and what its policy should look like. Here’s a snippet:

Beyond that, Washington should accept that long-term improvements flow not from its policies, but from the region’s peoples and leaders, be it Arab rapprochement with Israel, or economic dynamism in countries from Turkey to recently Egypt. The US can best encourage such home-grown developments by assisting on the margins, while maintaining, with its collective security order backed by free trade and access to investments and funding, a stable environment within which regional states and populations can develop.

There are just a few factors I think he’s missing. The first is that, as is true in most of the world, we have no friends in the Middle East. We have clients; we have vendors; there are also hostile non-belligerents but no friends. No only aren’t they our friends but they can’t be our friends. Our interests are just too divergent.

The second is that far too many people in Washington, not must people in the Defense or State Departments but people in Congress and in think tanks continue to adhere to the Wolfowitz Doctrine. That “doctrine” which aims to prevent the emergence of rivals, is not only authoritarian and imperialist but, worse, it is obsolete by about 20 years. As the old Yiddish prayer put it, Lord send us a cure—the disease is already here. We already have rivals. It’s too late to prevent their emergence and we don’t have the resources to accomplish it.

The third is that the gimlet-eyed objective of U. S. foreign policy has to be securing U. S. interests. Presently, that is not the case or, more precisely, we’re pursuing much broader objectives and taking it on faith that they will be good for us. So far that hasn’t worked out well.

In 1972 the U. S. entered into diplomatic relations with China for the first time since 1949 with a joint statement called the “Shanghai Communique”. Since that time the U. S. position regarding defense of Taiwan has been one of what is called “strategic ambiguity” regarding the question of U. S. action in the event of a mainland Chinese attack or invasion of Taiwan. That means we haven’t said we would defend Taiwan and we haven’t said we wouldn’t. It has been widely assumed that we would.

That ambiguity was removed yesterday by President Joe Biden during his visit to Japan. Or has it? Today President Biden is walking that back. From Morgan Chalfant at The Hill:

President Biden said Tuesday that the U.S. still abides by the policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan, a day after he made waves by saying in no uncertain terms that the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

“No,” Biden told reporters during an event in Japan when asked if the policy of strategic ambiguity towards Taiwan was “dead.”

“The policy has not changed at all,” Biden added. “I stated that when I made my statement yesterday.”

The relevant passage of the Shanghai Communique is the first two sentences of paragraph 12:

The US side declared: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.

That does not say that the U. S. agrees with or accepts the Chinese belief only that the Chinese believe it. It’s very artfully worded.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal laud the end of strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan and want it brought into any Asian trade framework negotiated by the U. S.:

The press is saying President Biden blundered Monday in committing the U.S. to defend Taiwan, but after three similar statements in the last year maybe he means it. The arguably much bigger mistake is his decision not to include Taiwan in the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that the Administration launched on Monday.

Asked by a reporter if the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily against China, Mr. Biden answered with a blunt “yes.” He went on to say that, “We agree with the One China policy. We signed onto it and all the attendant agreements made from there. But the idea that it could be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not—it’s just not appropriate. It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.”

Rather than launching into an examination of what the president meant, praising him, or criticizing him, I’ll just ask some questions:

• Did the president remove at least some of the ambiguity from our position?
• Did he intend to?
• Why now?
• Does the statement serve U. S. interests?
• Should the U. S. officially accept or reject that Taiwan is a part of China?

My answers are yes, no, who knows?, no, and no.

I have mentioned many times that however focused on domestic policy a president might be when entering office foreign policy has a way of taking over. Seeing this in the Biden presidency former World Bank President Robert Zoellick has an op-e in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that President Biden emulate Harry Truman following the disastrous first midterms of his presidency:

First, the U.S. must boost its military investments. The administration drafted its defense budget before the Russian invasion of Ukraine altered the security landscape in Europe. Mr. Biden now needs to match new commitments with updated strategies. Ukrainians need the weapons and technologies to defend themselves. The U.S. needs new plans for forward defense across the Atlantic and Pacific. Pacts addressing nuclear weapons, missiles, and American troops in Europe are out-of-date. The administration needs modern technologies and new concepts of flexible response, combined with a willingness to negotiate, so that weapons of mass destruction—including calamitous cyberattacks—are never used.

Second, the U.S. must grow stronger and more resilient at home. The bedrock must be respect for the core constitutional principle of free elections, including acceptance of the results; a bipartisan reform of the Electoral Count Act is long overdue. The country also needs to prepare for the next pandemic. Mr. Biden could encourage gas and oil production alongside a transition to renewable energy through market incentives. Americans may struggle to understand climate models, but everyone has seen the severe storms and flooding along with the need for adaptation. The president can boost scientific research and development for computing, communications, energy and biology. He should focus schools on educating for the future by speaking to political centrists who aren’t interested in identity politics. America should attract the world’s talent and encourage newcomers. The president would also be wise to distance himself from those in his party trying to defund the police. He can do this by committing to safe streets while respecting everyone’s civil rights.

Third, the president needs to explain that only the U.S. can build a new type of international coalition, working with allies but also looking beyond to appeal to developing countries that are abstaining from the Russia-China challenge. Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. led the global effort to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria. The Biden administration should do the same for Covid. Americans can help build global resilience in the face of food price shocks and climate changes by offering the world emergency supplies, seeds and fertilizers. All this can be done while keeping markets open and encouraging investments for future production, efficiency and trade. Washington’s strategy for the long-term should stress openness and opportunity, in contrast with authoritarian lockdowns.

Mr. Biden may reasonably worry that the Congress is short of Arthur Vandenbergs—the Republican senator with whom Truman worked to design America’s successful international architecture. But the response of most Republicans to Ukraine suggests the president could negotiate support for the three pillars of national safety and strength if he acts resolutely.

I don’t think that a lack of Vandenbergs is the only challenge standing in the way of Biden’s imitating Truman. For one thing Chuck Schumer is no Alben Barkley.

Barkley’s name may not be familiar to you. The long-serving Kentucky senator was the Senate minority leader for the 80th Congress, the first Congress in which Republicans held both houses of Congress since the 71st (1929). He was widely considered the hardest working man in the Congress. Truman picked him as his running mate in the 1948 general election and he ran for his party nomination for president, losing to his cousin, Adlai Stevenson.