In his Washington Post column Josh Rogin draws attention to the material concurrence of the Biden Administration with the facts in the “fact sheet” released by Mike Pompeo on January 15 on the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) laboratories:

After reviewing the Trump administration’s underlying evidence, none of which has been released publicly, the Biden State Department determined that some of the facts in the Jan. 15 statement are supported by either U.S. government information or public sources, a senior State Department official told me. But that doesn’t mean the Biden team is endorsing Trump’s or Pottinger’s assertion that the lab was probably involved.

“There wasn’t significant or meaningful disagreement regarding the information presented in the fact sheet,” the senior State Department official said. “No one is disputing the information, the fact that these data points exist, the fact that they are accurate. Where there was some discomfort was that [the Trump administration] put spin on the ball.”

The emphasis is mine. The “fact sheet” itself can be read here. In other words they’re accusing the Trump Administration of cherry-picking the information to make a case and, although they agree that the WIV might have been the source of the virus, they demur from concluding that was its source. That’s better than the WHO which wouldn’t even consider the possibility.

As is frequently the case for pundits in these discussions he closes by emphasizing that searching for the source of SARS-CoV-2 isn’t about assigning blame but is necessary to prepare for future pandemics:

The origin of the pandemic is not just about blame. If the source of the outbreak can’t be determined, its true path can’t be traced and crucial scientific information for preventing the next outbreak can’t be learned. The Biden administration is trying to take a neutral stance on the issue, even though the fact-finding process has become entangled in domestic politics, as well as U.S.-China relations.

“We certainly care a great deal about the origin of this virus, not only for reasons of accountability, but also for public health implications going forward,” the official said. “If we are going to prevent future outbreaks, epidemics or, God forbid, pandemics, we need to know how the last one started. . . . Whichever theory the facts bear out, that’s where we’ll go.”

I think there are a couple of other factors that should be entertained. Research at the WIV was being funded in part by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National Institute of Health (NIH). The Chinese authorities have not lived up to their part of the bargain when we offered that funding which was that the CDC NIH was to share in any and all results. Plus if the WIV is participating in military research CDC NIH funding would be extremely problematic.

Not to mention that if the federal government could identify the WIV as the source of SARS-CoV-2 it would put wings on the lawsuits against Chinese SEOs or other companies with substantial control by the Chinese government which have either already been filed or I would expect to be filed.

Frankly, Katrina vanden Heuvel’s Washington Post column on strengthening the labor movement puzzles me. Here’s her thesis:

This is a moment of immense promise: By elevating pro-labor legislation and policies, we have the opportunity to revive union power and launch a new labor movement for the 21st century.

Strengthening unions would play a critical part in tackling our country’s staggering inequality. As proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15 face an uncertain future, expanding the ranks of organized labor would give more people a living wage. The Labor Department reports unionized workers’ median earnings are about 19 percent higher than those of nonunion workers. Unions also shrink wage gaps for women and for workers of color.

What’s unclear to me is how she intends to strengthen unions. I think that unions are strongest in a tight labor market. AFAICT the Biden Administration is doing everything in its power to loosen the labor market.

To the loose domestic labor market add offshoring and importing goods we used to manufacture here. If you want the lots of working people to improve, you’ll want a tighter labor market, less offshoring, and fewer imports. I just don’t see how you can accomplish it via legislation without dealing with those fundamentals.

It would also help if she distinguished between public sector unions and workers and private sector unions and workers which she does not do.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Judy Shelton, whom I understand is persona non grata in some quarters for showing affection for the gold standard, opens the op-ed with a statistic I found sobering:

The 25 largest U.S. banks currently hold 45.7% of their assets in loans and leases, according to Fed data released Friday, down from 54.1% this time last year. Meantime, their year-over-year holdings of Treasury and agency securities increased 33.5%. This reflects more-stringent borrowing standards and diminished loan demand. But it also reveals a subtle yet persistent change in how banks operate.

going on to explain the ways that the Federal Reserve has discouraged banks from lending over the last dozen years or so. She concludes:

America’s future as a free-market economy depends on surmounting a fundamental quandary: All entrepreneurial endeavor that is potentially productive is inherently risky. It is the nature of capitalism. Nevertheless, access to financial capital is vital for improving a person’s prospects for economic prosperity—an essential aspect of achieving the American dream.

The Fed must avoid turning banks into government utilities through its carrot-and-stick approach of providing incentives for the accumulation of reserve balances while enforcing compliance parameters that discourage risk-taking. The goal is to stimulate, not stultify, productive economic activity—the kind that raises output and justifies increased wages. Workers do best when banks find it profitable to invest in private enterprise, to become reliable partners with the people who aspire to create products and provide services.

The decisions of the central bank are meant to support, not to supplant, the real economy. The Fed’s killing-with-kindness approach risks permanent scarring of banking relationships by curtailing access to credit. No wonder the movement to democratize finance is being pursued increasingly through nonbank institutions.

The United States hasn’t been a “free-market economy” for most of my adult life and that has never been truer than today. The best you could say is that the U. S. is a mixed economy, much of it poorly managed by the federal government. The federal government has been picking winners and losers for decades. It’s not hard to tell the difference. The winners are winning and the losers are losing. But also consider this:

The fastest growing component of GDP by far is net federal outlays. It’s nearly a third of GDP—more than at any time since World War II. The Democratic congressional leadership have made it clear that the $1.9T spending bill they’ve already passed is just a start. What the economy will look like when they’re done we can only speculate but it certainly won’t be a free-market economy.

From J. P. Morgan via Michael Batnick comes a very interesting chart of the personal savings rate over the last 60 years and it’s actually pretty astonishing. Cruise on over and take a look at it. It doesn’t flat-out prove anything but it suggests a lot and I’ve going to reflect on what it suggests in this post.

To put that personal savings rate into perspective in 2020 the personal savings rate was higher than it’s been in my lifetime. that’s a higher savings rate than Japan or Switzerland in 2015—both are countries well known for high savings rates. It’s not as high as China’s personal savings rate. In general a high savings rate means that people are worried about the future and Americans were more worried in 2020 than any time I can remember.

The household savings rate was absolutely terrible during the Aughts. That’s also the period during which American industries were being offshored, largely to China. I suspect those two things are related.

That high a savings rate suggests that the handouts from the federal government in 2020 didn’t stimulate much of anything other than savings. It was badly designed—not nearly targeted enough. Will the new round of handouts stimulate the economy or be saved? I’m not sanguine about that.

I guess there’s a glass half full way of looking at it. Today’s savings means the possibility of more consumption in the future. That’s balanced by John Maynard Keynes’s wisecrack that in the long run we’re all dead.

I can see several different scenarios for ending the COVID-19 outbreak in the U. S. One of them is to inoculate enough people in the U. S. against the disease so that between those who have some natural immunity either because they’ve already had it or they’re otherwise naturally immune and those who’ve been inoculated that the disease stops spreading. Or at least its spread slows. The “gotcha” on that is “people in the U. S.”. that strategy presupposes the ability and willingness to stop people entering the country who are carrying the disease.

We could also forcibly inoculate people entering the country against the disease but somehow I can’t envision that happening.

Another way is to be prepared to inoculate the entire world against the disease. As I’ve been saying for most of the last year, inoculating 7 billion people is a problem a couple of orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive than inoculating 330 million (or 200 million or whatever it takes).

What does the Biden Administration have in mind? If, in their zeal to be more virtuous than the hated Trump Administration, they decline from testing and quarantining people entering the country, do they just prefer that the outbreak continue indefinitely? Won’t that expose them to the same charges they’ve been leveling against the Trump Administration’s response to the disease?

It takes Bhaskar Sunkara quite a while to get to the point in his piece in the Guardian about the limitations of the present demands for “equity” and its emphasis on action by private companies:

First, it might satisfy younger staffers who want to feel like they’re working for companies that are stalwarts of anti-racism. Second, some consumers might like such anti-racist gesturing. Third, showing a commitment to diversity and arranging for a diversity consultant to come in is cheaper than dealing with an anti-discrimination lawsuit, having to deal with a Twitter-led consumer boycott for a misstep, or paying black and brown workers more.

Yet even if corporations aren’t driving the race-conscious awakening, they’re willing to adapt to the new environment because the political demands flowing from activists are increasingly compatible with corporate profit-making and governance. Corporations are also more than happy to monetize the new social justice interest. Just think of Hollywood – which once blacklisted socialist actors and directors in the cold war – rushing to make films with watered-down accounts of Black Panther leaders like Fred Hampton (who was a Marxist) or the Chicago Seven (all of whom were radical anti-capitalists at the time).

Similarly, companies like Apple, where workers in the secretive Chinese complex that manufactures iPhones attracted global concern after a spate of suicides, just brought out a special edition $429 Black Unity Apple Watch that was marketed for Black History Month. Apple says: “The Black Unity Sport Band is inspired by the pan-African flag and made from soft, high-performance fluoroelastomer with a pin-and-tuck closure laser-etched with ‘Truth. Power. Solidarity.’” Where is the power or solidarity for the workers toiling in factories in China, one might wonder? Or for child workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo who toil and die in mines extracting raw materials like cobalt that are used in iPhones. One doesn’t hear anything about that kind of material injustice affecting the working class from the global south when corporations make their self-congratulatory PR statements around inclusion.

They would rather focus on symbolism and racial-justice-themed commodities and products than contend with more expansive state oversight of private employment decisions, like an affirmative action program. Better to have Kendall Jenner appearing in a schmaltzy BLM-themed Pepsi ad than paying more in taxes to help working-class people in the form of an expanded welfare state and cash transfers.

I wish he’d submit some evidence that there’s actually a connecting link between “paying more in taxes” and helping “working-class people”. In the U. S. the primary effect of higher marginal tax rates and a complicated personal and corporate income tax system is to enhance the power of Congress who then sells exemptions from the tax to the highest bidders. And for some reason increased revenues never go to help the poor but to hire people ostensibly to help the poor. The NGOs, contractors, employees, and higher wages for them always seem to materialize but the help for the poor is harder to demonstrate.

As I’ve said in other posts we’ve been here before, cf. Tom Wolfe’s “Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers” only this time the flak catchers are corporate HR departments rather than beleaguered federal, state, and local government employees.

After reaffirming how much more they like President Biden than his predecessor, the editors of the Washington Post urge him to conduct a press conference:

But each of his 15 most recent predecessors, including Mr. Trump, held a full news conference within their first 33 days in office. Mr. Biden has been in office for 46 days. It was only after journalists’ complaints became increasingly loud — and following a wave of bad press — that Ms. Psaki announced Friday that the president would appear for an extended, unaccompanied question-and-answer session with reporters.

Though Mr. Biden regularly answers a smattering of questions after making announcements or other events, Post media critic Erik Wemple points out that these often perfunctory exchanges are no substitute for formal, solo news conferences at which reporters can ask follow-up questions, answers are supposed to be more than a couple of words long, and the president’s thoughts on a wide range of issues can be mined. Mr. Trump’s first news conference gave Americans an early sense of the chaos and indignity that would define his administration, as he ranted about cable news and personal grudges.

Mr. Biden should be eager to advertise his more thoughtful, reality-based approach. He should do so in front of reporters, for extended periods of time, and more often than his late start would suggest.

IMO those suggesting that Mr. Biden is not holding press conferences because he’s incapable of doing so are confusing his speech impediment with dementia but not conducting a press conference feeds the rumor mill. The editors are right. It’s past time for such a press conference.

The editors of the Washington Post are urging the World Health Organization to begin another investigation into the origins of COVID-19:

Another hypothesis, that the pandemic was ignited by some kind of laboratory leak or accident, is denied by China. However, a senior researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli, was working on “gain of function” experiments, which involve modifying viral genomes to give them new properties, including the ability to infect lung cells of laboratory mice that had been genetically modified to respond as human respiratory cells would. She was working with bat coronaviruses that were genetically very similar to the one that caused the pandemic. Could a worker have gotten infected or inadvertent leakage have touched off the outbreak in Wuhan?

The joint WHO-China team said in its Feb. 9 news conference in Wuhan that the laboratory hypothesis was “extremely unlikely” and would not be further studied; later, Dr. Tedros said that nothing was off the table. As the 26 scientists point out in their letter, the team lacked the training and forensic skills required to investigate this possibility. They were under strong pressure from China to steer clear of the subject altogether.

What’s needed is an independent, multidisciplinary and unfettered investigation into the origins of the outbreak, both the zoonotic and laboratory hypotheses. China’s obduracy is not going away. The WHO, a membership organization, lacks the powers to pry open closed doors in China, and there is not another good alternative. However, Dr. Tedros could appoint a new team of highly qualified international experts, including forensic specialists, to investigate the laboratory-leak hypothesis, and forcefully insist that China not stand in its way. If he openly challenged China on this matter, he would have the support of a world wanting to know how this nightmare began and how to prevent another.

What I have been hearing lately are somewhat desperate attempts at finding an explanation, any explanation, which does not situate the origins of COVID-19 within China. Frozen food imported from Europe. Zoonotic transmission from Thailand. No explanation has been offered on how the first cases reported in China managed to contract the disease from frozen food or from Thailand while other people more conveniently situated for the virus managed to avoid it.

As Conan Doyle wrote “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”. Perhaps they’re disinterested in the truth.

Speaking of rearranging the deck chairs, I presume you’ve heard about the 30,000, that’s 30,000 organizations whose email systems running Microsoft’s Exchange Server, have been compromised by Chinese hackers, apparently supported by the Chinese government.

What’s the appropriate response?

1. Nothing. What is there we can do?
2. Every single company and every single individual whose information was compromised should sue Microsoft in the largest class action suit the world has ever known. Maybe the company will survive, maybe it won’t.
3. Microsoft should be punished by the government for something-or-other. Show me the company and I’ll show you the crime.
4. We should make it as difficult as we possibly can for China to access the Internet.
5. We should use hackers of our own to take as many Chinese systems down as we can.
6. We should treat it as an act of war.

I have no idea what the U. S. should do. Maybe all of them.