Trade Deficits In The Context Of State-Managed Trade And Systemic Debt

Capitalism, Debt, Economy, Free Markets, The State

THE NEW COLUMN is “Trade Deficits In The Context Of State-Managed Trade And Systemic Debt.” It’s now on Townhall.com.  

An excerpt:

…  What goes for “free trade,” rather, is trade managed by bureaucratic juggernauts—national and international—central planners concerned with regulating, not freeing, trade; whose goal it is to harmonize labor, health, and environmental laws throughout the developed world. The undeveloped and developing worlds generally exploit and pollute as they please.

One of the promises Candidate Trump had made and hasn’t yet violated was to simply make these statist organs and trade agreements work for the American people. To wit, the president believes in reducing trade deficits.

Far be it from me to endorse tariffs as a means of reducing trade deficits. I am only here questioning the totemic attachment free-traders have to trade deficits, given that Americans live under conditions of systemic debt and state-managed trade that is anything but free.

If free trade is an unknown ideal, it is quite appropriate to question the alleged glories of an aggregate, negative balance of trade, in this “rigged system,” as Trump would say.

As to systemic debt: Yes, libertarians ought to oppose tax increases, which is what tariffs are. We hold that voluntary exchanges are by definition advantageous to their participants. Trader Joe’s, my hair stylist and the GTI dealer—all have products or skills I want. Within this voluntary, mutually beneficial relationship, I give up an item I value less, for something I value more: a fee for the desired product or service. My trading partners, whose valuations are in complementary opposition to mine, reciprocate in kind.

Ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), there’s nothing wrong with my running a trade deficit with Trader Joe’s, my hair stylist or my GTI dealer, as I do—just as long as I pay for my purchases.

And there’s the rub: The data demonstrate that we Americans, in general, are not paying for our purchases.

Americans, reports Fortune.com, actually have more debt relative to income earned than Greeks. “Indebted U.S. households carry an average credit card balance of $15,706, according to NerdWallet.”

Corporate America is likewise heavily leveraged.

The Federal government is the definition of debt. The U.S. national debt is over $20 trillion without federal unfunded liabilities. Those exceed $210 trillion, by Forbes’ 2017 estimate. Total public debt as a percent of Gross Domestic Product, announced the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is 104 percent.

Our improvident government’s debts, liabilities and unfunded promises exceed the collective net worth of its wastrel citizens.

Given these historic trends, it seems silly to dismiss the yawning gap between U.S. exports and U.S. imports as an insignificant economic indicator.

Because of decades of credit-fueled, consumption-based living, the defining, current characteristic of our economy is debt—micro and macro; public and private. Unless one is coming from the pro-debt Keynesian perspective, is this not an economically combustive combination? …

… READ THE REST. “Trade Deficits In The Context Of State-Managed Trade And Systemic Debt” is now on Townhall.com.

The Mercer Column can be read on WND, as well, titled “State-Managed Trade Is Not Free:” “The defining, current characteristic of our economy is debt.”

It’s also on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine.

Nikki Haley’s Dangerous, Mushroom-Cloud, Hearsay Hysteria

Britain, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Russia, UN, War, WMD

If the US didn’t go to war with Iraq, RIP, the smoking gun would be a mushroom cloud, warned the insane Condoleeza Rice, Bush’s National Security Advisor. Now another blood-thirsty screech is inciting the same against another people. Airhead Nikki Haley is warning that “Russia could use chemical weapons in New York.”

Who told the harridan? The manta that “17 intelligence agencies say so” is not proof, it’s hearsay.

She and mad Rachel Maddow likely agree.

Washington Examiner:

“If we don’t take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used,” Haley told the United Nations Security Council. “They could be used here in New York, or in cities of any country that sits on this Council. This is a defining moment.”
Haley raised the specter of new attacks during an emergency council meeting, held at the request of British officials who have accused Russia of using “a military-grade nerve agent” to target a former military intelligence officer who committed treason. Russian diplomats have denied responsibility for the incident, but British investigators say they have identified the poison as a chemical weapon produced by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
“Time and time again, member-states say they oppose the use of chemical weapons under any circumstance,” Haley said. “Now one member stands accused of using chemical weapons on the sovereign soil of another member. The credibility of this council will not survive if we fail to hold Russia accountable.”
“A hysterical atmosphere is being created by London,” Russian Ambassador Visaly Nebenzia told the Security Council. “We would like to warn that this will not remain without reaction on our part.”

Russia faulted the United Kingdom for taking action before submitting to a formal investigation brokered by Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. “Those experts will not be convinced by their argument,” he predicted.

Does this irresponsible idiot know what evidence means? Does anyone in the West care about evidence? Or is assertion all it take to take the Anglo-American Idiocoracy to war?

Those who object to launching wars for Israel, should abhor the idea of doing the same for the “Perfidious Albion,” aka Britain.

Perfidious Albion (AKA The Crap Country Of Britain) Prefers Creedal Jihadis To Peaceful, Right-Wing Girls

Affirmative Action, Britain, Free Speech, Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

The crap country of Britain is the embodiment of the Perfidious Albion. The archaic phrase denotes the predictably treacherous nature of successive British governments. Britain’s Home Office regularly welcomes back returning Jihadis, but has turned away two girls, detaining them no less, for their hard-right activism.

Home of the Magna Carta, in 1225. The crap country of Britain, in 2018.

Moreover, the Home Office letter informing rightist activists Brittany Pettibone, Martin Sellner, and Lauren Southern of their status as untouchables is the work of an illiterate. Britain’s institutions have been hollowed out by positive discrimination/affirmative action.

Truly despicable specter.

“Delingpole: Britain Says ‘Yes’ to Jihadists, ‘No’ to Free Speech“:

… It’s illiterate (“Your boyfriend have in his possession” and “insight” where it means “incite”), it’s at once pompously officious and sloppily amateurish, and it’s written by someone who clearly has no grasp of basic details like when and when not to use capital letters (“London Hyde park” and “the Leaflets”).
Yet on this barely educated jobsworth’s say-so, author and activist Brittany Pettibone has – with her boyfriend, Austrian Identarian Martin Sellner, and, subsequently, Canadian citizen journalist Lauren Southern – been declared persona non grata in the U.K. …

MUST READ: “A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN.”

Comments Off on Perfidious Albion (AKA The Crap Country Of Britain) Prefers Creedal Jihadis To Peaceful, Right-Wing Girls

Written by on

UPDATED (3/13): The Great Negotiator Never Negotiated With Nikki Haley. Trump Gave Her Power And Let Her Keep John McCain’s Foreign Policy Positions

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Neoconservatism

Another mainstream Republican President Trump has empowered big time is Nimrata Nikki Haley, the 46-year-old daughter of immigrants from Punjab, India, former governor of South Carolina (where she disrespected Southern history by removing Robert E. Lee’s battle flag), and now US ambassador to the United Nations. I wonder which wars Haley will launch when her time comes to really call the shots?

Haley, heavily pushed by the Ivanka-Jared wing of the White House, waltzed into her job without conditions, having been given “a free hand to set foreign policy.”

Diplomats say “She doesn’t know enough about foreign policy to know what is her foreign policy.” Well, she knows enough to “distance herself from the new president on multiple key foreign-policy fronts, carving out an approach that hewed closer to Republican foreign-policy leaders in the Senate, including Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain. She pilloried Russia, denouncing Putin as an untrustworthy rival and dismissing the prospects of working productively with Assad in the war against the Islamic State.”

Even as she accepted Trump’s offer to serve at the U.N., Haley distanced herself from the new president on multiple key foreign-policy fronts, carving out an approach that hewed closer to Republican foreign-policy leaders in the Senate, including Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain. She pilloried Russia, denouncing Putin as an untrustworthy rival and dismissing the prospects of working productively with Assad in the war against the Islamic State….
Haley’s European colleagues noted that her core positions from Russia to Syria and Ukraine aligned neatly with their own, making her a potential partner who might soften the contours of the president’s controversial policies. “She couldn’t have been better from our point of view,” says one U.N. Security Council member. “She positioned herself comfortably at our end of the administration’s spectrum.”

MORE: “Candidate Haley: The portrait that emerges is of a retail politician turning U.N. diplomacy into a ticket to the White House.”

UPDATE (3/13):

The newly hired has Haley’s approval:

Neocons are happy about Mike Pompeo:

The woman who should have had the job. An old-school Democrat:

Comments Off on UPDATED (3/13): The Great Negotiator Never Negotiated With Nikki Haley. Trump Gave Her Power And Let Her Keep John McCain’s Foreign Policy Positions

Written by on