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Im-Politic: Did “The Science” Give Us the Virus?

19 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Anthony S. Fauci, bio-weapons, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Im-Politics, Joe Biden, lockdowns, National Institutes of Health, New York, Nicholson Baker, pandemics, public health, SARS, stay-at-home, terrorism, Trump, virology, Wuhan virus

That’s a pretty stunning header, I know. But it’s anything but crazy, or even click-baity – at least if you take seriously a long, very serious, and very carefully reported article published January 4 about the CCP Virus’ origins in New York magazine, which hasn’t exactly been an enthusiast for President Trump or science- or China-bashing.

For author Nicholson Baker makes clear not only that for years before the Trump era, America’s top public health officials (who epitomize “The Science” that all the adults in the nation’s room from President-elect Joe Biden on down have anointed as the only valid sources of U.S. and global virus policy advice) pushed measures certain to boost the odds that something like Covid 19 would be created, and somehow escape from, a laboratory someplace in the world – including China.

And notably, one of the main pushers was one Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

It’s important to make clear here what Baker isn’t saying. He isn’t saying that the Chinese manufactured the virus as a bio-weapon. He isn’t saying that Beijing loosed this pandemic on the world on purpose. And he certainly isn’t accusing Fauci and the rest of the public health establishment of acting maliciously.

But what he is saying is awfully damning, and urgently needs to be examined by the incoming Biden administration, the entire U.S. political and policy communities, and of course the public.  For Baker marshalls and summarizes voluminous evidence for the proposition that the most reasonable theory of the virus’ origin is not that in its highly infectious form it developed naturally in some mammal species (like a bat) and then jumped to humans (e.g., at a wet market) – the explanation offered at various times by the Chinese government and by many infectious disease specialists. Instead, the author supports the idea that it was produced by scientists from a naturally occuring mammalian virus, specifically by scientists at one of the three advanced virology facilities in and around the city of Wuhan.

And then, Baker – who is extremely careful to distinguish between facts and suppositions – speculates that “it eventually got out” by hazard. Release via “a lab accident — a dropped flask, a needle prick, a mouse bite, an illegibly labeled bottle,” he emphasizes, “isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s just a theory.” But he rightly argues that “It merits attention…alongside other reasoned attempts to explain the source of our current catastrophe.”

But where do the roles of the U.S. and global public health establishments come in? During recent decades, as Baker reports, scientists have been conducting “’gain of function’ experiments — aimed to create new, more virulent, or more infectious strains of diseases in an effort to predict and therefore defend against threats that might conceivably arise in nature.” And many of these experiments were funded by the Fauci’s Institute at the NIH. (Similar work was being funded by the Defense Department, whose interest in bio-weapons and fighting them was reawakened by the increase in global terrorism in the 1990s and the prospect that germs like anthrax would be used to advance extremist goals. This threat, of course, materialized right after September 11 with letters containing the germs sent through the mail – in an immense irony – by a U.S. government bio-weapons researcher.)

As implied immediately above, Fauci and his colleagues had the best of intentions. But as Baker documents exhaustively, they ignored numerous warnings from fellow professionals that, in no less than two related ways, they might be creating a problem far worse than that they were trying to solve. First,in their determination to design in the lab super-dangerous bio threats that terrorists hypothetically might some day create and use, they lost sight of how their own experiments could unleash such actual threats in the here-and-now due to the real possibility of leaks (hardly unknown in the world of biological research).

In Baker’s words, “Why, out of a desire to prove that something extremely infectious could happen, would you make it happen? And why would the U.S. government feel compelled to pay for it to happen?” Echoing these worries were numerous scientists, such as Johns Hopkins biomedical engineer Steven Salzberg, who noted several years ago, “We have enough problems simply keeping up with the current flu outbreaks — and now with Ebola — without scientists creating incredibly deadly new viruses that might accidentally escape their labs.”

Second, no evidence has been found yet that any of the coronaviruses that are naturally occuring and that have infected humans (like the SARS “bird flu” – which actually came from mammals – of 2002-03) are remotely as contagious as their lab versions, or are found in animals that often come into contact with humans outside China and its wet markets. In fact, Baker quotes Rutgers University microbiologist Richard Ebright has describing Chinese virologists’ efforts to scour remote locations for animal sources of natural coronaviruses that can be supercharged in a lab as “looking for a gas leak with a lighted match.”

In addition, Fauci arguably magnified these dangers by channeling some of the U.S. government funding for “gain of function” research to the Wuhan virology labs. On the one hand, this decision made sense (as long as gain-of-function was being sought in the first place) because China has been the origin point of so many mammalian coronaviruses, and therefore the home of so many leading virus specialists. On the other hand, safety first hasn’t exactly been a national Chinese watchword.

So the implications for simply “following The Science” seem clear. And they go beyond what should be (but isn’t) the screamingly obvious point that, especially in a field as new and rapidly changing as this branch of virology, there is no “The Science.” Expert opinion almost inevitably will be mixed, and politicians and their journalist mouthpieces flocking to one side while completely ignoring the other is bound to end badly. Matters are bound to end even worse, of course, when the favored faction aggressively tries to stamp out and discredit as “conspiracy thinking” the other’s theories – as Baker shows indisputably was the case with public health authorities and experts (including Fauci) who continue to try absolving the Wuhan labs from any responsibility.

More important, this tale bears out what I and many others have written for months (e.g., here): The pandemic is a crisis with many dimensions – economic and social as well as medical. The public health establishment’s contributions are indispensible. But not only is its expertise limited. Like any other human grouping defined by common characteristics and experiences like fundamental interests and educational backgrounds and occupational environments, this establishment is influenced by its own distinctive unconscious biases and predispositions.

In this case, in Baker’s words, some of the most important are “scientific ambition, and the urge to take exciting risks and make new things.” All of which are perfectly fine and even praiseworthy – in their place.

Further, the medical dimension of the crisis is complex, too, as shown both by all the evidence of major public health costs generated by the lockdown and stay-at-home orders championed so singlemindedly by Fauci and his acolytes, and by the strong disagreements among the virologists and similar researchers laid out in such detail by Baker. So it’s the job of political leaders to take all these considerations into account, not to act as if only one cohort of advisers has a monopoly on wisdom in all relevant areas.

And let’s end on an O’Henry type note. I can’t resist pointing out that President Trump, too, has been one of those U.S. leaders whose administration has robustly funded this gain-of-function research – one of the few instances in which he’s, apparently with no objections, followed The Science.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S. Manufacturing’s Biggest 2020 Winners & Losers

18 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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aerospace, automotive, Boeing, CCP Virus, computer and electronics products, consumer goods, coronavirus, COVID 19, energy, Federal Reserve, food products, fossil fuels, furniture, housing, industrial production, inflation-adjusted output, lockdowns, machinery, manufacturing, on-line shopping, stay-at-home, travel, wood products, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Thanks to last Friday’s release of the Federal Reserve’s report on December U.S. manufacturing production, it’s possible to identify the sector’s biggest winners and losers for inflation-adjusted growth. And their ranks include some notable surprises. (As with all U.S. government economic data, though, there’ll be plenty of revisions over the next few years.)

First, let’s keep in mind that the following categories are pretty broad, including a wide range of products whose performances have varied just as widely. For example, as noted previously (e.g., here), “machinery” contains everything from machine tools to heating and cooling equipment to semiconductor production gear to turbines to construction equipment to farm machinery.

Still, these groupings are specific enough to show how much care is needed when generalizing about the performance of a piece of the economy as big as manufacturing. Moreover, they’re the categories that come early on in the incredibly detailed presentation each month of manufacturing output results deep in the weeds of the Fed’s own website.

With these observations in mind, the five strongest growers (or most modest shrinkers) in manufacturing during 2020 were automotive (vehicles and parts combined) at plus-3.64 percent; food, beverage, and tobacco products (up 0.40 percent), wood products (0.38 percent), computer and electronics products (up 0.14 percent), and non-metallic mineral products (down just 0.52 percent).

The biggest losers? Petroleum and coal products (down 13.34 percent); printing and related activities (off by 10.41 percent); furniture and related products (down 9.86 percent); non-durable miscellaneous manufactures (down 8.57 percent); and aerospace and other non-automotive transportation equipment (an 8.27 percent contraction).

Some of these results were entirely predictable. For example, petroleum and coal products essentially entails the fossil fuels industries, which have been decimated by the overall U.S. and global economic slumps triggered by the CCP Virus, and by the particular hit taken by business and leisure travel. And don’t forget the lingering effects of Boeing’s safety troubles. Moreover, of course those Boeing woes in turn have taken their toll on the aerospace sector.

On the flip side, despite major concern about the strength of America’s food supply chain, it proved impressively resilient. And since Americans didn’t stop eating, real food production expanded – although as the table below shows, its this expansion was much slower than in 2019.

I’m not sure what’s been up with furniture, though, especially considering that the good performance of wood products surely reflects the strength of a domestic housing industry that should have spurred production of furniture. Moreover, so far, the 2020 trade statistics reveal no significant increase in imports.

Non-durable miscellaneous manufactures are something of a puzzle, too. This category includes items like jewelry, silverware, sporting goods, toys, and musical instruments. Since on-line shopping has propped up consumption during the pandemic period, purchases and domestic production of these goods should have remained strong, too – even though many of these sub-sectors have long dominated by imports.

And speaking of imports, a clear sign of their importance is the negligible growth of the domestic computer and electronics industries. It’s clear that the virus and related lockdowns and stay-at-home orders has greatly increased demand for information technology products. But it’s evident that the biggest winners weren’t U.S.-based suppliers. In fact, 2020 growth was way below 2019’s, as the table below shows.

Meanwhile, the solid growth of the automotive sector is pretty remarkable, since the sector literally shut down almost completely in March and April. That looks like awfully strong evidence that much of the economic damage of the pandemic period has stemmed from government restrictions, and not from any inherent weakness in the economy.

In any event, below are the results for all of manufacturing’s main big industry groups, along with the data for the durable goods and non-durable goods super-sectors, and industry overall. For comparison’s sake with the pre-CCP Virus period, I’ve also presented their after-inflation growth for 2019. And a year from now, the final Fed 2021 statistics will permit judging just how complete a retun to normalcy has been achieved.

                                                                              2018-19              2019-20

manufacturing                                                        -1.06                   -2.63

durable goods                                                         -1.70                   -2.97

wood products                                                       +3.58                  +0.38

non-metallic mineral products                               -1.17                   -0.52

primary metals                                                       -2.69                   -7.66

fabricated metals products                                     -1.72                   -5.38

machinery                                                              -2.39                   -3.80

computer & electronics products                          +6.19                  +0.14

electrical equipmt, appliances & components       -1.71                   -1.68

motor vehicles and parts                                        -9.05                  +3.64

aerospace and misc transporation equipment       +0.29                   -8.27

furniture and related product                                +0.34                   -9.86

miscellaneous manufactures                                +0.30                    -3.67

non-durable goods                                                -0.72                    -2.24

food, beverage and tobacco products                  +2.67                   +0.40

textiles and products                                            -2.24                    -5.04

apparel and leather goods                                    -7.50                    -3.64

paper                                                                    -2.37                    -1.91

printing and related activities                              -3.20                  -10.41

petroleum and coal products                               -1.32                  -13.34

chemicals                                                            -2.07                     -1.31

plastics and rubber products                               -3.24                     -0.78

other manufacturing                                           -8.59                      -8.51

Im-Politic: It’s Americans Last for the Courts as Well as Business on Immigration

01 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Biden, businesses, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, guest workers, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Joe Biden, judges, labor shortages, lockdowns, recession, Reuters, Trump, unemployment, visas, wages, workers, Wuhan virus

So here I was about to give myself a day off from blogging today and spend most of it reading and then watching the big New Year’s Day college football games, but the news just keeps newsing. And I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t immediately seize on the opportunity to comment on today’s Reuters report titled “Trump extends immigration bans despite opposition from U.S. business groups.”

The piece wasn’t most remarkable for the kind of pro-globalist or Never Trump bias I often cover, or for the headline development. Everyone who’s followed the issue knows that the President has long favored and put into effect many measures aimed at curbing both legal and illegal immigration – and long before the CCP Virus and ensuing lockdowns-type government orders and consumer caution combined to create a genuine U.S. jobs depression.

Nor should anyone be especially struck by the observation that business groups are seeking to reopen American borders to green-card applicants (who will be seeking U.S. employment) and foreign guest workers (who enter the country in response to request from companies claiming labor shortages) even though, as the piece notes, 20 million Americans are currently receiving unemployment benefits.

No, what blew me away about the story were these two sentences:

“In October, a federal judge in California blocked Trump’s ban on foreign guest workers as it applied to hundreds of thousands of U.S. businesses that fought the policy in court.

“The judge found the ban would cause ‘irreparable harm’ to the businesses by interfering with their operations and leading them to lay off employees and close open positions.”

In other words, this judge supported allowing the number of workers overall available to American business to start growing again at a time when enormous numbers of domestic workers nationally have lost their jobs because enormous numbers of the businesses they worked for are being closed (many for good) by the aforementioned shutdown orders and consumer behavior changes.

Yet the judge’s stated reason for admitting these new (foreign) workers at a time when business are shedding enormous numbers of (domestic) workers is that enormous numbers of these same businesses would suffer “irreparable harm” – that is, harm for good – without the foreign workers. (See this post for an exceptionally intelligent discussion of the national business closure numbers, which so far are anything but from definitive.)

Even worse: The business lobbies that have opposed the Trump restrictions are the same groups that for months have condemned what they regard as overly sweeping lockdowns-type mandates for killing off enormous numbers of businesses, and threatening the survival of many others by sharply limiting the amount of customers they serve. And these business organizations insist that companies need more employees? Even though there’s every reason to believe that, at least through the winter, these shutdowns are much likelier to become tighter, not looser?

This isn’t to say that every business in this highly diverse economy during these highly difficult times is facing the same issues or dealing with the same labor market conditions. In fact, there can’t be any reasonable doubt that some companies are experiencing troubles finding the workers they need. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that pandemic-related travel curbs are complicating their efforts to attract the necessary employees from other parts of the country, even if they raised wages strongly – the response identified by standard economic textbooks for ending labor shortages (even though this wage effect is overwhelmingly ignored by economists who use the same textbooks to support lenient immigration policies).

But how would new foreign workers solve this problem? They’d be subject to the same travel restrictions. And even if employers were willing to pay to bring them safely to their facilities, why couldn’t they extend the same services to any qualified domestic workers they could identify – if they bothered to look for them?

As for other businesses, chances are they favor reopening the immigration sluice gates now during a CCP Virus-induced economic slump for the same reason they favored it in normal times: They simply want to pump up the U.S. labor supply, and thereby drive down the price that labor can command.

Apparent President-elect Joe Biden ran as a champion of American workers. But he’s also taken many strongly pro-Open Borders positions. According to Reuters, although the Trump bans are “presidential proclamations that could be swiftly undone” and Biden has criticized them, the former Vice President “has not yet said whether he would immediately reverse them.”

But if he – not to mention the judge and the business groups – were really concerned about business survival, they’d all focus more on rolling back unjustified lockdown measures and securing more federal aid for struggling enterprises rather than delivering yet another immigration-related slap in the face to an already historically hammered domestic workforce.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The CCP Virus Lockdowns’ State-Level US Effects II

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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Tags

CCP Virus, Commerce Department, coronavirus, COVID 19, lockdowns, shutdowns, states, stay-at-home, Wallethub.com, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Yesterday’s RealityChek post presented some facts about the economic performance of America’s states during the CCP Virus era that struck me, anyway, as surprising and important. And it ended with the observation that two big states that have imposed relatively sweeping anti-virus curbs on business and consumer activity – New York and California – accounted for a considerably outsized share of the national economy’s shrinkage during the pandemic through the third quarter of this year (the latest economic statistics available).

Today’s post will use the same data – from a recent Commerce Department report – to show that overall, the states with the most restrictive lockdown etc regimes have generally experienced the biggest economic contractions. That conclusion may sound too obvious to bother thinking about, but it matters because economic distress, as I’ve written repeatedly, produces its own serious public health (both mental and physical costs). Moreover, at least according to most of the public health establishment, even if mass vaccination goes as quickly and smoothly as realistically possible, normality could still be nearly a year off.

As with the previous post, however, some qualifications need to be discussed, and in addition to yesterday’s, two more should be kept in mind. First, despite the connection between CCP Virus-related economic and business curbs on the one hand and slumping economies on the other, there’s a non-trivial number of exceptions, as will be shown below. So it’s distinctly possible that some states have found the kind of balance between still-sometimes (but not always) conflicting economic and public health imperatives that’s worth emulating.

Second, not only have the lockdowns etc been very on-and-off in nature since the pandemic became a pandemic in late winter, but measurements of these lockdowns’ scale unavoidably entail a pretty fair amount of subjectivity.

The source I’m using for this (at this link) looks on-target in general to me. But I have to admit puzzlement at some of the rankings. For example, the source organization, Wallethub.com, places Michigan right in the middle of these rankings – even though Michiganders have been among the most vehement opponents of virus curbs. Have many of the folks directly experiencing this state’s restrictions just been throwing unwarranted tantrums?

Moreover, Maryland, where I live now, has imposed pretty tight restrictions, too, although at least Republican Larry Hogan has been one of those governors who’s given different counties a fair amount of regulatory autonomy since the state (like even many smaller ones) is fairly diverse. But I’m not convinced that overall its curbs have been patchy enough to place it in the lockdowns-light half of states.

Meanwhile, New Mexico is ranked just a little more restrictive than Michigan, though my own look at this state’s policies concluded they’ve been quite lockdown-y.

But nobody’s perfect, so I’m going with Wallethub.com as my lockdown guide, and here’s what I did. First, I looked at the ten states whose economies grew the most (or contracted the least) between the firt and third quarters of this year, and identified where they stand in the Wallethub rankings, and then performed the same exercise with the ten states that suffered the worst contractions. The growth (and contraction) figures represented percentage changes in real gross domestic product, and the Wallethub scale assigns the least restrictive states the lowest numbers. Here are the results:

Top 10 1Q-3Q GDP                                               rank on lockdown scale

Utah: +1.07                                                                            3

Washington: +-0.44                                                             36

Delaware: -0.08                                                                   31

Arizona: -0.52                                                                     45

Iowa: -0.54                                                                            5

Idaho: -0.81                                                                           2

Indiana: -1.01                                                                      15

Georgia: -1.03                                                                     13

Arkansas: -1.27                                                                   10

Alabama: -1.34                                                                   14

The big takeaway? Of these ten states, seven imposed relatively light anti-CCP Virus restrictions

(earning rankings in the lowest half of the fifty states plus the District of Columbia). And four of these states were among the ten least restrictive states. So that looks like solid evidence that the relatively open states were rewarded with the best economic performances, and that this openness as such deserves significant credit. But three states on this list put into effect lockdowns on the tight side and fared relatively well economically, too – Washington, Delaware, and Arizona.

Have they found the policy sweet spot? Or is there something about their economies’ structures that have produced economic resilience? One observation pointing to the importance of structure: both Washington and Arizona boast highly developed tech sectors – Amazon and Microsoft, e.g., headquartering the former, and the latter containing much semiconductor production.

Here are the states with the worst growth performances during the pandemic:

Bottom 10 1Q-3Q GDP                                               rank on lockdown scale

Hawaii: -6.67                                                                              51

Wyoming: -5.24                                                                           7

New York: -4.56                                                                        38

Oklahoma: -3.84                                                                         4

Tenn: -3.33                                                                                18

Alaska: -3.28                                                                             12

Nevada: -3.14                                                                            20

New Jersey: -3.08                                                                     47

Vermont: -3.06                                                                          41

North Dakota: -2.98                                                                   9

And these results seem to cut against those of the previous list – because of these low growers, only four had imposed very restrictive lockdowns (Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, and Vermont). Further, three were among the very least restrictive states (Wyoming, Oklahoma, and North Dakota). And the other three were well in the half of states that have been least restrictive (Tennessee, Alaska, and Nevada).

Nonetheless, economic structure considerations as well as policy measures seem to be influencing these results. Principally, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and North Dakota all depend very heavily on a fossil fuels sector that has been plunged into a deep slump due to the virus’ overall economic effects. And lockdown-light-ish Nevada has suffered from the tourism depression.

Now let’s view the situation from the opposite perspective. Let’s take the states with the ten tightest and ten loosest lockdown regimes, and examine their respective economic performance. First, the ten tightest lockdowners, with the most resrictive at the top:

Most restrictive on lockdowns                                1Q-3Q GDP growth rank

Hawaii                                                                                    50

California                                                                               36

Mass.                                                                                      32

Maine                                                                                     34

New Jersey                                                                             47

Colorado                                                                                 33

Arizona                                                                                    4

Oregon                                                                                   20

Pennsylvania                                                                          37

Vermont                                                                                  41

Here the correlation between policy and performance looks awfully strong. Fully eight of the ten biggest economic loser states are among the states with the tightest lockdowns, and three of these are among the ten most restrictive. Interestingly, Arizona comes across as a standout according to this measure, too.

Economic structure is playing a role here, too – as seen by the presence of tourism-reliant Hawaii and Vermont. In addition, Pennsylvania’s become a big energy state thanks to the Marcellus shale formation, and Colorado has long depended heavily on both energy and tourism.

At the same time, Pennsylvania’s got lots of office workers who’ve been able to do their jobs from home – as does New Jersey (which along with New York was hit early and hard by the virus). And what gives with California – of course tourism-heavy, but in many ways the center of both high tech manufacturing and high tech service provision in the nation, not to mention research and development?

So lockdown decisions seem to have made major contributions to these states’ relatively deep downturns.

A similar conclusion seems justified from this list of the ten states that have permitted their economies to remain most open and imposed the fewest cubrs on behavior – with the least restrictive closest to the top:

Least restrictive on lockdowns                                1Q-3Q GDP rank

South Dakota                                                                     14

Idaho                                                                                   6

Utah                                                                                     1

Oklahoma                                                                         47

Iowa                                                                                    5

Wisconsin                                                                         11

Wyoming                                                                         49

Missouri                                                                           21

North Dakota                                                                   41

Arkansas                                                                            9

Seven of these ten lockdown-lightest states are in the top half of U.S. economic performers, four are in the top ten and one (Wisconsin) is Number 11. Moreover, the three conspicuous exceptions to this pattern – economically woeful Oklahoma, Wyoming, and North Dakota – are all, as previously pointed out, states that have suffered because they’re energy-heavy.

As a result, the way I see it, this table and at least two of the others of the four total presented here, along with yesterday’s state-level data, further strengthen the case that lockdowns per se have exacted major – though far from catastrophic –  economic prices. But by the same token, these results confront the nation with the question of far away the economic tipping point might be. 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The CCP Virus Lockdowns’ State-Level US Effects I

28 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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California, CCP Virus, Commerce Department, coronavirus, COVID 19, GDP, gross domestic product, inflation-adjusted growth, lockdowns, New York, real GDP, shutdows, states, stay-at-home, Utah, Washington, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

One of my coolest holiday gifts came courtesy of Uncle Sam. Not a tax refund or stimulus check, but the Commerce Department’s release last week on “Gross Domestic Product by State, 3rd Quarter, 2020.”

Seriously.

I always look forward to these data because they enable gauging how developments in the national economy are affecting individual states as well as regions, and vice versa, and this latest report is especially interesting because of all that it says about the economic impact of the highly diverse set of lockdowns and shutdowns and stay-at-home orders and the like that the states have imposed during the CCP Virus era.

This will be the first of two posts on the subject, and I’ll focus on some simple descriptive findings – many of which came as surprises to me. Beforehand, though, it’s important to lay out some warnings against drawing overly tight conclusions between a state’s economic performance and the virus curbs it’s put I effect.

Among the most important:

>The pandemic hit different states at different times, so differences in their growth rates (what these gross domestic product, or GDP, figures are particularly valuable for), in many instances have relatively little to do with their lockdown etc regimes.

>The states have highly diverse demographic profiles (e.g., average age of the population, population density) that can also produce highly diverse economic performances for reasons largely unrelated to economic curbs.

>Different state economies are also dominated by different industries, and as has become obvious, some industries’ health has been decimated by the virus (especially in-person services of all kinds like dining and travel and hospitality, but also energy) while some have held up fairly well (like manufacturing). It’s become just as obvious that many jobs that can be performed at home, and therefore the income and spending they generate have been much less affected by the pandemic than jobs requiring a worker’s presence (e.g., in those in-person service sectors).

>Finally (for now), state economies don’t exist in isolation from each other. Commuters and shoppers often cross state lines when traveling to work or stores, and their businesses often sell their products and offer their services to customers nation-wide – inevitably weakening or strengthening the impact of state-specific curbs.

Still, the new GDP-by-state numbers (which include the District of Columbia) reveal any number of important results since they take the story past the deep second quarter virus- and shutdown-induced downturn suffered by the entire national economy, as well as the strong third quarter rebound.

One big surprise: The entire U.S. economy saw output drop by 2.17 percent in inflation-adjusted terms (the gauge most closely watched) between the first quarter of the year (the last mainly pre-pandemic quarter) and the third. But two states actually managed to grow in inflation-adjusted terms (the gauge most closely watched by students of the economy): Utah (whose economy expanded by 1.04 percent in real terms) and Washington (0.44 percent).

The Washington result was unexpected, at least for me, because its West Coast location placed it closer to the CCP Virus’ origins in China, because the first virus case was recorded there in January (at least as far as is known to date), and because one of its economic crown jewels is aerospace giant Boeing, which has been hit so hard both by recent travel restriction and the safety woes troubling its jetliners.

The worst performing states, in relative (percentage terms) were less surprising. The leader here far and away was Hawaii, whose constant dollar GDP shrank by 6.67 percent) followed by Wyoming (down 5.24 percent by the same measure) and New York (4.56 percent). The Aloha State has of course been victimized by the depression in the travel and tourism industries, Wyoming is energy dependent, and New York collectively caught the CCP Virus early, when so little was known about its virulence and deadliness, and about which Americans were least and most vulnerable.

Oddly, however, the number of states that appear to have been especially hard hit economically between the first and third quarters was pretty limited. Only nine overall experienced price-adjusted contractions of more than three percent. In addition to the three biggest losers above, they were Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alaska, Nevada, New Jersey, and Vermont. And bonus points for you if you see major energy (Oklahoma, Alaska) and tourism (Nevada and Vermont) effects at work here.

Other than that, the economies of eighteen states shrank between two and three percent in constant dollar terms between the first and the third quarters – meaning that, generally, they weren’t far from the national total of 2.17 percent. The rest contracted by less than two percent or (as with Utah and Washington) eaked out some growth.

But this isn’t to say that the economic impact of the virus and related economic curbs haven’t been highly concentrated in at least one respect: A way outsized share of this production destruction has taken place as of the third quarter in just two states: New York and California.  

New York’s the champ here. During the first quarter, its economy represented 7.74 percent of the U.S. total in inflation-adjusted terms. By the third quarter, though, its $67.80 billion contraction represented 16.36 percent of the entire country’s $414.33 billion. In other words, measured by lost output, it punched more than twice above its economic weight.

During this period, California’s real GDP fell by more than New York’s in absolute terms ($74.30 billion). But its economy has long been bigger than New York’s – accounting for 14.81 percent of constant dollar US GDP during the first quarter, or nearly twice New York’s share. So its 17.93 percent shrinkage was smaller relative to the size of its economy than New York’s.

Their combined impact, however, is genuinely astonishing. Accounting for a combined 22.55 percent of the U.S. economy adjusted for inflation in the first quarter, they generated 34.29 percent of the nation’s economic shrinkage – more than a third.

And this is where the lockdown angle comes in: By one gauge of virus-era state economic regimes, (which themselves have almost all been on and off at least to some extent, thereby creating yet another complication) New York’s and California’s were among the strictest. And the next RealityChek post will examine in more detail the relationship these curbs and state economic growth.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New Evidence that Trump’s Tariffs Have Bolstered U.S. Manufacturers

23 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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aluminum, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, GDP, gross domestic product, inflation-adjusted growth, lockdowns, manufacturing, metals, metals tariffs, real GDP, real value-added, recession, steel, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, value added, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As everyone knows, at least as of the final (for now) official third quarter growth figures just released, the entire U.S. economy remains in a severe recession thanks to the arrival of the CCP Virus and the subsequent tight curbs on business activity.

Less widely known:  A separate set of official figures released along with yesterday’s government release on third quarter gross domestic product (GDP) shows that, by the measures most closely watched (i.e, inflation-adjusted), domestic manufacturing never suffered a recession by one crucial definition – a cumulative downturn lasting at least two quarters. And can it be mere coincidence that the entire time, President Trump’s sweeping and steep tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods, and of steel and aluminum from most major foreign producers, have remained in place?

Below are the growth (and contraction) figures for the entire U.S. economy and for the manufacturing sector for the entire CCP Virus period so far – the first quarter through the third quarter of this year. They come from the Commerce Department’s data on four measures of output tracked by the folks who look at “GDP by Industry” and consist of gross output both pre-inflation and adjusted for price changes, and value-added (a gauge of production that tries to remove the double-counting that results from gross output’s inclusion of both inputs for products and services and the final products and services themselves) in pre-inflation and price-adjusted terms. All the non-percentage numbers are in trillions of dollars at annual rates.

                                                      1Q                2Q                3Q            1Q-3Q

v/a whole economy:                 21.5611        19.5201        21.1703    -1.81 percent

v/a manufacturing:                     2.3643          2.0537          2.3291    -1.49 percent

real v/a whole economy           19.0108        17.3025        18.5965    -2.18 percent

real v/a manufacturing:              2.1999          1.9629          2.2132   +0.60 percent

gross output whole econ          37.8268        34.2600         36.9425    -2.34 percent

gross output mfg                        6.1163          5.3334           6.0134    -1.68 percent

real g/o whole economy           34.2613        31.3989         33.4440    -2.39 percent

real g/o manufacturing               6.2038          5.6162           6.2089    +0.08 percent

Probably the most important of these results is real value-added, since its topline economy-wide numbers are identical to the inflation-adjusted GDP figures regarded as the most important measures of economic growth. And in real value-added terms, manufacturing output in the third quarter was actually slightly (0.60 percent) higher than in the first quarter. Manufacturing expansion has also taken place according to the real gross output figures, though it’s been marginal.

Also crucial to note although both pre-inflation measures show first-third quarter cumulative manufacturing downturns, they’ve been shallower in both cases than the economy-wide slumps.

It’s true that the virus and related shutdowns have more dramatically impacted the service sector when it comes to first-order effects – because so many service industries entail personal contact. But the case for the tariffs’ benefits for manufacturing looks compelling upon realizing that U.S. services companies are major customers of domestic manufacturers. So although the virus obviously crimped these markets, it seems that the tariffs preserved a good many of them by pricing out much Chinese and foreign metals competition.

One way to test this proposition, of course, would be for apparent President-elect Joe Biden to lift the levies while the pandemic keeps spreading. Unless powerful evidence comes in to the contrary, manufacturers, their employees, and indeed all Americans should be hoping this is a bet Biden won’t make.

Making News: Podcast On-Line of NYC Radio Appearance on Swalwell Media Cover Up…& More!

21 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Eric Swalwell, Frank Morano, Germany, journalism, lockdowns, Mainstream Media, Making News, shutdowns, spying, The New York Times, The Other Side of Midnight, Wuhan virus

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my appearance in last night’s wee hours on Frank Morano’s “The Other Side of Midnight” talk show on New York City’s WABC-AM radio. Click here to listen to a timely discussion of two recent RealityChek items: the national media’s near news blackout (and possibly coverup?) of the Eric Swalwell China spy scandal story, and the increasingly US-like anti-CCP Virus performance of Germany — whose lockdowns-heavy strategy and early successes won such fulsome worldwide praise.

Special bonus for Baby Boomer native-New Yorkers-in-exile (like me!) — right at the beginning of the recording, you’ll hear the same “77 WABC” jingle you may remember from your childhood and adolescence.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments

Im-Politic: Germany’s Looking Like an Increasingly Tarnished Anti-CCP Virus Gold Standard

20 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Germany, Im-Politic, infections, lockdowns, mortality, reopening, shutdowns, stay-at-home, Worldometers.info, Wuhan virus

As the now-well-worn (but still pretty darned good!) wisecrack goes, “I’m old enough to remember when Germany was held up as a model for fighting the CCP Virus.” (See e.g., here and here.) And as this gibe implies, that portrayal of Germany keeps getting exposed as premature.

In fact, by several key grim virus metrics, Germany has caught up with the United States – which of course has just as often been held up as a model for how not to fight the pandemic.

For example, according to the Worldometers.info website, on a per capita basis, Germany’s daily death rate is now greater than the United States’. As of last Friday (I’m skipping the weekend numbers because CCP Virus-related info tends to get reported more slowly on Saturdays and Sundays), Germany’s new reported virus-related fatalities were 30 percent of America’s (838 vs 2,794). Yet Germany’s population (83.91 million) is only 25.28 percent of America’s (331.91 million).

Germany’s performance looks better in terms of seven-day average (7DA) daily figures – which are more accurate because they smooth out the inevitable random daily fluctuations. On December 18, the German figure of 598 was only 23.15 percent of its U.S. counterpart of 2,583.

But major German catch-up has still taken place. And it’s been going on for months. October 16 is when the American 7DA daily fatality total began its latest big move. That day’s figure was 716. So between then and December 18, it rose by 260.75 percent.

October 16 is just before Germany’s current death surge, and that day, the 7DA stood at 21. So through December 18, it’s risen by 2,748.62 percent. That’s more than ten times faster.

The new daily infections numbers tell a similar story. Let’s cut to the chase and examine the 7DAs. By this measure, the United States’ current and worst CCP Virus wave began about October 5, when the daily 7DA stood at 44,691. By December 18, it was up just under 400 percent.

Germany’s current wave (a true second wave) began about the same time, and on October 5, the 7DA for daily new infections stood at 2,292. As of December 18, the figure was 24,460 – a level just over 967 percent above October 5’s, and a rate of increase more than twice as fast as the United States.’

None of this means that Germany’s virus strategy has been a failure, and certainly doesn’t mean that America’s has been a success. In the first place, serious measurement problems continue to plague the infection and mortality data everywhere. (See, e.g., here.)

In the second place, it’s not cricket to compare any geographic regions’ CCP Virus strategies without taking major virus-related differences into account. In this case, it’s crucial to note that temperatures affect the virus’ spread, and that Germany got colder faster, at least between October and November, than the United States.  (For the U.S. data, see here. For the German data, see here.) Germany is also about seven times more densely populated than America, and its relatively crowded conditions alone clearly encourage virus spread. Moreover, it’s not as if Germany has locked down consistently since the CCP Virus’ arrival.

At the same time, the German-American differences in temperatures and temperature changes have hardly been enormous. (Further complicating the weather analysis – the United States’ enormous size also means enormous weather variance from region to region.) And the population density hasn’t changed during this year. So the gaps between these variables can’t possibly begin to explain why Germany’s current surge – albeit from much lower absolute starting levels – has been so much worse than the United States. But they’ve been the statistics used most often to judge virus strategies, so it seems fair to examine exactly what they’ve revealed lately.

Nor does it make sense to blame Germany’s relatively poor performance this fall and winter so far on its various reopenings. Unless you think shutting down an entire national economy for that many months consecutively, with no relief, is a viable approach to a pandemic.

Instead, it’s time to recognize, especially for lockdown and mask-wearing and other mass restrictions enthusiasts, that if – even before the pandemic is one year old – countries with mitigation approaches as far apart as those of Germany and the United States have been so widely labeled can see such completely unexpected infection and mortality results, the establishment conventional wisdom on sweeping behavioral curbs is weaker than advocates insist. And consequently, the best possible tradeoffs between CCP Virus spread and mortality effects on the one hand, and other public health and economic costs on the other, shouldn’t be regarded as set in stone.

Im-Politic: Lockdowns vs Reopening, Apples-to-Apples

09 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, domestic violence, education, Im-Politic, Kristi Noem, lockdowns, mental health, Michelle Lujan Grisholm, New Mexico, Republicans, shutdown, South Dakota, stay-at-home, substance abuse, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Worldometers.info, Wuhan virus

Truth in advertising: The more I look into CCP Virus economic restrictions and regulations on mask-wearing, the more skeptical about their anti-virus power I become. That’s not to say that I believe they have no mitigating effect at all, or even that they have only marginal impacts in absolute terms.

But when it comes to the lockdowns and shutdowns, the evidence keeps telling me that the differences in virus-related outcomes so far between states and countries that have imposed the most and the fewest contain too many inconsistencies (especially during the current second virus wave) to dismiss. And of course the case for them becomes even weaker upon considering the kinds of economic and public health costs they’ve inevitably exacted, and which I’ve been writing about since March.

In terms of mask-wearing, as I’ve explained before, my objections center not on those non-virus costs (because there seem to be none) but on what I’ve called the fetishization of this practice, and the illusions it seems to be breeding.

I’ve been hesitant to weigh in more fully on the debate over lockdowns per se because apples-to-apples comparisons are so difficult to find. Too many entries concentrate tightly on differing restrictions regimes and too few take into account crucial variables like population density and weather and median age of inhabitants After all, all else equal, localities where people are tightly packed together are obviously going to face greater spread challenges in particular than those in which they’re few and far between. Ditto, especially when it comes to the current second wave, for localities where winter begins earlier and settles in more persistently. And it’s by now well-established that the elderly are by far the most vulnerable segment of any population.

Within these United States, however, I think I’ve found two states that have taken radically different anti-virus strategies, and that are pretty similar demographically. And their experiences make a pretty convincing case for the anti-lockdown (and mask) side.

The two states are New Mexico and South Dakota – both largely rural and therefore both thinly populated. Only 17 inhabitants are found per square mile in the former and just ten in the latter. And those in percentage terms, the gap is wide, clearly both are dominated by wide open spaces. (The national average is 87.4 – all these figures come from the 2010 Census.) The median ages of their people as of 2019 is similar, too – 38.6 years for New Mexico and 37.7 years for South Dakota. (The national average was 37.7 that year.)

An initial examination indicates that New Mexico and its Democratic Governor has performed considerably better against the CCP Virus than South Dakota and its Republican Governor – who’s sometimes villified for all but fostering a death cult.

Since the pandemic’s arrival in the United States in sometime near the beginning of this year (or was it late last year?), New Mexico’s cases per million have been just over half those of South Dakota (98,386 as of today, versus 52,435, according to the reliable Worldometers.info website). And its death rate per million has been much lower, too – 837 per million versus 1,256, according to the same source.

But the biggest difference of all? New Mexico has been one of the states that has locked down and restricted most extensively, according to the New York Times‘ compilation of this information. It’s latest batch of restrictions started last month, when Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered non-essential businesses to close, and put into effect a two-week stay-at-home order. There’s been some relaxation since then, but The Times reports that all but one of its counties remains in the most restrictive lockdown phase. Moreover, mask-wearing is mandatory.

In South Dakota, meanwhile, Governor Kristi Noem has never ordered a lockdown or mask mandate.

And given this striking contrast, the differences between the two states’ anti-CCP Virus approaches don’t look nearly so great.

Moreover, they look even less impressive during this second wave period. Even though the pandemic’s human toll in New Mexico has been lower than in South Dakota overall, recently the trends have tracked surprisingly closely.

South Dakota’s current case surge began October 6, when the seven-day average of daily recorded new infections was 409. This figure peaked November 14 (having risen by 256.48 percent during those five weeks), and since then has fallen by 40 percent, to 875 as of yesterday.  (These figures come from the Washington Post ‘s excellent searchable database.) 

New Mexico’s current case surge began three weeks later (November 1), at a seven-day daily average of 767 new infections. It peaked just three weeks later, on November 23, at 2,671 – and its rate of increase was only slightly slower than South Dakota’s. Since then, through yesterday, it’s down a little faster than South Dakota’s (43.69 percent).

Also undercutting the “death cult” charges: South Dakota’s weather began turning colder about two weeks before New Mexico’s, and has stayed colder since. The patterns for both states have been pretty choppy, but you can see the details at this database. (I looked up the info for Pierre, South Dakota, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, specifically.)

Over the next two weeks, the U.S. government will be releasing data that will provide a much clearer, up to date picture of the CCP Virus’ state-level economic toll (through November for employment, through the third quarter for growth) – and an indirect indication of its non-virus health (especially mental health and substance abuse-related) and social costs (e.g., domestic violence, children’s educational achievement). These figures will permit pronouncing a much more comprehensive, convincing judgment as to whether policy cures implemented for the virus have been better or worse than the disease.

Im-Politic: Trump-ism Without Trump for America as a Whole?

16 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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"Defund the Police", allies, CCP Virus, China, climate change, coronavirus, court packing, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, enforcement, Executive Orders, filibuster, Green New Deal, Huawei, human rights, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, judiciary, lockdowns, mask mandate, masks, metals, multilateralism, Muslim ban, Phase One, progressives, Republicans, sanctions, Senate, shutdowns, stimulus, Supreme Court, tariffs, taxes, Trade, trade wars, Trump, unions, Wuhan virus

Since election day, I’ve spent some time and space here and on the air speculating about the future of what I called Trump-ism without Donald Trump in conservative and Republican Party political ranks. Just this weekend, my attention turned to another subject and possibility: Trump-ism without Mr. Trump more broadly speaking, as a shaper – and indeed a decisive shaper – of national public policy during a Joe Biden presidency. Maybe surprisingly, the chances look pretty good.

That is, it’s entirely possible that a Biden administration won’t be able to undo many of President Trump’s signature domestic and foreign policies, at least for years, and it even looks likely if the Senate remains Republican. Think about it issue-by-issue.

With the Senate in Republican hands, there’s simply no prospect at least during the first two Biden years for Democratic progressives’ proposals to pack the Supreme Court, to eliminate the Senate filibuster, or to recast the economy along the lines of the Green New Deal, or grant statehood Democratic strongholds Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. A big tax increase on corporations and on the Biden definition of the super-rich looks off the table as well.

If the Senate does flip, the filibuster might be history. But big Democratic losses in the House, and the claims by many veterans of and newcomers to their caucus that those other progressive ambitions, along with Defunding the Police, were to blame, could also gut or greatly water down much of the rest of the far Left’s agenda, too.

CCP Virus policy could be substantially unchanged, too. For all the Biden talk of a national mask mandate, ordering one is almost surely beyond a President’s constitutional powers. Moreover, his pandemic advisors are making clear that, at least for the time being, a sweeping national economic lockdown isn’t what they have in mind. I suspect that some virus economic relief measures willl be signed into law sometime this spring or even earlier, but they won’t carry the total $2 trillion price tag on which Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to have insisted for months. In fact, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of relief being provided a la carte, as Congressional Republicans have suggested – e.g., including popular provisions like some form of unemployment payment bonus extension and stimulus checks, and excluding less popular measures like stimulus aid for illegal aliens.

My strong sense is that Biden is itching to declare an end to President Trump’s trade wars, and as noted previously, here he could well find common cause with the many Senate Republicans from the party’s establishment wing who have never been comfortable bucking the wishes of an Offshoring Lobby whose campaign contributions it’s long raked in.

Yet the former Vice President has promised his labor union supporters that until the trade problems caused by China’s massive steel overproduction were (somehow) solved, he wouldn’t lift the Trump metals tariffs on allies (which help prevent transshipment and block these third countries from exporting their own China steel trade problems to the United States) – even though they’re the levies that have drawn the most fire from foreign policy globalists and other trade and globalization zealots.

As for the China tariffs themselves, the latest from the Biden team is that they’ll be reviewed. So even though he’s slammed them as wildly counterproductive, they’re obviously not going anywhere soon. (See here for the specifics.) 

Later? Biden’s going to be hard-pressed to lift the levies unless one or both of the following developments take place: first, the allied support he’s touted as the key to combating Beijing’s trade and other economic abuses actually materializes in very convincing ways; second, the Biden administration receives major Chinese concessions in return. Since even if such concessions (e.g., China’s agreement to eliminate or scale back various mercantile practices) were enforceable (they won’t be unless Biden follows the Trump Phase One deal’s approach), they’ll surely require lengthy negotiations. Ditto for Trump administration sanctions on China tech entities like the telecommunications giant Huawei. So expect the Trump-ian China status quo to long outlast Mr. Trump.

Two scenarios that could see at least some of the tariffs or tech sanctions lifted? First, the Chinese make some promises to improve their climate change policies that will be completely phony, but will appeal greatly to the Green New Deal-pushing progressives who will wield much more power if the Senate changes hands, and who have demonstrated virtually no interest in China economic issues. Second, Beijing pledges to ease up on its human rights crackdowns on Hong Kong and the Muslims of Xinjiang province. These promises would be easier to monitor and enforce, but the Chinese regime views such issues as utterly non-negotiable because they’re matters of sovereignty. So China’s repressive practices won’t even be on the official agenda of any talks. Unofficial understandings might be reached under which Beijing would take modest positive steps or suspend further contemplated repression. But I wouldn’t count on such an outcome.

Two areas where Biden supposedly could make big decisions unilaterally whatever happens in the Senate, are immigration and climate change. Executive orders would be the tools, and apparently that’s indeed the game plan. But as Mr. Trump discovered, what Executive Orders and even more routine adminstrative actions can do, a single federal judge responding to a special interest group’s request can delay for months. And these judicial decisions can interfere with presidential authority even on subjects that for decades has been recognized as wide-ranging – notably making immigration enforcement decisions when border crossings impact national security, as with the so-called Trump “Muslim ban.”

I know much less about climate change, but a recently retired attorney friend with long experience litigating on these issues told me that even before Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court, the Justices collectively looked askance on efforts to create new policy initiatives without legislating. Another “originalist” on the Court should leave even less scope for ignoring Congress.

The bottom line is especially curious given the almost universal expectations that this presidential election would be the most important in recent U.S. history: A deeply divided electorate could well have produced a mandate for more of the same – at least until the 2022 midterms.

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  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Im-Politic

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Signs of the Apocalypse

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

The Brighter Side

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Those Stubborn Facts

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

The Snide World of Sports

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Guest Posts

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

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Current Thoughts on Trade

Terence P. Stewart

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Marc to Market

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Alastair Winter

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