A Brief History of Hard and Soft Landings
Alan ReynoldsThis year marks the thirteenth time since 1954 that the Federal Reserve Board ’s policy‐making Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) began gradually ratcheting up the federal funds rate on bank reserves in a series of recurring steps. Eventually, however, the rate increases always stopped and the FOMC began bringing the “fed funds rate” back down.The inevitable series of interest rate reductions most often did not begin until recession had already begun, or too shortly before, so those monetary policy experiments are now looked back on as “hard landings.”Whenever the rate increases stopped in ti...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 14, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
Russian Public Opinion on the Ukraine War: Perspectives from the American Experience
John MuellerSince World War II, the United States has conducted extended wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Whether the Russian effort in Ukraine will be similarly extended has yet to be seen. However, should that come about, evidence about public opinion from America ’s wars suggests lessons—and non-lessons—for assessing Russian opinion on the war in Ukraine.The comparison suggests that, after a rally-round-the flag effect at the outset of the war, a decline of support is to be expected regardless of the effects of media coverage, antiwar demonstrations, censorship and propaganda efforts, or military hap...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 26, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: John Mueller Source Type: blogs
U.S. Gasoline Prices Depend on Global Oil Markets — Not “Independence”
Alan ReynoldsI still have a 1979 bookmark that says, “INFLATION IS A PAIN IN THE GAS.”Funny but wrong. U.S. gasoline prices follow gyrations in world oil markets, which depend on global (not domestic) supply and demand.What actually happened in 1978 –80, an important German study from Bruegel reminds us, was the Iranian revolution and the Iran ‐Iraq War: “The 1978 Iranian revolution decreased global supply by 4 percent and led to a price increase of 57 percent. The 1980 Iran‐Iraq war decreased global supply by 4 percent and led to a price increase of 45 percent.”What happened to world oil market...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 10, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
I didn't want to do this . . .
I felt I didn ' t have time to argue over something so ridiculous, which is really off topic for this blog, but I ' d like to set the record straight. The claim that the United States is responsible for the Syria civil war, and that it would have been over in a year if the U.S. hadn ' t supplied weapons to the rebels, is preposterous. Sorry, but that is Russian propaganda, and that ' s what concerns me.There is a Wikipedia page, in fact, that details all of the weapons used by Syrian rebels and what is known about where they came from. Much of their weaponry was captured or taken from stockpiles. Some of it came from Iran ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 10, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
War is a crime
The concept of " war crimes " is ridiculous. In case you didn ' t know it, the principal charges at the Nuremberg trials were plotting and carrying out invasions -- committing an illegal war of aggression. How the defendants specifically waged war was not the issue. And by the way, the allied countries indiscriminately bombed cities for the precise purpose of massacring civilians -- as depicted by Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five.During the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. generals spoke frequently of what they call " collateral damage. " This is when they bomb wedding parties, as seemed to ha...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 9, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve Was Never Used Strategically
Alan ReynoldsPresident Biden plans to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for a million barrels a day for six months, describing this as “awartime bridge to increase oil supply until production ramps up later this year. ”This is only the second time that the SPR has been used for the purpose Congress intended in 1975 – to counteract temporary spikes in the global price of oil due to cartel extortion or foreign wars. The first time was during the Gulf War, on January 16, 1991, when President George H.W. Bush announced the SPR would immediately begin selling up to 2.5 million barrels a day. On the following d...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 1, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
Congress Should Require TPS for Immigrants from Nations With Armed Conflicts
David J. BierSince 1990, the executive branch has had the authority from Congress to provide Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to people already in the United States who are from countries in which an “ongoing armed conflict within the state" exists. A bipartisan group in Congress wrote a letter to the Biden administration requesting that it designate Ukraine for TPS, and then they also proposed legislation torequire it to use its authority.Finally, the administrationhas relented (with the full details still to be filled in). But Congress should still recognize the procedural problem with giving total discretion to th...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 4, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: David J. Bier Source Type: blogs
Moral Philosophy, and some pragmatism
The objective was to install a regime more congenial to North American and European interests, which in the view of the perpetrators included being friendly to Israel. What they got was social collapse and a horrific civil war, followed by a regime more friendly to Iran. There are a couple of points that might make a minor moral distinction between this war crime and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One is that the majority of the Iraq population did want an end to the Saddam Hussein regime, although they invaders didn ' t really understand anything about Iraq and in particular that there wasn ' t any common national ident...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 28, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Pootie Poot
Yep, Pootie Poot was Chimpy ' s nickname for Vlad. Shrub said " I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul. " So the right wing fascinated adoration for the Pootster goes way back. Anyway, the invasion of Iraq by President Cheney and his stooge GW Bush was arguably as egregious as Putin invading Ukraine, but maybe not quite. They were lying about the Weapons of Mass Destruction ™ but they weren ' t lying about the nature of the Saddam Hussein regime. It was also not dangerous on as large a scale. Saddam didn ' t have a friend in the world. While the invasion and occupation turned out to be catastr...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 25, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Inevitability of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in Trillion ‐Dollar Spending Programs
David BoazIn 2009, as the federal government was rolling out the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program and preparing to spend another $787 billion in President Obama ’s “stimulus” package — both with little serious examination by Congress, I wrote a blog post titled “How to Spend a Trillion Dollars without Waste and Fraud. ”The first line of my post was “You can’t.” And I noted that the federal government knew that, because both Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for TARP, and Gene Dodaro, the acting comptroller general, hadtold a House subcommittee— after the pas...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 23, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Epistemology
The pervasive term for politics in the U.S right now is " polarization. " It is true that people are divided into sharply divergent and seemingly irreconcilable camps. But the division is not about political philosophy or values or aspirations for society. It ' s about reality, plain facts. I ' ve mentioned before Habermas ' s concept of the " three worlds " of criticizable validity claims. These are intersubjective reality, the world " out there, " what is true; the world of what ought to be, what we consider to be right and just and good; and what happens to please us as individuals, what we find to be sensual...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 3, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
How Much Will Biden ’s Infrastructure Plan Eventually Cost? History Suggests Some Worrisome Answers
David BoazHere at Cato we ’ve written many times about the record of big infrastructure projects and “megaprojects”:Cost overruns are rampant.“Here is a rule of thumb to remember when you hear about a proposed government project: If a politician says that it will cost $1, it will end up costing $2 or more. ”“Contractors were essentially rewarded for delays and overruns with added cash and guaranteed profits. ”“The ongoing saga of California ’s high‐speed bullet train may end up being as classic a story of Democratic politicians ’ hubris as the Solyndra debacle.”“Linda Bilmes...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 30, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Law Yet to Catch Up With Counter ‐Drone Technology
Matthew FeeneyA recent joint intelligence bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and theNational Counterterrorism Center reveals what the agencies consider to be thefirst attempt to usea drone to target domestic infrastructure. The incident, which occurred last year, involved a small drone flown toward a Pennsylvania power substation. It highlights the regulatory headaches surrounding counter ‐drone measures.According to reporting fromWiredmagazine, the attempted attack featured a DJI Mavic 2 carrying two pieces of nylon rope attached to a ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 9, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Matthew Feeney Source Type: blogs
How the Politics of Big Pharma Is Undermining COVID-19 Public Health Policy in Canada
Claudia Chaufan (York University), Faisal Mohamed (York University), How the Politics of Big Pharma Is Undermining COVID-19 Public Health Policy in Canada, SSRN (2021): In December 2020 a former NATO commander in Iraq appointed to lead vaccination logistics in the... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - October 24, 2021 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
U.S. and World Economic Freedom Heading in Different Directions
Ian V ásquezTheEconomic Freedom of the World: 2021 Annual Report, released today by the Fraser Institute and co ‐published in the United States by the Cato Institute, documents a slight rise in global economic freedom, continuing a notable, long‐term, though decelerating, trend over the past several decades. The study is based on data through 2019, the most recent year for which there is internati onally comparable data, so it does not account for the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.Although the United States maintained its rank at 6th in this year ’s index, it is worrisome that its long‐term declin...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 14, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Ian V ásquez Source Type: blogs
