From the Summit of the Moral High Ground

Well what a week it has been... The results of today's Japanese election (an overwhelming victory for Abe the King of Global Quantative Easing). The Associated Press wrote "Despite weakening popularity ratings, a recession and messy campaign finance scandals, the Liberal Democrats were virtually certain to triumph thanks to voter apathy and a weak opposition." And there you have it: the apathetic Japanese people have spoken, or rather chosen not to. As a result, when the entire Japanese house of Ponzi cards comes crashing down for the final time, they will have nobody but themselves to blame. Which, incidentally, is the case in every other "developed" nation including Jersey. Because UAE's Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said OPEC will stand by its decision not to cut crude output "even if oil prices fall as low as $40 a barrel" and will wait at least three months before considering an emergency meeting. In doing so, OPEC not only co...

So what a day today was in the world; it started in China - China Securities Depository and Clearing Corp (CSDC) said in an announcement after the market closed on Monday that with immediate effect, only corporate bonds with the highest rating of AAA and those issued by firms with a high rating of AA and above could be used for bond repurchase. Analysts say the regulators' exclusion of lower grade bonds from being used in bond repurchase contracts, a key source of secondary liquidity in trade, increases the risk of trading such bonds, depressing demand and putting upward pressure on yields. (You may recall that for example, Amazon Inc bonds, are rated BBA and so would be excluded). This immediately removed $80 billion of eligible collateral and lowered the fx rate to 6.2 Yuan per dollar. The knock on effect was that money that banks had borrowed in Japan (at 0% interest) and placed in Chinese bonds (earning 2% interest was swiftly repaid). This 2% money for nothing earnt b...

Egalitarianism is the favorite religion of the left. It has gotten to the point that no one even bothers to question whether equality is in fact a desirable goal for society. It is taken as given. The problem is that “equality” is a very, very broad term, with myriad meanings and interpretations. When conservatives and libertarians talk about equality, they usually mean equality of rights, of treatment under the law, and to a certain extent, of opportunity. By contrast, when progressives talk about equality, they mean it in a much more sweeping sense. Everyone should be given equal medical care, men and women should be paid the same amounts, and the fact that CEOs make more than factory workers is somehow to be decried. Both of these approaches have their problems, the most important being that it only makes sense to treat things as equals if they actually are equal, a condition that is rarely met in the real world. A perfect example is the continual harping on “equal pay ...