Commentary

The “Future Party” Continued

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, The Future Party, Uncategorized

Given our two major parties either are in alignment on major policies or in silent agreement to keep certain hot button issues at the boiling point, a little competition might be expected to come in to take advantage of an under served market. There actually are people who have noticed continuing down our present fiscal path can only end in disaster.  The only question is when.  Maybe they’ve noticed our rapidly aging population and realize it is also on the verge of declining.  Just to keep our social programs going we need more not fewer people.  Free markets have raised millions and millions of people out of grinding poverty and some recognize this and fear the effects of a reversal.   We live in a shrinking world and it’s unreasonable to think we can be a walled off “Big Switzerland.” Most don’t want to be asked if they’re pro-life or pro-choice when they’re actually somewhere in the middle.  Instead of endless fruitless fighting  about guns many are asking if all these people knew the perpetrators of these mass murders were disturbed or had mental problems why was d nothing was done?  All these people just might be asking “where do I go to find somebody to represent my views?”

Progressives may feel they have won the culture wars, but the backlash has contributed mightily to the fact Democrats control very little that matters.  Further it has greatly contributed to the nations ugly divide.  An update of William Graham Sumner’s “Forgotten Man” might be illuminating.  In his 1876 essay he put it in algebraic terms,

As soon as A observes something which seems to him wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X, or, in better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X… What I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. he is the man who never is thought of…. I call him the forgotten man… He works, he votes, generally he prays—but he always  pays…”

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The “Future” Party

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, The Future Party, Uncategorized

The funeral of Barbara Bush, the matriarch of a preeminent Republican family illuminates just how broken things are.  While former Presidents of both parties attended there was a notable no-show, the present Republican President Donald Trump.  Now sitting presidents don’t always go to first lady funerals, but who wouldn’t want to be seen paying his respects to “America’s Grandmother,” especially a publicity addict like Trump. He didn’t go simply because he wouldn’t  have been welcome.  Think about it.  The leader of the Republican Party wasn’t welcome at the funeral of the wife of one Republican president and the mother of another.  If this doesn’t alert the nation to a major split in one of our two major parties nothing will.  In fact, most of the Republican attendees must feel they no longer have a party.  Rolling over for the present President would mean surrendering their values.  According to recent polls, they are a minority in their party, with the President viewed favorably by at least 70-80% of Republicans.   As the Senator  from Arizona, Jeff Flake, found there is no  room for those old Goldwater-Reagan people in the present party.

A move to the other major party offers no welcoming home either.  If you’re a free market Republican strongly favoring trade agreements such as the Trans Pacific  Partnership (TPP) you might find kindred souls among the Democrats. After all, it was negotiated by the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton under the Obama administration.  Surely on this issue at least these Republicans could join with Democrats.   This would be way off base.  To placate the dominant progressive wing of that party, Clinton simply ran away from her own handiwork.  Bernie Sanders and the progressives didn’t want any part of TPP so she caved.  Odd, the dominant Trump wing of the Republicans had exactly the same position on TPP as the dominant progressive wing of the Democrats. On closer inspection this isn’t odd at all .  On major issues these supposed blood rivals are in basic agreement or have symbiotic relationship. Continue reading →

Criminal Minds

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, Uncategorized

Another mass murder resulting  the usual running off in all directions.  Ban the type of weapon used.  No fortify and arm the schools. Someone dropped the ball.  What we seem to overlook is normal people don’t commit mass murderer.  Abnormal people do.  Further, in most cases the perpetrators have exhibited behaviors that gave us clear indications they were capable of acts most wouldn’t even entertain.  What we don’t have is a method to connect the dots necessary to prevent them from acting.  Millions of people watch “Criminal Minds” a TV series that follows a team of FBI profilers tracking down people who commit horrific crimes.  The idea is to use characteristics to create a profile of the criminal in order to make an identification.  In other words, mass murders have a different set of traits that set them apart from the general populace.  Indeed, if you went to the FBI and asked them for a general profile of those capable of mass murder they could provide it. What is needed is a way to reverse the procedure of using the profile to catch the bad guys after the committing of crimes to a way to fill in the profile before the crimes take place.

The FBI with a comprehensive profile based on the idiosyncrasies of mass murderers refined and combined with a super data collection system would give us the basis to identify them before they act.  We already have tip lines but these would be far more effective with a questionnaire filling in the blanks on a profile.  Extended to the internet, someone who sees abnormal behavior such as cruelty to animals could log on to the FBI tip site and find the questionnaire to be filled out. A person conflicted by what they had observed would see cruelty to animals is something needed to be reported.  The questionnaire could alert observers to the kinds of behavior we need to know about.  At the same time they would be assured the information provided would be correlated with other reports. This is where big data comes in.  With the proper algorithms all reports would be in one place to be aggregated and ranked.

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Surrounded

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, Uncategorized

With all the Trump White House News dominating each and every news cycle, it has been widely overlooked the US backed coalition in Northern Syria repelled an attack by Assad government forces.  Over 100 of the Assad forces possibly including Russians were killed. There were no coalition losses.  This group, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is made up of 2000 US troops working with Kurdish and Arab militias.   The Assad forces are an alliance of other Syrians, Hezbollah and Iran with Russian support.  It’s well-recognized the Kurds are the backbone of this US led coalition that took the Issis Capitol Raqqa.  The Trump Administration has loudly claimed victory over Issis with this success.  The coalition is still battling Issis remnants and other extremists groups in Northern Syria to keep them from reconstituting.  To further complicate the situation, Turkey on Syria’s northern border with Russian acquiescence is attacking Kurdish forces in the Northwest Syria Afrin enclave and threatening the Kurdish elements of the coalition.  One has to ask, how did our troops end up surrounded by threats, what are we hoping to accomplish and do we really have a workable middle east plan?

The pro Assad alliance in Syria is basically a Shia Army hell-bent on reconquering the majority Sunni Country by any means possible including  chemical weapons.  Remember those were supposed to removed from Syria by the Russians.  No wonder refugees have moved into coalition held areas. So in addition to preventing a resurgence of extremists, the coalition is trying to keep  the Syrian tragedy from getting even worse. This is nothing new for the Kurds.  When so much of Iraq including Mosul fell to Issis, many of those fleeing this horror found refuge behind the guns of the Kurdish Peshmerga.  It’s hard to visualize the recapture of Mosul without Kurdish support. Both in fighting ISiS and our humanitarian efforts the Kurds have been our best ally.  In theory Turkey is our NATO ally.  Under Pres. Erdogaon this almost daily proves to be less true.  An Islamist, he has moved his nation closer to Iran and Russia and away from the West.  In Turkey there is a large  Kurdish  concentration  in the Southeast part of the country, along the Syrian border.  Turkish mistreatment of these Kurds has a long history and Erdegon  has if anything made things worse.  A successful Kurdish uprising is his worst nightmare. He might have treated the Kurds right, but that ship has sailed. Turkey like the Assad Alliance feels the need to crush the Kurdish areas along the Syrian border as a matter of survival

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Simple Interest

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, The Long Journey to "More", Uncategorized

In our 1/2/18 post “2018” we suggested that the only group that could supply new funds to push the stock market higher was the public at large.  The figures for December and January are in they show this group’s participation was the greatest since the “Great Recession.” They bought pushing the market to the stratosphere. Unfortunately, with no more new money available, the market was set up for a change of direction.  The reason given for the subsequent sharp down move was rising interest rates.  The bulls argue the market hadn’t had a correction for an abnormally long time and was overdue. In any case interest rates are historically low. Even the recent rise and the projected Federal Reserve moves should be easily handled by worldwide growth. After all, economic expansions in the past faced much higher rates and still thrived.  In the US profits will be greatly enhanced by the recent tax revisions.  Wages and optimism are rising.  Solid reasons for expecting the economic expansion to continue accompanied by rising profits.  This should be reflected in higher stock prices.

On the surface this makes a lot of sense but what if the recent interest rate rise even from such low levels is indicative of a much more dangerous situation?  In our series the Long Journey to “More” the post Free Capital to Finance “More”  attempted to show how the world’s central banks led by our Federal Reserve had caused massive distortions to the traditional risk pyramid.  Instead of a base of relatively safe assets tapering up to high risk, we had a pyramid of mostly risky assets.  With so much risk already, investors might really be reluctant to go after the really high risk/high reward ventures.  We thought this might help explain the tepid growth throughout the era worldwide “Quantitative Easing.”  The theory behind the central bankers move to zero or negative interest rates was to drive up the value of risk assets giving their owners gains resulting in a “wealth effect.” This would result rise in greater consumption driving growth.  Some economists claim this indeed added to growing  GDPs.  The consensus in the US is that it added about 1/2% to our GDP.  Even granting this might be true, it has left investors far and wide with horribly unbalanced portfolios.  Across the board they’re out of line with normal risk tolerance.

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