I'm Tired Of Hearing About Russia And Ukraine

 

It's awful that Russia invaded Ukraine.  That's the end of that story.  Ukraine has no strategic value to the United States, and we are five times as far away from Ukraine as is Germany.  If Russia invading Ukraine is a serious political problem, it's five times as much of a problem for Germany as it is for us.  Before we get involved in another European Pissing Contest Among Cousins (see WW-I), I want to see several European countries get involved first.  Poland has already said "Thanks, we'll pass".

As punishment for their dastardly deeds, the U.S. is imposing sanctions on Russia, cutting them off from the international banking system.  Of course, the power elite in Russia, the political leaders and the oligarchs, are largely unaffected by the sanctions.  It's The Man In The Street who is most affected.  Idiot Americans think we're doing the Lord's work by bashing Russia.  What we're actually doing is confirming in the minds of ordinary Russians that we're a bunch of ignorant bullies.  That's largely true, but we don't have to confirm it daily, do we?

Meanwhile, the mostly-made-up conflict with Russia provides the perfect villain upon which our incompetent administration can blame the high price of gasoline.  Forget the fact that Biden's first official act as President was to kill the KeystoneXL pipeline.  Forget the fact that Biden's second official act as President was to ban fracking.  None of those had anything to do with the price of motor fuel.  How odd, then, that this week for the first time ever, we paid more than $4 per gallon for gasoline; $4.249 to be precise, and that's with a 5¢/gallon discount, so $4.299 for almost everybody else.  Energy independence?  Who needs that?

Almost everyone is now aware that inflation has infected the economy, but being economic illiterates, few understand why inflation has infected the economy.  Anyone even moderately conversant with the Austrian School of Economics knows the answer.  Since the Trump Presidency, the Fed has been issuing letters of credit to the U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. Mint has been printing greenbacks... $8Trillion worth.  80% of all the dollars in circulation have been printed... new... within the last two years.  The only surprise is that inflation has only hit a 40-year high and not a 90-year high (to account for the Great Depression.

Back in 2016, I predicted an oncoming economic crash, and I was very surprised that it didn't happen.  I predicted it in 2012, too.  Perhaps I was too much of a pessimist back then, but I have not seen anything that makes me feel optimistic about our country's future path.  My (Republican) Congressman, Gus Bilirakis (FL-12), gleefully reported today that he helped spend another trillion — for the children and for the troops!  And to reward them for all their good work, the 'emergency spending bill' also included a raise for members of Congress!

Really, as long as the bulk of voters insist on sending to Washington politicians who see their job as 'spending money as fast as possible' there's no way we're going to escape runaway inflation.

Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

 

Fungible Commodities

 

There's this delusion making the rounds that buying Venezuelan oil is better than buying Russian oil.  The only people holding this delusion are those who fundamentally misunderstand economics.  In America, alas, that's 'nearly everybody'.

The notion of a 'fungible commodity' is that product from location A is largely replaceable by similar product from location B.  Let's use 'oil' as the base product for the sake of discussion — although the identical analysis is applicable to almost everything that fits within the ambit of 'commodity': diamonds, wheat, beef, silver, lumber, helium...

If we decide that we don't want to buy oil from place A, what happens?  We have created a local reduction in demand for A-oil.  This will cause the price to drop momentarily and other oil buyers will be drawn to it.  If those other oil buyers move away from B-oil and replace it with the now cheaper A-oil, this will cause the price of A-oil to rise as the price of B-oil drops.  We then swoop in to buy the now-available B-oil, driving its price back to equilibrium.  Everything is the same because the supply of oil (whether A- or B-) is the same, and the demand is the same.  Executing a preference for a fungible commodity from one place causes an automatic rebalancing of other people's preferences for a different place.

What causes the price of a commodity to change is imbalance in supply and demand.  If location A curtails the supply of oil but demand stays constant, the equilibrium price will rise.  If you're wondering why gasoline is suddenly getting more expensive, it's because supply has been reduced but demand has not.  The reduction in supply began when the U.S. government began making it harder for American refiners to obtain oil — by closing pipelines, by restricting certain production methods (e.g.: fracking), and other supply-chain-related causes.  President Biden has asked Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to backfill for the oil that U.S.-based pumps are no longer producing, and SA has declined because high prices are, to them, a good thing.  Now, Biden is trying to make a deal with Venezuela to buy their oil, but this, even if successful, won't change the equilibrium point.  Other oil buyers will simply get theirs from Russia.  The supply will still be low (and the price high) because we're no longer pumping.

There is a second cause for the high price of oil — the higher price for everything, actually — and that's 'inflation'.  We're seeing the same syndrome with inflation that we're seeing with oil: we're printing dollars that aren't backed by anything.  In effect, the supply of dollars is going up but the wealth that dollars putatively represent isn't rising at the same rate.  The value of each new dollar is zero, but paper money is a fungible commodity: you can't tell one dollar from another, so the average value of any given dollar is reduced until the total of all the dollars in circulation balances with the available product that they can be used to purchase.

This is what happens when you let people run your economy who don't actually know how to run an economy.

And here's the really bad news: nobody knows how to run an economy.  Only the economy can run the economy.

 

U.S. vs Guy Reffitt

 

(CNN) — The first trial for a January 6 US Capitol attack defendant won't have any members of the public, media or even the wife of the defendant in the courtroom to witness much of the proceedings, a federal judge decided on Monday.

Judge Dabney Friedrich decided not to allow any members of the public to witness the evidence presentation in person at the historic trial that's expected to last more than a week.  A few are being allowed to watch jury selection, which began Monday, and opening statements.
...
Friedrich cited space concerns due to stringent coronavirus protocols at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, designed to ensure that jurors and witnesses at trials are spread out from one another.

Amendment 6

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

IANAL, but the text of the 6th amendment seems pretty plain to me:

• speedy and public trial — Refitt has been in the pokey nearly a year so 'speedy' this isn't, and it isn't going to be 'public', either, if the public won't be permitted to even see the 'evidence'.
• impartial jury — that hasn't happened in a federal court in well over a half-century.
• if the U.S. federal government's Judicial branch can't provide an appropriate venue for a trial, one that comports with the requirements of the Constitution, how is that an excuse for ignoring those Constitutional requirements?

It almost goes without saying that the defendant will not be permitted 'discovery' of the estimated 14,000 hours of video of the so-called insurrection.  These flaws alone are enough to ensure any conviction is overturned on appeal by anything like a fair court.

Then there's this: if such blatant injustice turns out to be the trigger for civil war, will Judge Dabney Friedrich object when his trial is likewise held in secret?  The Golden Rule tells us that how you treat others is how you, yourself, wish to be treated, so the judge can't have any objection to that, could he?

Will a Republican House and a Republican Senate, if that's the outcome of the 2022 election, have the intestinal fortitude to impeach and convict jurists like Friedrich, ensuring they never service (pun intended) the American people ever again?  Don't bet on it.