The View from Right Field

John Bolton Is Leaving. It is Too Bad.

I was very disappointed to see that National Security Advisor John Bolton either was fired or resigned.  Donald Trump’s tweets indicated it was the former (here and here).  Mr. Bolton’s tweet, at @AmbJohnBolton, indicated it was the latter.  I will leave it to you to decide who is more trustworthy.  I know who I believe.

I have not always agreed with John Bolton’s views on various foreign policy questions, but at least he knew about foreign policy and had an approach to foreign policy that he had thought through.  It is unclear to me if President Trump has either.

2019 @Cubs: What’s the Problem? Injuries or a Lack of Clutch Singles?

With Javy out, KB day-to-day (and not even close to his best), and now Addy, it doesn’t look good for the Cubs.  They entered the weekend 2½ games behind the Cardinals and ended it 4½ games back.  When your announcers start talking about the second Wild Card spot, you know it’s not looking good, especially when the teams behind you keep getting closer.

I understand the Cubs have had a lot of injuries this year, with Willy gone in August, Kyle Hendricks, Hamels, and Yu down at times, not to mention Kimbrell and others.  But has it really been the injuries?  Or has it been, once again, the Cubs not getting clutch hitting?  And one thing especially.  Not clutch hitting as a whole, but clutch singles.  How many people, other than Rizzo, have been getting clutch, two-out, two-strike singles this year?  Because, a lot of times, you don’t need a home run; you just need a single.  And a single should be a lot easier to get than a home run. 

Nasty Politics and Not Enough Economic Growth

Robert Samuelson, long-time economics writer at The Washington Post, asked earlier this week whether the U.S. economy had lost its economic dynamism.¹  Mr. Samuelson noted that “Americans have been conditioned to think that present economic disruptions are at, or near, historical highs.”²  However, he continued:

“But that's not what [a] study [by Joel Elvery of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank] found. Instead, it concluded: ‘After 100 years of dramatic change, the mix of occupations has been more stable since 1970.’ …

A more likely possibility [for economic disruption and insecurity] is that, in many different ways, the U.S. economy is becoming less dynamic. …

Where Are the Cubs Going and For How Long?

Joe Maddon is generally a pretty upbeat guy.  And he doesn’t criticize his players in public.  In Tom Verducci’s book about the 2016 season, The Cubs Way, Verducci talked about Maddon saying that it wasn’t good criticize a player right after a game in which he made a mistake.  The player knew he made a mistake.  Criticizing at that point is just piling on.¹  Verducci also quoted Maddon as saying:

“‘I read once a really good line, “Praise publicly, criticize privately.” He said.  ‘I love that.  That’s exactly how you should do it. I think.  So I attempt to live by that.’” (p. 158) 

It is, therefore, interesting to see some of the things Maddon has been saying lately, in the last regular season month of his contract with the Cubs.

@BernieSanders’s “Green New Deal”. Is He Trying to Re-elect @realDonaldTrump?

Senator Bernie Sanders was an early supporter of the Green New Deal, and last week he issued his version of what that would mean.  Let’s just say his plan is big.  It would require lots of government and lots of money, though as to the latter, his plan says it’s all paid for with taxes on big energy, reduced military spending (because we can “scal[e] back military spending on maintaining global oil dependence”), taxes paid by all the people with new, good-paying jobs, and, of course, the rich “pay[ing] their fair share.”

Most of the news articles did not go into the details of Senator Sanders’ plan, though “Vox” did include some of them.  Perhaps the most comprehensive list was in The Wall Street Journal’s editorial this morning.  (Not surprisingly, the WSJ’s editorial page is not supportive.)  On the other hand, if you really want to see what’s in the plan, just go to berniesanders.com.  It’s there.

The Purpose of a Corporation. I’ll Go with Milton Friedman.

Last Monday, the Business Roundtable, a group of chief executive officers of big U.S. corporations, announced that it had changed its statement on the purpose of a corporation and had issued a new “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.”¹  This was a big deal:

“The leaders of some of America’s biggest companies are chipping away at the long-held notion that corporate decision-making should revolve around what is best for shareholders. …

No longer should decisions be based solely on whether they will yield higher profits for shareholders, the group said.  Rather, corporate leaders should take into account ‘all stakeholders’ – that is, employees, customers and society writ large. …

I Am So Tired of @realDonaldTrump

In the middle of his snit yesterday over trade and tariffs with China, President Trump tweeted, in part:

“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” (Here and here)

I just don’t know what to say.  Maybe Xi Jinping and Kim Jung Un, people President Trump calls his friends, can order their companies to do this.  But, President Trump, you can’t do this.  We are a free country, and you can’t order people or companies around like some Communist dictator.  And saying things like this is stupid. 

Does Anybody in Washington Care About Ukraine?

The answer, of course, is no.  Fortunately, at least some other people do, as can be seen by French President Emmanuel Macron’s meeting on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.¹  When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, annexed Crimea, and supported (including with Russian troops) a separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine, Barack Obama pretty much did nothing.  As I mentioned in my post on Monday, President Obama threatened tough sanctions but wound up, (in the words of The Economist), imposing “underwhelming ones”.  He refused to sell defensive, anti-tank weapons to Ukraine on the theory, I guess, that you can stop fighting by not giving victims the means to defend themselves.  He said, as I also mentioned Monday, “Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian Army?”  (Answer: Yes.) 

Ultimately, it was German Chancellor Angela Merkel who led the effort, along with France, to try to negotiate an end to the war with Russia.²  Chancellor Merkel’s efforts led to the Minsk II agreements, but implementation of them has been limited, to say the least.  President Obama left the White House without having done anything substantive.

Foreign Policy: Are Presidents Trump and Obama All That Different?

Wilbur Ross, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce said, last Wednesday, that Hong Kong was an internal matter for Hong Kong and added: “What are we going to do – invade Hong Kong?”  In response, Edward Luce, of the Financial Times, commented: “In a few words, Mr Ross captured the degeneration of US foreign policy.”¹  Which may be true, but it didn’t start January 20, 2017.

Secretary Ross’s choice, invasion or doing nothing, sounds suspiciously like the phony choices Barack Obama used to justify his do-nothing, or at least, do-as-little-as-possible, approach to foreign policy.  For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and fomented a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, President Obama asked: “Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian Army?”  In fact, the Trump administration, even though President Trump is supposedly in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, has sent the kinds of defensive weapons that President Obama refused to send.  And it has seemed to help.

Confidence and Predictability. Words You Never Hear in Connection With Donald Trump

I have talked before about the importance of certainty and confidence, in both foreign affairs and the economy.  In an editorial yesterday on the possible upcoming recession (the ‘Trump recession,” the Democrats will call it), The Wall Street Journal said this:

“[W]e never said tariffs would produce immediate recession.  We said they – and the climate of uncertainty they were creating for business – would chill global trade and undermine the surge in capital investment spurred by tax reform and deregulation.  The growth momentum from tax cuts and a strong labor market were able to mask the impact of helter-skelter trade policy for a time.  But that old economic disciplinarian, Adam Smith, sooner or later exacts a price for policy blunders.

@Cubs 2019: Home Runs Are Nice, But They’re Not Enough

I don’t know if they have a statistic for what percentage of a team’s runs are scored on home runs.  If they do, the percentage for baseball as a whole is clearly going up – a lot.  And I would imagine the Cubs are a leader in that percentage.  It’s also pretty clear Joe Maddon is not happy about it.

Mark Gonzalez wrote in Wednesday’s Tribune about Joe Maddon’s thoughts on the way hitting is taught today:

“‘Just to go Twitter and search “hitting guru,”‘ Maddon said. ‘And find out all these different people making money these days. They’re making it too complicated, and it’s really sad.’

Mass Shootings: After We “Do Something,” Let’s Try to Do Something That Actually Works

With two more mass shootings, in El Paso and Dayton, we are told we must “do something.”  Generally, that means gun control, though it now also seems to include “red flag” laws, as well as more spending for mental health and doing something about violent video games. Okay, let’s do it, subject of course to the Constitution.  Not only the Second Amendment, but also the other ones: the First, Fourth, Fifth, etc.

But after we “do something,” let’s also try to do something that works.  Megan McArdle, at The Washington Post, has a couple of ideas on this subject (here and here).  Aggressive stop-and-frisk policing has seemed to reduce murder rates in places like New York City, but many people don’t like what they see as police harassment of minorities.  Also, given the distrust of the police by many people in places like Chicago, you wonder how it would work there.  Plus, these kinds of tactics wouldn’t stop mass shootings, though reducing day-to-day murders might save more lives than reducing mass shootings over a whole year.

Russia and China: Dangers and Opportunities. But Is Anybody Paying Attention?

Protests in Hong Kong have extended into their tenth week, with the airport in Hong Kong being shut down over the weekend.  Meanwhile in Moscow, and elsewhere in Russia, there are growing protests with respect to upcoming local elections and efforts by the Vladimir Putin regime to prevent opposition candidates from running in those elections. 

The protests in Russia have been met by force and large numbers of arrests.  Beijing has yet to intervene in the Hong Kong protests, but one wonders how long that restraint will last.  In both Russia and the People’s Republic of China, government-controlled media have limited dissemination about the protests, but I am sure some information is seeping around and through Putin’s barriers and the Great Fire Wall.

Once Again: Can Americans Be Trusted With Campaign Finance Disclosures?

Last Monday, U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro (Dem, Tex.) tweeted a list of 44 people in San Antonio, Texas, who contributed the maximum amount to President Trump’s campaign in 2019, with this comment:

“Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump – the owner of @BillMillerBarBQ, owner of the @HistoricPearl, realtor Phyllis Browning, etc. Their contributions are fueling campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’”

The Solution to Foul Ball Injuries

Protective netting.  One of the big questions in Major League Baseball, other than why aren’t the Cubs doing better with all of the talent they supposedly have, is fan safety and how far to extend protective netting down the foul lines.  It’s such a big deal that the U.S. Senators from Illinois, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, apparently having nothing more important to do with their time, sent a letter last week to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred asking for information about injuries at ball parks.¹

Before the 2018 season, MLB required all parks to extend the protective netting to ends of the dugouts.  With injuries this year, some parks are extending the netting even farther.  The White Sox have extended the netting at Guaranteed Rate Field² all the way to the foul poles.

Break

As I said at the end of the last post, I will be on break until early August.  In the meantime, Go Cubs!

The Stock Market: Real or Addicted? – A Follow Up

This is a follow up on last Friday’s post, “Is the Stock Market for Real or Just Addicted to Low Interest Rates and Easy Money?”  In writing it, I realized I have been saying the same thing for years.  In looking back at my past posts on the economy, I found I even used the “Christiane F.” analogy, about the problems the stock market would have trying to kick its addiction to low interest rates, before. 

Which gets to the first point of this post: Maybe I’m wrong about the economy.  Maybe things have changed.  Maybe low interest rates are appropriate, and maybe the stock market is for real.  You would have lost a lot of money betting against the stock market over the last ten years.

President Trump’s Foreign Policy Claims Are Often Bizarre, But It’s Not the First Time We’ve Seen That

The foreign policy follies (and worse) of Donald Trump are so bad, it sometimes makes us forget bizarre positions that prior administrations have taken.  For example, in 2011, when the United States was involved in the bombing of Libya (because, inter alia, Moammar Gaddafi was threatening to massacre Libyan civilians), the question of the War Powers Act arose.  The War Powers Act was passed over President Nixon’s veto in 1973.  It provided that presidents are to get Congress’s approval or authorization within 60 days¹ after they send troops into hostilities.

The Obama administration, however, did not want to seek Congressional approval of our operations in Libya.  But it also did not want to say, as other presidents have said, that the War Powers Act was an unconstitutional limit on the President’s power.² So, the State Department legal advisor, a politically appointed position, came up with the theory that the War Powers Act did not apply to the bombing of Libya because we were not engaged in “hostilities” since the other side could not effectively shoot back at us.  (See here and here,)

Is the Stock Market for Real or Just Addicted to Low Interest Rates and Easy Money?

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell indicated in Congressional hearings on Wednesday that the Fed could be cutting its benchmark interest rate later this month – and the stock market promptly went up.  So, a “Powell Put”?  (See here.) 

In addition to a possible U.S. rate cut, interest rates in Europe remains at historic lows.  The European Central Bank’s rate for overnight deposits by banks is -0.4% (where it has been for over three years), which means you would get back less than you put in.  In June, five-year bonds issued by mortgage banks in Germany were priced at -0.2%, which means you would have to pay the bank in order to lend them money.¹  And in Denmark some banks are even offering mortgages at negative rates,¹ which means … well, you get the idea.

The 2019 Political World - In Two Cartoons

The one on the left is from Tuesday's Financial Times.  The one on the right is from today's Wall Street Journal.