Markets and Trading

2024 Election Plus/Delta

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Pluses: admittedly much the shorter list, but we did resolve a few things.

  1. Thanks mainly to vote shifts in California and New York, the popular vote outcome was not at variance with the Electoral College vote, and it wasn’t particularly close (over 4-1/2 million votes).
  2. Largely as a result, the losing side, and VP Harris herself, have indicated cooperation with formal certification and transition processes.
  3. Harris is gone. She’ll get a chunk of money for a book and retire to the lecture circuit.
  4. Walz, same, and given the likelihood that he would have been a 21st-century version of Henry Wallace, with Chinese instead of Soviet agents in his inner circle, that might be more important than getting rid of Harris.
  5. Taking a somewhat longer view, Trump is gone too (perhaps not a much longer view; see the final Delta item below).
  6. By extension, there is some chance that ’28 will not have the electorate choosing between a crook and an idiot for President.
  7. Whatever one may think of prediction markets, and there are arguments on both sides regarding their functionality, the biggest prediction market of all, the US stock market, was forecasting a Trump victory all year (not coincidentally, the same thing happened in 2016).
  8. By the way, the media will actually report negative economic news now.
  9. I could have put this in either category, but I’ll leave it here: your Cluebat of the Day is a reminder that Trump is as old as Biden was in ’20, and notwithstanding some of my more apprehensive items below, to expect anything much of him is a waste of time.
  10. Likely continuation of relatively good space-industry policy across Administrations, which should be the only thing that matters several decades from now.

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Mwen Rekòmande Panik Imedyat

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Having sensed that my public is calling: “In fair Springfield, where we lay our scene …”

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A Grand Puzzlement

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There are certain things that I just don’t “get”. No matter how hard I try and wrap my mind around the topic, it just stubbornly refuses to engage, sitting in a little sullen lump in the corner and obstinately saying “No.” Because of this, the higher mathematic fields have always been closed to me, either through natural disinclination or having been traumatized in getting blind-sided by the New Math in the third grade. Wisely, I stuck to the simpler, practical methods to do with numbers, and left esoteric maths to those who had a bent for them. I have other talents.

That being admitted and perhaps in relation to such an inability, I could never quite grasp the method and appeal of bitcoin.

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Heuristics for Ukraine (and other places)

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NB: some of the following is from a recent videoconference that included our own Trent Telenko, who is very much the man of the hour, but some of it is more publicly available, not to mention common sense. First, though, as is my wont, a quadrant diagram to organize my presentation …

I. Theater “Hardware” (physical assets/consequences)

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What is going on with China right now ?

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China was admitted into the World Trade Organization in 2001 with the understanding that they would participate in free trade and to international norms.

Until the 1970s, China’s economy was managed by the communist government and was kept closed from other economies. Together with political reforms, China in the early 1980s began to open its economy and signed a number of regional trade agreements. China gained observer status with GATT and from 1986, began working towards joining that organization. China aimed to be included as a WTO founding member (which would validate it as a world economic power) but this attempt was thwarted because the United States, European countries, and Japan requested that China first reform various tariff policies, including tariff reductions, open markets and industrial policies.

That has not happened. China has followed a mercantilist trade policy, stealing intellectual property, requiring companies selling to the Chinese to share ownership with often corrupt entities owned by the Peoples Liberation Army and relatives of regime principals.

Mercantilism is a policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. These policies aim to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a current account surplus. Mercantilism includes an economic policy aimed at accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods. Historically, such policies frequently led to war and also motivated colonial expansion.[1] Mercantilist theory varies in sophistication from one writer to another and has evolved over time.

America has been largely passive in tolerating this behavior until Donald Trump became president. Some of this passivity may reflect Chinese influence with US politicians.

While it may seem politics as usual in Washington today, some are alarmed.

“Nobody in the 1980s would have represented the Russian government. And now you find so many lobbying for the Chinese government,” said Frank Wolf, a retired U.S. representative from Virginia who long served as the co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. “I served in Congress for 34 years. I find it shocking.”

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