Month: February 2024

Playing by the rules

This morning’s NYTimes proclaimed that:“The Biden administration, responding to the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, unveiled its largest sanctions package to date as the war in Ukraine enters its third year.”

On November 30, 2023, Phillip Dean Hancock was executed in Oklahoma. As the death penalty has been eliminated in most countries and such killing is considered immoral by millions of people around the world, what sanctions would be appropriate for them to impose on the U.S.?

A quite different case arises from killing an enemy in someone else’s country (aside from in war, where anything seems to be “allowed.”)  On February 13 of this year, Maxim Kuzminov, a former Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine, was found dead with multiple bullet wounds in Villajoyosa, a city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. The murder is suspected to have been organized by Moscow. What measures should Spain take against Russia in response (hopefully the U.S. will keep its nose out of other people’s business—fat chance)?

On January 3, 2020, the U.S. assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, in Baghdad. More recently, on February 7, 2024, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, a senior commander in Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. What measures should Iraq (and Iran) take against the U.S.?

The rule of law is a fundamental aspect of our freedoms and the prosperity it has made possible. The international rules based order is an extension of those principals internationally and has served, though imperfectly, the same purposes globally. The U.S. has become an Imperial power who doesn’t obey the rules it tries to impose on others. Thus, American influence in the world is declining rapidly. We will all suffer as a result.

Abortion

Views on abortion have always been difficult to reconcile. Under our constitution, anyone born here is a citizen and has all of the rights of all other citizens. But when does a human fetus or embryo become a person with such rights? The question can be most challenging when the rights of two people—the mother and the fetus—conflict. My own view is that a fetus obtains the status of person with the right to protection, when it is viable, i.e., capable of living when removed from the womb.

The recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that an embryo is a person that must enjoy the protections of the law, moves the goal post to a whole new level. Dr. Ito Briones (MD, Ph.D) argues that, if that is true and applied into practical terms, then women will be subject to a whole new level of restrictions on their behavior in the interest of the unborn person. His interesting observations follow:

The recent ruling by the Alabama supreme court to equate the embryo as a person started when embryos frozen in tubes were accidentally destroyed in a fertility clinic. The parents sued the clinic based on Alabama’s  law of “wrongful death of a minor’s act”. The lower courts said that this law does not apply but the Alabama Supreme Court overturned that decision. And so here we are.

As a practical consequence of this ruling, IVF clinics in Alabama have expectedly suspended treatments. There are already numerous outlets online and in the news that discuss this topic and so I will not discuss this here anymore. Unfortunately, there are also other unintended consequences from this decision that might turn the mundane day to day life of a woman into a dystopian mess.

Here are other issues that may need to be considered because of this ruling. 

  1. Is a restaurant owner liable for serving alcohol to a pregnant woman even if she didn’t know she was pregnant and does not inform the establishment? Presently, restaurants and stores can be held legally liable if they serve or sell alcohol to minors. The liability is valid even if they were not aware of the age status of the patron. To solve this issue, restaurants ask for an ID to confirm age. Does this mean women should also be required to show a negative pregnancy test before being served any alcohol? 
  • Coffee has been scientifically proven to be harmful to the embryo. Do women also have to show a negative pregnancy test before being served coffee? Caffeine is the main culprit in harming embryos and caffeine is also present in tea, chocolate, soft drinks and other foodstuff. Should the government limit the sale of these items to women?
  • How about pregnant women who have breast cancer or any cancer? Can they get treatment even if it will most probably harm if not kill the embryo? 

Before this ruling, a medical case of a pregnant woman with cancer will involve an intimate discussion with the woman, her husband and family, and the doctor. Because of this ruling, the government and law enforcement will have to join the already hypersensitive and impossible dilemma that she will face.

Additionally, any medical treatment on a pregnant woman will have to be reviewed by lawyers to make sure that the embryo’s rights are taken into consideration.

Medical studies have shown that stress on pregnant women may harm the embryo. Stress can induce sleepless nights, hypertension, loss of appetite or a tendency to overeat, headaches, etc. 

Can pregnant women (at any trimester including the first) work as nurses (exposing the embryo/child to harm) or police officers? Should women in these jobs show a monthly negative pregnancy test while at work?

Driving can be very stressful for the woman. Can pregnant women drive? 

Do women have to show a negative pregnancy test while enrolled in college?

By the way, is every miscarriage going to be handled as a possible homicide?

If I have any recommendation about this ruling it is that one should invest in pregnancy test kits soon. The stock value of these tests in the market will surely skyrocket. 

Should the State mandate or advise?

It depends of course. But in America, which was established to empower each individual to make their own decisions, the state should only regulate those individual activities that might harm others such as violating property rights. This attitude presumes that each of us cares more about our wellbeing than does anyone else and know better how to achieve it taking account of our differences in tastes, interests, and risk preferences. It has resulted in a society of more prosperous and happier members.

This can be contrasted with the view that the average person is not intelligent enough or self-motivated enough to maximize their potential and needs to be guided by smarter, wiser people.

A society in which each individual enjoys the maximum freedom of choice hardly means that the government has little or no role in our wellbeing. In addition to providing public safety, shared institutional and physical infrastructure development, and the adjudication and enforcement of contracts (the rule of law), government can contribute to the provision of the knowledge to help inform the individual choices we each make. I want to review two very different areas of government involvement that have reflected the above conflicting attitudes of the government’s best role—monetary policy and public health policy.

Section 8 of the US Constitution gives the federal government the power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof,…” Our twelve Federal Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System carry out that mandate via a system of market determined prices of goods and services and an inflation target of 2%. While I would prefer a monetary policy in which currency was issued or redeemed at a fix price for a hard anchor (traditionally gold) in response to market demand (currency board rules), the Fed has behaved very well within its inflation targeting regime over the past two years (after keeping its policy interest rate too low until two years ago).

A successful inflation targeting policy requires keeping inflation expectations anchored to the target (2% in the US) so that economic wage and price decisions are made in light of that expectation. But todays’ policy actions are only fully felt over the next year or two (what Milton Friedman called “long and variable lags” in the effects of policy). Federal Reserve policy is implemented largely by setting the rate at which it supplies the money it creates to the market. If it sets that rate below the so called neutral rate, it must supply money to keep the rate low. If it sets the Fed Funds (and related) rate above the neutral rate, it must absorb money from the market to keep the rate high. Setting its policy interest rate is the lever by which it controls the rate at which the money supply grows. Each Federal Reserve President and Governor must evaluate all available information about economic activity most likely over the next one to two years and determine in like of that what monetary growth is most likely to result in 2 percent inflation over that period. If market participants believe that the Fed’s choice is most likely to result in achieving the stated target in the future, their wage and price decisions will anticipate that inflation and thus bring it about.

It should be obvious that if Fed officials are honest it attempting to achieve their target and explain as fully as they themselves understand the prospects to the public and the public has confidence in the Fed’s commitment, this is the best that can be done. In fact, the Fed deserves high marks for such transparency in our uncertain and evolving world. Each person and firm make their own forward looking decisions in light of their best guesses of future conditions. The Fed’s guidance is the best and most the Fed can do to bring or keep inflation on target.  

When governments don’t trust “the people” to make their own decisions (they are not smart enough or are two lazy or whatever), they must mandate the “proper” behavior. Consider our approach to the public’s health during the Covid pandemic. Whether government should offer advice and provide information on what is known about a disease such as Covid-19 is complicated by the fact that we should not be free to expose others to communicable diseases. In the case of Covid the government’s understanding of its nature and best protection grew and evolved over time. But the US public heath agencies lost credibility from the beginning by telling well intentioned lies.

“In early March 2020, Dr. Fauci said ‘there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.’ In the same interview he said people could wear masks if they liked, but they wouldn’t get perfect protection, and it would further pinch what at the time was a short supply of masks for doctors and nurses.” PolitiFact | Marco Rubio says Anthony Fauci lied about masks. Fauci didn’t.

But more to my point, CDC officials thought that their shut down and isolation mandates would be more effective than allowing individuals to determine how best to protect themselves and others. The subsequent evidence suggested that they were wrong. Any benefits were outweighed by very substantial costs. Read the following articles and studies for examples.

Scott Atlas on Lies

“I explore the association between the severity of lockdown policies in the first half of 2020 and mortality rates. Using two indices from the Blavatnik Centre’s COVID-19 policy measures and comparing weekly mortality rates from 24 European countries in the first halves of 2017–2020, addressing policy endogeneity in two different ways, and taking timing into account, I find no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality development.” https://academic.oup.com/cesifo/article/67/3/318/6199605?login=false  

“The most restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for controlling the spread of COVID-19 are mandatory stay-at-home and business closures. The most restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for controlling the spread of COVID-19 are mandatory stay-at-home and business closures. Given the consequences of these policies, it is important to assess their effects. We evaluate the effects on epidemic case growth of more restrictive NPIs (mrNPIs), above and beyond those of less-restrictive NPIs (lrNPIs)….

“After subtracting the epidemic and lrNPI effects, we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs on case growth in any country…. While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less-restrictive interventions.”  January 2021 study

Worrying About Mandates and Lockdowns as Delta Variant Hits Unvaccinated Californians

What is Israel’s Objective in Gaza?

Following Hama’s brutal October 7 attack on Israel, Israel announced its “revenge” attack on Gaza to destroy Hama’s capacity to endanger Israel. In what looked at first like a human gesture, Israel urged the Palestinian residence of northern Gaza to move south to avoid Israel’s bombing of the north. But it didn’t take long before Israel began to attack Palestinians in the south as well.

“Israeli forces shelled the outskirts of the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip on Friday [February 2], where the displaced population, penned against the border fence in their hundreds of thousands, feared a new assault with nowhere left to flee.

“More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now homeless and crammed into Rafah. Tens of thousands more have arrived in recent days, carrying belongings in their arms and pulling children on carts, since Israeli forces last week launched one of the biggest assaults of the war to capture adjacent Khan Yunis, the main southern city.

“If the Israeli tanks keep coming, “we will be left with two choices: stay and die or climb the walls into Egypt,” said Emad, 55, a businessman and father of six…. Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Thursday that troops would now “eliminate terror elements” in Rafah, one of the few areas not yet taken in an almost four-month-old assault. But this is the same Israeli line used since the start of the war, which has killed and wounded tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

“As the only part of Gaza with access to the limited food and medical aid trickling across the border, Rafah and nearby parts of Khan Yunis have become a warren of makeshift tents, clogged by winter mud.”  “Nowhere left to flee-Rafah to become Israel’s new battlefield”

What is Israel trying to accomplish? “Hamas, which Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said on Tuesday ‘must be erased off the face of the planet.’… Israeli officials have vowed a merciless campaign of retribution against ‘human animals.’” “Defending Israel”

Israel’s far right officials have not been shy in proclaiming their purpose. It is to remove Palestinians (one way or another) from Israel’s occupied territories in to enable a democratic Jewish state to rule all of Palestine. Jewish Israelis blocking access of food and medicine to Gaza’s starving Palestinians are equally explicit about their Genocidal objective.

While Israel’s objective is explicitly clear, facts of the war, as with any war, are harder to confirm. The Israeli claims that Gaza invaders on Oct 7 raped women and beheaded babies were never supported with any evidence and are surely propaganda lies of war.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa) is the largest relief agency operating in this war zone, delivering critical food and medical suppliers to displaced Palestinians. Its relief work is critical for the survival of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.
When Israel claimed that Unrwa had been infiltrated by Hamas, “the international media reproduced without question the ‘dossier’ of alleged evidence Israel distributed to journalists, a dossier which it never formally handed to Unrwa itself…. The UN agency first knew about the allegation that initially 12, then 190, then 1200 of its employees were ‘members of Hamas’ when they read about it in the media. Unrwa regularly shares lists of its employees with Israel….

“The Israeli army that has killed over 152 Unrwa staff in Gaza, turned, in their minds, into the victim of the UN agency which had been ‘infiltrated by Hamas’….  I still find it hard to understand how readily governments across the western world swallowed the bait, without any fact checking, and how, in the blink of an eye, accounting for just over $440m, half of the Unrwa’s operational budget, suspended funding.” “Gaza war-why west is falling to stop Israel’s plan to destroy Unrwa”

Biden’s pleas for Israel to be more careful about killing innocent Palestinians are pathetic. We must demand an immediate cease fire in Gaze and the end of all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and their return to their Palestinian owners or our aid to Israel will end. Jews and Palestinians deserve safety, and fair and equal treatment. Peace and justice will not be achieved in the area without that. “One state solution for Palestine and Israel” More and more Americans and Europeans are speaking up in protest of our complicity with Israel’s atrocities. Even many within the American and European governments are speaking up  Over 800 Western Officials Denounce Pro-Israel Policies | TIME  American Jew Yoav Litvin put it very bluntly: “Liberation, reconciliation and an end to Israel’s genocidal violence can only be achieved within a steadfast and unwavering anti-Zionist framework that aligns with wider leftist, antiracist, anticolonial values.”  Yoav Litvin is a Postdoctoral Fellow in The Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior at The Rockefeller University, New York, NY.  He was born in Jerusalem. “The anatomy of Zionist genocide”

But our attention is now being distracted by more reckless wars in the Middle East.

Anne with an E

Several weeks ago I complained that the biggest winners of this year’s Emmy awards were series I had stopped watching after a few episodes because there were virtually no characters in them to like and the real world already has enough bad apples. In response to my complaint my former IMF colleague, Marta Castello Branco, who had been a member of the IMF technical assistance missions that I led to the central banks of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in 1992-3, recommended that I watch “Anne with an E.”  Boy was she right.

In three seasons with ten episodes each, “Anne with an E” follows the adventures of a brilliant, well-read but socially inept orphan girl adopted at the age of 13 by a relatively old brother and sister who had never married. The drama takes place in Canada around 1800. Anne is super smart and used her expansive imagination and extensive reading of the classics to survive the cruelties of 12 years in an orphanage before her adoption. She talks faster than a speeding bullet and is rarely quiet. The series is essentially about the coming of age experiences of children in a small farming community as seen largely through Anne’s eyes.

Being a homely red head, Anne’s growing up challenges are more than most, which can be difficult enough for the average child.  The series frankly and honestly treats the racial biases toward blacks, native Indians, gays, and other minorities at the time, the ugliness of school bullies, and the ridged moral codes of the towns people. But through the ups and downs of life most members of the farming community learn and grow in their understanding of their fellow community members.  Anne plays a large role in the struggle to make the world a better place while trying to understand her own place in it. There are plenty of people to like. The show is excellently cast and performed and gripping and uplifting. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Thank you Marta.