RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/08/then-and-now/

On Good Friday, I chanced across a photograph of the lower Manhattan skyline at night from Good Friday in April 1956. Three skyscrapers, dominating the space, feature certain windows illuminated to form gigantic crosses to commemorate that most solemn of Christian holidays. The year 1956 was not that long ago. But how much has changed in those 60-odd years! Can you imagine such a public display of Christian affirmation in New York today? Nor can I. 

That was then. Now things are different. 

I thought about that disjunction between then and now when reading through Washington’s Farewell Address this weekend. Washington had intended to withdraw from politics when his first term ended in 1792. He asked James Madison to draft a valedictory statement but, when the time came, bickering among some of his Cabinet, especially between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, convinced him to run again. He set the original document aside. 

But when 1796 rolled around, he was weary and determined to leave politics. He enlisted Hamilton to revise the statement to which he added his own observations. The document is known as Washington’s “Farewell Address,” though Washington did not deliver it orally. Instead, he had it published in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser in September 1796, about 10 weeks before the election to choose his successor.

It was widely reprinted and became, in the words of the historian John Avlon, a sort of “civic scripture,” more widely reprinted even than the Declaration of Independence in the early years of the Republic. During the Civil War, both Houses of Congress began to hold annual readings of the document. The House abandoned the practice in 1984. I am told that the Senate continues to this day, selecting a senator (and alternating between parties) to read the document aloud on the Senate floor to commemorate Washington’s birthday. 

Several passages from the Farewell Address have become inscribed on the collective memory of the nation. But what struck me rereading the 6,000-word statement is how much it appears as a period piece, a blast from an apparently unrecoverable past. Anyone who has read the Farewell Address will recall Washington’s stirring warnings against “the fury of party spirit,” foreign entanglements, his cautions against excessive debt, his insistence on the place of religion as the foundation for civic order. The question is: what relevance do such injunctions have in present-day America? 

It pains me to say it, but I suspect the Farewell Address retains but a rhetorical claim on America circa 2023. Then, in 1796, Washington’s exhortations and admonitions had purchase in the political, economic, and moral reality of America. Now, they mostly echo like antique sentimentalities, more or less like the phrase “with liberty and justice for all” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Who still takes that seriously? 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-propublica-harlan-crow-1c4c2f41?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The left’s assault on the Supreme Court is continuing, and the latest front is the news that Justice Clarence Thomas has a rich friend who has hosted the Justice on his private plane, his yacht, and his vacation resort. That’s it. That’s the story. Yet this non-bombshell has triggered breathless claims that the Court must be investigated, and that Justice Thomas must resign or be impeached. Those demands give away the real political game here.*

ProPublica, a left-leaning website, kicked off the fun with a report Thursday that Justice Thomas has a longtime friendship with Harlan Crow, a wealthy Texas real-estate developer. The intrepid reporters roamed far and wide to discover that the Justice has sometimes traveled on Mr. Crow’s “Bombardier Global 5000 jet” and that each summer the Justice and his wife spend a vacation week at Mr. Crow’s place in the Adirondacks.

The piece is loaded with words and phrases intended to convey that this is all somehow disreputable: “superyacht”; “luxury trips”; “exclusive California all-male retreat”; “sprawling ranch”; “private chefs”; “elegant accommodation”; “opulent lodge”; “lavishing the justice with gifts.” And more.

Adjectival overkill is the method of bad polemicists who don’t have much to report. The ProPublica writers suggest that Justice Thomas may have violated ethics rules, and they quote a couple of cherry-picked ethicists to express their dismay.

But it seems clear that the Court’s rules at the time all of this happened did not require that gifts of personal hospitality be disclosed. This includes the private plane trips. ProPublica fails to make clear to readers that the U.S. Judicial Conference recently changed its rules to require more disclosure. The new rules took effect last month.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-who-saw-the-economic-crises-coming-paul-singer-banking-signature-svb-financial-downturn-asset-hyperinflation-recession-debt-federal-reserve-cd2638fe?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

New York

“Men and nations behave wisely,” the Israeli statesman Abba Eban observed, “when they have exhausted all other resources.” Imagine if our economic policy makers listened to Paul Singer instead. Mr. Singer, 78, is founder of Elliott Management and one of the world’s most successful hedge-fund proprietors. Before the financial crisis of 2008, he tried to alert investors and public officials about the dangers of subprime mortgages. In the 15 years since, he’s repeatedly warned that the landmark Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, and the expansive monetary policies along the way, were inviting disaster.

Will policy makers finally start listening? He isn’t betting on it. “I think that this is an extraordinarily dangerous and confusing period,” he says at the Manhattan office of his charitable foundation. (Elliott’s headquarters moved to West Palm Beach, Fla., in 2020.) Mr. Singer is dressed casually and appears relaxed, but his message won’t put investors at ease.

“Valuations are still very high,” he says. “There’s a significant chance of recession. We see the possibility of a lengthy period of low returns in financial assets, low returns in real estate, corporate profits, unemployment rates higher than exist now and lots of inflation in the next round.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/george-soros-son-alexander-visits-biden-white-house-disclosures

A son of left-wing billionaire and philanthropist George Soros has scored several recent visits to President Joe Biden’s White House as he showers Democrats with campaign donations and promotes his meetings with top lawmakers, records show.

Alexander Soros, chairman of the Open Society Foundations grantmaking network that his father founded in 1993 to influence left-leaning politics and culture matters, has increasingly posted images on social media of himself with Democratic lawmakers whose campaigns he has bankrolled. The 37-year-old, who the Washington Examiner reported has met with top Biden administration officials since at least 2021, spent more time at the White House in December 2022, according to federal visitor logs released Thursday.

“Alexander Soros is poised to lead his family’s multi billion-dollar political and philanthropic network,” Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, a conservative investigative think tank, told the Washington Examiner. “Like his father, he cozies up to White House and congressional leaders willing to do the family’s bidding on such issues as crime, immigration, election policy, and more, as the Soroses exploit every type of giving: money to parties, independent expenditure groups, and so-called ‘charities.'”

Walter added: “No wonder former staffers and grantees of their foundations, donor groups, and lobbying shops are found throughout the Biden administration, from the State Department to the Domestic Policy Council.”

https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/the-great-re-shoring-charade/

China’s position in global supply chains strengthens as US pretends to ‘friend-shore’ its imports

Moving factories from China to Mexico is one of the few hot topics in an otherwise listless market, US investment bankers say.

As American hostility to China rises, US corporations scramble to assure the public as well as inquisitive congressional committees that they are moving operations out of the Middle Kingdom to friendlier venues.

It’s all a pantomime for political consumption. US imports from Mexico, Vietnam, India and other “friend-shoring” venues depend on imports of Chinese components, according to an Asia Times study of international trade data. China’s exports to non-Japan Asia and Latin America are booming, and Chinese companies are investing billions of dollars in Mexico.

The charade permits American politicians to flaunt success in decoupling from China, and gives corporate leaders a chance to display their patriotism – while America’s indirect dependence on China’s industrial power increases.

“Friend-shoring” venues including India, Vietnam and Mexico show a lockstep relationship between imports from China and exports to the United States. Econometric analysis confirms that this relationship isn’t simply the result of a rising trend in both measures.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3939238-as-recession-looms-who-will-biden-blame/

It’s the economy, stupid.

Those famous words from Democratic strategist James Carville must be haunting President Biden’s White House as the economy begins to slow — and just as the 2024 election moves into view.

Most recently, the job market appears to be faltering, with March gains pegged at 236,000, way down from February’s 311,000 and the 334,000 recorded on average over the past six months.

This is challenging for Biden, who hopes to run for reelection and has relied on solid employment gains to prove that his “economic plan is working.” It’s been a tough sell, seeing that inflation has caused real wages to decline for two years in a row; writing last fall, the Dallas Fed noted that the hit from inflation was “the most severe faced by employed workers over the past 25 years.”

Biden’s approval ratings on the economy, according to Real Clear Politics’ average of polls, is a disastrous 37 percent.

Of course, the downturn in growth – we are not yet in recession – has been engineered by and will be welcomed by the Federal Reserve, which slammed on the brakes a year ago as inflation soared to 40-year highs. Having dithered for more than a year as price increases gained steam, Chair Jerome Powell then jacked up rates at a historically aggressive pace and has also been reducing the size of the Fed balance sheet.