Climate Exodus, the Caribbean Residents' Dilemma

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 10/22/2017 06:26:00 PM
If these scenes will just keep replaying, shouldn't you leave for good? The recent hurricanes which leveled vast swathes of the Caribbean islands, Irma and Maria, have raised concerns among residents about how viable it remains to live there. Certainly, others like their big neighbor to the North aren't helping matters. Climate deniers like Trump likely make their future bleaker. Saying global warming is a hoax means denying sea levels are rising and denying warmer temperatures means more water vapor is being stored--both of which make storms even more damaging. So, not only have many of these countries and territories...
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How to *Really* Fix Massive US Trade Deficits

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 10/16/2017 04:58:00 PM
And the award for best trade villain goes to... Trumpian idiocy is endangering perfectly good trade deals with Mexico and Canada [NAFTA] as well as with South Korea [KORUS FTA]. The anti-heroes here are two economic illiterates, the vulgarian ignoramus Donald Trump and his Reagan-era trade "enforcer" Robert Lighthizer. To them, the reason for massive US trade deficits is so easy to understand: other countries taking unfair advantage of "gullible" US leaders. For them, the golden age of America--when its manufacturing was strong--is just some kind of protectionist policy away: For the administration, the core belief is...
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Mexico, Screw Trump: Only Congress Undoes NAFTA

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 10/11/2017 06:41:00 PM
Mexico should put Trump and his protectionista Lighthizer in their place by getting the US congress to stop this idiocy. I make no bones that I am far more sympathetic to Mexico than Trump's USA at the ongoing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) "renegotiations." What US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is attempting to do is actually beggar-thy-neighbor masquerading as an "update" of NAFTA. Let's not mince words here: No self-respecting nation would agree to such one-sided stipulations--especially to replace ones that aren't so lopsided. Among other things on the American negotiators' wish list: A US proposal...
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Deport-o-Mania 3: Houston's (Non-)Rebuilding

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 10/10/2017 08:32:00 PM
Trump voters ain't gonna fix this destruction. There's an insightful op-ed in the Washington Post on why Houston's rebuilding is well off-track. Simply put, there are not enough construction workers at the current time. With Trump's various immigration-unfriendly policies in progress, things aren't going to improve anytime soon. The net result is that instead of aiding the reconstruction of the United States' fourth-largest city, Trump is putting it off indefinitely. Actually, there's plenty of capital sitting on the sidelines but not enough labor to get the construction work going. This is one industry where automation...
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Euro Transport Consortia: First Airbus, Now "Railbus"

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 10/09/2017 06:19:00 PM
They are the European champions, my friend. They'll compete with the Chinese till the end... Despite the imminent [?] withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, its time being considered a part of it can count as a clear success in at least one respect: Its participation in the pan-European aerospace consortium Airbus has more than lived up to expectations. British Aerospace together with France's Aerospatiale as well as their German and Spanish counterparts combined to produce a European powerhouse in civilian commercial aircraft with the resources to compete with American titan Boeing yearly for top sales...
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Can US Stocks Rise Still Despite Buyers' Strike?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 10/02/2017 12:50:00 PM
Are companies flush with high-yield bond proceeds buying back stock no matter what? There's an interesting article over at MarketWatch that brings up all sorts of questions about what really buoys the stock markets and who investors really are. The conventional understanding is that bonds--debt issued by corporations--move in the opposite direction of stocks since the former are regarded as relatively safer assets while the latter are riskier assets. However, bonds and stocks may not be coupled in this manner. Instead, large institutional investors, namely pension funds, tend to shy away from risky investments like equities....
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