Brexit - part the third

Well, the wolf has fully shed its clothing. It was some seven years ago, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, that I had a mea culpa moment. One needs do so every now and again. This is what was predicted:

But many of the poorer places in Britain that receive the most aid from Europe also voted decisively to leave. Promises were made by the leaders of the so-called Leave campaign that exiting the European Union would lead to a bonanza of money no longer being sent to Brussels, the seat of the European government. After the vote, they almost immediately retreated from those promises, leaving the future of aid programs funded by Europe in peril.

So, to no great surprise, The Guardian reports on one part of the aftermath

Farmers in England are being left without crucial nature recovery payments and unsure of what to plant after delays to a post-Brexit scheme.
...
The sustainable farming incentive (SFI) is part of a package of payments that is replacing the EU's common agricultural policy, which paid land managers for the amount of land in their care.

Surprise, surprise. And, of course, as in many/most/all industrialized economies, the shitkickers in the countryside rule the damn gummint. Kind of like our sub-GED Rednecks who are intent on remaking the USofA in their uneducated image.

House of Cards

All this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is so 1980's. Back then, about the start of the decade, the notional mortgage rate peaked (in recent memory, of course). While some econ/finance professionals still contend that selling price and interest rate aren't inversely correlated, every where one looks, they are. The reason is simple: neither number matters much; what matters is the monthly nut of the average mortgage seeker. And that number is fixed in the short term by... income. So, if a builder or current mortgage holder wants to move a house, comps don't matter. What matters is median income of the slice of the market being targeted. And that means the bank and the builder are stuck. The monthly nut is out of their control.

The easiest way to generate large capital gains on a dwelling is to buy when interest rate is peaking. If you can, of course. Once the rate regresses to the mean, assessed value will climb just because the nut will always, and I mean always, be slurped up by the bank and the builder. Nothing left on the table. When the bank can't impose its will on Mr. Market, the builder will instantly up the selling price. Absolutely no reason to leave even a crumb of the nut on the table.

100 Percent

There's been controversy for decades about the correlation between damn gummint/academia/NGO basic research and drugs approved for drug companies. one such study concludes that the number is 100%, for a specific timeframe:

Amid debates over costs — and profits — from a coronavirus vaccine, a new study shows that taxpayers have been footing the bill for every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019.

Not everyone goes that far, but there's no debate that drug companies do little, if any, foundational research and development. Most, if not all, employed by drug companies disagree, but the fact remains that most drugs come out of basic biological/chemical research not done by private industry.

Which all brings us to some reporting today on the current meme of the various -glutide drugs. This is a long report by the estimable Gina Kolata (had I known one could make some kind of a living as a science reporter back when I was starting college...).

Obesity affects nearly 42 percent of American adults, and yet, Dr. Engel said, "we have been powerless." Research into potential medical treatments for the condition led to failures. Drug companies lost interest, with many executives thinking — like most doctors and members of the public — that obesity was a moral failing and not a chronic disease.

That's part one. Here's part two:

In the 1970s, obesity treatments were the last thing on Dr. Joel Habener's mind. He was an academic endocrinologist starting his own lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and looking for a challenging, but doable, research project.

If you read on, you'll find that his work led directly to the -glutides.

Here's part three:

In 1990, John Eng, a researcher at the Veterans Affairs medical center in the Bronx, was looking for interesting new hormones in nature that might be useful for medications in people.

His work was the next big step.

And so it went to private drug companies to commercialize the -glutides.

I never kept a link, but I suppose Dear Reader can find one if so motivated, though some wag described semaglutide thus: "This is what starvation looks like." The reason for the bon mot is simple: it is now public knowledge that semaglutide, at least in high enough dose, strips all tissue not just fat. It's called muscle wasting. We can all look like the octogenarian Mick Jagger.

HMMM? - part the second

Well, it's Game, Set, Match and on the record. As predicted, the Lost Ark Smith sought was the DMs and other non-public texts. Yeah, I still bet there's at least one, "Shit!! I lost to Sleepy Joe!!" DM in the Ark.

In the hearing on Feb. 7, 2023, Howell referenced Musk, asking: "Is it because the new CEO wants to cozy up with the former president?"

Birds of a RRW flock together.

Nostradamus - part the first

Well, it's always fun to predict the future, especially when one can point to some recent history, which supports some past history. So, we have this report which tells us what Xi Donjon would do if, Satan forbid, the RRW rabble put him in the White House again. He's on record that he'll eviscerate any one or department which calls him out. That's what dictators do.

The Chinese government, facing an expected seventh consecutive monthly increase in youth unemployment, said Tuesday that it had instead suspended release of the information.

The unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds in urban areas hit 21.3 percent, a record, in June and has risen every month this year. It was widely forecast by economists to have climbed further last month.

A point of reference too often ignored between the RRW and the rest of us: the RRW suppress data, or make up 'alternative facts', when data contradicts the will of the Dear Leader. Said Will simply rules by fiat to make rules that in turn make life easier for Dear Leader and his acolytes. Just as any mob boss, Xi Donjon follows the same course. He lied about Covidiot Infection^™, and of course the Big Lie of 2020. Here's an early example

Throughout the campaign, Trump openly mocked employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis as "phony" and "totally fiction." His tone changed when he wanted to take credit for a good jobs report. In March, Sean Spicer said at a press briefing that the President wanted to make clear that the unemployment rate "may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now."

So, China has a serious problem. On the one hand, it's long since abandoned the One Child Policy, which recognized that infinite growth of population couldn't sustain. But it was abandoned. Now, Xi gets to reap the results.

As in every society since the beginning of time, the talented and ambitious move from the shithole countryside to the cities to find work which fits an educated citizen. China is no different.

Xi Jinping, the country's top leader, has called for young people to go to remote areas to find work — to "eat bitterness," a Chinese expression that refers to enduring hardship. [sounds a lot like Mao]

But China's educated young people today want jobs with good working environments in fields such as the internet, education, culture and entertainment. Those jobs, for the most part, are not located in the countryside.

"College students do hope to go to big cities," said Nie Riming, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, a research organization.

Given that Xi Donjon's base is shithole county Rednecks, what do you think might happen?

As it happens, that first piece mentions Country Gardens, another builder near collapse. Of interest here, is that this situation is the result of CCP's insistence that people be, largely, restricted to 'home' ownership as 'investment'. Isn't working out. But, one need be careful: there's a powerful cabal here in the Red, White, and Blue that's been pushing the same notion for some generations. In case one has forgotten, The Great Recession was driven by that cabal.

HMMM? update

What if (I don't know for sure as I type) Twitter stores DMs? And, what if wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 sent Eastman or Jared or Ivanka or Rudy - "Well, it's a pisser to lose to Sleepy Joe!"

I may not know jackshit, but Jack Smith likely does.

[update - the Ides of August]
Turns out -
- Twitter (by any name) does store DMs, even after the user has deleted them
- Andrew Weissmann, so far alone, since this was posted has made the same observation

And, of course, the indictment count has grown to 4 and the criminal count to 91; so far.

China Doll

Faithful Reader will likely recall the number of times (well... I don't without looking it up) the problem for slave-wage economies has been mentioned; to wit - such economies can only function (mostly, if not completely, for The Elites running the country) if they have open access to high-wage counterparts to dump the goods and services. The USofA and Europe specifically in this day and age. China has been the archetype since Nixon "opened China" in 1972, allegedly for the purpose of providing a new market space for USofA made goods and services. That was all a lie, of course, just as it was for Mexico and the rest of southern America. The purpose was getting access to slave-wage labor; and so it has happened.

So, today brings fresh data that the gag isn't working anymore. Xi's xenophobic and stupid "Zero Covid" 'policy' is being blamed for the burgeoning crisis, but one may also posit that this is the inevitable result of China's ravenous assault on the West.

Exports from China, which has the world's second-largest economy after that of the United States, have now declined for three months in a row while imports have fallen for five consecutive months. The numbers reflect declining foreign demand for Chinese-made products, falling domestic demand, a real estate crisis and geopolitical tensions, including the war in Ukraine.

Note that reference to "real estate crisis". It's been long known that Xi has tried to rein in real estate speculation, but how much different is the Chinese model of 'investment' in one's house than the USofA?

China - 30% of GDP.
USofA - 17.7% of GDP.

But while smaller as a percent of GDP, housing and related activities remain bigly

When looking at gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy, housing plays a significant role. Housing's share of GDP was 17.7% in the first quarter of 2021, the latest data available when writing this, which represents a near 14-year high. The housing market can therefore push up or pull down growth, and, right now, housing is a main driver of the expansion.

Well, what about household wealth?
China - 70%
USofA - 68% (but with some caveats)

As we found with The Great Recession, figures don't lie by liars figure. Xi is learning that lesson.

The Easy 80 Percent

Dr. McElhone was fond of many sayings, including "the easy 80%", meaning, of course, that success is non-linear in effort and/or effect. Happens all the time. The Reader may note the number of essays here on the capitalist's dilemma: often called The Tyranny of Fixed Cost. Pharma typically calls the cost of bringing a drug to market as $X billion. What they don't tell you: most drugs are modifications of existing drugs, most drugs are derived from government and academic and NGO research labs, and that $X billion number is reached by dividing total R&D spend by number of drug approvals in some time span. That last bit is key: pharma lumps all the costs wasted on worthless drugs into the numerator; they demand to be paid for failing.

So, here's another admission.

"This is very much the way that the industry argues that the pricing works," [Stacie Dusetzina] said. "In the rare disease space, for example, there's a strong argument that the price per person has to be really high because it's a smaller group of people using it."

The moral of the story? Pharma has tackled most of the diseases that affect most of the people most of the time, cancer being the obvious exception. We're left with the low sub-populations/diseases but still, there's that pesky $X billion bill for the drug. Like it or don't, but all you non-childbearing Pooh Bears will be paying for all those PPD sufferers. Who said Socialized Medicine was a bad thing? Or, to put it more bluntly: without Socialized Medicine (whether overt or covert), not even the rich could afford such drugs out of pocket.

Billions

You owe it to self to read up this piece. It's the RRW going all bananas.

Klingenstein and the Claremont Institute push a harder-edged rightwing politics, and he appeared in a series of videos released in 2022 where he argued that American conservatives are in a "cold civil war" with "woke communists", and that "education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, big tech... together with the government function as a totalitarian regime".

What's amusing about such blather is that many of his billionaire brethren spend a shitload of their moolah engaging in sportswashing, which practice Saudi has taken to a new level and visibility. At least in the USofA (and, it appears, the UK as well at least), professional sport leagues engage in very explicit, very aggressive 'communism' in the form of draft lotteries, salary caps (for players, only, of course), luxury tax (oohhh!!) and the like all in the quest for 'balance' among the various teams; make sure the playing field is level (well, really; tilted to aid the incompetent) so even a shitty team can win soon. One of the stated excuses for this communist ideology is that 'large market' teams would dominate the sport if left unchecked, destroy the 'small market' teams due solely to having more moolah. That's Communism with a capital K. Given that billionaires (almost?) universally got their moolah just by destroying their small fish brethren.

Sauce, geese, ganders. Well, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

How many professional teams are owned by billionaires? A lot.

Of course, Steve Cohen is the counterargument to the jibe from the RRW: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Batshit J. Moron is, of course, the legacy method. Money and brains don't have a high correlation.

Thought For The Day - 4 August 2023

Ya wanna know some ting? One might wonder why is it that Mad Dictator Don's mouthpieces haven't been blaring that he can't be prosecuted? I suck up a lot of news, but have not seen any reporting of such blaring.

The reasoning, such as it is, goes like this: the Jan. 6 cases flow from conduct that happened while he was President, and for which he was impeached, and from which he skated. So, since the Constitution makes punishment of Presidents through impleachment, which has already done and dusted, why can he be prosecuted criminally for conduct he was acquitted of? I don't buy it, but it seems strange that Lauro would claim First Amendment coverage, when that claim is nonsense. Enquiring minds need to know.