Raymond Richman - Jesse Richman - Howard Richman
Richmans' Trade and Taxes Blog
COVID-19 shows that imbalanced trade is killing US - we're published in today's American Thinker
Jesse Richman, 3/29/2020
by Jesse Richman and Howard Richman
We have been warning of the costs and dangers of imbalanced trade for decades. With the election of Donald Trump, U.S. voters showed they got it. But our country's elites in Congress and the bureaucracy have dragged their feet. Perhaps with COVID-19, U.S. elites will recognize that imbalanced trade is killing the U.S. and finally get behind President Trump to fix it.
When a country configures its policies so that it consistently buys almost a trillion dollars more in goods from abroad than it sells, several things happen. First, it stops making stuff. Second, it goes deep in debt to foreigners. Third, it becomes less resilient in the face of disasters and threats.
The consequences of imbalanced trade are dramatically apparent in the manifold weaknesses revealed by the current pandemic. When China fought the virus, its medical workers had available top-quality respirators and full-body protective suits. Millions of face masks were sent to the people of Wuhan, allowing each person to play a role in reducing transmission of the virus.
When American companies produce abroad, their factories may be taken over by the countries where the factories reside. In fact, that is exactly what happened in China during the COVID-19 epidemic, as President Trump's economic adviser Peter Navarro pointed out in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on February 23 (see the 2:15 mark):
In terms of the immediate issue, face masks — the N-95 face masks, China put export restrictions on those masks and then nationalized an American factory that produces them there.
As the U.S. attempts to fight the pandemic that spread from China, our hospitals have dwindling supplies of the most basic protective gear and no possibility of providing our medical workers with the kind of protection China's doctors and nurses had available.
[Click here to read the rest on the American Thinker website.]
Deborah Brix announces breakthrough -- FDA has agreed to let at-home testing resume later this week
Howard Richman, 3/24/2020
Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force said the following at the press conference yesterday:
There has been a breakthrough today, and I think you will see this from the FDA. For all of you who are waiting for self-swabbing options, those are going to be available sometime this week, to enable individuals to do their own tests.
FDA shuts down at-home tests for COVID-19
Howard Richman, 3/23/2020
Proving again that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution, the FDA on March 21 shut down the at-home tests for COVID-19 that had been developed by several companies according to techcrunch.com:
While a number of companies who currently offer at-home medical and health diagnostics had rushed to produce kits that would allow for self sample collection by people who passed a screening and believed they might have contracted the new coronavirus, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has updated its Emergency Use Authorization guidelines to private labs that specifically bar the use of at-home sample collection. This means startups including Everlywell, Carbon Health and Nurx will have to immediately discontinue their testing programs in light of the clarified rules.
The FDA issued the updated guidance on March 21, and though some of the companies had already begun to ship their sample collection kits to people, and even begun to receive samples back to their diagnostic laboratory partners, even any samples in-hand will not be tested, and will instead be destroyed in order to comply with the FDA’s request....
All three of the companies we spoke to that were working to distribute these tests had partnered with labs that were approved under the FDA emergency guidelines to perform COVID-19 diagnostics, and it was the understanding of all parties that at-home self collection via swab kits was included in the authorization. All three also said they were offering their tests at-cost, and seeking ways to defray even that cost to consumers through potential healthcare agency partnerships. Each also offered telehealth consultations for both the sample-gathering process, as well as for delivery of the results....
Stop slow-walking synthetic vaccines! Our bureaucracy is killing us! - we're published in American Thinker this morning.
Howard Richman, 3/22/2020
by Howard Richman and Jesse Richman
The world is entering an economic recession and health crisis partly due to the continuing lack of imagination and capability among experts in the bureaucracy. Perhaps these supposed experts are suffering from a disease first named by C. Northcote Parkinson several decades ago: injelitance or the rise to power of incompetents who are skilled only in the arts of preventing problems from being solved by the capable.
The now legendary failure of the CDC to manage the task of developing an effective test for the virus is being compounded by the efforts of state and federal government bureaucrats to block Americans who developed their own tests, including the heroes at the Seattle Flu Study. U.S. public health officials have advised Americans not to wear face masks that work and can be made at home, and even though some countries are requiring masks to slow virus transmission.
Many millions of Americans now on lock down are paying with their liberty for the freedom accorded to a few hundred thousand travelers from China and Europe over the last two months by incompetent government agencies like Homeland Security, despite President Trump’s clear intention to close the border to the disease.
And now health bureaucrats are slow-walking their testing of possible vaccines. Nowhere is this more evident than in the lethargic actions of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Massachusetts-based Moderna Therapeutics completed the world’s first candidate COVID-19 vaccine in just 42 days and rushed the first vials to NIAID on February 24. But then NIAID bureaucrats started slow-walking it. They told TIME that they and the rest of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) couldn’t possibly prepare the vaccine for human testing before April, at the very earliest. Finally, perhaps due to intervention by the Trump administration, they discovered that they could, after all, begin human testing on March 16.
Meanwhile, NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci has repeatedly told reporters that no vaccine could possibly be approved in less than a year to a year and a half. In fact, one of the first times he said this, he was directly contradicting President Trump who had just said that he expected a vaccine in months, or a year at the most. The question becomes: Is Fauci’s bureaucracy intentionally slow-walking the approval process?
But the problem is not just bureaucratic lethargy, it is also a regulatory system which was designed to protect the public from vaccines made from attenuated pathogens, not vaccines that are synthesized in the lab. Attenuated viruses are dangerous. Sometimes they mutate within the body so that they can reproduce themselves and produce a disease. The following appears in a 2019 medical journal article, available on the NIH website:..
[Click here to read it on the American Thinker website]
Our Pharmaceutical Industry needs Surgical Mask Protection -- we're published in American Thinker this morning
Howard Richman, 3/19/2020
by Jesse Richman and Howard Richman
Search Amazon today for face masks and the product will be unavailable, dramatically marked up, and/or shipping from China. In the face of the Coronavirus pandemic, masks are an essential component of the equipment medical professionals need but one that some hospital systems are also struggling to procure. And if they were widely available, face masks could potentially help Americans reduce the risk of infection as well, since one of the main infection pathways is through breathing the virus in, and masks substantially reduce exposure.
One of the reasons why masks have been in short supply in the U.S. is inevitable – any time there is a major pandemic involving a respiratory infection, there will be mask shortages. Part of it also involves decisions about trade policy that have systematically made the U.S. more vulnerable to political, economic, and health shocks....
To read the rest on the American Thinker website, go to:
Human trials for US Vaccine moved up from April to today!
Howard Richman, 3/16/2020
The human trials for the U.S. vaccine, Moderna's mRNA vaccine, will start today. According to The Online Citizen:
The first participant in a clinical trial for a COVID-19 vaccine will receive the experimental vaccine on Monday (16 March), a United States (US) government official said.
The official also spoke on the condition of anonymity as the trial has not been publicly announced yet, according to an AP report earlier today. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding the trial which will take place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.
The trial is aimed to test whether the vaccine will show any potential side effects and to set the stage for a larger test. It will start with 45 young and healthy volunteers, in which they will be given different doses of shots co-developed by NIH and Moderna Inc.
Originally, according to TIME magazine on February 25, the first human trials were not going to start until April:
Moderna Therapeutics, a biotech company based in Cambridge, Mass., has shipped the first batches of its COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine was created just 42 days after the genetic sequence of the COVID_19 virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was released by Chinese researchers in mid-January. The first vials were sent to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, which will ready the vaccine for human testing as early as April.
My guess is that somebody in the Trump administration intervened to get NIAID and NIH moving.
Israelis moving quickly to get out a COVID-19 vaccine - I'm published in American Thinker this morning.
Howard Richman, 3/15/2020
Israeli scientists at the MIGAL Galilee Research Institute had worked for four years and had successfully developed a coronavirus vaccine for chickens which passed clinical trials. When they saw the genetic sequencing of the COVID-19 virus, they realized that they could quickly adapt their chicken vaccine to the human virus. Ella Dagan, a spokesman for MIGAL told europorter:
When the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus COVID-19 was published, the researchers realized that the two viruses have the same infection mechanism similarities so they can use it, with small amount of adaptation, to achieve an effective human vaccine in a very short period of time.
Dr. Shahar, one of the scientists at MIGAL, saw God’s hand in this. He told nocamels.com:
It’s a little bit like fate that we were working on this coronavirus vaccine at the same time that the world was suddenly hit by this epidemic of coronavirus for humans.
MIGAL created its vaccine by synthesizing two proteins. Unlike vaccines that are created by injecting a dead or weakened disease-causing virus, there is little danger that a synthetic virus will give patients a disease.
Its vaccine creates antibodies in the mucosal immune system of the body which consists of thin permeable barriers to infection in the lungs, gut, eyes, nose, throat, uterus and vagina. Dr. Chen Katz, MIGAL’s biotechnology group leader, gave europorter a detailed cellular-level description of how MIGAL’s vaccine works:...
To read the rest at the American Thinker, go to:
God's Providence at work: The Israeli COVID-19 vaccine
Howard Richman, 3/11/2020
Israeli scientists have developed an oral COVID-19 vaccine. The latest report is from nocamels.com, a website that reports Israeli innovation news:
While working on the avian [coronavirus] vaccine, the scientists [at the MIGAL Galilee Research Institute] said they identified a possible COVID-19 vaccine candidate as a by-product of the [avian] vaccine and have made the “required genetic adjustments to adapt the vaccine to COVID-19, the human strain of coronavirus.”...
“It’s a little bit like fate that we were working on this coronavirus vaccine at the same time that the world was suddenly hit by this epidemic of coronavirus for humans,” [Dr. Shahar of MIGAL] says.
The MIGAL vaccine was created by synthesizing two proteins. Unlike vaccines that are created by injecting a dead or weakened disease-causing viruses, there is very little danger of the MIGAL vaccine giving patients a disease.
The main danger with synthetic vaccines is that they will only work in the test tube, not in-vivo. But the researchers at MIGAL have already proven in clinical trials that the avian version of their vaccine works in live chickens.
Most vaccines create antibodies in the bloodstream – not this one! This one creates antibodies in the mucosal immune system which consists of thin permeable barriers to infection in the lungs, gut, eyes, nose, throat, uterus and vagina. The nocamels.com website quotes Dr. Chen Katz, MIGAL’s biotechnology group leader saying:...
Is Manufacuring in Recession? No.
Jesse Richman, 12/23/2019
In the last several days I have read several opinion pieces which stated as a fact that manufacturing was in "recession." But as is all too often the case even in a world where hyperlinking is easy and simple, they linked to no evidence. So I went looking. It seems that they were likely mislead by a one month blip driven by the autoworker's strike into thinking manufacturing was is recession. Hardly. Take a look at the graph of manufacturing employment by the St. Louis Fed. Whilst there is that sharp one-month drop, it is followed by a sharp rebound to a level higher than has been seen since before the Great Recession. Some recession.
China's Genocide and Efforts to Export the Destruction of Human Freedoms
Jesse Richman, 12/6/2019
Helen Raleigh has an important piece in the Federalist today on recent leaks from China and the revelations made by a former Chinese spy in Australia who is seeking ausylum. It's an important counterpoint to those who seek to diminish the threat posed by China.
Raleigh discusses the recent document leaks which reveal in further detail the thoroughgoing Chinese plans to brutaly suppress the culture of 13 million citizens because of their culture and religion. The manuals for deception. The Orwellian survielance state.
If the world would protect human rights, then it must not treat China as a normal state in these circumstances. States engaged in genocide are not normal states. A good place to start would be suspension and then expulsion from the World Trade Organization, followed by revocation of most favored nation status, a status China richly deserved to lose 30 years ago when it slaughtered pro-democracy protestors, and should never have been given back.
1989 democracy protests in China were brutally repressed with about 10,000 killed. But after brief interregnum US continued open economic policies with regime responsible for that violence despite the continued political dominance of the Chinese Communist party.
“Students understood they were given one hour to leave square but after five minutes APCs attacked. Students linked arms but were mown down including soldiers. APCs then ran over bodies time and time again to make 'pie' and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains. Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted." -From recently declassified British diplomatic cable. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516
The second set of revelations concerns Chinese influence and subversion campaigns...
Capitalism is coming to an end in China
Howard Richman, 11/17/2019
Capitalism is coming to an end in China. On the China Law Blog, Dan Harris writes that Chinese businesses are trying to get short-term profits now because they don’t believe in the long run. Harris also writes that Chinese partners in joint manufacturing ventures with American companies are starting to ignore their American partners:
[O]ur China lawyers are dealing with an increasing number of situations where the Chinese side of a China joint venture has essentially taken over the joint venture and stops communicating with its foreign joint venture partner. Maybe these joint ventures are no longer even profitable, but our clients are entitled to determine this and if the joint venture should be shut down, our clients are also entitled to a share of the joint venture company’s existing assets. For how to prevent/mitigate such problems, check out this article on China joint ventures. It’s as though the Chinese side in these joint venture partnerships views it as their patriotic duty to kick their foreign partner to the curb....
How Urkaine oligarchs stole $1.8 billion of IMF (i.e., U.S.) loans, while Biden was watching.
Howard Richman, 11/15/2019
The U.S. gives loans to prop up foreign banks through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 2009 and 2015, President Obama increased the U.S. contribution to the IMF, so that our contribution went up by a total of $9.2 billion. In 2014, the IMF gave the central bank of the Ukraine a massive $4.51 billion loan. However, $1.8 billion of that loan disappeared, despite the fact that Vice President Biden had been delegated by President Obama as the U.S. point man (start watching at 51:37) to prevent such corruption. In an article that was published in 2015, Harper's Magazine traced how that $1.8 billion disappeared:
The scheme, as revealed in a series of court judgments of the Economic Court of the Dnipropetrovsk region monitored and reported by Nashi Groshi, worked like this: Forty-two Ukrainian firms owned by fifty-four offshore entities registered in Caribbean, American, and Cypriot jurisdictions and linked to or affiliated with the Privat group of companies, took out loans from PrivatBank in Ukraine to the value of $1.8 billion. The firms then ordered goods from six foreign “supplier” companies, three of which were incorporated in the United Kingdom, two in the British Virgin Islands, one in the Caribbean statelet of St. Kitts & Nevis. Payment for the orders—$1.8 billion—was shortly afterwards prepaid into the vendors’ accounts, which were, coincidentally, in the Cyprus branch of PrivatBank. Once the money was sent, the Ukrainian importing companies arranged with PrivatBank Ukraine that their loans be guaranteed by the goods on order....
Review of: The Unifinished Peace: The Council of Foreign Ministers and the Hungarian Peace Treaty of 1947 by Mihály Fülöp
Jesse Richman, 11/11/2019
Published by Social Science Monographs, Center for Hungarian Studies and Publications.
2019 marks the 30th anniversary of what in Hungary is sometimes referred to as the "annus mirabilis" or year of miracles -- the fall of the iron curtain which was rapidly succeeded by the end of the cold war. In that year a series of events, some planned from above and others organized from below, brought about the dissolution of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe and the freeing of nations which had been held in bondage and coercion in the Soviet orbit for more than four decades. One of the joys of my Fulbright in Budapest this year has been the opportunity to take part in many commemorations of the events that unfolded 30 years ago.
But the world is now 30 years beyond that era. And as tensions rachet, institutions are tested, and power balances shift in the current moment, it is worthwhile to reflect upon another set of lessons: lessons from the tumultious years that marked the transition point from World War II to the Cold War. And to understand those events, there are perhaps few more intriguing vantage points than the Hungarian experience. During WW II Hungary had fought the Soviets, attempted shifting sides, been occupied by the Germans, and been liberated by the Red Army. In the aftermath of the war, it was the only country in what would become the Soviet block to hold nearly free elections, a late 1945 ballot in which communists won less than 20 percent, even under Red Army occupation.
Fülöp's book introduces the reader to the complicated interplay of understandings and and actions that shaped the policies...
Balanced Trade Advocate Raymond L. Richman dies at 101 - in American Thinker this morning
Howard Richman, 10/28/2019
Here's the text:
One of the first advocates of balanced trade, Dr. Raymond L. Richman, died on October 23 at age 101. A commentary that he wrote in 2003 (The Great Trade Debate) recommended the very policy that President Trump is carrying out today – the negotiation of bilateral agreements that balance trade. He concluded that commentary:
Is there any way to balance our trade? Let's take a clue from the fact that barter is always beneficial to both parties. Instead of "Free Trade" as the slogan, how about the slogan, "Free and Balanced Trade"? We could announce to countries with whom we have large chronic deficits that their exports to us in the future will be limited to, say, 110 percent of what we bought from them last year. If you want to trade with us, you'll have to buy from us. Let's barter!
I'm sure the countries given this ultimatum will protest to the World Trade Organization (WTO) but there is precedent for bilateral agreements. We have a bilateral agreement with Japan now that limits the number of autos it can export to us.
The rules of international trade discriminate against the U.S. but the discrimination is not the cause of the deficit. The average level of U.S. tariffs is lower than that of any other large industrial nation. We have some barriers in the form of quotas but they affect a small proportion of our trade. The definition of dumping under WTO rules allows countries to rebate value-added taxes. Since we have no value-added tax and income taxes cannot be rebated, goods from many countries sell for less in the U.S. than in the countries in which they are produced. We could replace the corporate income tax with a value-added tax and subsidize exports by rebating the tax. Or we could change the rules to deny countries the right to rebate the value-added tax.
While such actions would do some good, the principal cause of chronic trade deficits was and continues to be capital flows from abroad. The U.S. went from being the world's leading creditor nation in 1970 to become the world's biggest debtor.
The situation calls for dramatic action. Stop the bleeding! Blue-collar workers have been bearing the burden of so-called "free trade" long enough. Let's have balanced trade.
He was a well-respected economist who received a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1957 with Milton Friedman his dissertation advisor. Then he worked as a consultant for the OEEC, the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank, the US Agency for International Development and the Asian Development Bank. When he retired from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982, he became Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs.
He authored four books, dozens of journal articles and hundreds of commentaries about economic development, tax policy and trade policy. In recent years most were co-authored with his son (Howard) and his grandson (Jesse), a unique three generational collaboration. Many of their commentaries have appeared in American Thinker.
Meanwhile, the balanced trade policy that he recommended, which is being implemented by President Trump, has already contributed to the longest continuous economic expansion in American history.
To read it go to:
Raymond L. Richman dies at age 101
Howard Richman, 10/25/2019
Former University of Pittsburgh Professor of Public and International Affairs, well-known economist, soldier, and author Dr. Raymond L. Richman died at age 101 on October 23 at his home in Pittsburgh.
He earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1940 and was a member of the Illinois Bar. He served as a legal assistant to the Selective Service Board of Appeals in Toledo, Ohio until he enlisted in the army in December, 1941 as a private. During World War II, he became an officer in the US Army Air Corps, and exited his active military service in 1945 as Executive Officer of the 600th Bomb Squadron with the rank of Major, serving in the European theatre, and joined the US Air Force Reserve and rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel.
He received a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1957 and spent 1957-58 as a consultant to the European Productivity Agency of the Office for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in Paris and teaching courses in Economic Productivity in Rome and Yugoslavia. He served for many years as a consultant to the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the US Agency for International Development, participating in and heading missions to Panama, Colombia, Central America, and Egypt. He also served as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank and directed the preparation of the Real Estate Assessment Manual of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, published in 1971.
He served briefly as head of the Departments of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and taught at the Universidad de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina. He traveled, lectured, and studied extensively in Brazil. When he retired from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982, he became Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs.
Raymond Richman authored four books, dozens of journal articles and hundreds of commentaries about economic development, tax policy and trade policy. In recent years most were co-authored with his son (Howard) and his grandson (Jesse), a unique three generational collaboration. Beginning with a commentary in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on September 14, 2003 (The Great Trade Debate), he became one of the first advocates of a policy of balanced trade, an alternative to the free trade vs. fair trade debate. His essential argument was that trade, free or not, benefits both countries if it is balanced.
He was always there for his extended family whenever they ran into problems dealing with personal crises. As a result, he was the honored guest when his nephew Colonel Mark Richman moved his Air Force Medical Group retirement ceremony in 2016 from California to Pittsburgh so that Ray could participate.
A member of Rodef Shalom Congregation, Raymond is survived by his wife of 47 years Wilma T. C. Richman, his children Janice Richman, Howard Richman (and wife Susan Richman), Robin Richman and Lucila Silva, and Maria Silva (wife of Newton Silva), 11 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his first wife Hilda Richman, his parents Reuben Richman and Ida Jakobson Richman, his brother Lester Richman, his sister Dorothy Stern, and his son Newton Silva.
Local friends and family will be received at his Pittsburgh home at 3:30pm on Sunday, October 27 (for info email DrHBR1950@gmail.com). A memorial service will be held in Sacramento CA on Sunday, November 10 (for info email RobinBethRichman@gmail.com).
The Fed and the Dollar Shortage Abroad
Jesse Richman, 10/10/2019
The US dollar has been bid up strongly of late relative to many world currencies. In part this may reflect trade pressures. But it goes back before Trump stepped down the escalator of Trump Tower and into politics. In part it may reflect the gradual unwinding and disintegration of the eurodollar market (https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2017/02/24/the_eurodollar_never_really_made_sense_to_begin_with_102561.html). And if so, perhaps it should be celebrated because that market always had its problems. But on the other hand, the appreciation of the dollar in the face of large US trade deficits calls for Fed action. If the Federal Reserve was actively managing the US balance of trade and the value of the dollar to bring trade towards balance, then it would be pushing dollars into world financial markets...
The rich are getting poorer, and the poor are getting richer... but you wouldn't know it from the press coverage
Jesse Richman, 10/10/2019
A recent piece on Real Clear Markets does an excellent job of taking down recent highly distorted reporting of the poverty and income growth data for 2018 that the Census Bureau recently released.
Most of the commentary suggests inequality is increasing and Trump is to blame. But in fact the incomes of the lower income groups are increasing faster than the incomes of high income groups.
The rich are getting poorer, and the poor are getting richer... but you wouldn't know it from the press coverage
Jesse Richman, 10/10/2019
A recent piece on Real Clear Markets does an excellent job of taking down recent highly distorted reporting of the poverty and income growth data for 2018 that the Census Bureau recently released.
Most of the commentary suggests inequality is increasing and Trump is to blame. But in fact the incomes of the lower income groups are increasing faster than the incomes of high income groups.
Scientists Deny Man-Made-Climate-Change
Raymond Richman, 9/13/2019
The head of the world’s foremost weather science organization, Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told the Talouselämä magazine in Finland that he disagrees with doomsday climate extremists who call for radical action to prevent a purported apocalypse. Talaas said that establishment meteorological scientists are under increasing assault from radical climate alarmists who are attempting to move the mainstream scientific community in a radical direction. “Climate experts have been attacked by these people and they claim that we should be much more radical. They are doomsters and extremists. They make threats,” Taalas said.
The WMO is one of the two organizations that founded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. Since being formed, the IPCC has become the leading institution worldwide to promote the theory that human activity contributes to global warming. Talaas pointed out that climate extremists are selectively picking out facts from the IPCC reports to fit their narrative. The vast majority of the climate models the IPCC uses as the basis for its predictions have incorrectly forecast higher temperatures repeatedly. According to an analysis by the Cato Institute, 105 of the 108 models predicted a higher surface temperature for the period between 1998 and 2014 than the temperature actually recorded. The IPCC has previously admitted that climate models cannot be used to accurately predict long-term changes in the climate.
Talaas’s comments were sent to a list of 5,000 media contacts, but none have picked up the story according to Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London. Peiser said. “He talks about a religious cult. He talks about people being extremists and doomsters. It’s quite staggering. The language that he uses and the signal that he’s sending out is ‘We are afraid of these extremists. They are destroying our society.”
A new study conducted by a Finnish research team has found little evidence to support the idea of man-made climate change. The results of the study were soon corroborated by researchers in Japan. ...
Trump's Tariffs are keeping the US out of a Recession - We're published in this morning's American Thinker blog
Howard Richman, 9/9/2019
Trump's tariffs are keeping the US out of a recession
By Howard Richman, Jesse Richman and Raymond Richman
The rest of the world is experiencing an economic slowdown. The graph below shows the world's 12 largest economies. According to statistics for the most recent economic quarter, the only two currently growing faster than a 1% annual rate are the United States and China. And the United States grew faster than China.
The United States is currently experiencing the longest economic expansion in American history, and Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell expects that expansion to continue. In Zurich on Friday, he began a speech by stating:
Click here to read the post on the American Thinker website.
Trump's Tariffs helping keep US out of a Recession
Howard Richman, 9/7/2019
The rest of the world is experiencing an economic slowdown. The graph below shows the world’s 12 largest economies. According to statistics for the most recent economic quarter, the only two whose economies are growing faster than a 1% annual rate are the United States and China.
UK is not the only country that may have already entered a recession, usually defined as two consecutive economic quarters with negative growth. The Euro Area as a whole is growing at a miniscule 0.2%, and Germany, usually the Euro Area leader, shrank by 0.1% in the most recent quarter.
The United States is currently experiencing the longest period of economic expansion in our history, and there is no end in sight. On Friday, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell announced:...
Climatology's startling error
Howard Richman, 9/5/2019
Lord Monckton and his team of scientists have found an error in the feedback calculations of former NASA administrator and climate change alarmist James Hanson. Monckton's calculations are based upon the standard equation of control theory, while Hansen's were based upon an overly-simplified version of that equation. Moroever, Monckton's equation allows the feedback factor to be calculated mathematically, without need for a model.
Monckton's team found that a doubling of carbon dioxide increases earth temperature by precisely 1.15 degree Celsius, not the 3.35 to 4.5 degrees claimed by global warming alarmists. When carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles over the next 150 years, the Earth's temperature will only go up by 1.15 degree Celsius, other things being equal. Such a small rise in temperature, when combined with the positive effect that carbon dioxide has upon plant life, will be beneficial for mankind.
Here's a YouTube video showing an interview with him which I borrowed it from this blog posting:
The Man-Made-Trillion-Dollar-Climate Warming Hoax
Raymond Richman, 8/19/2019
Man-Made-Trillion-Dollar-Climate Warming Hoax
The following items are excerpted from two recent articles on climate change that the media and pundits alike ignored. Indeed, Pundits like Paul Krugman and US leaders like Sen.Lindsay Graham are making a push to force Pres. Trump to change his position and to enact curbs on the use of fossil fuels. Almost all of the Democratic candidates for president take the same position. Countries around the world have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars to promote wind and solar sources of energy and continue to subsidizes electric vehicles making hundreds of millionaires.
The source of the first is RT.com. Published 12 and 13 Jul, 2019
A new study conducted by a Finnish research team has found little evidence to support the idea of man-made climate change. The results of the study were soon corroborated by researchers in Japan. ...
The Delusional Wall Street Journal
Howard Richman, 8/11/2019
Trump Derangement Syndrome has not only affected Democrats. It has also affected some of those on Wall Street who oppose Trump's trade-balancing agenda. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal (A Navarro Recession?) suggested that Monday’s stock market slide heralded a recession which they blamed on White House Trade Advisor Dr. Peter Navarro's unreasonable stance on China. But later that day the stock market rose, for the third day in a row, erasing Monday's slide.
In the same editorial they claimed that China had stopped manipulating its currency in 2014. But a few days earlier the Chinese government had forced the yuan through the 7 yuan per dollar barrier, and on Monday (August 5) Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin determined that they were a currency manipulator. Meanwhile the price of gold has been surging, probably because China has been accumulating gold as a byproduct of its currency manipulations.
Mnuchin's declaration showed off yet another delusion in the Wall Street Journal editorial, that Navarro is somehow isolated within the administration. To the contrary, the President has put together an economic team that is working very well together. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin wasn't the only one to act this week. On Tuesday (August 6) Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross slapped a 230% countervailing duty on two Chinese cabinet makers.
In the words of Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse, President Trump has put together "an incredible team, delivering astonishing results." In fact, the U.S. economy is now in the midst of our longest period of expansion ever, largely due to three of Trump's actions:
- Business income tax cuts that make it less expensive to produce in the United States.
- Cuts in costly business regulations.
- Tariffs, tariff threats, and negotiated trade agreements which have encouraged growth-producing business investment in the United States.
Because Navarro has been in the WSJ crossfires this week, he has been interviewed frequently. Unfortunately, his interviewers have tended to interrupt him constantly. Here's the rare interview in which he was given a chance to lay out the administration's reasonable goals in its negotiations with China:...
Trade Deficits Are Taxes on American Workers Levied by Foreign Countries
Raymond Richman, 6/18/2019
The media are all trumping that Pres. Trump’s tariffs are a tax on American consumers and favor free trade. They are telling less than half the story. The chronic trade deficits are also a tax on American workers. The chronic trade deficits tells us that foreign countries are shipping to us more goods at current exchange rates than we are shipping to them. They are accumulating the difference in US cash, bonds or notes or existing productive assets like real estate or private securities. They are not buying newly produced goods or services which require labor to produce. The workers who lose their jobs have to seek lower paying jobs in the US domestic market.
The American consumers are for the most part salary and wage workers. The trade deficits eliminated the jobs of millions of American manufacturing workers who found continued employment only in lower wage domestic jobs. Many multinationals have been producing products abroad and selling most of their output in the US producing huge deficits with China, Germany, Japan, Mexico, S. Korea, and others. Santa Monica, California once had hundreds of manufacturing jobs creating products for Apple Corp. Its principle product now is produced by Foxconn, a Chinese company, in China.
It is true that the laid off workers found jobs eventually but at much lower wages. This is the excuse for the widespread economic belief that trade deficits do not cause permanent unemployment. The difference between the wages before and after a trade deficit has all the characteristics of an income tax, leaving the worker-taxpayer with less after-tax income to consume or save. Chronic trade deficits may not cause unemployment in the long-run as many economists argue but millions of manufacturing workers lost well-paid jobs as a result of the trade deficits and ended up considerably poorer. ...
Trade Agreements Are "Entangling Alliances" That Are Difficult to Exit Once They Are Approved.
Raymond Richman, 6/2/2019
Pres. Thomas Jefferson, in his inaugural address, declared his devotion to "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none", using a phrase which is often attributed to Pres. Washington. warned against entangling alliances. He thought they could involve us in wars that we did not want to fight. e thoushht An exTple of an entangling alliance is the European Union and the difficulty the UK is experiencing to make a British exit from it. Multilateral trade agreements are eThe USA took advantage of its success in breaking up the USSR by getting some former members of the USSR to join the North Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO). It waged war against Yugoslavia and got Albania, Croatia, and Slovenia to join the European Union and NATO. ntangling alliances which become the law of the land even superseding the Constitution. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade created the World Trade Organization. The GATT agreement that it administers has a provision that members shall not require the country of origin to appear on the sales of imported products. The U.S. Congress passed a law requiring labeling meat products with the country of origin. The WTO warned the U.S. Congress that that was in violation of the treaty. The U.S. Congress dutifully rescinded the labeling requirement.
It is amusing to observe the leaders of theThom Democratic Party pretend to be upset about an alleged Russian interference in the 2016 USA presidential election and argue that it smacks of collusion. They object not at all to USA intervention in Venezuela or to the inclusion in NATO of former Russian dominated countries, ...
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Mar 2020
- COVID-19 shows that imbalanced trade is killing US - we're published in today's American Thinker
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