The Current State of the U.S. Dairy Industry I had to endure a discussion of the plight of American dairy farmers where Trump’s trade policies were somehow to blame. Stephanie Mercier confirmed some of the facts: According to data reported by the National Farmers Union (NFU), the average dairy farm has shown a positive net income only […]
Bicycles and Wine Tariffs Jeffrey Frankel has a must read blog over at Econbrowser: The “bicycle theory” used to be a metaphor for international trade policy. Just as standing still on a bicycle is not an option — one has to keep moving forward or else the bike will fall over – so it was said […]
Have the Transfer Pricing Experts at KPMG Heard of the Repo Ruckus? If one thinks Trump’s economic advisors are the dumbest people on the planet, I have a new candidate for that award – a few supposed experts on intercompany loans that work for KPMG: In 2017, the ARRC selected the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) […]
Ukraine Corruption and Transfer Pricing As I listened to the testimony of Bill Taylor and George Kent, I was also reading up on some South African transfer pricing case involving iron ore: Kumba Iron Ore will pay less than half of the tax bill it received from the SA Revenue Service (Sars) last year following audits […]
Mankiw’s Ideal Democrat (Bloomberg Alert) Greg Mankiw has always been a Never Trumper: I just came back from city hall, where I switched my voter registration from Republican to unenrolled (aka independent). Two reasons: First, the Republican Party has largely become the Party of Trump. Too many Republicans in Congress are willing, in the interest of […]
Has Tyler Cowen or John Cochrane Ever Heard of Monopsony Power? I’m going to replicate one portion of a long winded rant about alleged cognitive dissonance: The argument for a minimum wage is that labor demand is inelastic — employers will hire the same number of workers. They will just absorb the higher wages or pass […]
Mike Pompeo Reminds Me of Al Capone How to say in Latin that our Secretary of State is pompous and dishonest as it gets? Oh yea – if one says “quid pro quo” in English, it never happened. These unbelievable stupid excuses for denying what is plainly true – that Trump extorted dirt on Democrats […]
Drain the Ukrainian Swamp Trump’s latest excuse for withholding arms for the Ukrainian government to defend itself against Putin’s invitations so he can extract dirt against the Bidens is what again? Oh yea – he wants to root out corruption. REALLY? OK – start with this: KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian […]
Does Bob Barr Need It in Writing? I think we all know AG Barr lied about the Mueller report but permit me to go back to this: The moment Attorney General William Barr laid eyes on a letter from special counsel Robert Mueller criticizing Barr’s summary of his two-year investigation, he knew his goose was cooked. […]
UkraineGate: What Will Volker Say? I am referring to Kurt Volker: The president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has revealed text messages of conversations between himself and senior officials at the State Department that he says show they endorsed his controversial dealings with Ukraine…During an appearance on Fox News show The Ingraham Angle last night, Giuliani revealed 15 […]