Joseph E. Gagnon and Madi Sarsenbayev at the Peterson Institute for International Economics have an interesting article on whether economists or markets are better at forecasting. They write:
Previous posts (here and here) showed that long-term bond yields and long-term inflation compensation derived from bond yields are not good predictors of future inflation. Another post showed that economic forecasters are better at predicting inflation than consumers, but that neither group is especially accurate. This post compares the predictive accuracy of bond markets and economists over both short-term and long-term horizons. It finds that although short-term inflation compensation from bond yields has slightly better predictive accuracy than economists’ projections, economists are actually better at long-term forecasting.
I’ve been using 5 year breakevens to infer expected inflation in several posts. I thought it would be interesting to assess the usual metrics (mean error, root mean squared error) for the standard breakeven, and that adjusted for inflation risk and liquidity premia. (I don’t have a 5 year economists’ forecast to compare against, unfortunately).
Here are the ex post realizations and the corresponding forecasts.
Figure 1: Ex post CPI inflation over 5 years, annualized (black), implied forecast from 5 year Treasury-TIPS spread (red), implied forecast from 5 year Treasury-TIPS spread adjusted for inflation risk and liquidity premia, from DKW (blue), all in %. Source: BLS via FRED, Fed via FRED [link added 6/26], KWW following D’amico, Kim and Wei (DKW) accessed 6/4, and author’s calculations.
The adjustment methodology is described here. Notice that for the better part of the last decade, both forecasts overpredicted inflation. The unadjusted series clearly misses in late 2013, a miss not matched by the adjusted series, thereby highlighting the advantages of that series.
The corresponding forecast errors are shown below.
Figure 2: Ex post CPI inflation over 5 years prediction errors from 5 year Treasury-TIPS spread (red), and from 5 year Treasury-TIPS spread adjusted for inflation risk and liquidity premia, from DKW (blue), all in %. Source: BLS via FRED, Fed via FRED [link added 6/26], KWW following D’amico, Kim and Wei (DKW) accessed 6/4, and author’s calculations.
As a consequence of this pattern, while the mean error associated with the unadjusted series is smaller in absolute value than that for the adjusted (-0.06 pp vs. 0.35 pp), the root mean squared error is larger (0.79 vs 0.57). In addition, the adjusted series explains the actual CPI inflation with a significant slope coefficient of 0.81, R-squared of 0.28; the unadjusted series yields a slope coefficient of 0.09, R-squared of 0.01.
Gagnon and Sarsenbayev also discuss the forecasting performance of unadjusted breakevens at the 2 year and 5 year horizons.
As of today, the 5 year breakeven implies 2.46% inflation on average over the next five years. At the end of May, the adjusted breakeven implied an inflation rate 0.8 percentage points below the unadjusted breakeven.
Figure 3: Five year inflation breakeven calculated as five year Treasury yield minus five year TIPS yield (blue), five year breakeven adjusted by inflation risk premium and liquidity premium per DKW, all in %. Source: Fed via FRED [link added 6/26], Treasury, KWW following D’amico, Kim and Wei (DKW) accessed 6/4, and author’s calculations.
Picked up gas yesterday. $2.57 a gallon. Roughly 10cents cheaper than the local average. Limes 28cents a piece, the cheapest I have seen at that particular store in weeks, Although I have seen them as low as 19cents at another supermarket. Energy drinks a little on the high end recently but can still get a good namebrand one for $1.60 when the local average is about $1.99. Can pick up a large 24-pack of chicken hotdogs at $4.02. Haven’t been paying close attention to meat prices lately because I have 5 tons of it frozen in the garage, I’ll check next time I’m at the supermarket in the next 2-week time frame. Had a New York Strip steak for $7.40 a couple days ago, but that one I bought back in April.
Gasoline prices have been steady where I am for what that is worth, but crude oil prices have been creeping upwards, with Brent crude now over $75 and WTI at nearly $74. Goldman Sachs has been saying they will get to $80 and there has recently emerged a loud group of “investors” touting Steven Kopits’ s prediction that they could get to $100 by end of year.
I note that I have never ruled that out, while thinking it not too likely. This forecast is in the face of some major possible offsets, including a possible resumption of major oil exporting out of Iran, which is currently about a tenth of what it was before Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018, not to mention the widely held belief that US producers will kick in when the price gets much above $70, although one reason why it seems to have been going up in the last few days is that so far those S producers have not been responding with increases, supposedly due to “uncertainty,” which I guess we need to see the prices staying well above $70 for a longer time for the US supply response to kick in.
Well, Larry Summers is walking back his 4% inflation forecast for 2021. Now he says it will be 5% YoY at the end of 2021. He’s determined to make sure Kudlow doesn’t get to the right of him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/new-york-real-estate.html
June 25, 2021
Wonking out: What New York could learn from Utica
By Paul Krugman
Last week I took advantage of the fading pandemic to take a bike tour in the Finger Lakes region, making a detour on the way to visit the old industrial city of Utica, N.Y. — which is where I lived until I was 8 years old. I found the street we used to live on, although to be honest I couldn’t remember which house was ours. But perhaps that’s not all that surprising: The neighborhood has changed since 1961, having become home to many Bosnian refugees in the 1990s.
And whereas my mother used to take me out for lunch at the local White Tower, a once popular hamburger chain, this time I stopped near our old house for cevapi.
The thing is, for a city that has lost most of its original reason to exist — the glory days of the Erie Canal are ancient history, and the industries that drove the upstate economy in its heyday are pretty much gone — Utica is doing relatively OK. Those refugees and other immigrants, drawn in part by low housing costs, have helped generate new businesses — Chobani yogurt has a plant nearby — that in turn have partly offset the loss of the old industrial base.
All of which is surprisingly relevant to discussions about the economic future of New York City — which those of us who have lived in or around it tend to call simply “the city” — whose trajectory has probably been permanently altered by Covid-19 and its aftereffects. Even though the U.S. economy as a whole seems headed for rapid recovery, the post-pandemic economy will probably be different in some ways from what we had before. And New York might seem, on the surface, to be one of those places that will lose from those differences.
From an economic point of view, New York is, above all, a city of office buildings, empowered by the most effective mass transit system ever devised — the elevator. The pandemic, however, gave a huge boost to remote work, and while many workers will eventually go back to the office, many others won’t — probably leaving Lower Manhattan with a large glut of office space.
Politico recently had an interesting article asking a number of experts what, if anything, should be done to get workers back into those buildings. The most common (and persuasive) response? Nothing.
As Jason Furman, who chaired Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, put it, even if there is a persistent decline in the demand for Manhattan office space, the result won’t be empty buildings; it will be lower rents. The journalist Matthew Yglesias made the same point. Ultimately falling rents will bring workers back — maybe not the same workers, maybe not the same businesses, but someone will make use of those buildings.
When I read that discussion, I immediately thought of a relatively old paper * by Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko, with the admittedly not very inspiring title “Urban Decline and Durable Housing.” They pointed out that while a growing city’s supply of housing is highly elastic — if prices are high, lots of houses will be built, unless the NIMBYs get in the way — a shrinking city’s housing supply is inelastic: Houses aren’t torn down when their prices fall.
A key consequence of this asymmetry, Glaeser and Gyourko argued and documented with data, is that while cities can experience explosive growth, they rarely experience rapid decline. Why? Because housing in a city is, as the title says, durable: It doesn’t disappear when a city falls on hard times; it just becomes cheap….
* * https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=penniur_papers
Nonetheless, Paul Krugman failed to understand the need New York had for economic diversity and the opportunity to gain this in adding an Amazon headquarters to the city setting the stage for broad advanced technology employment and additional growth even in a time of expansion:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/opinion/amazon-new-york.html
February 14, 2019
New York Returns 25,000 Jobs to Amazon
As the company cancels its plans for a major Queens campus, anti-corporate activists got what they wanted at a great cost.
I am really bothered by the Paul Krugman essay in that planning is completely neglected in rebuilding the economy of New York. But that was to me the problem with Krugman’s lack of concern as to whether Amazon would build a headquarters in New York. Is planning of no consequence? I would think the experience of “rust belt” cities shows otherwise. I do not understand the nonchalance of the Krugman analysis.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-25/America-s-muddled-industrial-policy-11o2ZRwug0g/index.html
June 25, 2021
America’s muddled industrial policy
By Anne O. Krueger
When a government sets out to “pick winners” and support designated industries, products, or firms through subsidies, tariff protections, tax breaks, and other measures, it is pursuing an industrial policy. For advocates of this approach, the idea is that the state should step in to boost “particular industries that are considered strategically important” when it is expected that markets and the private sector will not do so on their own.
Despite its long history of failures, industrial policy is back on the agenda in the United States….
[ I would argue this is entirely wrong, and that industrial or development policy has repeatedly worked and well-defined development policy is precisely what is now needed for New York. ]
BTW Anne O. Krueger is not the same person as Paul Krugman. I say the obvious as it seems JohnH thinks this oped was written by Krugman. Yes he is THAT stupid.
It makes you wonder if Krugman ever visited Detroit, once America’s fourth largest city. Or, if Detroit is too far away, he could visit Bridgeport, CT. Both were major industrial cities that deindustrialized during Krugman’s lifetime and should have made it clear what happens when industry abandons one place and sets up shop elsewhere: an early predictor of the consequences of trade liberalization and emergence of the Rust Belt.
But if you are to be a shameless advocate of corporate-friendly trade deals, you have to turn a blind eye to a lot of predictable negative consequences.
Did Krugman steal your girl friend and kick your dog? That was an incredibly dishonest personal shot. But this is all you seem to know how to do. It is getting beyond old.
It took me all of 2 seconds to find the June 7, 2013 oped by Krugman on Detroit in the NYTimes of all places. If you bothered to read it, you would see that all of your stupid rants are dead wrong:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/opinion/krugman-detroit-the-new-greece.html
But I doubt you will ever admit that your attacks on Krugman are very stupid lies. It is who you have been for many years. A complete waste of time.
I still wonder if Krugman ever visited Detroit and personally witnessed its hardship. Judging from his insouciance, I doubt it. Much better to visit a place like Utica that has finally turned things around a bit.
Naturally, Krugman does not identify the specific forces that led to Detroit’s decline. First was the auto industry’s move to the South to avoid the unions. Then there was NAFTA, which sent jobs to Mexico, just across the border. Finally, there was China PNTR. Two of these changes were government supported…and Krugman and the government were content to treat the devastation with benign neglect.
Yet people hail him as a Liberal??? Give me a break!
I’m surprised that the Chinese government has not put up a statue to Krugman and other prominent economists who helped sell PNTR and who paved the way for China’s ascendance to peer rival of the US. Not only did they help strengthen China’s economy, but in the US the corporate-friendly trade deals helped set they stage for widespread social discord (leading to Trump) and an explosion in corporate profits (leading to unprecedented inequality). What more could the Chinese leadership have asked for?
Strangely, many of the negative effects of “free” trade were known in advance and readily acknowledged in text books. But in the rush to do PNTR, negative effects were generally swept under the rug, touting the positives instead. It was the rare economist who advised on conditioning the deals on compensating the victims or strengthening the social safety net generally. Dispassionate academics and scientists most were not.
As Piketty noted in his latest book, history and economics are too important to be left the historians and economists.
“many of the negative effects of “free” trade were known in advance and readily acknowledged in text books.”
Well that was certainly the case with Krugman’s writings. But of course you continue to LIE about what he has and has not said. Yes – you are a liar. Look if you want to continue proving you are pointless and stupid, don’t let me stop you.
If pgl ever bothered to read Krugman’s endorsement of PNTR in The NY Times on May 5, 2000, he could see for himself that Krugman dodged all the major textbook negative economic impacts of free trade, except for the impact on labor unions, which he dismissed as merely symbolic. I would link to this, but since I have done this many times, and pgl conveniently forgets its contents immediately, I won’t make the extra effort.
It was entirely foreseeable that entire communities would be devastated and livelihoods lost (it had happened before.) But there was no mention, even in passing. And he made no call for compensation for those disadvantaged by the deal. It was quite simply a sales job, accentuating the positives, ignoring the negatives.
Krugman’s main thrust was human rights, not economics. And judging from pgl’s recent complaints about treatment of Uyghurs, the deal was a total fiasco…no one being held accountable, of course.
If Krugman stuck to textbook economics, explaining pluses and minuses of proposed policies, instead of shilling for the foreign policy establishment, I’d be much less critical.
“JohnH
June 27, 2021 at 5:21 pm
If pgl ever bothered to read Krugman’s endorsement of PNTR in The NY Times on May 5, 2000”
I did read it. Now why did you not provide a link to it? Oh yea – people can see for themselves what he said. I guess the fact that you are a blatant liar is not something you want easily exposed.
What is the point of this? Look – we all know you are stupid. We all know you are a liar. Dishonestly trashing others does not make you look smart by comparison. Try moving on as your dishonest smears are utterly pointless.
“If Krugman stuck to textbook economics, explaining pluses and minuses of proposed policies”
I guess when that Fox News witch (Laura whatever) told LeBron to shut up and dribble you stood up and applauded the racist. If you stuck to the facts, you would have nothing to write here. And the world would be a much better place.
I see pgl is back to labeling anyone who disagrees with her “racist”. You can really have a keen view into pgl’s personal character by the fact it’s not even political slant that really bothers pgl or dictates who she will label “racist” or “sexist” or whatever pgl’s personal slander du jour of the week is. Similar to Barkley Junior labeling me “the worst person on this blog” who “should be banned”, and cozies up to the blatant racist in New Jersey like he is his long lost half brother (what would you call a guy who says Puerto Rican peoples’ excess deaths (read as unnecessary deaths), in the thousands, “never happened”). But this is the guy Barkley takes kinship with, to interact with, because the man in New Jersey never commits the “cardinal sin” of disagreeing with Barker Junior.
JohnH quick get out your Merriam-Webster dictionary so you can show pgl up for the POS she is…..oh wait!!!!! wait!!! I was wrong…….. I was wrong……. “the worst person on this blog and who should be banned” is wrong again……. here it is in Merriam-Webster in print plain as day racist noun anyone who dare disagrees with the deity from on high known as “pgl” Well sh*t damnit, I was wrong. You are a racist after all JohnH—- it’s right there in the Merriam-Webster.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-06/26/c_1310029545.htm
June 26, 2021
Over 1.14 bln doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in China
BEIJING — More than 1.14 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in China as of Friday, the National Health Commission said on Saturday.
[ Domestically, Chinese vaccines are being administered at a rate of 20 million doses daily. ]
Too bad China’s probably stolen vaccines mostly don’t work…
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/world/americas/latin-america-pandemic-education.html
June 26, 2021
1+1=4? Latin America Confronts a Pandemic Education Crisis.
With economies reeling and millions cut off from the classroom, Latin America’s students are leaving school in alarming numbers, experts say.
By Julie Turkewitz
Photographs by Federico Rios
SOACHA, Colombia — Already, two of Gloria Vásquez’s children had dropped out of school during the pandemic, including her 8-year-old, Ximena, who had fallen so far behind that she struggled with the most basic arithmetic.
“One plus one?” Ms. Vásquez quizzed her daughter one afternoon.
“Four?” the little girl guessed helplessly.
Now, Ms. Vásquez, a 33-year-old single mother and motel housekeeper who had never made it past the fifth grade, told herself she couldn’t let a third child leave school.
“Where’s Maicol?” she asked her children, calling home one night during another long shift scrubbing floors. “Is he studying?”
Maicol, 13, certainly was not. Frustrated by the work sheets his teachers had been sending via text message — the closest thing to instruction his school had been able to give him in more than a year — Maicol had instead followed his uncle to work. Together, they hauled a giant wheelbarrow through the streets, digging through trash, collecting bottles and cans to sell for a few cents a pound….
[ A terrifying New York Times article on Colombia, with especially revealing photographs depicting the crippling failure of development within the Washington Consensus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus ]
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Eusy
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, 1980-2019
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EusQ
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, 1980-2019
(Indexed to 1980)
I been reading a book on Statistics lately, kind of touching base again with stuff I was at least semi-good at in college but haven’t used in so long, I’m hoping if I build a stronger base there I can get more of the econometrics. I’m thinking I can use “R” simultaneously with the basic stats and build those things up at the same time. But the book I’m using reads really well and reminds me some of my old college stats books. Just one of those free download things. I have some more, shall we say “questionable” downloads, if you get my drift, but this one was expressly intended for free download. I would argue it’s more learner friendly, at least to those at a more basic level. Meaning I think the people who wrote it are actually keen on teaching and not just doing the teaching thing as a sideline to research and publishing. The other books, I keep on jumping down to the appendix part for “math you should have learned before” and it just makes the learning feel disjointed, whereas this one, I’m gliding a long and not having to jump back and forth.
They’ve even got a section in this book that the former world-famous Statistics classroom TA “Princeton”Kopits would enjoy~~~covering the “highly complex” issue of confidence intervals. That’s impressive yeah?? Maybe I should send that portion to Kopits so he can proofread it for errors??
Nice review of how the Appellate Court that suspended Rudy’s law license actually had a lot of fun doing so:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/rudy-giuliani-law-license-suspended-hilarious.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/johnson-26-johnson-ends-opioid-sales-settles-new-york-case-for-24230-million/ar-AALtNq4?ocid=uxbndlbing
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=twwl
January 30, 2018
Personal consumption expenditures price index and Personal consumption expenditures less food & energy price index, 2017-2021
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=F1UA
January 15, 2018
Personal Consumption Expenditures, PCE less food & energy, PCE services and PCE goods, 2017-2021
(Percent change)
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-06/24/c_1310024904.htm
June 24, 2021
The Communist Party of China and Human Rights Protection — A 100-Year Quest
From State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China
Contents
Foreword
I. For People’s Liberation and Wellbeing
II. The Principle of Respecting and Protecting Human Rights Embedded in Governance
III. Ensuring the People’s Position as Masters of the Country
IV. Making Comprehensive Progress in Human Rights
V. Protecting the Basic Rights of Citizens in Accordance with the Law
VI. Advancing Human Rights Around the World
VII. Adding Diversity to the Concept of Human Rights
Conclusion
This week, at the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Canada, along with 43 other countries, formally accused China of a series of severe human rights abuses. Sixty-five other countries however issued a joint statement in support of China, 25 additional countries made separate statements in support of China. Ninety country in all then supported China on human rights. Importantly, from Egypt to Kazakhstan and on, every participating predominantly Muslim country supported China on human rights.
Correcting for a plural:
Ninety countries in all then supported China on human rights….
ltr: I think this comment more properly belongs to the thread of this post. It is my hope that you will engage directly in the discussion of the forced labor/detention/repression of the Uyghur population.
Now now now, Menzie, it is super important that dictatorship like Egypt with its own major record of human rights violations has come out in support of the human rights record of the PRC, not to mention pretty authoritarian Kazakhstan. And these are supposedly predominantly Muslim nations, so obviously this means that there is no problem for those Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang!
Of course al Sisi seized power in a coup from a democratically elected Muslm Brotherhood government and has sided quite frequently with governments seen as suppressing various Islamist movements. As for Kazakhstan, a large proportion of its population is ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, so it is not such an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, with a leadership that is essentially a direct continuation of who was ruling the place during the secular Soviet period. But let us not spoil a good propaganda story with such details.
Hmmm…if I recall correctly, Krugman used the human rights issue as justification for an economic policy…China PNTR. Can a discussion of human rights be dismissed as an economic issue, since Krugman made them intertwined.
Let’s also not forget that not all countries define human rights the same way as the US and Canada. Many countries consider the provision of basic economic goods, including food, shelter, and healthcare to be basic human rights. Sadly the US and Canada do not, as the US’ homeless crisis clearly demonstrates. And the US refusal to provide healthcare for all is probably something that should be brought before the UN Council on Human Rights.
JohnH: ltr’s comment about China’s human rights record was on a thread about inflation expectations. A post on human rights issues and imposition of trade sanctions seemed the more appropriate place for his/her comment; however, I do not expect that you will agree.
Lifted from a June 28 WSJ story on Commodities prices:
“Copper is down 10% from a record it hit in March. Front-month futures for corn and soybeans are off their May highs by 13% and 19% respectively. Hogs have shed 17% this month.”
Then we can discuss papers trying to sell lumber as “cheap” right now (i.e. “another run up in prices”) for their lobbying/advertising sponsors. None of these things spell out “inflation” to me. What it spells out is the Rent-seeking class marketing a “supply shortage” to a bunch of illiterate American rubes who can never learn their lesson.
Notice the date:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/opinion/24kristof.html
January 24, 2008
China’s Genocide Olympics
By Nicholas Kristof
Then, 13 years having passed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/opinion/beijing-olympics-boycott.html
April 7, 2021
Here’s How to Handle the ‘Genocide Olympics’ in Beijing
The Olympiad gives us leverage. Let’s use it.
By Nicholas Kristof
ltr: I think this comment more properly belongs to the thread of this post. It is my hope that you will engage directly in the discussion of the forced labor/detention/repression of the Uyghur population.
Correct me if I’m wrong but did we not go to the 2008 Olympics? Even though there was a case to boycott.
There’s a moral case not to go to ANY of them. Salt Lake City and Michigan State University (separate issues) pop into mind. There’s also a strong economic case to be made that they hurt more than they help the cities which host them.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-24/UNHRC-is-not-a-rogues-gallery-for-hypocrisy-11mmylcp4cM/index.html
June 24, 2021
UNHRC is not a rogues’ gallery for hypocrisy
By Bobby Naderi
The “international” image of Canada as a “great” defender of human rights did not hold water on June 22 when it voiced concerns about China’s actions in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Tibet Autonomous Region during the 47th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.
For starters, China is actively engaged in international human rights undertakings, has signed 26 international human rights instruments, including six core UN conventions, and is ensuring that its domestic laws and policies are consistent with such conventions, especially in places like Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet. Just as importantly, China maintains constructive contacts with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Office (OHCHR), even inviting many of the OHCHR officials to visit these regions.
Little wonder during the Council’s 47th session more than 90 countries, including Muslim nations, supported China for exposing the hypocritical mask of a few Western governments that with persistent flirtation tried to use the issue of human rights to fabricate rumors and interfere in other countries’ internal affairs. Whatever the intention behind such unhelpful statements and remarks, they are highly regrettable.
This is becoming more common, though, not only with double standards under duress, but with some countries getting inspired by this maddening inconsistency with multilateralism. For example, no longer able to defend in any way its own human rights violations, the U.S. as one of the countries that backed Canada’s anti-China statement in Geneva, itself pulled out of the UNHRC long time ago….
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-26/China-is-paying-hypocritical-Western-nations-back-in-their-own-coin-11pbkcmfLyw/index.html
June 26, 2021
China is paying hypocritical Western nations back in their own coin
By Maitreya Bhakal
For decades, some Western nations have bullied and lectured non-West nations. Some countries are pushing back. China in particular, one of the quietest and most restrained nations on Earth (especially compared to Western countries), has had enough.
Ever since China proved to be a rising threat to U.S. global supremacy, the West has unleashed a massive propaganda and diplomatic campaign against it. A key aspect of the strategy is hypocrisy….
ltr: I think this comment more properly belongs to the thread of this post. It is my hope that you will engage directly in the discussion of the forced labor/detention/repression of the Uyghur population.
She did but only to deny reality.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-26/China-is-paying-hypocritical-Western-nations-back-in-their-own-coin-11pbkcmfLyw/index.html
June 26, 2021
China is paying hypocritical Western nations back in their own coin
By Maitreya Bhakal
For decades, some Western nations have bullied and lectured non-West nations. Some countries are pushing back. China in particular, one of the quietest and most restrained nations on Earth (especially compared to Western countries), has had enough.
Ever since China proved to be a rising threat to U.S. global supremacy, the West has unleashed a massive propaganda and diplomatic campaign against it….
https://newsus.cgtn.com/news/2021-03-13/64-countries-call-for-stopping-politicization-of-human-rights–YAnYBd1wo8/index.html
March 13, 2021
Madam President,
I have the honor to speak on behalf of 64 countries.
We maintain that all sides should promote and protect human rights through constructive dialogue and cooperation and firmly oppose politicization of human rights and double standards.
We commend the people-center philosophy that the Chinese government pursues and achievements that have been made in its human rights cause. Xinjiang is an inseparable part of China. We urge the relevant sides to abide by the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs by manipulating Xinjiang related issues, refrain from making unfounded allegations against China out of political motivations and curbing the development of developing countries under the pretext of human rights.
Thank you, Madam President.
[ Imagine, this time Canada was chosen to “bell the cat” and 90 countries supported China. ]
ltr: I think this comment more properly belongs to the thread of this post. It is my hope that you will engage directly in the discussion of the forced labor/detention/repression of the Uyghur population.
ltr: I think this comment more properly belongs to the thread of this post. It is my hope that you will engage directly in the discussion of the forced labor/detention/repression of the Uyghur population.
For anyone who doesn’t already know, I’m sure 85% who read this blog have already “read in between the lines”~~~”CGTN” is China’s version or Russia’s “RT”, and hopefully you don’t need much explanation beyond that. But for the few dumdums we have on this blog, RT is basically the same outfit (it has about 3 different monikers, another name being “Sputnik News”, see here—->> https://sputniknews.com <<—-or please DON'T see here ) that stuffed Mark ZuckerTraitor's pockets as he went around telling everyone "Gee wiz, we had no idea the millions we at Facebook got from "RT" and company was from Russia. I'm just an innocent little boy who runs a charity just like serial adulterer Bill Gates, how could I have ever been involved??"
https://www.businessinsider.com/zuckerberg-says-trump-is-exactly-who-you-expect-2020-9
I think what Mark ZuckerTraitor is trying to say is, is that he and donald trump are soul-connected, both men willing to sell their own mothers out for an extra nickel to be found in street crevice.
Listening to “Weekend Radio” hosted by Robert Conrad and comes out of WCLV radio. I love this show so much, and I swear since they nudged David Letterman off the air, this may be my favorite regularly offered show in all of video/audio media.
Do yourselves a HUGE favor, find a radio station near your residence where they offer this small slice of heaven and listen to it. And if no station near you offers it on the weekend, call up your NPR station and tell them they’re making an egregious error on par with being the leader of a devil worshipping cult.
http://www.ideastream.org/wclv/weekend
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-06/27/c_1310030544.htm
June 27, 2021
Over 1.16 bln doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in China
BEIJING — More than 1.16 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in China as of Saturday, the National Health Commission said on Sunday.
[ Chinese vaccines are being administered domestically at a rate of 20 million doses daily. ]