From CNN:
China’s major stock indices and its currency have opened sharply lower Monday, as widespread protests against the country’s stringent Covid-19 restrictions over the weekend roiled investor sentiment.
Here are data over the past week for China and HK stock markets and the CNY:
The Hong Kong market also tanked.
NYT article. Bloomberg, live coverage.
What is the matter with these people? Don’t they know that China has hd only 3.6 deaths by covid per million people? They eeed to be reminded of this, and I mean over and over and over and over and over again, so they will realize how lucky they have been to have had these lockdowns and such a wonderfully wise and glorious leader to bring them to them!!!
This makes dealing with the real estate/construction/bad debt problem trickier, not to mention the overall slowing of the economy.
China hasn’t beefed up emergency room capacity and hasn’t deployed vaccines that offer much protection against infection or, importantly, against greater severity of infection. Lockdowns can’t safely be abandoned because alternatives haven’t been pursued.
Now would be a good time to build increased emergency room capacity and import the best available vaccines, but lags in implementation mean lockdows, and the civil unrest and economic harm they bring with them are likely to continue for now. Probably a good idea to dispense with the ridiculous hygiene theater that has been part of the official response. Has to be eroding credibility.
So, what do we know about the situation in China? Not a rhetorical question. While this comments section is often overrun by blow-hards, posers and propagandists, there are clearly a number of fairly well informed commenters here with experience in China stuff. What do you have?
I’ll start:
We don’t know how many protesters are in the streets in China. China makes sure that we cannot know. This is exactly the kind of circumstance in which the absence off press freedom serves authoritarian interests.
But here area few things we do know –
Local protests are fairly common in China. Protests generally focus on a grievance and avoid politics. Often, they work, bringing higher-level official scrutiny to local failures.
Mass protests are rare in China under communist rule. The 2021 “World Protests: A Study of Key Protest Issues in the 21st Century” contains a table of protests involving more than a million people:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-88513-7_2/tables/9
Note the absence of China proper from the list. Hong Kong made the list, though not all assessments of Hong Kong protests agree a million people were ever involved. So either less than 1/1000th of the population has engaged in a protest between 2006 and 2020 or the government has hidden it well.
We know that something like 1 million people joined the Tiananmen Square demonstrations prior to the June massacre. That massacre is probably a big factor in limiting protest to non-political grievances.
Press reports of the current round of protests typically refer to hundreds or thousands of protesters at individual locations – nothing specific about how many thousands. Those locations are widespread, but we don’t know how numerous. There have been calls for Xi and the Communist Party to step down, but that is not common, as far as we know from press reports.
Covid lockdowns and the hardship they create amount to a grievance. The widespread nature of protests and the inclusion of some expression of political discontent make these protests a different kettle of fish for the government from the common, accepted sort of protest, as does the government’s own impotence.
We have reason to think the Chinese regime has limited flexibility on lockdowns in the near term, because no alternative has been developed.
Does what we know give reason to expect regime change? I wouldn’t think so, but what would I (or any of you) know? My limited reading of the literature on regime change suggests formal knowledge is pretty squishy. This is exactly the sort of issue about which Tetlock, Kahneman and others have warned us to distrust expert opinion. We can probably assume that numbers and persistence matters, so we have things to watch for.
Anybody else? By which I mean, anybody with actual information and a modicum of seriousness.
Tiny little orde-of-magnitude error in the CNN report:
“The reserve requirement ratio for most banks (RRR) was reduced by 25 percentage points.”
The cut in the RRR was 25 basis points, 0.25%, not 25 ppt.
Basis. Percentage. Millions. Billions. Where is Dr. Evil when we need him!
As recently as a year ago the pendulum seemed to be swinging in favor of autocratic dictators. Now it seems to be swinging the other way. Possibly the over-reach by Trump and Putin (and lesser but significant over-reach by Xi and the Iranian religious dictator) is likely the reason.
Politico: “Europe accuses US of profiting from war
EU officials attack Joe Biden over sky-high gas prices, weapons sales and trade as Vladimir Putin’s war threatens to destroy Western unity.
Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” one senior official told POLITICO. ”
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-war-europe-ukraine-gas-inflation-reduction-act-ira-joe-biden-rift-west-eu-accuses-us-of-profiting-from-war/?mibextid=BUZLm6
The Europeans only noticed just now? I guess Europe’s leadership isn’t very bright…or has been pretty reluctant to exert their sovereignty and act in accord with their own self interests.
Also, another round of what’s fit to print in the US: “Protests Erupt in Shanghai and Other Chinese Cities Over Covid Controls”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/26/world/asia/china-protests-covid.html
What’s fit to print outside the West: “Thousands have been protesting across Europe against skyrocketing energy prices, inflation, and arms deliveries to Ukraine.”
https://english.almayadeen.net/in-pictures/europe-protests-over-cost-of-living-and-pay
Thank goodness for the internet, where you can learn what’s actually going on in the world!
The US and the EU squabbling over trade policies is a generational old thing. Only a clueless Putin poodle would suggest that this is a new debate. And of course we know JohnH would be all too happy if NATO stepped aside and let Putin murder tens of millions of Ukrainians.
And exactly what per cent of the Chinese population is protesting? But that trivial number gets headlines in the NY Times!
And where exactly did the NY Times choose to note (in passing) the Prague protests that took place in late October? In the business section!!!
In Czechia 100,000 people are reported to have taken part…1% of the population…but that’s not significant enough to be reported by the Times. [Gotta love the selective reporting of propaganda!]
Heck, I’d be outraged, too, if the government forced my heating and transportation costs to skyrocket by substituting cheap Russian gas with expensive American LNG…and possibly made my employer uncompetitive and forced him to go out of business in the process.
But, yeah, the Ukraine war has nothing to do with the sales of expensive American energy…it’s only about democracy and human rights, or so the propagandists would like to have us believe. just like the Iraq War was about anything but oil! But Europeans–including the leadership–are finally starting to realize that they have been had.
JohnH: Given the incredibly draconian nature of the surveillance state in China, any protests are (literally) remarkable.
Agreed. Any protests in China are remarkable. But so are 100,000 protesters in Prague. Remember that the biggest protests in Washington numbered only in the hundreds of thousands…and the US population is 30x Czechia’s.
Going back to my point…a remarkable protest in China gets coverage while a remarkable protest in Czechia does not. Selective reporting is highly characteristic of propaganda. Protests in Czechia are not consistent with the narrative, while protests in China are.
JohnH,
Uh oh. Looks like you are just out and out lying again. What has led you to do this? Are you actually being paid by Moscow?
So, I checked. That demo in Czechia of 100,000? That was a PRO-Ukraine and ANTI-Russia protest. Did you really think you could get away with lying like that here? You are so far beneath contempt, I am unclear where to place you, which circle of Hell are you heading for?
I guess jonny was ordered by Putin to ignore stories like this:
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/russia-ukraine-crisis/russia-ukraine-war-czech-citizens-protest-in-prague-raise-placards-criticising-putin-articleshow.html
Russia-Ukraine War: Czech Citizens Protest In Prague, Raise Placards Criticising Putin
Czech Republic citizens demonstrated their anger by raising placards against Russia’s President Putin amid the ongoing ‘conflict’ in Ukraine.
The citizens of the Czech Republic are all too familiar with Russian led domination and war crimes.
here is a link to the sep 2022 100000 plus
https://watchers.news/2022/09/05/czech-republic-first-more-than-100-000-people-protest-in-prague-over-soaring-energy-prices-government-policy-toward-russia-czech-republic/
or oct 2022
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/czechia-tens-of-thousands-gather-in-prague-to-protest-russia-sanctions/
neither show support for sanctions that cause economic and soon physical harm….
Anonymous: Contra, The Guardian.
“You lived and suffered under totalitarian rule for decades. But your people stood up and despite jeopardizing your livelihood, despite risking prison, you did it anyway. You fought for freedom, you fought for democracy, and you fought for the rule of law.”
From the piece Anon linked to. Let me get this straight. It is great that the Czech Republic stood up to Russian dominance but we should ignore the same stand by the people of Ukraine? Really?
Agreed. Any protests in China are remarkable. But so are 100,000 protesters in Prague. Remember that the biggest protests in Washington numbered only in the hundreds of thousands…and the US population is 30x Czechia’s.
Going back to my point…a remarkable protest in China gets coverage while a remarkable protest in Czechia does not. Selective reporting is highly characteristic of propaganda. Protests in Czechia are not consistent with the narrative, while protests in China are.
pgl uses a March, 2022 link to refute my November 2022 link! Talk about BS!
pgl moves the goalposts yet again…public sentiment changed in the six intervening months, but pgl wants you to be misled by presenting an outdated link that might make the naive reader to think otherwise.
Does Putin give you a bone for each of these pathetic comments of yours? Good boy little Johnny.
After JohnH’s fellow troll decided to defend JohnH’s lying, our host linked to something from the Guardian. Check out the graph under:
Support for maintaining economic sanctions on Russia
Support is still high in Western Europe and Australia. Yes another JohnH disinformation campaign busted.
you can find borsch in a country restaurant in czechnia….
the differences btw Czech 1968, and Ukraine post 2014 are broad.
prof c, I suspect much of what guardian prints
what happens in Europe this winter….
Anonymous: Let me get you on the record. Are you questioning how the Guardian took data from YouGov and graphed them, or are you questioning YouGov (which I regularly see cited in the Economist). Please confirm.
Menzie, blindly believing a news paper source is a fools game and often confirmation bias. We’re at a point where blogs are often more informative and accurate. At least their biases are recognized. Just loo here for Biden’s polices.
“In Czechia 100,000 people are reported to have taken part” Really? No source for your latest lie? Oh wait – if you provided the source, we would see it came from your master Putin.
“And exactly what per cent of the Chinese population is protesting? But that trivial number gets headlines in the NY Times!”
Some of these protestors are employees of Foxconn (the contract manufacturer for Apple’s iPhones) who are demanding better worker conditions. The fact that you are mocking them shows you are no friend of workers. No Jonny boy has sold what few principles he may have ever had to serve master Putin.
“And exactly what per cent of the Chinese population is protesting?”
One could be killed by the regime if one protested in China. Same for Iran. But that is AOK by JohnH the Putin poodle as Putin kills dissidents in Russia.
“Thousands have been protesting across Europe”. Hey Johnny – try to impress you preK teacher by telling us what percentage of the EU population 2000 protestors comes to. This statement is as laughable as Trump telling us now many people attended his latest rally.
OK – I have given Johnny boy a challenge he will never be able to take on. So here goes, the EU population is well over 500 million. And Johnny boy thinks a couple of thousand protesters is a BIG deal? Now I asked him to express this in a percentage but his preK teacher says Johnny boy is incapable of doing simple arithmetic so let me finish Johnny’s homework for him. The number of protesters noted in his little article was less than 0.1% of the population.
But good news for Johnny boy – I bet the number of Ukrainians killed by Putin’s war criminals last month exceeded a couple of thousand.
Johnny, your framing is revealing:
“…unity in the West.” (Yes, I understand you didn’t write these words. You chose them, though.)
“…fit to print outside the West…”
The West is bad. Democracies are bad. Civil liberty is bad. We get, Johnny. We heard you the first time.
Russia started a war with Ukraine. Death and suffering accros an entire country, food scarcity in large parts of the world, are the results. The war is in Europe, so economic harm is greater there than in the U.S. But Oh, let’s do wring our hands – facetiously in your case – over a trade spat. Let’s not miss the opportunity to pretend a trade spat is more important than killing people by the thousands, displacing them by the millions.
Fake outrage as a distraction from real outrage; that’s your whole deal.
Navalny’s top aide says Ukraine war shows Putin is crazier than previously thought, warning the Russian leader is not ‘in touch with reality’
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/navalny-s-top-aide-says-ukraine-war-shows-putin-is-crazier-than-previously-thought-warning-the-russian-leader-is-not-in-touch-with-reality/ar-AA14EGic?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=27eda1d11b48463d8d104a94f6b74deb
Now I get that as Putin’s pet poodle, JohnH has been trained to dismiss anything from Navalny but I thought the grown ups here would be interested in these thoughts.
Yeah, the Iraq War was about freedom, democracy and human rights, too. [Guffaw, guffaw!] ]And hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. But MacroDucky sees no reason for the US to be held accountable or to make sure policies are put in place to make sure it never happens again.
But he gets really incensed when others repeat US behavior.
JohnH: I’m sorry, but are you saying the outcome in Iraq was due primarily to poor accounting for expenditures?
Johnny boy seems to be echoing people like the rightwing lunatic Rand Paul and the racist Marjorie Taylor Greene. Go figure.
Hey coward. I protested the idea of invading Iraq back in 2002. You did NOTHING back then. NOTHING at all.
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Whataboutism, again? “Oh, yeah? What about Iraq!”
Johnny, we talked about this. Whataboutism is a cheap trick, Johnny. It’s not an argument for or against anything. It’s just an effort to change the subject.
Just to compound the problem, you pretend to know things you don’t know. And I don’t mean getting the protests in Czechia backward. I mean when you lied about my views on Iraq. You have know idea at all of my views, but lacking a morally defensible position on Ukraine, you try to impose morally weak positions on others.
This is where the question of your real motives comes up. You could just be a moral infant with a strong need for attention, I suppose, but that’s a poor fit with your behavior. Couching everything in condemnation of the U.S, always cheering for division in the West, wiggling away from any criticism of Putin – it’s all consistent with Russian propaganda. Which makes your claim to have voted in just one presidential election a bit odd. Are you really a U.S. teenage idiot, pretending to be an adult? Your argumentation is juvenile, but your focus is too keenly on justifying Russia’s behavior for a stupid U.S. teen. No, justifying Russia’s behavior is obviously your primary goal. The contrast with U.S. behavior is secondary.
Johnny? You’re failing in your task. Your rabid emotionalism, obvious rhetorical trickery, dodging away from any real positions by changing the subject – it’s what the Koch brothers teach their trolls. It’s what Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose did. It’s too obviously manufactered to be the product of teenage attention-seeking. You really do work for Pooty-Poot. You’re a joke.
“wiggling away from any criticism of Putin ”
I have asked John repeatedly to take a direct stance against the aggressions of Russia and putin towards Ukraine. he has refused to say a bad word, unless it is combined with “whataboutism”. he is a coward.
JohnH,
What a bunch of exaggeration. Yes, the article says EU officials are “furious,” although the quotes from various of them come across to me more as annoyed rather than “furious.” And importantly, what seems to have them most annoyed are the subsidies and protectionism in the Inflation Reduction Act tied to encouraging green investment, nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, which you suggest is what this is all about.
Oh yes, they are upset about US charging high prices for natural gas, and that may be justified, although it is a result of them having let themselves get too dependent on Russian gas in the past.
Who would have thought that extensive shutting down of society would have a deleterious effect on an economy? Just send out a few hundred trillion renminbi to the populace and everything will be fine… economically and socially.
I bet Brucie boy is hoping this virus ravages the Chinese population. Brucie did everything he could to make sure this virus killed as many of his own neighbors. BTW Brucie – do you need help paying for all that bleach you are consuming?
there is a difference between shutting down an economy when an unknown virus is spreading and the population has few defenses, and doing so after vaccines and treatments have been developed.
Bruce Hall was told not to see a difference as Kelly Anne Conway told him taking bleach would protect him. MAGA!
Protests in China are a bit different than in the US.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/11/protesting-via-equation.html
“I would have gone with Mv=PY”
I guess this is why you like this blog. Alex had no clue what those equations were either so he goes with a discredited concept from macroeconomics? Hey Brucie – please keep bringing us the dumbest nonsense ever deviced!
pgl,
I was waiting for the snark. Now go back to Alex’s post and follow the link to the source. Understanding comes with patience. Develop some.
I did troll. BTW – I was the one who figured out what this equation represents. Not you and not your right wing economist blog. Now if little Brucie ever learned to READ he would know that. But no – your reading skills are nonexistent.
LOL! Come on, man! “Figuring out” what the equation was using Google search when the answer was already there in Alex’s post and comments. You must be a real hoot in your “Economics, Politics, and Physics” course at the Rockland Community College.
Gee those scholars at Marginal Revolution are incapable of grasping what this equation was? Two seconds on a little known tool called Google:
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/the-friedmann-equations-and-how-they-are-related-to-protests-in-china/ar-AA14Efmm
What are the Friedmann equations
Named after the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann, these are a set of equations that describe the rate at which the universe expands. In fact, Friedmann was the first physicist to predict that the universe is expanding. The equation displayed in the protests in China is one form of the first Friedmann equation. Simply put, the first Friedmann equation tells us the rate at which the universe is expanding. This, in turn, allows scientists to predict what the universe will look like at any point in the future, or work out what it looked like at any point in the past.
The link goes into detail but of course we are already WAAAY beyond Brucie’s boys ability to comprehend.
Bruce Hall
November 29, 2022 at 10:12 am
Gee a full day after I posted this – Brucie lectures me on having the patience to figure something out? Seriously – can anyone really be THIS STUPID?
“Patience” refers to your inability to finish reading before making snide and inappropriate comments. The “full day” was me waiting for you to make your snide and inappropriate comment. I don’t spend all of my time refreshing the Econbrowser comments to see if you’ve posted. There are so many other sources of information to read. Time for you to get a life.
Tip for the New York travelers who need new tires: try the Michelin Cross Climate 2 tires. Great all around tires for the north. Spent my “full day” shopping while getting those installed on my SUV before my next trip to Florida. Of course, NYC might get lucky and have a warmer, drier winter which will be helpful given the lack of heating oil there. Rather than fix the problem, NYC simply tells people to “find another way to heat your home”. NYC: home of brilliant economists and government officials.
https://oilandenergyonline.com/articles/all/new-york-city-bans-heating-oil-natural-gas/
https://news.yahoo.com/us-northeast-hurtling-toward-winter-130007857.html
Eswar Prasad published in 2015, at the peak of Rmb trade settlement. The share then dropped by about one-third, and has not recovered the roughly 22% level since then.
In the same year, at the SF Fed’s “Policy Challenges in a Diverging Global Economy” conference, he said, China’s heavily distorted financial sector continues to limit the potential for the renminbi. His caveat is key: “The renminbi will become a significant reserve currency within the next decade if China continues adopting financial-sector and other market-oriented reforms.”
If.
“Still, the renminbi will not become a safe-haven currency that has the potential to displace the U.S. dollar’s dominance unless economic reforms are accompanied by broader institutional reforms in China.”
Unless.
Would anyone care to argue that Xi Jinping’s second term featured continual adoption of financial-sector and other market-oriented reforms, and / or broader institutional reforms?
I’ll start.
There have been earth-shaking institutional reforms, but entirely in the wrong direction. Burying alternative voices kind of reforms.
Financial-sector and other market-oriented reforms … not so much.
As I have stated, China is politically unstable. It would appear that quite a few Chinese have had enough of Xi. Or to quote Harry Potter: “Neither can live while the other survives.”
[Sybill Trelawney’s first prophecy]
Steven, how many months has ti take for the peanut gallery here to address your prescient China commentary? Notice the use of address versus recognize?
When CoRev comes to one’s defense, one has nothing. Nothing at all. Hey CoRev – define WTF you mean by “prescient”. This should be fun.
I bet CoRev thought Stevie pooh was “prescient” when Stevie told us that a RECESSION was on the way which would cause that Republican wave.
Well, we’ll see. It’s entirely possible Xi puts down the protesters. But it does highlight that the public is increasingly tired of Xi.
@ BlueStates’ResidentKopits
“Entirely possible”. You are a fool. But like your brother-from-another-mother Barkley, a highly entertaining fool. Xi will NOT be overthrown (by regular citizens). And you can quote me in your next garbage published post or your presumed future “Firing Line” interview. Hilarious.
Harry Potter as a foreign policy expert? OK a fictional character is still 1000 times more insightful than an incompetent consultant begging for attention.
It’s not foreign policy. It’s economics. See the graph.
https://www.princetonpolicy.com/ppa-blog/2018/4/8/chinas-governance-options
Economics? Another subject you do not understand. Yea – we have seen your STUPID graph before. I guess you are trying to impress the bozos at the Heritage Foundation.
Steven,
I think it would be great if pro-democracy demos could actually achieve something, and I am not surprised that the extreme assertion of personal centralized power by Xi at the recent Party Congress, along with his refusal to relax the clearly increasingly unpopular lockdowns, has led to these demonstrations, apparently in 16 different cities, with indeed some of them involving people calling for democracy and Xi to step down.
However, the hard reality is that, aside from the demos spreading to Hong Kong, it looks like the authorities have stomped them down. Barricades were put up in the parts of Shanghai and Beijing where the demos were at their peak, and apparently things were “eerily quiet” on Monday night in both cities. This is probably not going anywhere, despite puncturing a big hole in Xi’s propaganda.
Democracy may yet come to the mainland, but, unfortunately, probably not anytime soon. Xi and his machine look to be very much in control.
Just to add a bit more, my problem with your past comments on this was not that being pro-democracy was somehow bad but that you argued that US foreign policy should be focused on pushing such protests, which seemed too much for me. If they happen, we can support them somewhat, although, as in Iran, US support for anything there gets used by authorities to discredit it. As it is, for right now, I think Biden admin is playing it carefully and right, supporting the right of Chinese citizens to peacefully protest, which is what they have done, while being suppressed.
While there were some calls for democracy and some other things, it looks that the main focus of these has been against the lockdowns. I also note that at some of these protests they were singing the “Internationale,” which has not always been associated with a pro-democracy position.
I suppose that I don’t expect democratic forces to succeed as such, but rather the Communist Party to fracture, and the successful rebels to then call for elections. Similar to Russia with Yeltsin. I always thought democracy was going to be a hard sell in Russia, but I actually have a good bit of confidence in the Chinese. I mean, people protesting with the Friedman Equations — that’s genius.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/11/protesting-via-equation.html#comments
With protests happening at the top two universities in China, Peking University and Tsinghua, both in Beijing, it is not surprising that some of these people are plenty smart. Clearly the regime is facing a long term credibility problem. They could have avoided this by maintaining the 10 years and you are out system that they had developed for leaders while maintaining something more like the looser system they had under Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor But this move to extreme centralized super authoriitarianism will be leading to more trouble down the road.
As it is, I think a split in the Party is probably some distance off. What Xi does seem to have pulled off is getting near absolute control over the Party. It is the rest of Chinese society where this “success” looks to be leading to trouble for him and his associates.
the Friedman Equations?
I guess you have no clue what this is about especially since you cannot even be bothered to properly spell his last name correctly. Now now our most incompetent consultant should have noticed by now, I have provided a link to who this person was and what this equation is about. But Stevie as usual is too busy posting his usual intellectual garbage to be bothered with actually READING.
@ BlueStates’ResidentKopits
“……. and the successful [Chinese] rebels to then call for elections.”
I try not to drop the F-bomb out of respect to Menzie, but damn you are [edited – MDC] stupid.
China is unstable?
Really?
Evidence, please, and not just some protests lasting (thus far) barely a week.
Hard analysis, or admit it ain’t necessarily so.
The PRC coverage of the World Cup is censoring pictures of fan who are not wearing masks?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-s-state-tv-is-editing-out-close-ups-of-unmasked-people-at-the-world-cup-as-its-strict-covid-rules-spark-mass-protests/ar-AA14DWiq?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=2eeaae3f1bea4c79bc529dc38b77a970
Chinese state TV edited out World Cup footage showing maskless attendees, Bloomberg reported.
China has a strict zero-COVID policy, with harsh restrictions in place.
Mass protests started this weekend after 10 people died in an apartment fire in Urumqi.
China’s state television network has been editing out footage that shows World Cup attendees not wearing masks, amid the country’s ongoing zero-COVID policy that has sparked rare mass protests. Bloomberg reviewed World Cup coverage on China Central Television (CCTV) and found that the state network showed less footage of stadium crowds than other TV stations around the world, and often replaced footage with scenes of the coaches or players on the bench.
But wait – the coaches and players are not wearing masks. Maybe they will edit out everything above the waist line.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/white-house-china-covid-protests-rcna58952
The White House on Monday issued a statement in support of peaceful protesters in China after demonstrations against the country’s zero-Covid policy intensified this weekend.“We’ve long said everyone has the right to peacefully protest, in the United States and around the world,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson said in a sta t. “This includes in the [People’s Republic of China.]”
Good for the White House but a few follow ups. Don’t Russians have a right to protest Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine? Don’t Iranians have the right to protest the degrading treatment of women in their nation? Don’t football players have the right to protest human rights violations in Qatar? If you asked anyone at FIFA – apparently not.
October Border Apprehensions: Worse and worse; 2.6 m for 2023
https://www.princetonpolicy.com/ppa-blog/2022/11/26/october-border-apprehensions-worse-and-worse-26-m-for-2023
Steven,
I find it totally hilarious that somehow people find high border apprehensions to be some kind of evidence of the system breaking down and the US having supposedly awful “open botders,” when in fact those record apprehensions look like border security working and show just the opposite of open borders.
That’s not what it shows. For example, at the southwest border, seizures of fentanyl more than doubled in FY 2022 and is up 13 fold since 2017. Is it your view that fentanyl smuggling has fallen to 1/13th of the level of 2017? Meanwhile, marijuana seizures by Border Patrol have fallen by 97% — 97%! — at the sw border since 2013. Is it your view then that vast quantities of pot are now being successfully smuggled across?
Apprehensions and drug seizures measure levels of activity at the border. Illegal immigration is totally out of control, running at six times the level of, say, the Obama administration.
fentanyl? Dude – it is being imported by WHITE people not Mexicans. But nice try – stirring up racist hate is your forte.
Still having trouble with reading comprehension, pgl? Where in Steven’s comment are “Mexicans” mentioned? However, that “racist” ABC News spells it out clearly. https://abcnews.go.com/US/fentanyl-trip-drug-coming-america/story?id=84403096
barks,
curious, what would a ‘failed’ border policy look like?
It would look like a Mexican shopping in your neighborhood.
Salvadoran….
I see – racist Anon fears Salvadoran too. An equal opportunity racist he is.
Oh my – Stevie saw a Mexican on Cape Cod. Hey Stevie – your buddies at Fox and Friends want to steal their kids and keep them in prison.
Immigration is nothing more than a political issue with you?
‘I find it difficult not to feel a certain chagrin with the Trumpians in this past election. In the House, the Democrats over-performed by 30 seats. That is, a statistical regression would have predicted a loss of 39 seats in the House given President Biden’s approval rating at the time. As of writing, the Democrats will have lost only 9, ceding a narrow majority to the Republicans.’
Seriously dude – being more racist than Stephen Miller is not a virtue.
Ole bark, bark hilariously says:
“Immigration is nothing more than a political issue with you?…
Seriously dude – being more racist than Stephen Miller is not a virtue.”
How can the most racist and hateful commenter continue with his discriminatory comments?
I guess CoRev did not read Stevie’s stupid blog post before he inserted his own stupidity.
“Inadmissibles, those presenting themselves at official crossing points without appropriate documentation, continues to run hot. CBP reports 26,405 inadmissibles for October, the second highest month for any month in the past ten years.”
Inadmissibles? They are PEOPLE you racist POS. Damn – you would indeed put Stephen Miller to shame.
That is the term CBP uses. Again, above your pay grade.
I see – you choose that because you were ordered to? Got it.
“They are PEOPLE you racist POS.” says the most hateful and racist commenter here.
Hey CoRev – we get you are the most dishonest and dumbest commenter here so you do not have to remind us over and over.
And again the most hateful and dishonest (that’s lying for you liberals) commenter proves it.
Come on Barkley – Stevie has to write this upside down gibberish to get invited back onto Fox and Friends.
pgl,
Well, this bit about all the detentions at the border somehow being a sign of “loss of control” at the border was a standard line for GOP candidates in the just completed election, with me surprised at how infrequently Dems running against them made the point I did that all these detentions show quite a lot of control at the border.
Oh, I do know that some did make that point, with the media generally ignoring them when they did so.
But Stevie protests he has to use the standard GOP racist playbook as he picks and chooses his racist terms from official documents. Weak.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iranian-general-acknowledges-over-300-dead-in-unrest/ar-AA14DGwy?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=f8a36ccdf36c484495617922ba1f7f61
‘An Iranian general on Monday acknowledged that more than 300 people have been killed in the unrest surrounding nationwide protests, giving the first official word on casualties in two months.’
So even the government of Iran admits it is killing its own people. Now something tells me that the number of citizens who have been murdered by this government is much higher than 300.
Of course, Princeton Steve might find useful consulting opportunities from the Iran government to post his usual garbage as to how the number of deaths cannot be that high.
No update? The Shanghai Composite, USD:Yuan, and Hong Kong Index each recouped these relatively modest (e.g. Shanghai was only ~-2% and HK ~-3.8%) Nov 27 losses.
It’s also important to note that Menzie’s cherry-picked data sample magnifies the shock-value of recent (transitory) losses. The same datasets viewed from merely a month back would’ve shown this week’s declines as nothing much more than returns to recent levels.
Always beware economists ringing alarms.
you believe a stock market move of 3.8% in a day is driven by nothing? I would argue a nearly 4% move of a stock market is driven by some amount of significant news or events.
Econned reminds me of rsm. He does not know the difference between news v. noise either.
baffling,
I never asserted the market move was “driven by nothing”. I never suggested anything remotely close to that. I’m baffled at your comment.
“The same datasets viewed from merely a month back would’ve shown this week’s declines as nothing much more than returns to recent levels.”
Econned, that is what you are implying here.
He is implying that the Efficient Markets Hypothesis never existed. Yea – he is that dumb.
Baffling,
Wrong. I’m saying (not implying) that the levels pointed out by Menzie are levels seen very recently. E.g. “The same datasets viewed from merely a month back would’ve shown this week’s declines as nothing much more than returns to recent levels.” I’m saying absolutely nothing about the market movements being “driven by nothing” (your suggestion of my claim) or something. The drivers of the market movements are not a part of my comment. Period.
econned, then you are saying that a 4% market move in a day is nothing. most market participants would disagree.
let’s be clear here. econned is not commenting to improve the discussion on this board. the comment was meant to criticize prof chinn and troll. period.
Econned
November 30, 2022 at 8:59 am
Baff – you need not address this worthless incompetent as he has proven he has no clue about basic financial economics. No clue at all.
This is your defense of your stupid original comment? I guess basic financial economics is something else you never comprehended.
“The drivers of the market movements are not a part of my comment.”
Hey Econned – the entire post as well as the follow-up post calling you out was precisely about the drivers of the market movements. So thanks for confirming your little objection was about as irrelevant as it gets. You really are one dumb troll.
baffling,
I literally said “ The Shanghai Composite, USD:Yuan, and Hong Kong Index each recouped these relatively modest (e.g. Shanghai was only ~-2% and HK ~-3.8%) Nov 27 losses.“ My point is these swings aren’t abnormal enough to make a big deal over and particularly when the movement is relatively quickly reversed
I see you refuse to read Samuelson’s 1965 paper but I have a 1973 paper for you to read:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3003046
Even the best investors seem to find it hard to do better than the comprehensive common-stock averages, or better on the average than random selection among stocks of comparable variability. Examination of historical samples of percentage changes in a stock’s price show that, when these relative price changes are properly adjusted for expected dividends paid out, they are more or less indistinguishable from white noise; or, at the least, their expected percentage movements constitute a driftless random walk (or a random walk with mean drift specifiable in terms of an interest factor appropriate to the stock’s variability or riskiness). The present contribution shows that such observable patterns can be deduced rigorously from a model which hypothesizes that a stock’s present price is set at the expected discounted value of its future dividends, where the future dividends are supposed to be random variables generated according to any general (but known) stochastic process. This fundamental theorem follows by an easy superposition applied to the 1965 Samuelson theorem that properly anticipated futures prices fluctuate randomly-i.e., constitute a martingale sequence, or a generalized martingale with specifiable mean drift. Examples demonstrate that even when the economy is not free to wander randomly, intelligent speculation is able to whiten the spectrum of observed stock-price changes. A subset of investors might have better information or modes of analysis and get above average gains in the random-walk model; and the model’s underlying probabilities could be shaped by fundamentalists’ economic forces.
Let me make this simple for you Econned. You know nothing about the basics of financial economics. So we are left with your babbling utter nonsense. Then again – that is all you have ever done.
econned, a stock market move of 3.8% is not insignificant, even if it reversed in the following days. it does not happen randomly.
Gee Econned – our host has a new post just for you. Paul Samuelson had something to say about this topic back in 1965. I provided the title of his classic in a comment. READ the paper you arrogant but ignorant troll.
I see you refuse to read Samuelson’s 1965 paper but I have a 1973 paper for you to read:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3003046
Even the best investors seem to find it hard to do better than the comprehensive common-stock averages, or better on the average than random selection among stocks of comparable variability. Examination of historical samples of percentage changes in a stock’s price show that, when these relative price changes are properly adjusted for expected dividends paid out, they are more or less indistinguishable from white noise; or, at the least, their expected percentage movements constitute a driftless random walk (or a random walk with mean drift specifiable in terms of an interest factor appropriate to the stock’s variability or riskiness). The present contribution shows that such observable patterns can be deduced rigorously from a model which hypothesizes that a stock’s present price is set at the expected discounted value of its future dividends, where the future dividends are supposed to be random variables generated according to any general (but known) stochastic process. This fundamental theorem follows by an easy superposition applied to the 1965 Samuelson theorem that properly anticipated futures prices fluctuate randomly-i.e., constitute a martingale sequence, or a generalized martingale with specifiable mean drift. Examples demonstrate that even when the economy is not free to wander randomly, intelligent speculation is able to whiten the spectrum of observed stock-price changes. A subset of investors might have better information or modes of analysis and get above average gains in the random-walk model; and the model’s underlying probabilities could be shaped by fundamentalists’ economic forces.
Let me make this simple for you Econned. You know nothing about the basics of financial economics. So we are left with your babbling utter nonsense. Then again – that is all you have ever done.