Stephen Moore: Not the Nominee Republicans Need

Before we start, I’m going to need to go into a bit about the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System of the United States of America (AKA the Federal Reserve Board). If you think you have enough context and just want to read about Stephen Moore, you can skip ahead to the “Now it gets interesting!” tag below.

Stephen Moore has been stealth-nominated by the White House for a position on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System (AKA “the Federal Reserve”). Someone in such a position is called upon to make decisions about many things, but most often and most centrally decisions about the availability of credit in the United States. The Board of Governors’ principle tool to influence monetary policy is the ability to raise and lower the interest rate that banks must pay to borrow money from the Federal Reserve. Not only does this affect directly many interest rates for consumer and mortgage loans, but it also affects the total amount of money in the economy. For instance, if a bank has an opportunity to loan money out at a specific interest rate, but it doesn’t have enough to do so, it can borrow the money from the Fed at a low interest rate and then lend it out at a higher interest rate. This allows them to use the income from the higher interest customer loan to pay the interest they owe to the Fed and pocket the difference. But if the interest rate the Fed wishes to charge is high enough, the rate charged to the customer might be so high the customer does not want the loan or perhaps so high that the customer does not have credit sufficient to qualify for the same size load at that higher rate (the required monthly payments would be larger, and the customer many not be able to comfortably afford those higher payments, in the judgement of the bank, even if the customer believes they could).

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The Horrifying, Racist, Greed-Corrupted Profiteers

Now THIS is what I’ve been looking for.

Yahoo News just released a story detailing some of the companies who are actually profiting off Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. Without alleging that individuals at these corporations feel subjective malice towards others based on race, we can unequivocally say that they are participating in a harmful, horrifying, racist policy. The fact that they’re doing it for the money instead of true belief in Racial Holy War will be their defense. Let it also be the sum total of their sources of comfort.

Comprehensive Health Services Inc. (CHSI), a Florida-based company that touts its experience with “immigrant shelter services” received the bulk of the contracts.

Dynamic Service Solutions, a Maryland firm, was awarded a contract worth up to $8.7 million from HHS through the “shelter care for unaccompanied children” vehicle in September 2017.

Southwest Key Programs was awarded two contracts through the vehicle in September 2017 worth up to $1.8 million each for “emergency shelter operations.”

Dynamic Educational Systems, a subsidiary of the Arizona firm Exodyne, was awarded a pair of HHS contracts worth up to approximately $5.6 million for “emergency shelter operations.”

The fifth business with contracts through the HHS vehicle for “shelter care for unaccompanied children” is Virginia-based MVM. According to GovTribe, the company was awarded two contracts worth up to $9.5 million in September 2017 for “shelter operations” and for unspecified “emergency and other relief services.”

The Southwest Key link goes to a temporary page – the increase in traffic after they were identified as profiting from the ICEolation policy apparently broke their old server. Otherwise, all links go directly to corporate contact/comment pages.

Please do your part and respectfully (though firmly, if you wish) let these companies know that their participation in this ongoing violation of international and domestic law has been noticed and will affect their respective corporate images. It appears that most, if not all, of these get most, if not all, of their money from direct or indirect government contracts. We can’t threaten to stop buying their widgets, but we can let them know that their bad behavior has been immortalized and will follow them.

 

 

 

Venezuela: Fucked by Capitalism, Fucked by Socialism

I don’t know much about Venezuela, but I do know that the late Hugo Chavez has been pilloried as a source of instability, particularly for his socialist reforms. This is true despite the fact that Chavez’ power has always been acquired through elections as free and fair as any in recent Venezuelan history, while his opponents launched a coup to end his first stint as head-of-state.

So why is that? Could it be that he came to power fairly but implemented such bad, harmful, and/or tyrannical policies that a coup was justified?

Even granting that Hugo Chavez had participated in an unsuccessful 1992 coup intended to instal Rafael Caldera as Venezuelan head-of-state (and the fear of violence that might generate among his opposition after he was elected), Al Jazeera doesn’t think so. While they do blame Chavez for certain decisions, they do not find general blame in a socialist approach to economic policy … nor do they find it in any capitalist approach. What they find instead is both interesting and, for those with a good understanding of economics, fairly predictable.

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