Just returned from Dallas, where her husband was assassinated as he sat by her side in the back of a presidential limo, Jacquelyn Kennedy finds herself surrounded by people with little help to offer. A reporter, summoned by the widow to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, asks, “What did the bullets sound like?” Her brother-in-law suggests she see a priest, and while Jackie is reluctant (“Bobby, I want to talk to the press”), a priest is duly wheeled in. “Let me share with you a parable,” he says.
Jackie seeks to inform us that the glittery Kennedy Administration launched a new style of politics—politics as a campaign of never-ending media manipulation. (We see a careful recreation the White House tour Jackie whisperingly conducted for CBS-TV in 1962, faithfully rendered in primordial black-and-white.) But this is hardly a fresh observation; and so by default, the movie devolves into a suffocating examination of its star, Natalie Portman, as she unleashes a tsunami of acting—weeping, simpering, smoking and snapping—much of it captured in relentless, oppressive close-ups. (Portman’s accent seems odd at first—it feels haunted by the ghost of Gildna Radner’s old “Baba Wawa” character on SNL. A quick visit to YouTube, however, establishes that this is in fact the way Jackie Kennedy spoke, so…points for meticulous preparation.)
The movie doesn’t feel like it’s really about anything—it has no warmth, no spirit, and its dialogue is sometimes dead, writes Kurt Loder.
Who creates federal laws? Civics books say it is Congress, but the real answer today may be the executive branch. Earlier this year, James Gattuso and Diane Katz reported that just the 229 major regulations issued since 2009 added over $100 billion in annual costs (according to the regulatory agencies), $22 billion coming in 2015. With estimates of the total regulatory costs now exceeding income tax burdens at over $2 trillion annually, regulations were far more burdensome for many Americans than legislation.
Unfortunately, missing from this process is accountability to citizens. In response, some members of Congress have turned to supporting the "Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny" (REINS) Act, which would require Congress to approve major regulations before they could take effect.
Why is this necessary when the US Constitution specifically assigns all legislative powers to Congress? Because Congress has increasingly abdicated its lawmaking responsibility, delegating its power through vague laws and mandates to executive agencies, which then impose and enforce the actual regulations that legally bind Americans.
The REINS Act, by allowing major regulations to take effect only if passed by Congress, would end the effective delegation of legislative power to regulatory bureaucrats and restore some of the Constitution’s eroded separation of powers. It would offer some real political accountability, by moving us back toward Americans’ earlier understanding of legislative powers, gutted in U.S. v. Grimand (1911) and subsequent court rulings.
Before Grimand, Congress had already begun giving administrative agencies power to formulate specific rules to implement Congress’ general policy objectives. But in Grimand, the Supreme Court gave such administrative rulings the full force of law, with delegation mushrooming since.
The result has been ever-growing power for federal bureaucrats, enacted through reams of rules, imposing massively large costs on Americans. But bureaucrats need not clearly spell out their policies and their consequences to the public, much less submit themselves for voter approval. And whenever a scandal reveals some regulatory abuse or failure, politicians hide from their responsibility by blaming the bureaucrats they delegated the power to and then failed to effectively oversee.
There is another very practical reason for reining in our current Pandora’s Box of congressional delegation. The fact that legislators must leave policy details vague — to be filled in later by others — illustrates how members of Congress don’t know enough about the problems they’re supposedly addressing.
To adequately address a societal problem requires detailed knowledge of the problem and the specifics of how it will be “fixed.” But legislators who had really mastered such details would trumpet them at every opportunity to ensure they got credit. So, when they delegate policy details to agency bureaucrats, they reveal they do not know the specifics of a workable solution.
Despite the ineffectiveness of legislatively delegating vaguely outlined responsibilities to executive agencies, it is prevalent because it gives the appearance of a legislative solution without requiring legislators to actually have a solution. Given voters’ shaky knowledge of social problems, policies, and possibilities, such play-acting can work for politicians almost as well as (if not better than) actual solutions. It also provides politicians ready-made scapegoats whenever the political heat gets turned up, allowing them to absolve themselves from true accountability.
Americans constantly hear public servants’ verbal commitments to accountability. But it is a slogan more than a reality. Reinstating a requirement that Congress approve all laws, which, if we are honest, major regulatory rules amount to, would restore some meaning to that rhetoric. It would force elected officials to answer for agency excesses and failures, rather than letting them blame bureaucrats for their own lack of real solutions. And holding both executive agencies and the Republican-controlled Congress to greater account would be an excellent way for the president-elect to prove his commitment to “drain the swamp” of federal abuses and abusers.
Snoop Dogg suggested San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick should choose between football and “being a revolutionary,” saying he appreciated that Kaepernick “brought something to America’s attention that needed to be brought to their attention,” namely police brutality’s effect on minorities, but that there were too many things to deal with to focus on that and being a football player at the same time.
The rapper, appearing on Fox Sports’ Undisputed, was also critical of Kaepernick’s positive comments about Fidel Castro. Co-host Shannon Sharpe pointed out that the Castro regime killed people and that people died trying to escape Cuba. “As bad as things are in the U.S.,” Sharpe noted, “people aren’t dying to leave.”
“He’s kind of hypocritical in so many words,” Snoop Dogg responded, “because he’s pushing this, but at the same time he’s giving credit for this, and it’s the same abuse they’ve been taking.”
After Castro’s death, Kaepernick sought to defend his praise, saying he was only praising Castro for “investment” in education, “free universal healthcare,” and “helping end apartheid” in South Africa.
“Trying to push the false narrative that I was a supporter of the oppressive things he did is just not true,” said Kaepernick, who just last month explained that he didn’t vote in the elections because it would be providing implicit support for an oppressive system. In that case, providing explicit praise to a murderous dictator would suggest providing at least implicit support for his oppressive system.
“And I don’t even understand the Cuban thing so let me not speak on something I’m not really aware of, because now I look bad when I say something that I think I’m representing positive, but the whole community is really mad at me now for saying something I didn’t even have no knowledge about,” Snoop suggested of Kaepernick’s comments on Castro, which came shortly before his death.
“That’s why I say he doesn’t have a team,” Snoop Dogg explained. “If he had a team, they would tell him, you can’t say this, this is what you need to say, it’s preparation.”
“When you want to be a revolutionary you have to be supported by a team, he didn’t have a team supporting him,” Snoop Dogg suggested toward the beginning of the interview. “He never had a team with structure, with protocol, what are we doing? Why are we addressing this situation? How are we going to handle it? What’s the solution? He just brought it up, and it just was in the air, then everybody looked at him for answers, and he had no answers. He just was bringing it to people that this was a situation that we have to pay attention to.”
Kaepernick’s decision to take a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and other injustices in the U.S., like the fact that Hillary Clinton broke the law with her email but wasn’t in prison, came in the summer of 2016. “So what is this country really standing for?” Kaepernick asked at his first press conference after beginning his protest.
The Clinton angle wasn’t really picked up by the media, who focused instead on the bulk of Kaepernick’s statements, about police brutality. Police brutality has been an issue that has animated activists and communities for decades. The militarized response to protests in Ferguson over a police shooting propelled the issue of police brutality into the national spotlight. Many people, like Snoop Dogg and the hosts of Undisputed, insist Kaepernick brought attention to the issue, but I haven’t seen any polling to suggest Kaepernick had reached an audience that was unaware of the issue of police brutality before. Naturally, no matter how unproductive, or even counterproductive, Kaepernick’s protest may be, he has a what ought to be unbounded right to self-expression, a First Amendment guarantee.
Nevertheless, Kaepernick’s decision to focus on the problem and his protest of it, and not on solutions Black Lives Matter activists released more than a year and a half ago that have largely been ignored by the very people who insist they care deeply about the issue of police violence. Perhaps I’ve missed it, but I have not heard Kaepernick or any other celebrity glomming on to the issue of police violence mention Black Lives Matters’ Campaign Zero initiative a single time.
Over 30 years after a botched test at the Soviet nuclear plant sent clouds of smoldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, the world's largest land-based moving structure has been slid over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site to prevent deadly radiation spewing from the stricken reactor for the next 100 years.
Rising 360 feet into the air with a span of 850 feet and length of 540 feet, the shield is tall enough to cover the Statue of Liberty and longer than two Boeing 777 jets placed end to end.
As Yahoo reports, a concrete sarcophagus was hastily built over the site of the stricken reactor to contain the worst of the radiation, but a more permanent solution has been in the works since 2001.
Easily visible from kilometers away, the 36,000 tonne 'New Safe Confinement' arch has been slowly pulled over the site over the past four days to create a casement to block radiation and allow the remains of the reactor to be dismantled safely.
On Tuesday, a ceremony was held at Chernobyl to mark this major milestone in the decades of work to secure the site that has been funded by donations amounting to over 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) from over 40 countries and organizations.
"Let the whole world see today what Ukraine and the world can do when they unite, how we are able to protect the world from nuclear contamination and nuclear threats," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.
The structure, which resembles a vast aircraft hangar, has been designed to withstand extreme temperatures, corrosion and tornadoes.
A first for modern engineering, CNN notes that the Chernobyl shield is the largest moveable, land-based structure ever built, according the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which manages funding for the international project.
The arch-shaped steel structure was assembled nearby and moved more than 1,000 feet into position with the help of a special skidding system of hydraulic jacks that pushed the mammoth shield one stroke at a time.
"Many people had doubts and didn't believe… However, I congratulate you, dear friends. Yes, we did it," said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko during a ceremony at Chernobyl commemorating the event.
Chernobyl itself, obviously, remains a ghost town…
In conjunction with that announcement, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a Milwaukee-based free market think tank, published a report on six occupational licenses that should be repealed or reformed. The report highlighted licenses for dietitians, landscape architects, private detectives, private security persons, sign language interpreters, and interior designers.
None of these licenses do much, if anything, in the way of protecting the public’s health and safety, I wrote at the time. Since that’s the only reason government should require a permission slip before someone can engage in an otherwise legal activity, it makes sense that Wisconsin lawmakers should take a skeptical look at why those licenses are required.
I’ve received more than a dozen emails from people in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) arguing that the state license for sign language interpreters is necessary and proper. I checked with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and found out that they, too, have been besieged by a similar outpouring of opposition since publishing their report.
Here’s a portion of the message I received from one reader, Karen Beth Staller, who says she’s been a sign language interpreter for 30 years:
While it’s much more expensive and time-consuming to engage in the profession than it was when I started, it’s time and money well-spent. We need degrees, licenses, registrations and background checks, as well as continuing education requirements to keep up with developments in linguistics and interpreting practices, as well as training interpreting in specialized settings.
As a freelance interpreter, one might go into a college classroom for a class on legal ethics or microbiology; a doctor’s office for a cold or a cancer diagnosis; an operating room for open heart surgery; a courtroom for a divorce hearing or a murder trial; a factory floor for a job interview or forklift training; an emergency room for a broken toe or a shooting; a bank to liquidate a deceased relative’s accounts; a funeral home to make final arrangements; and hundreds of other settings for myriad other reasons…
…This may seem simple to someone who has – as a hearing person – dealt with these interactions all your life, but when there’s a language difference, it becomes more complicated…
…To become an interpreter, one needs much more than just a knowledge of sign language, but without background checks, licenses and educational requirements, anyone would be able to call themselves an interpreter.”
I think Staller made the strongest argument out of the messages I received, but there were many variations of the “if we don’t have a license, anyone can call themselves an interpreter and cause confusion or outright harm to the deaf community.” Several of those messages included references to the 2013 incident in which a man named Thamsanqa Jantjie ended up on stage with President Barack Obama during Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in South Africa. Jantjie clearly had no idea what he was doing and was obviously not a trained sign language interpreter, to say the least.
That Jantjie was apparently able to fake his credentials well enough to get on stage at such a high-profile event certainly is shocking, but it’s not a good argument for licensing. It speaks more to a lack of adequate diligence by the organizers of that single event, not to a broader problem in the market for sign language interpreters. In other words, just because South Africa does not require licenses for sign language interpreters, it doesn’t mean that a licensing scheme would have stopped Jantije from getting on stage.
No one is arguing that deaf people do not have a right to have skilled, accurate interpreters. The question, then, is not whether the deaf community in Wisconsin should have access to competent sign language interpreters, but whether a state licensing scheme is the best way to ensure that they do.
“The importance of sign language interpreters’ work is not at issue,” says Lee McGrath, legislative counsel for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm that frequently challenges restrictive and onerous state licensing rules. “The real question is whether there is some permanent market failure that courts, hospitals, or businesses are unable to determine whether an interpreter is competent.”
Most states don’t require a government-issued permission slip for sign language interpreters. Until 2010, Wisconsin didn’t, either. Even if fake sign language interpreters are a legitimate concern in Wisconsin, it’s not clear that a market failure exists because there isn’t a scourge of poor sign language interpretation affecting other part of the country. It would seem there must be other mechanisms to prevent Jantjie-style scam artists from ruining the lives of deaf people.
There’s actually lots of them. Private certifications are probably the best way to accomplish the goals of licensing (efficacy and competency in a professional workforce) without getting the government involved. There’s a national organization, the Registry for Interpreters of the Deaf, already offering this certification.
As the website for RID’s Ohio Chapter informs: “While Ohio does not yet require a degree or certification to interpret outside of the K-12 classroom setting, to gain competence in interpreting, one should consider enrolling in an Interpreter Training Program.”
Translation: If you want to get a job being a sign language interpreter in Ohio, get certified because no one will hire you otherwise.
There are other market-based regulatory mechanisms too, particularly in today’s world where everything can be subject to an online review. This is clearly an issue of importance to the deaf community in Wisconsin, so I don’t doubt they would be able to police bad actors and prevent them from finding work. In many ways, this more personalized, market-based regulation can offer superior results compared to what you get with government licensing. Getting a license means you cleared the bar set by bureaucrats in Madison (or somewhere else), but that’s all. It’s binary. Black and white, on or off, yes or no.
Market based regulations or private certifications allow consumers to see a range of results. It filters out the bad guys, but it also lets the really good ones stand out from the crowd.
“The issue is not whether sign language interpreters are important or whether it matters if interpretation is accurate. It is our view that free markets, informed with good information, are the most efficient means at ensuring quality – not government permission slips,” says Collin Roth, a research fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. “Fencing out interpreters who may be well qualified but are not in a position to bear the costs and burdens of licensure is, in our view, more likely to deny the deaf community the services that it needs – and drive up the cost of those services – than it is to materially improve public and safety,”
If all else fails and there is a real concern about people passing themselves off, Jantjie-style, as fake sign language interpreters, lawmakers can always make that a crime and empower the state attorney general to prosecute such frauds.
That should be a last resort, of course, but it’s still better than licensing because it only punishes those who are actually breaking the law. Licensing operates under the premise that government permitting will prevent potential law-breakers from ever having the chance to do so by erecting a barrier to entry. The problem is that everyone—including the vast majority of people who aren’t going to commit that sort of fraud—has to clear that same barrier.
“State legislators should insert themselves between provider and buyer only when there is a problem that private actors cannot fix,” McGrath told me via email. “Moreover, when the state does intervene, it should be in the least restrictive way.”
More restrictive methods, like licensing, restrict competition, hurt opportunities for workers, and raise consumer prices. Licensing cost Wisconsin more than 30,000 jobs over the last 20 years and adds an additional $1.9 billion annually in consumer costs, according to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty report. Sign language interpreter licensing probably accounts for only a tiny part of that cost, but Staller admits that “it’s much more expensive and time-consuming” to be an interpreter today than it was decades ago when she started working in the field.
Deaf people everywhere should have access to high-quality, well-trained sign language interpreters and should be protected against frauds. The question lawmakers in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) should be asking themselves is whether mandatory government permission slips are the best way to accomplish that.
If anyone is cheering the news of an OPEC deal it is U.S. shale producers. The OPEC agreement sent oil prices shooting up this week, with WTI and Brent quickly surging above $50 per barrel.
Saudi Arabia has agreed to swallow the pain by lowering its oil production, reducing the global surplus to the benefit of everyone else. But it also managed to convince some of its intractable peers to chip in some production cuts, including Iraq, which had previously resisted any cuts. OPEC was even able to bring Russia on board for 300,000 barrels per day in reductions, even though Russia is not an OPEC member.
The result is significant by any measure. OPEC is planning to cut 1.2 million barrels per day beginning in January and non-OPEC producers could add another 600,000 barrels per day in reductions. The global supply-demand balance will likely flip from surplus to deficit when the deal is implemented, and Goldman Sachs sees oil prices rising to $60 per barrel in the first half of next year.
Surely there were champagne corks being popped in Texas as OPEC announced its decision. The share prices of more than 50 U.S. oil and gas companies shot up by more than 10 percent on Wednesday. The S&P 500 Energy Sector Index gained 5 percent, rising to its highest level since mid-2015.
The rebound in oil prices could lead to a revival in U.S. shale production. The U.S. has already lost about 1 million barrels per day (mb/d) since hitting a peak in April 2015, with output now down to about 8.6 mb/d. But production has stabilized in recent months, and the rig count has even rebounded substantially since hitting a low point at just over 400 in May of this year, rising by about 50 percent. Those early signs of stabilization in the shale patch occurred when oil prices were below $50 per barrel. Higher oil prices will accelerate the rebound.
Although major shale regions like the Bakken and the Eagle Ford are still losing production, the Permian Basin in West Texas has allowed the shale industry to survive, and even thrive in some cases. “Assuming OPEC makes good on an apparent production-cut deal, U.S. oil production growth is all but guaranteed to return in 2017,” Joseph Triepke, founder of Infill Thinking, an oil-research firm, told Bloomberg. “All U.S. tight-oil plays will benefit, but none more than the Permian, where we estimate as many as 150 rigs could be reactivated next year.”
Of course, breakeven prices in the shale patch can vary widely from place to place, but in the best locations, there is money to be made even at today’s low prices. North Dakota officials say that Dunn County, which is situated in Bakken country, can produce oil at $15 per barrel, according to Reuters. That puts it on par with the production costs in famously low-cost Iran, and almost as cheap as Iraq. However, because Bakken producers need to pay higher transport costs (thus, the urgency the industry sees in the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline), which often involves shipping crude by rail, breakeven prices can run higher for many companies.
In contrast, the Permian Basin is where the real action is today. Production never really stopped growing in West Texas, even during the downturn. Now the Permian is setting new output records seemingly every month – the EIA projects production will climb to a new record of 2.06 million barrels per day in December, up 27,000 barrels per day from November. Breakeven prices for much of the Delaware Basin in the Permian are around $30 per barrel.
The OPEC deal could accelerate spending, drilling, and production across the U.S. If oil prices rise well into the $50s per barrel, production could be profitable in virtually all of the major shale basins, including the Eagle Ford, which has fallen on hard times over the past two years. Even some large-scale projects from the oil majors, such as multi-billion dollar offshore projects, could move forward now that OPEC has cut output.
But here is where things get complicated. A strong rebound in shale drilling could doom the very price rally that sparked the revival. Goldman Sachs predicts that oil prices above $55 per barrel will bring back some 800,000 barrels per day in shale production compared to a scenario in which oil prices traded at just $45 per barrel. That would put a cap on oil prices – Goldman reiterated its projection for WTI for the second half of 2017 at $50 per barrel, arguing that a surge in shale production will bring prices back down.
In years to come markets may well look back at the month just passed as one of the most pivotal in recent memory, at least that’s the assessment of DB’s Jim Reid. The US election result just over 3 weeks ago sparked a huge divergence across asset classes and also between developed and emerging markets. In fact you could probably start this performance review from November 8th as assets were generally little changed in the first week and a bit leading into the election. Indeed for the first eight days 30 out of 39 assets had returns in a +/- 1% range and 35 assets in a +/- 2% range (the exceptions being commodities). That falls to 5 and 7 assets respectively for the full month however.
Most memorable of all moves perhaps last month was the significant repricing across global yield curves with yields spiking higher on the prospect of fiscal stimulus under President-elect Trump. Indeed in total return terms US Treasuries were -3% while Spanish Bonds and BTP’s returned -2% and Bunds and Gilts returned -1%. However returns for European assets were boosted by a -4% decline for the Euro. In fact in dollar terms then Bunds (-4%), BTP’s (-5%) and Spanish Bonds (-6%) were a lot weaker. Interestingly Gilts (+1%) outperformed with Sterling bouncing back +2% perhaps reflecting the fact that Brexit concerns became somewhat overshadowed. Meanwhile EM bonds (-8%) had their worst month of 2016 with Latam (-7%) in particular selling off sharply. Understandably then credit markets had a difficult month given the moves for rates. European fins, non-fins and HY returned anywhere from -4% to -5% in dollar terms while US credit markets were down anywhere from -1% to -3% with HY outperforming.
Meanwhile there’s an obvious divergence across equity markets. The S&P 500 returned +4% and had its best month since March while there were also gains for the Shanghai Comp (+3%) and more intriguingly, Russia’s Micex (+4%). It was the banking sector which stood out though with the S&P 500 financials index rallying +14% on the prospect of easing bank regulation.
In Europe equity markets were generally softer with the Stoxx 600 turning in a -3% month in dollar terms, although European banks were flat. The periphery was markedly weaker however with Italy’s FTSE MIB returning -4% (weighed down by rising referendum concerns) and the Spanish IBEX and Portugal General both -8%. Much like bonds, EM equities also struggled. The MSCI EM index was -5% while Brazil’s Bovespa, which has been notably volatile all year, returned -10% and was the weakest of all the asset classes.
The final asset class to mention is commodities.
Oil had been generally muddling along in a relatively small range ahead of the OPEC meeting but the positive outcome news saw prices surge nearly 10% on the final day of the month and so helping to push WTI (+6%) and Brent (+5%) into second and third place respectively. However, other commodities were mixed during the month with Gold (-8%) and Silver (-8%) in particular standing out with the trifecta of a Trump presidency, stronger dollar and rising Fed rate hike expectations clearly weighing. The positive outlier however was Copper (+19%) which, along with other base metals, benefited from higher expectations of a boost to infrastructure spending under a Trump presidency.
A quick update of where things stand in YTD terms now.
In dollar terms the top of the leaderboard still has the Bovespa (+67%) leading the way followed by Russia’s Micex (+42%). WTI Oil (+32%) follows with Copper (+23%) and Silver (+19%) rounding out the top 5. At the other end of the scale the FTSE MIB (-20%) is now languishing in the bottom spot with Wheat (-19%) and Sterling (-15%) also in the bottom 3. European banks have recovered a fair bit from the early year lows but are still -12% in total return terms. The S&P 500 (+10%) has had a solid YTD although the Stoxx 600 (-6%) has clearly struggled. Following last month’s moves DM bond markets are generally in a 0% to +1% range although Gilts (-8%) continue to be haunted by the horror month of October. Credit has had a generally solid year. European indices are +1% to +4% while US indices are +3% to +6%. The standout though in credit is US HY which is +13%.
Ever since word went out that Robert Ford shot Jesse James, there have been legends that the dead man was really someone else and that the outlaw secretly survived. Alan Lomax ran into one of those tales when he toured the South with a tape recorder in 1959. Neal Morris (*), an Arkansas banjo player, told Lomax his grandfather had known the James brothers and that they often hid out at his place (“because nobody expected them down in Arkansas, don’t you see”). Jesse James wasn’t even in that part of the country when Bob Ford supposedly shot him, Morris claims; instead, “Quantrill was the man that the Ford boys killed.”
Morris presumably means the Confederate guerrilla William Quantrill, who had fought alongside James in the Civil War. Historians say Quantrill died at the end of the war, but there were rumors that he survived his reported demise too. So Morris has managed to combine two secret-history stories into one: Quantrill didn’t die in 1865, and then in 1882 he died in Jesse James’ place.
Morris wraps up the story by singing the ballad “Jesse James,” which presents the more familiar tale of Ford blasting James in the back. “That’s the story that’s been told, don’t you see,” he says at the end, “but us people, a lot of these people in the mountains, don’t believe it.”
I’d call this “fake news,” but the whole thing is so wonderfully strange that I’d like to hold out a tiny smidge of hope that against all odds it’s true:
In 1948, an Oklahoma man called J. Frank Dalton claimed that he was really Jesse James and that the fellow killed by Robert Ford had actually been a Pinkerton named Charles Bigelow. You can read all about that here. The body of the man shot by Robert Ford was exhumed for DNA tests in 1995; you can read about that here. To listen to Woody Guthrie turning that “Jesse James” ballad into a song about Jesus, go here. For past editions of the Friday A/V Club, go here.
(* It’s spelled “Neal” on the Association for Cultural Equity’s online archive of the Lomax recordings. When Atlantic Records released a selection of those tapes as an anthology called The Sounds of the South, they spelled it “Neil.” I have no idea how Mr. Morris himself spelled it, or if he cared.)
Every Wednesday and Friday, members of the Clovis Mosquito Abatement team pick up a box from the post office, shipped to them from a lab in Kentucky. Inside that box are 20 tubes, each containing 1,000 male mosquitoes infected with a bacterium called Wolbachia that will render the eggs of any female they mate with infertile.
Project manager Steve Mulligan says it took a little explaining to persuade residents of a neighborhood in Clovis, Calif., to allow them to dump 40,000 mosquitoes in their front yards every week.
“It is unusual,” says Mulligan. “The idea of releasing mosquitoes to control mosquitoes, that is thinking a little outside of the box.”
But in the age of Zika virus, which has spread from South America to parts of Florida and even to Central California, people are open to new ideas to eliminate a species of mosquito that is responsible for millions of human deaths around the world.
While the residents of Clovis have been open to the audacious experiment of releasing bacteria-laden insects into their neighborhoods, other proposals have stoked far more controversy. A company called Oxitec engineered a mosquito in a laboratory to produce similar infertility effects to the Wolbachia infection method. But because this approach involves genetic modification as opposed to bacterial infection, Florida Keys residents formed a resistance movement to the GM mosquito.
“We don’t want to be guinea pigs,” says one Florida Keys resident at a town hall meant to field concerns about the mosquito release.
But with so many lives on the line, scientists like Zachary Adelman at Texas A&M questions the morality of opposition to genetically modified mosquitoes and has harsh words for those invoking the precautionary principle to halt the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment.
“While you’re waiting, and while you’re being ‘precautionary,’ tens of thousands of people—children—are going to die of hemorraghic fever from things like Dengue, or thousands of children will be born with microcephaly because of Zika,” says Adelman.
Adelman and his team have modified the genomes of mosquitoes with the cutting-edge gene-editing technology CRISPR. When the transgenic mosquitoes mate with non-modified mosquitoes, the off-spring will almost all be male.
“We can link it with the so-called ‘gene drive’ where the gene would be inherited beyond 50 percent, at these super rates, where almost all the progeny would carry this gene… And eventually, the mosquitoes would run into a problem. They would run out of females, and then there would be no more eggs, and then that would be that for them,” says Adelman.
One common objections that Adelman encounters is that wiping out a species of mosquitoes could have unintended consequences on our ecosystem. But he points out the particular mosquito he’s targeting, Aedes Aegypti, is only native to certain parts of Africa and has spread across the planet only with human colonization.
“There are no species that are dependent on it, that must eat it to survice,” says Adelman.
The Clovis release program concluded in mid-October, and scientists are still collecting data on the population effects. The trial release in the Florida Keys began last month, and Adelman says his CRISPR-modified mosquitoes still need further study in the lab before they’re ready to be released into the wild.
Watch the full video above.
Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Graphics by Joshua Swain. Camera by Alex Manning and Weissmueller. Music by Kai Engel and Jared C. Balogh.
Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.
During the past year, the Chinese yuan (CNY) has shed a bit more than 7 percent of its value against the greenback. That’s only one aspect of the CNY’s weakness. Another concerns the quality of the CNY.
As Jerry Jordan pointed out recently at the Cato Institute’s 34th Annual Monetary Conference, a central bank is a balance sheet. Among other things, the People’s Bank of China’s balance sheet contains information that indicates the quality of the CNY.
While the monetary liabilities (read: monetary base) of the bank have remained rather constant since late 2014, their composition has changed. The assets, which are the counterparts to the monetary liabilities, have changed dramatically. The net foreign assets have fallen and been replaced by net domestic assets. In consequence, the quality of the CNY has deteriorated. In this light, the recent tightening of China’s capital controls on outbound foreign investment is nothing more than an attempt to preserve foreign exchange and reverse the deterioration in the CNY’s quality.
Over the past year, we have observed a depreciation of the CNY against the greenback, a reduction in the CNY’s quality, and the imposition of even more restrictive capital controls – an embarrassing state of affairs for a country that was beating its breast just two short months ago about joining the International Monetary Fund’s elite Special Drawing Rights (SDR) currency basket.