Recent content by Brad Sallows

Class B warfare.

Yep. Except for whatever the next administration continues, the smart strategy has always been to just wait Trump out.

Part of it not being a great idea is that the government has already stated it will borrow to start the fund. They'll borrow more to prop it up if they have to. Governments are more likely to dig deeper holes rather than to walk away from sunk costs.

The same legality any executive action has until Congress acts to interfere with it or someone successfully brings a challenge to it before a court or the executive (or a succeeding executive) changes it - it goes forward until it's stopped. A Trump tariff is essentially the same as a JCPOA.

What does that have to do with the information conveyed by prices?

If it's not a really great idea, the time for public feedback that could kill it would be before it's stood up and the mandates are written.

"If..." The context in which the SWF is being stood up includes a lot of "hey, big domestic projects..." talk. Everyone "knows" that's part of its purpose. That can't go back in the horse.

There are reasons for favouring ownership of foreign assets. Ran across this today (skeptical article at Reason.com about the proposed Canadian SWF). "...the Norwegian investment fund is financed by the country's oil and gas revenues, only spends the return it makes, and can only make...

You wait for a loooong time for something to come along that move governments to do things you've thought they should do. Then a crisis arrives. Some governments start doing some of the things, but also put a lot of energy into pressing other governments to act first. Obviously there is not...

The cornerstone of all that is pricing. One of the great problems to be solved is figuring out where stuff has to go to make more stuff. How can timely information possibly be created and received and acted upon? That insufficiency of information is why command economies fail. Answer: prices.

There wasn't really anything preventing them from imposing water restrictions earlier. They do like to make big political gestures. If the crunched numbers warrant it, why aren't they already at stage 2? It's not as if there's some force beyond their ken that stops them from increasing water...

Unlikely. Protestors tend to be people with time on their hands - unemployed, retired - and whose chosen frame in Arnold Kling's "three languages of politics" is oppressor-oppressed, which means they almost always side with the indigenous groups. And they'd probably be resigned to getting...

Well, here is recent history for Rogers RCI. $2.00 per share, currently 4.05% yield. Has been $2.00 per share for a few years. Consistent, and not outsized. Those investors might want to try TELUS.

Operating margin and profit margin are two different things. Profit margin takes into account taxes and interest. Obviously taxes vary a little from country to country; equally obviously, companies that have been financing expansion with a lot of debt will have higher debt servicing burdens to...

Some point in time: "Deficit is project to be X". Later point in time: "Deficit is projected to be Y, where Y > X. What can we do?" Still later: "Deficit is projected to be < Y. What can we spend it on?"