In USA purple and violet are expelled. It is either red or blue.

Amanda Ripley in “America must step out of this self-destructive zombie dance” Washington Post November 1, references an ad by two candidates running for governor of Utah, in which they committed to respect and uphold democratic norms and a peaceful transition of power.

In a world where we hear polarization artists singing “Anyone you hate I can hate better; I can hate anyone better than you.” “No, you can’t “Yes, I can… Yes, I can”, that sounds like a great initiative. 

I would though like to see included a direct reference to the need of respecting the middle ground, the undecided, those swimming in the middle of the river being thrown stones at from both shores.

I speak from personal experience. Decades ago, in my homeland Venezuela, in an Op-Ed I wrote: “I write in green but my readers send me loads of hate mail, based on that they can only read me in yellow or blue.”

In America right now, purple and violet seem prohibited. It is either blue or red, and both blue and red polarization profiteers seem to love it that way.

PS. https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2010/05/speakers-corner-speakers-have-moved-to.html

An example of how the not so lean but still mean Bureaucracy Autocracy machine works.

First expert technocrats concoct and impose bank capital requirements implying their bureaucrat colleagues, those with no skin in the game, know better what to do with credit than e.g., small businesses.

“Assets for which bank capital requirements were nonexistent; sovereign credits. A ‘leverage ratio’ discouraged holdings of low-return government securities” Paul Volcker

Then politicians "complain" banks are not lending sufficient to small businesses.

And so, bureaucrats with access to lots of credit, further subsidized by central banks QEs and the preaching of MMT, design their own lending programs to small businesses, implying they know much better how to lend to small businesses than bank loan officers. This generates new jobs for loads of new bureaucracy associates, while adding loads of costs to be paid by tax payers or inflation.

Just an example of how Bureaucracy Autocracies empower themselves to grow and grow and grow

Of course, no matter those preaching MMT promise easy money ever after, that is unsustainable. The members of the fallen Bureaucracy Autocracies will also suffer. 

Citizens in countries suffering the curse of centralized oil revenues, they don’t live in a nation but only in somebody else’s business. Opposition politicians in such nations, more than changing that, usually only aspire to be the new owners of the business.

The same can be said of all countries suffering the easy public credit curse. Citizens there live in the business of their respective Bureaucracy Autocracy. Most of their respective opposition politicians, sometimes all, also aspire to be the new owners of that business.

Bureaucracy Autocracies were empowered by stealth.

A Bureaucracy Autocracy has been constructed with stealth

Sir, below I quote from Didi Kuo’s review of Moisés Naím’s “The Revenge of Power”, “How the world has been ‘made safe for autocracy’” Washington Post, April 24.

“Today’s autocrats are savvy, with new stratagems fit for a world upended by technological change. They exploit, and sow, distrust in experts, authorities, the media. They manufacture truth, invent enemies and use legal pretexts to consolidate power.”

The regulators in the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, launched Basel I in 1988. In order to “save” our banks from that “enemy” of excessive risk-taking, these “savvy” experts concocted risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements; and for which they decreed weights of 0% the government and 100% citizens.

That translated effectively into banks being able to leverage much more their capital/equity with  e.g., Treasuries, than with loans to citizens. That has made it much easier for banks to obtain desired risk-adjusted returns on equity with Treasuries, than with any private sector assets. That de facto implies that bureaucrats know better what to do with credit for which repayment they’re not personally responsible for, than e.g., small businesses and entrepreneurs

You don’t need to take my word on it. Paul A. Volcker, in his 2018 autobiography “Keeping at it” which he penned together with Christine Harper, valiantly confessed: “Assets for which bank capital requirements were nonexistent, were what had most political support: sovereign credits. A simple ‘leverage ratio’ discouraged holdings of low-return government securities”

Add to that central banks’ QEs, which primarily includes the purchase of government debt, and the empowernment of a non-transparent Bureaucracy Autocracy becomes evident. 

If that is not a prime example of “what Naím terms stealthocracy: a way of maintaining the architecture of liberal democracy while gutting accountability” what is?

Sir, as a Venezuelan just like Naím I too heard Hugo Chavez with concern and dislike. But, just like Venezuela’s curse of centralized oil revenues has allowed truly bad autocrats to remain entrenched even when the walls are tumbling down, what I now most fear, is that world wide government-easy-money curse. 

Let me also remind you Washington Post, that none of the excessive bank exposures that resulted in major crises, or bubbles that have burst, have ever been built up with assets perceived as risky, always with what was perceived as safe.

I could go on and on, but let me end with two questions:

The Founding Fathers of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, what would they have opined about the Federal Reserve decreeing risk weights of 0% the Federal Government and 100% We the People?

Where would America be today, if its immigrants centuries ago, had been met by this type of risk averse regulations?

PS. My first ever Op-Ed, in the Daily Journal of Caracas, was on the theme of bank regulations. 

PS. An example of how the Bureaucracy Autocracies work.

PS. I have recently enlisted #AI ChatGPT - OpenAI to help me fight the Bureaucracy Autocracy. "What would you opine of risk weighted bank capital requirements with risk weights assigned for political reasons?"

Here's a letter the Washington Post published August 2023. It refers to Paul Volcker’s valiant courageous and honorable confession on what happened 1988. Thanks @PostOpinions for not ignoring it.

Forcing oligarchs to keep their yachts, would be a much more severe sanction.

In those very rare moments the desire to own a yacht sets in, I remember the saying that the second happiest day for a millionaire is when he buys himself a super-duper yacht but, the happiest one, is that day he sells it.

With this in mind why should we advance the oligarchs such happiness? It could be much more effective to have a judge order him to keep the yacht and its crew in tip-top conditions for the next twenty years, and, if failing to do so, have to spend five years doing community service.

Warning! Let's not wake up to taxpayers having to pay unemployment benefits to many fired yacht-crews and pick up huge yacht-maintenance costs.

I warn so because though there must be tremendous buyer market in Russian oligarch yachts, few buyers, or none, will dare to show up. What's the future for this yachts: luxurious restaurants or tourist attractions like fancy Russian Faberge eggs floating museums?

Please, the more you feel enemies to your grandchildren’s way of life could be accumulating too much resources, would you not love for as much of these as possible to be frozen in unproductive assets, like fancy super-yachts?

So, is confiscating yachts a really potent way to fight a war and bring peace?

As also applies when taxing wealth it is important to consider if assets, like yachts, are to be sold, who are the buyers and what would they otherwise have done with that money. Would you, e.g., like an able entrepreneur to freeze his money/purchase-power in a luxurious yacht? And are we really sure those who will receive that money, e.g., the bureaucracy of turn, will give it a better use?

Warning! Just let not confiscations become somebody’s profitable business. 

I say this because, when selling a confiscated asset, e.g., a Russian oligarch’s super-yacht, what’s really obtained, effectively confiscated, is the money somebody else has willingly put into that useless asset.

Collecting tax from the wealthy is not as straightforward as it sounds.

 I refer to Debra Satz’s review of Peter S. Goodman’s “Davos Man” “Democracy is under threat. Are billionaires to blame?” Outlook, Washington Post, March 6. 

It states: “Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman estimate that at marginal tax rate of 10 percent for wealth over $1 billion would have raised $250 billion from the richest Americans in 2018”.

That could help feed a false illusion about how to resolve problems which of course should bother all of us, such as excessive inequalities.

BUT, all the wealth of the wealthy is stored in assets that have either been valued higher by other people’s money or, for which the wealthy when buying these, returned to the economy their money. So, this tax would require to collect $250 billion from the not-so wealthy, by having them buy the wealthy’s assets. 

What the implications of that would be is hard for me to estimate, but they should neither be ignored or underestimated. 

For a starter, what would the buyers otherwise had done with their money? 

Are we sure bureaucrats know better how to use it? 

What will become of yacht builders and yacht crews, if the yachts are the high-profile assets all wealthy decide to sell?

Don’t divide America’s children into those with poor or better off parents.

Sir, I refer to your editorial “A disaster for poor people” WP, January 30, 2022.

I’m from an oil-cursed nation, Venezuela, and I’m convinced that if all its net oil revenues, had been shared out equally to all its citizens, instead of empowering redistribution profiteering, my homeland would not be in the so sad shape it is today.

Therefore, when I read about child-tax credit being “strictly mean-tested to reduce the program’s high costs” my immediate reaction is to propose paying out those child benefits to all children, whether rich or poor, and if you need to help cover the fiscal costs, make those benefits taxable.

More important, those benefits would then be considered belonging to American children, and not just to the children of the poor Americans.

PS. http://theoilcurse.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-minimum-minimorum-on-exiting-iraq.html

@PerKurowski