Marketing Medicine

I see TV ads many times a day.  The medicine[s] always have a strange name, a made up word.  The TV doesn’t say what the magic medicine might cure.  They are not sold in stores, you have to order from the medicine’s website or telephone them.  If these magic medicines really worked I would think you could buy them in drug stores.  Since stores don’t carry them I have doubts that they actually do any good. 

“The Batman” movie 2022

Meh.  Two simple old fashioned techniques fail in The Batman.  The scenes are not lighted.  They are so dark the only character I could recognize was Batman himself, when he was wearing his costume. Other actors came and went, but I could not see them well enough to tell one from another.  All they had to do was turn on the lights.  Surely a movie budget can afford a little electricity. 

   And the curse of the soundman hits this movie hard.  The actors speak in stage whispers, or just too softly.  I failed to understand much of the spoken dialog.  Which makes it hard to follow what little plot the movie might have had.

   Things got so bad I stopped watching The Batman before it was halfway thru.    

 $32 million for a drone???

The TV says the USAF drone lost over the black sea cost $32 million.  You can buy a low end Russian jet fighter for that.  Gold plate much?? 

Silicon Valley Bank.

This bank had $200 billion plus in deposits, mostly from companies.  It had companies that deposited $20 billion apiece.  Sooner of later any half way competent company can find far more profitable uses for $20 billion, more profitable than leaving it in the bank.  When such a company withdraws $20 billion to do something it’s gonna shake the financial stability of the bank, even if it does have another $180 billion in the til. 

   I believe the thinking in bankers’ minds assumes that the depositors’ money is very small compared to the banks total assets.  And that they have a lot of depositors but they don’t all withdraw their deposits at the same time. 

  I’m thinking that Silicon Valley ignored all this and did not worry when big depositors made big withdrawals.

Biden promised to make all the depositors whole without laying the burden on taxpayers.  He is gonna have FDIC pay off everybody.  Of course FDIC gets its money from taxpayers, and $20 billion depositors take a lot of paying off.

 

The Federal Debt limit.

 We are approaching it.  It should hit sometime in September.  Last time, maybe ten years ago, the newsies cried and wailed that the US was going to default on its debts.  Not true. Never happened.  The Federal government collects enough taxes to pay about 65% of its debts.  The other 35% is paid be selling treasury bills (soundest investment on the planet). Last time my mail got delivered (the post office is nearly independent these days.  They don’t do checks for Social Security any more, the computers do electronic funds transfer right into my checking account.   I wasn’t due an income tax refund, so shutting down the IRS didn’t bother me.

   They did furlough a lot of federal bureaucrats.  Tough on them but my sympathy for bureaucrats is limited.   Plus as I remember they all got their jobs back with back pay. 

   So the newsies, even the Fox newsies, are wailing on the air that we are going to default on our debts.  Did not happen last time.  The Party of More Free Stuff (Democrats) has proposed trillions of dollars of new pork spending.  If the Republicans have the stones they should tell the Democrats, we won’t raise the debt ceiling just to pay for their pork.

Let’s make the rails safer.

Norfolk Southern has done two massive train wrecks inside of a week.  There is the East Palestine wreck and now a second wreck not far away from the East Palestine wreck.  Most of the time derailments leading to train wrecks are caused be faulty track.  Around here main line track at White River Junction is so old that I can pick spikes out of the ties with my fingers.  They run AMTRAK passenger trains over that bit of totally worn out track.  I’ll give the railroad this; they limit the speed of the passenger train to 30 mph over this bit of dead track.

   What we need is a public written document describing what properly maintained track is and how to inspect it.  Best issued by a private railroad association, not a government bureau.

   After a train wreck the railroad’s insurance company should inspect the track.  If the track fails to meet documented quality, the insurance company should refuse to pay off to the railroad.  For backup, if trackside land owners, local governments or businesses feel the railroad is running unsafely they can inspect the track themselves and sue the railroad if they find it running on dangerous track.

    The East Palestine train wreck is hard to explain.  The hotbox caused the truck to burst into flames 6 to 8 feet high.  There is a bit of video tape that shows this.  Why the train crew failed to stop the train after seeing the flames is strange, and no newsie has been intelligent enough to ask Norfolk Southern about it.  Hotboxes have been a hazard to railroading since its beginning two hundred years ago.   With 200 years of experience to guide them train crews ought to know to stop the train and cut the hotbox car out onto a siding and leave it there.

China is out to replace the United States as most important world power

I do not approve.  Here of some things that we should do to slow China down.

We ought to pass a tariff of 10% or maybe more on all Chinese goods.  That will cost the Chinese some business. The president can do this.  US tariffs are set by executive order of the president.

We should forbid US banks and other financial companies from loaning money to Chinese companies.  If a Chinese company needs to borrow money, it should borrow from places in China.  I believe this will require legislation in Congress.

 We ought to make a list of strategic items that US companies may not sell to China.  Semiconductors, small arms, ammunition, crude oil and refined fuels such as gasoline and diesel.  Coal, heavy weapons and their ammunition.  Aircraft.  A commission could come up with a more comprehensive list.  This ought to require legislation in Congress, but similar things have been done throughout the cold war on authority that I don’t understand.

US college education falls into two classes.  Four years of American college education is a hoot.  All of us who did college look back fondly on our college years.  Chinese students who graduate from an American college take back good memories of their time in America and will make it easier for us to get alone with China in the future.  Chinese students who are just out of high school (18 years old), unmarried, paying full list price, we ought to welcome.  Older students, who might be applying to US colleges to learn up-to-date US technology or snoop classified research, ought to be subject to more stringent checks.

Marking your product “Made in America” increases the sale of the product.  We ought to have an organization the keeps track of the “Made in America” mark and require that only 10 or 15 % of the product come from China, the bulk of the product should be from the US or friendly countries.  This might also require legislation from Congress to achieve. 

We ought to ban Tik-Tok and the like.