Savant Idiot

Larry Summers, onetime Treasury Secretary, President of Harvard (who left under a gaff cloud) and now a cable-news chattering head, last week poo-pooed President Trump's attempt to re-balance our international trade. He said on CNBC that he buys lots at his supermarket but it buys nothing from him ... and this is not a disaster. Thus, h,  a renowned economist, is implying that our huge trade deficits with China are not a worry.

To hear such liberal tripe from such a powerful voice in American policy making shocked me to the core ... and suggest why our country has been asleep at the switch for the last 25 years. Now, I am not a PhD. in economics, but I do know that Summer's has his bubble-head in the clouds on at least this issue ... for these reasons:

- Summer's supermarket analogy is misusing microeconomics. Asserting that this micro conclusion applies to macroeconomics is another gaff by one who clearly should know better.

- If Summers were employed by the supermarket he shops at ... and it bought his services as the other half of his analogy, then let's finish this lesson. If Summers spent much more there than he earned (like the current China trade analogy) them this supermarket would be the classic "company store" ... to which Larry would soon "owe his soul."

- The U.S. has been running growing trade defies with China for decades ... last year totaling about $375 billion. China then uses this sovereign wealth to but American assets. It would not take many more years of such an imbalance before China would effectively own the United States -- not a circumstance any of us (including Summer's I assume) would want to impose on our issue.

QED: Larry Summers is a savant idiot.

Savant Idiot

On CSPAN this morning there was a MIT professor, Jason Pontin, espousing on the 10 breakthrough technical developments occurring today ... see: CSPAN Video. He was quite knowledgeable and interesting until he got around to global warming. He then said that there are 40 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere (correct, if he means carbon dioxide by volume ... actually just carbon would be less). Then he said something that had me shouting at the TV. He said that he would bet all the money in his pocket that, in his lifetime, all this carbon would be removed from our air! This, of course,would mean that we would not have any plants since this carbon dioxide is what they feed on. No plants means no sustenance for animals ... for plants are the basis of all life ... and thus no MIT professor.

And then no one to either pay or collect his idiotic bet.