Nuclear exchange existential threat to Tech Logistics Chain fueling China's economy

China’s smartphone makers rely heavily on South Korean chip producers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix for chips to expand memory capacity in phones. In the first eight months of this year, China imported $23 billion worth of semiconductors from South Korea, half again as much as a year ago, according to the Korea International Trade Association.

Ken Burns' Vietnam series exposes the genesis of the term 'credibility gap'

Ken Burns' Vietnam series exposes the genesis of the term "credibility gap" which knocked the Administrative State off its pedestal of competence achieved by the successful prosecution of World War II. A great sacrifice being asked requires a credible vision.  Official statements that prove not to be true ate away at Johnson's War on Poverty as well as in Vietnam.  And it snowballed into Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign quip about the scariest words in the English language; "I'm from government, I'm here to help."  

What can Congress do about the Equifax credit crisis?

The recent new that the credit agency Equifax was hacked and let 143 million individual accounts in the U.S. be compromised means after weeding out children and those who have no credit that everyone’s account is at risk. It’s not short lived either because individuals can not change their social security numbers much less their date of birth and other corresponding data which vets their rating. It’s a credit crisis that requires a resolution.  Many will contact their Congressman, actually I did, and ask for government to just do something.

Upon reflection the problem is one of Governing the Commons. The Commons being public grasslands which were overused and abused by farmers who let their livestock eat everything because their was no ownership to promote sustainable grazing. Equifax is one of those careless farmers who has no regard for people’s credit because they gather big data and sell the information to creditors. So creditors are the customers whose only recourse is to drop one and use another. Equifax will be abandoned and probably be litigated out of business as it’s difficult to believe they have any friends left. Nevertheless what can Congress do about this credit crisis?

A simple suggestion would be to require every creditor to give the consumer the choice of credit agency to vet their application.  Let the consumer see three agencies: Experian, Transunion and Innovis to substitute Equifax, listed with a check box next to each name.  Have it be a prominent part of the weasel word section and requiring the consumer mark it and initial the marking so they get some ownership control over their identity.  Whichever one is selected is then contracted by the creditor to supply the information. With this simple change credit agencies will consider consumers as their customer so that one can envision television commercials from Transunion or Experian much like Visa or Mastercharge does to promote the use of their cards. While the service is free to consumers the agencies can upsell sell their services and security features. The positive from this change is that it will make the industry much more attentive to those whose history has been taken over by criminals, something which none of the majors has been great about and it should drive Equifax out of business.

Require consumer specifies which credit info gatherer to use

The credit information gatherers, Experian, TransUnion, Equifax and the like, mine an asset that has no ownership, much like the commons are grasslands abused by farmers because there is no owner with a long term vision to sustain it. The Equifax breaches are an example of carelessness coming from an unfettered use and abuse of an asset without an owner. But there are concerned customers who issue mortgages and leases that now have to contend with a complete data set put into criminal hands with a useful half life of a decade at least.  Just for this reason everyone of Equifax's customer ought to abandon them because their carelessness which will make their transactions more difficult in the future. They should be made an example of by litigating it out of existence.  But as for the problem of data in the wrong hands the fact that individuals have no ownership over the data collected needs to be explored as a mean of securing information. A possible solution is to require the consumer specifies which gatherer to use when applying for credit.

Support Kurdish nationhood abandon Shiites to Iran and Sunnis to Turkey

As Islamic State Withers, The Alliance Against it is Fraying which is as you would expect with 'your enemy is my enemy' accords where the old enemy is diminished making previous antagonisms apparent.  This article makes the statement that Iran and its allies  have the upper hand, as if that wrapped up the debate about working with Iran to further pacify the region.  Iran is tolerant of the Kurdish so that their nationhood in parts of Iraq and Syria is viable as long as American support for Kurdistan is economic. Otherwise abandon the rest of it leaving Sunnis to Turkey and Shias to Iran to more or less dominate.  

Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are authoritarians failing at their promise for growth

The Invidia Huang Silicon Valley story makes clear how important free and open expression is to the creative process and how authoritarians such as Xi Jinping of China effort to control the press and Donald Trump's effort to reduce immigration throw cold water on hot economic growth. China's government has a pact with its people to grow the economy at a high rate and float more boats.  It's the same pack Trump appears to have made with his supporters. In both cases they are failing and momentum has not yet made their failure apparent.